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So even the people that follow the topic closely are stunned by the digital landscape that engulfs our children, how quickly it evolves, and the potential social cost. Two people in a unique position to explain all this are our guest today, Jeffrey Chester and Kathryn Montgomery, both from the Center for Digital Democracy. Jeff is executive director of the Center, and Kathryn is its research director and senior strategist, as well as professor emerita of communication at American University. Jeff and Kathryn have been pioneers in this work and have been uniquely strong voices for protecting children. Interview Summary Let me congratulate the two of you for being way ahead of your time. I mean the two of you through your research and your advocacy and your organizational work, you were onto these things way before most people were. I'm really happy that you're joining us today, and welcome to our podcast. Kathryn, let me begin with you. So why be concerned about this digital landscape? Kathryn - Well, certainly if we're talking about children and youth, we have to pay attention to the world they live in. And it's a digital world as I think any parent knows, and everybody knows. In fact, for all of us, we're living in a digital world. So young people are living their lives online. They're using mobile phones and mobile devices all the time. They're doing online video streaming. They form their communications with their peers online. Their entire lives are completely integrated into this digital media landscape, and we must understand it. Certainly, the food and beverage industry understand it very well. And they have figured out enormously powerful ways to reach and engage young people through these digital media. You know, the extent of the kids' connection to this is really remarkable. I just finished a few minutes ago recording a podcast with two people involved with the Children and Screens organization. And, Chris Perry, who's the executive director of that organization and Dmitri Christakis who was with us as well, were saying that kids sometimes check their digital media 300 times a day. I mean, just unbelievable how much of this there is. There's a lot of reasons to be concerned. Let's turn our attention to how bad it is, what companies are doing, and what might be done about it. So, Jeff, tell us if you would, about the work of the Center for Digital Democracy. Jeff - Well, for more than a quarter of a century, we have tracked the digital marketplace. As you said at the top, we understood in the early 1990s that the internet, broadband what's become today's digital environment, was going to be the dominant communications system. And it required public interest rules and policies and safeguards. So as a result, one of the things that our Center does is we look at the entire digital landscape as best as we can, especially what the ultra-processed food companies are doing, but including Google and Meta and Amazon and GenAI companies. We are tracking what they're doing, how they're creating the advertising, what their data strategies are, what their political activities are in the United States and in many other places in the world. Because the only way we're going to hold them accountable is if we know what they're doing and what they intend to do. And just to quickly follow up, Kelly, the marketers call today's global generation of young people Generation Alpha. Meaning that they are the first generation to be born into this complete digital landscape environment that we have created. And they have developed a host of strategies to target children at the earliest ages to take advantage of the fact that they're growing up digitally. Boy, pretty amazing - Generation Alpha. Kathryn, I have kind of a niche question I'd like to ask you because it pertains to my own career as well. So, you spent many years as an academic studying and writing about these issues, but also you were a strong advocacy voice. How did you go about balancing the research and the objectivity of an academic with advocacy you were doing? Kathryn - I think it really is rooted in my fundamental set of values about what it means to be an academic. And I feel very strongly and believe very strongly that all of us have a moral and ethical responsibility to the public. That the work we do should really, as I always have told my students, try to make the world a better place. It may seem idealistic, but I think it is what our responsibility is. And I've certainly been influenced in my own education by public scholars over the years who have played that very, very important role. It couldn't be more important today than it has been over the years. And I think particularly if you're talking about public health, I don't think you can be neutral. You can have systematic ways of assessing the impact of food marketing, in this case on young people. But I don't think you can be totally objective and neutral about the need to improve the public health of our citizens. And particularly the public health of our young people. I agree totally with that. Jeff let's talk about the concept of targeted marketing. We hear that term a lot. And in the context of food, people talk about marketing aimed at children as one form of targeting. Or, toward children of color or people of color in general. But that's in a way technological child's play. I understand from you that there's much more precise targeting than a big demographic group like that. Tell us more. Jeff - Well, I mean certainly the ultra-processed food companies are on the cutting edge of using all the latest tools to target individuals in highly personalized way. And I think if I have one message to share with your listeners and viewers is that if we don't act soon, we're going to make an already vulnerable group even more exposed to this kind of direct targeted and personalized marketing. Because what artificial intelligence allows the food and beverage companies and their advertising agencies and platform partners to do is to really understand who we are, what we do, where we are, how we react, behave, think, and then target us accordingly using all those elements in a system that can create this kind of advertising and marketing in minutes, if not eventually milliseconds. So, all of marketing, in essence, will be targeted because they know so much about us. You have an endless chain of relationships between companies like Meta, companies like Kellogg's, the advertising agencies, the data brokers, the marketing clouds, et cetera. Young people especially, and communities of color and other vulnerable groups, have never been more exposed to this kind of invasive, pervasive advertising. Tell us how targeted it can be. I mean, let's take a 11-year-old girl who lives in Wichita and a 13-year-old boy who lives in Denver. How much do the companies know about those two people as individuals? And how does a targeting get market to them? Not because they belong to a big demographic group, but because of them as individuals. Jeff - Well, they certainly are identified in various ways. The marketers know that there are young people in the household. They know that there are young people, parts of families who have various media behaviors. They're watching these kinds of television shows, especially through streaming or listening to music or on social media. Those profiles are put together. And even when the companies say they don't exactly know who the child is or not collecting information from someone under 13 because of the privacy law that we helped get enacted, they know where they are and how to reach them. So, what you've had is an unlimited amassing of data power developed by the food and beverage companies in the United States over the last 25 years. Because really very little has been put in their way to stop them from what they do and plan to do. So presumably you could get some act of Congress put in to forbid the companies from targeting African American children or something like that. But it doesn't sound like that would matter because they're so much more precise in the market. Yes. I mean, in the first place you couldn't get congress to pass that. And I think this is the other thing to think about when you think about the food and beverage companies deploying Generative AI and the latest tools. They've already established vast, what they call insights divisions, market research divisions, to understand our behavior. But now they're able to put all that on a fast, fast, forward basis because of data processing, because of data clouds, let's say, provided by Amazon, and other kinds of tools. They're able to really generate how to sell to us individually, what new products will appeal to us individually and even create the packaging and the promotion to be personalized. So, what you're talking about is the need for a whole set of policy safeguards. But I certainly think that people concerned about public health need to think about regulating the role of Generative AI, especially when it comes to young people to ensure that they're not marketed to in the ways that it fact is and will continue to do. Kathryn, what about the argument that it's a parent's responsibility to protect their children and that government doesn't need to be involved in this space? Kathryn - Well, as a parent, I have to say is extremely challenging. We all do our best to try to protect our children from unhealthy influences, whether it's food or something that affects their mental health. That's a parent's obligation. That's what a parent spends a lot of time thinking about and trying to do. But this is an environment that is overwhelming. It is intrusive. It reaches into young people's lives in ways that make it virtually impossible for parents to intervene. These are powerful companies, and I'm including the tech companies. I'm including the retailers. I'm including the ad agencies as well as these global food and beverage companies. They're extremely powerful. As Jeff has been saying, they have engaged and continue to engage in enormous amounts of technological innovation and research to figure out precisely how to reach and engage our children. And it's too much for parents. And I've been saying this for years. I've been telling legislators this. I've been telling the companies this. It's not fair. It's a very unfair situation for parents. That makes perfect sense. Well, Jeff, your Center produces some very helpful and impressive reports. And an example of that is work you've done on the vast surveillance of television viewers. Tell us more about that, if you would. Jeff - Well, you know, you have to keep up with this, Kelly. The advocates in the United States and the academics with some exceptions have largely failed to address the contemporary business practices of the food and beverage companies. This is not a secret what's going on now. I mean the Generative AI stuff and the advanced data use, you know, is recent. But it is a continuum. And the fact is that we've been one of the few groups following it because we care about our society, our democracy, our media system, et cetera. But so much more could be done here to track what the companies are doing to identify the problematic practices, to think about counter strategies to try to bring change. So yes, we did this report on video streaming because in fact, it's the way television has now changed. It's now part of the commercial surveillance advertising and marketing complex food and beverage companies are using the interactivity and the data collection of streaming television. And we're sounding the alarm as we've been sounding now for too long. But hopefully your listeners will, in fact, start looking more closely at this digital environment because if we don't intervene in the next few years, it'll be impossible to go back and protect young people. So, when people watch television, they don't generally realize or appreciate the fact that information is being collected on them. Jeff - The television watches you now. The television is watching you now. The streaming companies are watching you now. The device that brings you streaming television is watching you now is collecting all kinds of data. The streaming device can deliver personalized ads to you. They'll be soon selling you products in real time. And they're sharing that data with companies like Meta Facebook, your local retailers like Albertsons, Kroger, et cetera. It's one big, huge digital data marketing machine that has been created. And the industry has been successful in blocking legislation except for the one law we were able to get through in 1998. And now under the Trump administration, they have free reign to do whatever they want. It's going to be an uphill battle. But I do think the companies are in a precarious position politically if we could get more people focused on what they're doing. Alright, we'll come back to that. My guess is that very few people realize the kind of thing that you just talked about. That so much information is being collected on them while they're watching television. The fact that you and your center are out there making people more aware, I think, is likely to be very helpful. Jeff - Well, I appreciate that, Kelly, but I have to say, and I don't want to denigrate our work, but you know, I just follow the trades. There's so much evidence if you care about the media and if you care about advertising and marketing or if you care, just let's say about Coca-Cola or Pepsi or Mondalez. Pick one you can't miss all this stuff. It's all there every day. And the problem is that there has not been the focus, I blame the funders in part. There's not been the focus on this marketplace in its contemporary dimensions. I'd like to ask you both about the legislative landscape and whether there are laws protecting people, especially children from this marketing. And Kathy, both you and Jeff were heavily involved in advocacy for a landmark piece of legislation that Jeff referred to from 1998, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. What did this act involve? And now that we're some years in, how has it worked? Kathryn - Well, I always say I've been studying advertising in the digital media before people even knew there was going to be advertising in digital media. Because we're really talking about the earliest days of the internet when it was being commercialized. But there was a public perception promoted by the government and the industry and a lot of other institutions and individuals that this was going to be a whole new democratic system of technology. And that basically it would solve all of our problems in terms of access to information. In terms of education. It would open up worlds to young people. In many ways it has, but they didn't talk really that much about advertising. Jeff and I working together at the Center for Media Education, were already tracking what was going on in that marketplace in the mid-1990s when it was very, very new. At which point children were already a prime target. They were digital kids. They were considered highly lucrative. Cyber Tots was one of the words that was used by the industry. What we believed was that we needed to get some public debate and some legislation in place, some kinds of rules, to guide the development of this new commercialized media system. And so, we launched a campaign that ultimately resulted in the passage of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Now it only governs commercial media, online, digital media that targets children under the age of 13, which was the most vulnerable demographic group of young people. We believe protections are really, really very important for teenagers. There's a lot of evidence for that now, much more research actually, that's showing their vulnerable abilities. And it has required companies to take young people into account when developing their operations. It's had an impact internationally in a lot of other countries. It is just the barest minimum of what we need in terms of protections for young people. And we've worked with the Federal Trade Commission over the years to ensure that those rules were updated and strengthened so that they would apply to this evolving digital media system. But now, I believe, that what we need is a more global advocacy strategy. And we are already doing that with advocates in other countries to develop a strategy to address the practices of this global industry. And there are some areas where we see some promising movement. The UK, for example, passed a law that bans advertising on digital media online. It has not yet taken effect, but now it will after some delays. And there are also other things going on for ultra processed foods, for unhealthy foods and beverages. So, Kathryn has partly answered this already, Jeff, but let me ask you. That act that we've talked about goes back a number of years now, what's being done more recently on the legislative front? Perhaps more important than that, what needs to be done? Well, I have to say, Kelly, that when Joe Biden came in and we had a public interest chair at the Federal Trade Commission, Lena Khan, I urged advocates in the United States who are concerned about unhealthy eating to approach the Federal Trade Commission and begin a campaign to see what we could do. Because this was going to be the most progressive Federal Trade Commission we've had in decades. And groups failed to do so for a variety of reasons. So that window has ended where we might be able to get the Federal Trade Commission to do something. There are people in the United States Congress, most notably Ed Markey, who sponsored our Children's Privacy Law 25 years ago, to get legislation. But I think we have to look outside of the United States, as Kathryn said. Beyond the law in the United Kingdom. In the European Union there are rules governing digital platforms called the Digital Services Act. There's a new European Union-wide policy safeguards on Generative AI. Brazil has something similar. There are design codes like the UK design code for young people. What we need to do is to put together a package of strategies at the federal and perhaps even state level. And there's been some activity at the state level. You know, the industry has been opposed to that and gone to court to fight any rules protecting young people online. But create a kind of a cutting-edge set of practices that then could be implemented here in the United States as part of a campaign. But there are models. And how do the political parties break down on this, these issues? Kathryn - I was going to say they break down. Jeff - The industry is so powerful still. You have bipartisan support for regulating social media when it comes to young people because there have been so many incidences of suicide and stalking and other kinds of emotional and psychological harms to young people. You have a lot of Republicans who have joined with Democrats and Congress wanting to pass legislation. And there's some bipartisan support to expand the privacy rules and even to regulate online advertising for teens in our Congress. But it's been stymied in part because the industry has such an effective lobbying operation. And I have to say that in the United States, the community of advocates and their supporters who would want to see such legislation are marginalized. They're under underfunded. They're not organized. They don't have the research. It's a problem. Now all these things can be addressed, and we should try to address them. But right now it's unlikely anything will pass in the next few months certainly. Kathryn - Can I just add something? Because I think what's important now in this really difficult period is to begin building a broader set of stakeholders in a coalition. And as I said, I think it does need to be global. But I want to talk about also on the research front, there's been a lot of really important research on digital food marketing. On marketing among healthy foods and beverages to young people, in a number of different countries. In the UK, in Australia, and other places around the world. And these scholars have been working together and a lot of them are working with scholars here in the US where we've seen an increase in that kind of research. And then advocates need to work together as well to build a movement. It could be a resurgence that begins outside of our country but comes back in at the appropriate time when we're able to garner the kind of support from our policymakers that we need to make something happen. That makes good sense, especially a global approach when it's hard to get things done here. Jeff, you alluded to the fact that you've done work specifically on ultra processed foods. Tell us what you're up to on that front. Jeff - As part of our industry analysis we have been tracking what all the leading food and beverage companies are doing in terms of what they would call their digital transformation. I mean, Coca-Cola and Pepsi on Mondelez and Hershey and all the leading transnational processed food companies are really now at the end of an intense period of restructuring to take advantage of the capabilities provided by digital data and analytics for the further data collection, machine learning, and Generative AI. And they are much more powerful, much more effective, much more adept. In addition, the industry structure has changed in the last few years also because of digital data that new collaborations have been created between the platforms, let's say like Facebook and YouTube, the food advertisers, their marketing agencies, which are now also data companies, but most notably the retailers and the grocery stores and the supermarkets. They're all working together to share data to collaborate on marketing and advertising strategies. So as part of our work we've kept abreast of all these things and we're tracking them. And now we are sharing them with a group of advocates outside of the United States supported by the Bloomberg Philanthropies to support their efforts. And they've already made tremendous progress in a lot of areas around healthy eating in countries like Mexico and Argentina and Brazil, et cetera. And I'm assuming all these technological advances and the marketing muscle, the companies have is not being used to market broccoli and carrots and Brussels sprouts. Is that right? Jeff - The large companies are aware of changing attitudes and the need for healthy foods. One quick takeaway I have is this. That because the large ultra processed food companies understand that there are political pressures promoting healthier eating in North America and in Europe. They are focused on expanding their unhealthy eating portfolio, in new regions specifically Asia Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. And China is a big market for all this. This is why it has to be a global approach here, Kelly. First place, these are transnational corporations. They are creating the, our marketing strategies at the global level and then transmitting them down to be tailored at the national or regional level. They're coming up with a single set of strategies that will affect every country and every child in those countries. We need to keep track of that and figure out ways to go after that. And there are global tools we might be able to use to try to protect young people. Because if you could protect young, a young person in China, you might also be able to protect them here in North Carolina. This all sounds potentially pretty scary, but is there reason to be optimistic? Let's see if we can end on a positive note. What do you think. Do you have reason to be optimistic? Kathryn - I've always been an optimist. I've always tried to be an optimist, and again, what I would say is if we look at this globally and if we identify partners and allies all around the world who are doing good work, and there are many, many, many of them. And if we work together and continue to develop strategies for holding this powerful industry and these powerful industries accountable. I think we will have success. And I think we should also shine the spotlight on areas where important work has already taken place. Where laws have been enacted. Where companies have been made to change their practices and highlight those and build on those successes from around the world. Thanks. Jeff, what about you? Is there reason to be optimistic? Well, I don't think we can stop trying, although we're at a particularly difficult moment here in our country and worldwide. Because unless we try to intervene the largest corporations, who are working and will work closely with our government and other government, will be able to impact our lives in so many ways through their ability to collect data. And to use that data to target us and to change our behaviors. You can change our health behaviors. You can try to change our political behaviors. What the ultra-processed food companies are now able to do every company is able to do and governments are able to do. We have to expose what they're doing, and we have to challenge what they're doing so we can try to leave our kids a better world. It makes sense. Do you see that the general public is more aware of these issues and is there reason to be optimistic on that front? That awareness might lead to pressure on politicians to change things? Jeff - You know, under the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission identified how digital advertising and marketing works and it made it popular among many, many more people than previously. And that's called commercial surveillance advertising. The idea that data is collected about you is used to advertise and market to you. And today there are thousands of people and certainly many more advocacy groups concerned about commercial surveillance advertising than there were prior to 2020. And all over the world, as Kathryn said, in countries like in Brazil and South Africa and Mexico, advocates are calling attention to all these techniques and practices. More and more people are being aware and then, you know, we need obviously leaders like you, Kelly, who can reach out to other scholars and get us together working together in some kind of larger collaborative to ensure that these techniques and capabilities are exposed to the public and we hold them accountable. Bios Kathryn Montgomery, PhD. is Research Director and Senior Strategist for the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD). In the early 90s, she and Jeff Chester co-founded the Center for Media Education (CME), where she served as President until 2003, and which was the predecessor organization to CDD. CME spearheaded the national campaign that led to passage of the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) the first federal legislation to protect children's privacy on the Internet. From 2003 until 2018, Dr. Montgomery was Professor of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., where she founded and directed the 3-year interdisciplinary PhD program in Communication. She has served as a consultant to CDD for a number of years and joined the full-time staff in July 2018. Throughout her career, Dr. Montgomery has written and published extensively about the role of media in society, addressing a variety of topics, including: the politics of entertainment television; youth engagement with digital media; and contemporary advertising and marketing practices. Montgomery's research, writing, and testimony have helped frame the national public policy debate on a range of critical media issues. In addition to numerous journal articles, chapters, and reports, she is author of two books: Target: Prime Time – Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television (Oxford University Press, 1989); and Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet (MIT Press, 2007). Montgomery's current research focuses on the major technology, economic, and policy trends shaping the future of digital media in the Big Data era. She earned her doctorate in Film and Television from the University of California, Los Angeles. Jeff Chester is Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), a Washington, DC non-profit organization. CDD is one of the leading U.S. NGOs advocating for citizens, consumers and other stakeholders on digital privacy and consumer protections online. Founded in 1991, CDD (then known as the Center for Media Education) led the campaign for the enactment of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA, 1998). During the 1990s it also played a prominent role in such issues as open access/network neutrality, diversity of media ownership, public interest policies for children and television, as well the development of the FCC's “E-Rate” funding to ensure that schools and libraries had the resources to offer Internet services. Since 2003, CDD has been spearheading initiatives designed to ensure that digital media in the broadband era fulfill their democratic potential. A former investigative reporter, filmmaker and Jungian-oriented psychotherapist, Jeff Chester received his M.S.W. in Community Mental Health from U.C. Berkeley. He is the author of Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy (The New Press, 2007), as well as articles in both the scholarly and popular press. During the 1980s, Jeff co-directed the campaign that led to the Congressional creation of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) for public TV. He also co-founded the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, the artist advocacy group that supported federal funding for artists. In 1996, Newsweek magazine named Jeff Chester one of the Internet's fifty most influential people. He was named a Stern Foundation “Public Interest Pioneer” in 2001, and a “Domestic Privacy Champion” by the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2011. CDD is a member of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD). Until January 2019, Jeff was the U.S. co-chair of TACD's Information Society (Infosoc) group, helping direct the organization's Transatlantic work on data protection, privacy and digital rights.
J.P. Duffy is joined by Jeff Zaino, vice president of the AAA-ICDR's Commercial Division, to discuss the AAA's upcoming centenary and its enduring reputation as a trusted choice for resolving commercial conflicts across industries. The conversation delves into the AAA's significant milestones and accomplishments, highlighting its commitment to innovation, including its approach to AI and the recent appointment of Bridget McCormack as president and CEO. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello and welcome to Arbitral Insights, a podcast series brought to you by our international arbitration practice lawyers here at Reed Smith. I'm Peter Rosher, Global Head of Reed Smith's International Arbitration Practice. I hope you enjoy the industry commentary, insights and anecdotes we share with you in the course of this series, wherever in the world you are. If you have any questions about any of the topics discussed, please do contact our speakers. And with that, let's get started. J.P.: Welcome back to the next episode of Arbitral Insights, in which we'll discuss the American Arbitration Association with Jeff Zaino, who's the vice president of the AAA's commercial division. I'm J.P. Duffy. I'm an international arbitration partner based in New York that acts as both counsel and arbitrator in international arbitration seated around the world under a variety of governing laws and arbitral rules. I'm qualified in New York, England, and Wales in the DIFC courts in Dubai, where I previously lived and practiced. I routinely represent clients and arbitrations involving a range of issues and frequently sit as an arbitrator in commercial disputes as well. I also have the good fortune to be a member of the AAA's commercial division arbitrator roster, the ICDR panel, and I'm a member of the AAA-ICDR Life Sciences Steering Committee and a member of the ICDR Publications Committee as well. So I get to do a lot with the AAA, which is really a wonderful organization. As I mentioned, with me today is Jeff Zaino, who's the vice president of the commercial division of the AAA in New York. He oversees administration of the large, complex commercial caseload, user outreach, and panel of commercial neutrals in New York. He joined the association in 1990, and Mr. Zaino is dedicated to promoting ADR methods and services. He's also written and published extensively on the topics of electronic reform and ADR, including several podcasts with the ABA, talks on law, and corporate counsel business. And he's appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and Bloomberg to discuss national election reform efforts and the Help America Vote Act. He was deemed a 2018 Alternative Dispute Resolution Champion by the National Law Journal and received awards for his ADR work from the National Academy of Arbitrators, Region 2 and Long Island Labor and Employment Relations Association. In 2022, Jeff received the Alicott Lieber Younger Committee of the Year Award for the New York State Bar Association Commercial and Federal Litigation Section. And in 2023, the Chairman's Award, NYSBA Dispute Resolution Section. So as you can tell, Jeff is a highly experienced, highly lauded arbitration expert, but we're really lucky to have his valuable insights today. So before we begin with some of the substance, let me just give a little bit of background on the AAA and the commercial division so that those that are less familiar have a little bit of information about what we're going to discuss today. The AAA is a non-profit alternative dispute resolution service provider headquartered in New York that administers arbitrations, mediations, and other forms of dispute resolution, such as ombudsperson and dispute avoidance training. It was founded in 1926 to provide an alternative to civil court proceedings, and that makes the AAA one of the oldest arbitral institutions in the world, as well as one of the largest, having administered over 11,553 business-to-business cases in 2023 alone, with a total value of over $19.1 billion. So that should give you a pretty good idea of the scope of what the AAA does. Notably, the AAA has several divisions that offer users substantial subject matter expertise. For instance, the commercial division, which Jeff heads, specializes in business-to-business disputes of all sizes, but has a particular expertise with large complex cases across a variety of industries, including accounting, communications, energy, entertainment, financial services, franchise, hospitality, insurance and reinsurance, life sciences, sports, and technology. There are also separate AAA divisions that focus exclusively on construction issues, consumer disputes, employment matters, government issues, healthcare, and labor disputes. Lastly, as many of our listeners will know, the AAA has a well-known international division, the International Center for Dispute Resolution, or what's colloquially known as the ICDR, that focuses on disputes that have an international component. Before we get into some of our recent developments, Jeff, if you could tell us a bit about what makes the AAA different than other arbitral administrators, I'm sure our audience would love to hear that. Jeff: Sure. Hey, thanks so much, J.P., for having me today, and thanks for the kind words at the beginning. It's great to be here today. Well, you mentioned it. The AAA is the largest and oldest ADR provider in the world. We have over 700 staff worldwide and 28 offices, including one in Singapore. And we have a huge panel, and you're on that panel. We have 6,000 arbitrators on our panel, and we consider them experts in the industry. And we're really proud of our panel. And like you mentioned, we're hitting our 100th anniversary in 2026. And since then, when I started, I started in the 90s, like you mentioned, 1990. From 1926, when we were founded, to 1990, we did a million cases, one million cases. And then, since then, from 1990 until now, 2024, we hit 8 million, 8 million cases. So it's growing. And I feel that's because of AAA, AAA-ICDR. Again, we've been around for almost 100 years, and we keep on growing. And I feel that we took the A out of ADR. I mean, everyone says alternative dispute resolution, but I really think now it's, and you'll probably agree with me, J.P., that it's dispute resolution. It's something in our toolbox and it's not alternative any longer. And then another thing about us, a huge difference about AAA-ICDR is we're not for profit. That makes us unique in this space. Profit-based companies are a little bit different than what we are. We're not criticizing them, but we're unique in the sense that we work directly for the parties, not for the arbitrators. J.P.: That's a really interesting stat, Jeff. Let me unpack some of that because I think, first off, if I understood that correctly, you said up until 1990, there were 1 million cases administered. Is that right? Jeff: That's correct. We did 1 million cases from our founding, 1926, a year after the Federal Arbitration Act in 1925. So we did 1 million when I came on board in 1990. And then from 1990 until now, we've done a total of 8 million. So we doubled that, or tripled it. It's been amazing how the growth that we've seen. And also during a pandemic, we saw a huge growth at AAA-ICDR. J.P.: And Jeff, one thing that I think you're obviously very involved with the New York State Bar, and I've done quite a bit with the New York State Bar myself over the years. One thing that I noticed, and you just reminded me of this, was an uptick in submission agreements during the pandemic, by which I mean parties taking existing disputes for which there was no arbitration clause, drafting an arbitration clause for it to submit it and move it into arbitration. And I think some of that was a function of the recognition that disputes would founder if the courts were closed and that parties needed things done. Did you see that kind of growth during the pandemic of submission agreements as well? Jeff: Absolutely. The courts were shut down, like you mentioned, for three to four months worldwide. And the ADR providers, like the AAA-ICDR, did not shut down. And we did have submissions, more submissions than we've ever seen. And usually it's only about, I would say, 2%, 3% of our caseload is submissions, but we saw the court systems. And I had, personally, I had over a billion dollar case, a bankruptcy case that came to us from Texas and it was mediated. We had two mediators, one in Connecticut and one in Texas. We had six parties, 40 people showed up on the Zoom, J.P., it was amazing. And that was a submission to AAA through the court system. The judge talked to the parties and said, listen, we're shut down. This is an important matter. Why don't you go to AAA? And so, yes, we did see submissions during the pandemic. I'm not sure if that's going to continue on. Most of our disputes are features of contract, as you know. J.P.: Yeah. I mean, that's always going to be the case in arbitration, right? That the vast majority of cases will be subject to a pre-dispute arbitration clause. But I think it's really interesting when you see submission agreements like that, because I think it's a clear recognition that one, arbitration is a really valuable tool. And two, it's a real plus for the AAA and a real nod of confidence that those are submitted to AAA because that's parties taking something they know has to be figured out and saying, all right, AAA is the guy to do. I wanted to pick up, too, on that exponential growth of 8 million cases between 1990 and the present versus 1 million over the first, you know, what is that, 70-something years or 60-plus years? Jeff: 60-plus years, absolutely, yeah. J.P.: Are there particular industries that you've seen significant growth in since the 1990 period that you were discussing, like between 1990 and the present? Are there particular industries that you are seeing more growth in or that you think there could be more growth in? Just be curious to get your views on that. Jeff: Sure, sure. And my area of commercial, as you know, because you're on the commercial panel and the ICDR panel, is healthcare. And I know you're a big part of healthcare. Also, financial services. We've seen a huge growth in that in the last five years. We put together an advisory committee for financial services on insurance. And then also, as you probably know, consumer. We saw a big amount of consumer cases during the pandemic and even prior to the pandemic. And that's a big caseload. It's about 30% of our caseload at AAA-ICDR. But again, people criticize that sometimes and say, well, that's not fair to the consumer. They're forced into arbitration. But what I say, J.P., to law students and when I speak at events like this, I say, listen, we don't draft ourselves into contracts. AAA-ICDR does not do that. People draft us into contracts and we just try to make the process, we try to level the playing field. And we do a lot of consumer, but we do a lot of high-end commercial cases, as you know, a lot of international cases and things like that. But the two areas, I would say, a long way to answer to your question, J.P., is I would say healthcare and financial services, insurance, that's where we're seeing a lot of growth and also technology. J.P.: The consumer aspect is one that is obviously very, very, very hot right now, given things like the mass arbitration rules and things like that. And we will probably touch on that in a bit, but it's a really valuable service to provide. And that's one thing that I think the AAA really does well. As you mentioned, it's a not-for-profit organization. It's not an organization that's out to make money off of consumer disputes. It's really there to help everybody resolve them. So something for everyone to keep in mind. Jeff: The company bears the cost, not the consumer. And I hope people know that, that we're not out, like you said, we're not out to make a big buck on this. We're just trying to level a playing field and access to justice for these people. J.P.: Yeah. And that's really what it is. At the end of the day, it's access to justice. And a lot of times the alternative is small claims court, which is not always a great choice. I've sat as an arbitrator in small claims court a few times, and I can tell you it's a great process when it works, but it can be a challenging process as well so Jeff: Without a doubt. J.P.: Always something to keep in mind. Yeah. Well, let's talk then about some of the recent developments because there have been quite a few. And as you mentioned, it's coming up on the centennial for the AAA-ICDR. And a lot has happened, obviously, in the 100 years of its existence, almost 100 years of its existence. Jeff: Sure. J.P.: And quite a few of those things are pretty monumental. And one of the biggest ones, I guess, is that in February 2023. Bridget McCormack took over as president and CEO of the AAA-ICDR from India Johnson, who was in that role for a lot of years. Bridget was previously the chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, if I'm correct, and was also a professor and associate dean at the prestigious University of Michigan Law School. So she brings a pretty extensive wealth of experience to the AAA. Now that she's been in that role for about a year and a half, how have things been different at the AAA-ICDR under Bridget's leadership? Jeff: It's been wonderful. I mean, Bridget brings such life to the company right now. I mean, India Johnson was great. She put our house in order, our finances. but Bridget is now doing a wonderful job in getting out there. I'm not sure, J.P., have you met her yet? J.P.: I have not had the pleasure of meeting her in person, but I'll sort of preview for our listeners that we are in the process of trying to get Bridget into our firm to talk to everyone about what the AAA-ICDR does and give sort of an insider's view for our partners. Jeff: Oh, wonderful. She's such a dynamic speaker. If you go on YouTube, you'll see she speaks all the time. It's amazing. Whenever I ask her to speak at an event in New York, I feel bad about asking her because I know how busy she is, but she does agree. But I have to find a space in her calendar because if you see on LinkedIn, I know you're on LinkedIn too, J.P., and she is everywhere. It seems like every week she's speaking somewhere, very dynamic, and she embraces AI. And I know we're going to talk about AI a little bit, but also innovation. And she's been doing such a terrific job being the face of the AAA, and we needed that. India, again, did a wonderful job, but Bridget is out there and around the world doing international events, doing events here domestically. And it really, I think, is getting the word out there about ADR and about, well, I should say DR, sorry, dispute resolution, and also access to justice. Being a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Michigan, doing a terrific job. And really, the people in the company are very excited. We have 700 plus employees, and we're excited with our new president. It really has been a great time with her. J.P.: You know it's funny. The one thing I've universally heard from anyone who works there when I ask about Bridget is everyone says great energy, great leadership, and really, really, really strong presence, which is really wonderful to hear because you seem to be echoing that pretty strongly as well. Jeff: Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, when she works a room, when she talks at an event, and it's great. We're forward-looking right now, big time. The AAA now is looking, AAA-ICDR, looking towards the future with innovation, with ODR, and we're going to talk about that, and with access to justice, which I love. And she's doing a terrific job. J.P.: Well, that's great to hear. And I think we are going to talk about odr.com in just a second. But before we do that, I'd just be curious, because they may well be the same thing. But what would you say Bridget's greatest accomplishment is so far? Jeff: I would say being the face of the AAA and embracing new ideas. For years, we didn't really, we moved kind of slowly. We embraced new ideas, but we moved slowly like a battleship turning around or an aircraft carrier turning around. We moved slowly. We're not doing that any longer. Bridget wants to move on quickly, which is great, and embrace things that are going on. And I think we're ahead of the curve on a lot of things, with acquiring ODR, with our embracing AI, with her ideas about innovation, access to justice. We are, I think, really ahead of the curve with respect to these areas, ahead of law firms, ahead of some of our competitors. And I attribute that to Bridget. J.P.: That's really great to hear. That's really great to hear. And it's really hard with a large organization to be nimble. Exactly. I know we do that pretty well at Reed Smith, I think, too, but it's a challenge, and it does require great leadership in order to get everybody on board with that. So it's wonderful to hear that's happening at the AAA-ICDR, and you see it. Jeff: Oh, yeah, without a doubt. And also, we're almost 100-year-old organizations, so you would think that we wouldn't be thinking about these innovation things in the future, but we are, which is terrific. We're an old organization, but not really. We're ready for the future. J.P.: Well, let's talk about that future a bit because it's clear that there's a strong focus on that. And one of the first things that I noticed is the odr.com resourceful internet solutions acquisition. So for those that don't know anything about that, maybe you could fill the audience in and give us a bit of background about that one and what it's done for the AAA-ICDR. Jeff: Sure. We just recently, a few months ago, acquired odr.com. It's a company that's been around for approximately 25 years. Online dispute resolution that can be completely customized for your needs for online dispute resolution. And they've been doing a wonderful job for many years. Okay. obviously much smaller than the AAA-ICDR, but they've been working with us. I'm not sure if you know this, J.P., but they've helped us with our no-fault business in New York. They help us set up our system initially years ago. So we've had a relationship with them for probably two decades with ODR. So we recently acquired them and we're working with them. Their most important area is right now is mediation. They have mediate.com and we're looking at our mediation.org and combining those two. Okay. And we want to expand our mediation business. And again, I mentioned it a couple of times, access to justice. We want high volume cases. Okay. We do obviously high-end cases, high dollar cases, but right now we're seeing with odr.com, we can spread the business, we can grow the business and we can expand our mediation business. And that's what we're trying to do because mediation is growing. As you know, J.P., it's it mediation has grown tremendously over the last couple of decades. But now with ODR online dispute resolution, I mean, it's going to really grow, I think. So that's what that's why we acquired it. And, you know, Colin Rule, I'm not sure, J.P., if you've ever met Colin Rule. The head of ODR.com. J.P.: I have not had the pleasure. Jeff: Yeah, he's he's phenomenal. know if anyone that's listening to this podcast, you just Google Colin Rule. He's been in this space for many, many years and he's a phenomenal person. And I'm really excited about this acquisition. And I think we're going to work so well together. J.P.: Jeff, just for people like me that are a little bit less savvy with how some of these things work technologically and sort of mechanically, is odr.com and mediate.com is a function of that, right? Or a part of that? Jeff: Yeah, it's a part of it. Yeah. And I believe they have arbitration.com, but now it's going to be merged in with the AAA. And the platform of odr.com is going to be used for our mediation services at AAA for online mediation services. J.P.: Okay. That's what I was getting at. So this is like a platform where users or parties and the mediator all log in, communicate with each other. Exchange their positions, and do everything that way. So is it correct to say it's sort of a virtual mediation platform? Jeff: Yeah, without a doubt. And now the timing is perfect, J.P., because we just came off the pandemic about a couple of years ago, and we were seeing, as you probably know, as an arbitrator at AAA, we were doing thousands of virtual hearings arbitration and also mediation, and it worked. It really worked. J.P.: Yeah. And that's really one of the true benefits that came out of the pandemic, in my view. Prior to the pandemic, I had always done certain aspects of cases virtually. And there was video conferencing was something that you could suggest, but that parties and frankly, arbitrators were not always that willing to embrace. But I think the pandemic really showed everyone that you can do things virtually. Efficiently, cost-effectively, and in a way that you don't need an in-person hearing for, and that it can be really successful. So I'm sure the timing has been right for odr.com and that acquisition. In terms of integrating it, what's the full timeline for getting it fully integrated, if you don't mind my asking? Jeff: Sure. I mean, right now we're focusing on mediation. Okay. That's going to be our focus for the next several months. And then I think we're going to try to see if we can move this into arbitration also, because we're still seeing a lot of arbitrations, not a lot. I mean, I would say that 30% of our arbitrations are still being done in the virtual world. We're starting to see, and JP you've been at my Midtown office in Midtown Manhattan on 42nd Street, and we're starting to see about 60 to 70% capacity as an in-person for arbitration. But there's still a segment that wants to do it in the virtual world. And this is where odr.com comes into play. And right now it's, but the focus right now is mediation and working with our mediation team at the AAA-ICDR. J.P.: Got it. Well, you know, it's funny. I have an employment partner who told me the odds of them ever doing an employment mediation below a certain value in person again are slim to none. Jeff: Interesting. J.P.: Yeah. And I think you guys have really hit the nail on the head with this. Jeff: Well, with labor similar to employment, we're seeing almost 80% of labor cases now in New York City, I'm talking, are being done virtual, maybe even a little bit more than that. They got so used to doing it in the virtual world for labor cases, union management. It's interesting to see where we're going with this. But commercial type disputes, the type that you handle, J.P., we're starting to see more people coming back into in-person. However, we're not seeing the days of a witness flying in from Paris for one hour because we have all the technology at the offices, our offices around the country, the voice activated camera. So we don't need to ship in people for one hour. It's a waste of money. J.P.: Yeah. And that's, you know, that's really the great thing that this technology allows for, which is, you know, I just did a, to mention the hearing space, Jeff, I just did a pretty large week-long hearing earlier in the year at the AAA's offices on 42nd Street. And it was great, but there were, you know, and I do, you know, myself prefer in-person for certain things, but, you know, during that hearing, we had witnesses that were exactly what you're describing, I mean, really only required to confirm a few issues or give, you know, a short cross examination and they were located in pretty diverse regions. Absolutely no reason to incur the time or expense or frankly, just the headache of bringing those people in from around the world for scheduling purposes and everything else. Jeff: Sure. J.P.: We did those, you know, we did those witnesses virtually and that is a real, that's a real benefit. You know, you sort of do that hybrid approach and you can save, it's way more efficient, It's way more cost-effective, and it is just easier from a scheduling perspective. So this is a really great development. Jeff: Yeah, and J.P., have you noticed, I mean, when you were probably at my office on 42nd Street, we have now the big monitors. And I've noticed that arbitrators like yourself and advocates like yourself are using more technology in the rooms. We have these cupboards in our hearing rooms where the binders used to go, the big binders for exhibits and things like that. No longer am I seeing that. Most arbitrators are now using our, we provide iPads, we have the big monitors, and it seems like people are going away from paper, which is great too. J.P.: Yeah, it's funny. I'm sort of like probably the last of the Mohicans where people really had to do things like mini books. Like when I was a real junior associate, we would have hearing bundles that were in mini book form and they were, you'd have 55 volumes and everything would be in there. I mean, there's sort of those nightmare stories where parties would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just pulling together the paper for a hearing. And that, you know, that to me always seemed a little bit crazy. In this day and age, it is totally unnecessary. I would much prefer to have everything electronically. And that hearing space really allows for that. So really, really great to hear that parties are embracing that because it's such a cost savings and it's an efficiency. You know, it just doesn't need to be the way it was. Jeff: Sure. J.P.: Well, let's talk then a bit about some of the AI stuff that you were mentioning, because I think that is really, I have to confess, I don't understand it as well as I should. I think most people, if they were being honest, probably have an inkling of what it does, but don't really know. I'd love to hear what the AAA-ICDR is doing with AI, because it's a really, really, really groundbreaking development. Jeff: Absolutely. Well, if you Google Bridget McCormack, our president, she speaks on AI quite frequently and it really has embraced it. And how have we embraced that AAA? Well, she encourages the staff to use it. And we have, she's even recommended certain programs that we should use. But with respect to how are we using it with respect to running our business? Well, we have ClauseBuilder and you know about ClauseBuilder. It's a tool that was developed in 2013 where people can go online and develop a clause for arbitration. Now we have ClauseBuilder AI, which as opposed to going through various modules with the original ClauseBuilder, you can just type in, I want an employment clause. I want three arbitrators. I want limited discovery. And the clause builder AI will build that clause for you. That's something we just rolled out. Also for arbitrators, scheduling orders. We have an AI program right now for arbitrators where a scheduling order usually takes an arbitrator, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, J.P., usually about an hour to two hours after you do the preliminary hearing. Well, now AI reduces that time to probably a couple of minutes for an arbitrator. So we rolled that out. And we obviously were having discussions about low dollar cases, high volume cases. Can AI be used? And we're looking into that. We haven't rolled that out yet. It's not going to eliminate you, J.P., but it's something that we're looking at right now. And we are embracing it. I use it for various things. I'll give you an example. I use it for if I'm doing an educational program, I'll type in, you know, I'm doing a program on arbitration and discovery. Can you give me a good title for this program? I've been doing this for years. I've used a lot of different titles for programs, and it's wonderful to use AI for those purposes and for editing things. So I like the fact that our company embraces it. Some companies do not. Some law firms, as you know, J.P., do not embrace AI. And we had that case last year where I think an attorney, it wasn't arbitration, it was litigation, where he cited cases through AI that never existed. J.P.: Yeah, that's actually happened more than once since then. And it's been kind of amazing to me. Yeah, it's funny. We as a law firm at Reed Smith have definitely embraced AI. We've got a person who's sort of C-suite level that addresses that and that heads that function up. And I know we are trying to bring it in much more for things that are sort of routine, that don't require necessarily true attorney time. And it is a real game changer. I mean, you know, anybody who doesn't get on board with AI is going to get left behind at some point because it is truly, truly the wave of the future, in my view. Jeff: Oh, absolutely. And the way I look at it, people say, well, it seems scary or whatever. But what about Google Maps and things that we've embraced years ago? I couldn't live, J.P., without Google Maps. So that's technology that it's going to help us. It's not going to take us over or whatever. It's going to help us enhance what we're doing. J.P.: Yeah, I think the concerns about Skynet are a little bit, you know, Skynet and Terminator are a little bit far-fetched, but it is something that we all need to get on board with. It's a lot like the way that, you know, when I first started practicing the notion of uploading paper documents to be reviewed and then using search terms was really scary for a lot of people, but that, you know, that became commonplace and you couldn't function without it. This will do the same thing to the extent it's not the same. Now, Jeff, what's the overlap, if any, between that you see between some of the AI initiatives and odr.com? Jeff: We're not really combining those yet, but I think we will. There's discussions about it, but right now we're focusing on mediation with odr.com and we're discussing rolling out AI with various things to help to assist our arbitrators, are mediators, but I think eventually, you know, there'll be a combination, I think, but right now there's not. J.P.: Got it. Well, we'll stay tuned because I can't imagine those two things are going to stay in separate houses for too long. Well, we could talk all day about what's going on at the AAA-ICDR right now because it's just amazing. I mean, it's really incredibly, incredibly dynamic at the moment. But what I'd like to do is sort of shift ahead to looking ahead to the future. We talked a bit earlier about how the AAA is rapidly approaching its centennial anniversary, And that's kind of a natural reflection point for any organization. If you were to sort of sum things up and say, what accomplishments from its first century of existence that the AAA is most proud of, what do you think you would point to? Jeff: Well, I would point to two things. First, how amazing the AAA-ICDR was and also other ADR providers. When pandemic hit, within a week, we were up with 700 employees doing thousands and thousands of cases. And I was worried about the arbitrators, not you, J.P., but other arbitrators with the technology. And our 6,000 arbitrators, it was flawless. It was amazing or seamless. It really went well. And that I'm very, very proud of because I had been with the AAA for a long time prior to that. And I was really concerned that the arbitrators weren't going to get it. We weren't going to be able to understand Microsoft Teams, Zoom, all that kind of stuff. So we did a great job during pandemic. We had some of our best years during pandemic with respect to helping society in arbitrating cases. But also some of the things that we've done for state and federal governments, you know, state and federal governments, Storm Sandy, Katrina. Those are the things I'm very proud of. I was a part of the Storm Sandy stuff where we administered 6,000 cases for homeowners and with insurance companies. And we were able to do that very quickly. And we're a not-for-profit. So the federal government and the state governments look at us and will hire us to do those kind of projects. And we can quickly mobilize because of our staff. So those two things really stand out in my career at AAA. J.P.: That's a really, really interesting thing to point to because that truly embodies the best that the AAA can offer. It's an incredible service that really helped people with real-life issues during really challenging times. So wonderful to hear. What would you see for the next 100 years in the AAA? Like, you know, looking forward, I know it's going to be here for, it's going to be having its two, it's bicentennial at some point. It will absolutely occur. What would you see is, you know, if you were to fast forward yourself a hundred years and still be in the seat, because by then technology will have kept us all alive for the next hundred years, and you're Jeff Zaino 2.0, sitting around in 200 years, where would you see the AAA-ICDR at that point? Jeff: Well, I'm on part of the committee for the 100-year anniversary. We have a committee already formed two years in advance to get ready for our 100th year anniversary, and we're talking about this stuff. And I think some of the themes that Bridget's talking about, access to justice, I think we're going to be, we saw from 1990 to now 8 million cases, we're going to see far more. We're going to see the public now embracing arbitration. When I was hired by the AAA in the 90s, I didn't even know what AAA stood for. I mean, with the name, American Arbitration Association. I didn't know what arbitration was. We are reaching out to law schools. We're doing collaboration with a lot of law schools in New York and throughout the country, throughout the world. And I think the word's going to get out there that arbitration is the way to go. Our mediation is too. And I'm excited about that. Also, we're going to see far more diversity at AAA and also in the community. And that's something that we really care about at the AAA. Right now, J.P., as you probably know, any list that goes out at the AAA is a minimum of 30% diverse. So we're going to see an increase in that area, but also access to justice for the public. J.P.: Really, really great. And I think we will all watch with rapt attention to see what happens because it's only good things in the future for the AAA-ICDR, that's for sure. Well, Jeff, I just want to thank you. But before we wrap this up, I'm going to reserve my right to bring you back for another podcast because there's so much more we could talk about. So, but is there anything I missed that we should hit on now that would be great for the audience to hear? I know there's just so much going on. Jeff: Well, I hope the audience when in 2026, when we have our 100th anniversary, I hope people participate in it because we're going to do things worldwide and we're going to be doing events everywhere. And that year we really are, we have a huge team of people that are working in our 100th year anniversary and not to just necessarily promote AAA-ICDR, but to promote arbitration and mediation. And that's what we're going to be doing in 2026, and I'm very excited about it. J.P.: You heard it here first, folks. Arbitration is the future. And Jeff said it himself. So we will definitely watch closely. Well, good. And just to give a very quick preview on this one, too, because Jeff, you mentioned it. We are going to, in the future, have your colleagues from the ICDR side of the house come on, and we're going to bring some of the new folks from Singapore and a few other people. So more to come. And it's just incredible to see. Jeff: We look forward to it. And J.P., I'd love to have another sit down with you. It's been great. J.P.: Good. We absolutely will. So that then will conclude our discussion at the American Arbitration Association for now. And I want to thank our guest, Jeff Zaino of the AAA Commercial Division for his invaluable insights. And I want to thank you, the audience, for listening today. You should feel free to reach out to Reed Smith about today's podcast with any questions you might have. And you should absolutely as well feel free to reach out to Jeff. I know he's super responsive and he would love to chat with you directly if you have any questions. And we look forward to having you tune in for future episodes of the series, including future updates with Jeff and our podcast with the ICDR as well. So thank you everyone. And we will be back. Outro: Arbitral Insights is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. For more information about Reed Smith's global international arbitration practice, email arbitralinsights@reedsmith.com. To learn about the Reed Smith Arbitration Pricing Calculator, a first-of-its-kind mobile app that forecasts the cost of arbitration around the world, search Arbitration Pricing Calculator on reedsmith.com or download for free through the Apple and Google Play app stores. You can find our podcast on podcast streaming platforms, reedsmith.com, and our social media accounts at Reed Smith LLP. Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Any views, opinions, or comments made by any external guest speaker are not to be attributed to Reed Smith LLP or its individual lawyers. All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.
In this special episode of the Oracle University Podcast, Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Principal HCM Instructor Jeff Schuster, delve into the intersection of HCM and AI, exploring the practical applications and implications of this technology in human resources. Jeff shares his insights on bias and fairness, the importance of human involvement, and the need for explainability and transparency in AI systems. The discussion also covers the various AI features embedded in HCM and their impact on talent acquisition, performance management, and succession planning. Oracle AI in Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/learning-path/oracle-ai-in-fusion-cloud-human-capital-management-hcm/136722 Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM: Dynamic Skills: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-fusion-cloud-hcm-dynamic-skills/116654/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started! 00:26 Lois: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs here at Oracle University, and with me, is Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services. Nikita: Hi everyone! Last week's conversation was all about Oracle Database 23ai backup and recovery, where we dove into instance recovery and effective recovery strategies. Today's episode is a really special one, isn't it, Lois? 00:53 Lois: It is, indeed, Niki. Of course, all of our AI episodes are special. But today, we have our friend and colleague Jeff Schuster with us. I think our listeners are really going to enjoy what Jeff has to share with us. Nikita: Yeah definitely! Jeff is a Principal HCM Instructor at Oracle University. He recently put together this really fantastic course on MyLearn, all about the intersection of HCM and AI, and that's what we want to pick his brain about today. Hi Jeff! We're so excited to have you here. 01:22 Jeff: Hey Niki! Hi Lois! I feel special already. Thanks you guys so much for having me. Nikita: You've had a couple of busy months, haven't you? 01:29 Jeff: I have! It's been a busy couple of months with live classes. I try and do one on AI in HCM at least once a month or so so that we can keep up with the latest/greatest stuff in that area. And I also got to spend a few days at Cloud World teaching a few live classes (about artificial intelligence in HCM, as a matter of fact) and meeting our customers and partners. So yeah, absolutely great week. A good time was had by me. 01:55 Lois: I'm sure. Cloud World is such a great experience. And just to clarify, do you think our customers and partners also had a good time, Jeff? It wasn't just you, right? Jeff: Haha! I don't think it was just me, Lois. But, you know, HCM is always a big deal, and now with all the embedded AI functionality, it really wasn't hard to find people who wanted to spend a little extra time talking about AI in the context of our HCM apps. So, there are more than 30 separate AI-powered features in HCM. AI features for candidates to find the right jobs; for hiring managers to find the right candidates; skills, talent, performance management, succession planning— all of it is there and it really covers everything across the Attract/Grow/Keep buckets of the things that HR professionals do for a living. So, anyway, yeah, lots to talk about with a lot of people! There's the functional part that people want to know about—what are these features and how do they work? But obviously, AI carries with it all this cultural significance these days. There's so much uncertainty that comes from this pace of development in that area. So in fact, my Cloud World talk always starts with this really silly intro that we put in place just to knock down that anxiety and get to the more practical, functional stuff. 03:11 Nikita: Ok, we're going to need to discuss the functional stuff, but I feel like we're getting a raw deal if we don't also get that silly intro. Lois: She makes a really good point. Jeff: Hahaha! Alright, fair enough. Ok, but you guys are gonna have to imagine I've got a microphone and a big room and a lot of echo. AI is everywhere. In your home. In your office. In your homie's home office. 03:39 Lois: I feel like I just watched the intro of a sci-fi movie. Jeff: Yeah. I'm not sure it's one I'd watch, but I think more importantly it's a good way to get into discussing some of the overarching things we need to know about AI and Oracle's approach before we dive into the specific features, so you know, those features will make more sense when we get there? 03:59 Nikita: What are these “overarching” things? Jeff: Well, the things we work on anytime we're touching AI at Oracle. So, you know, it starts with things like Bias and Fairness. We usually end up in a pretty great conversation about things like how we avoid bias on the front end by making sure we don't ingest things like bias-generating content, which is to say data that doesn't necessarily represent bias by itself, but could be misused. And that pretty naturally leads us into a talk about guardrails. Nikita: Guardrails? Jeff: Yeah, you can think of those as checkpoints. So, we've got rules about ingestion and bias. And if we check the output coming out of the LLM to ensure it complied with the bias and fairness rules, that's a guardrail. So, we do that. And we do it again on the apps side. And so that's to say, even though it's already been checked on the AI side, before we bring the output into the HCM app, it's checked again. So another guardrail. 04:58 Lois: How effective is that? The guardrails, and not taking in data that's flagged as bias-generating? Jeff: Well, I'll say this: It's both surprisingly good, and also nowhere near good enough. Lois: Ok, that's as clear as mud. You want to elaborate on that? Jeff: Haha! I think all it means is that approach does a great job, but our second point in the whole “standards” discussion is about the significance of having a human in the loop. Sometimes more than one, but the point here is that, particularly in HCM, where we're handling some really important and sensitive data, and we're introducing really powerful technology, the H in HCM gets even more important. So, throughout the HCM AI course, we talk about opportunities to have a human in the loop. And it's not just for reviewing things. It's about having the AI make suggestions, and not decisions, for example. And that's something we always have a human in the loop for all the time. In fact, when I started teaching AI for HCM, I always said that I like to think of it is as a great big brain, without any hands. 06:00 Nikita: So, we're not talking about replacing humans in HCM with AI. Jeff: No, but we're definitely talking about changing what the humans do and why it's more important than ever what the humans do. So, think of it this way, we can have our embedded AI generate this amazing content, or create really useful predictions, whatever it is that we need. We can use whatever tools we want to get there, but we can still expect people to ask us, “Where did that come from?” or “Does this account for [whatever]?”. So we still have to be able to answer that. So that's another thing we talk about as kind of an overarching important concept: Explainability and Transparency. 06:41 Nikita: I'm assuming that's the part about showing our work, right? Explaining what's being considered, how it's being processed, and what it is that you're getting back. Jeff: That's exactly it. So we like to have that discussion up front, even before we get to things like Gen and Non-Gen AI, because it's great context to have in mind when you start thinking about the technology. Whenever we're looking at the tech or the features, we're always thinking about whether people are appropriately involved, and whether people can understand the AI product as well as they need to. 07:11 Lois: You mentioned Gen and Non-Gen AI. I've also heard people use the term “Classic AI.” And lately, a lot more about RAG and Agents. When you're teaching the course, does everybody manage to keep all the terminology straight? Jeff: Yeah, people usually do a great job with this. I think the trick is, you have to know that you need to know it, if that makes sense. Lois: I think so, but why don't you spell it out for us. Jeff: Well, the temptation is sometimes to leave that stuff to the implementers or product developers, who we know need to have a deep understanding of all of that. But I think what we've learned is, especially because of all the functional implications, practitioners, product owners, everybody needs to know it too. If for no other reason so they can have more productive conversations with their implementers. You need to know that Classic or Non-Generative AI leverages machine learning, and that that's all you need in order to do some incredibly powerful things like predictions and matching. So in HCM, we're talking about things like predicting time to hire, identifying suggested candidates for job openings, finding candidates similar to ones you already like, suggesting career paths for employees, and finding recommended successors. All really powerful matching stuff. And all of that stuff uses machine learning and it's certainly AI, but none of that uses Generative AI to do that because it doesn't need to. 08:38 Nikita: So how does that fit in with all the hype we've been hearing for a long time now about Gen AI and how it's such a transformative technology that's going to be more impactful than anything else? Jeff: Yeah, and that can be true too. And this is what we really lean into when we do the AI in HCM course live. It's much more of a “right AI for the right job” kind of proposition. Lois: So, just like you wouldn't use a shovel to mix a cake. Use the right tool for the job. I think I've got it. So, the Classic AI is what's driving those kinds of features in HCM? The matching and recommendations? Jeff: Exactly right. And where we need generative content, that's where we add on the large language model capability. With LLMs, we get the ability to do natural language processing. So it makes sense that that's the technology we'd use for tasks like “write me a job description” or “write me performance development tips for my employee”. 09:33 Nikita: Ok, so how does that fit in with what Lois was asking about RAG and Agents? Is that something people care about, or need to? Jeff: I think it's easiest to think about those as the “what's next” pieces, at least as it relates to the embedded AI. They kind of deal with the inherent limitations of Gen and Non-Gen components. So, RAG, for example - I know you guys know, but your listeners might not...so what's RAG stand for? Lois & Nikita: Retrieval. Augmented. Generation. Jeff: Hahaha! Exactly. Obviously. But I think everything an HCM person needs to know about that is in the name. So for me, it's easiest to read that one backwards. Retrieval Augmented Generation. Well, the Generation just means it's more generative AI. Augmented means it's supplementing the existing AI. And Retrieval just tells you that that's how it's doing it. It's going out and fetching something it didn't already have in order to complete the operation. 10:31 Lois: And this helps with those limitations you mentioned? Nikita: Yeah, and what are they anyway? Jeff: I think an example most people are familiar with is that large language models are trained on this huge set of information. To a certain point. So that model is trained right up to the point where it stopped getting trained. So if you're talking about interacting with ChatGPT, as an example, it'll blow your doors off right up until you get to about October of 2023 and then, it just hasn't been trained on things after that. So, if you wanted to have a conversation about something that happened after that, it would need to go out and retrieve the information that it needed. For us in HCM, what that means is taking the large language model that you get with Oracle, and using retrieval to augment the AI generation for the things that the large language model wouldn't have had. 11:22 Nikita: So, things that happened after the model was trained? Company-specific data? What kind of augmenting are you talking about? Jeff: It's all of that. All those things happen and it's anything that might be useful, but it's outside the LLM's existing scope. So, let's do an example. Let's say you and Lois are in the market to hire someone. You're looking for a Junior Podcast Assistant. We'd like the AI in HCM to help, and in order to do that, it would be great if it could not just generate a generic job description for the posting, but it could really make it specific to Oracle. Even better, to Oracle University. So, you'd need the AI to know a few more things in order to make that happen. If it knows the job level, and the department, and the organization—already the job posting description gets a lot better. So what other things do you think it might need to know? 12:13 Lois: Umm I'm thinking…does it need to account for our previous hiring decisions? Can it inform that at all? Jeff: Yes! That's actually a key one. If the AI is aware not only of all the vacancies and all of the transactional stuff that goes along with it (like you know who posted it, what's its metadata, what business group it was in, and all that stuff)...but it also knows who we hired, that's huge. So if we put all that together, we can start doing the really cool stuff—like suggesting candidates based not only on their apparent match on skills and qualifications, but also based on folks that we've hired for similar positions. We know how long it took to make those hires from requisition open to the employee's first start date. So we can also do things like predicting time to hire for each vacancy we have with a lot more accuracy. So now all of a sudden, we're not just doing recruiting, but we have a system that accounts for “how we do it around here,” if that makes any sense. But the point is, it's the augmented data, it's that kind of training that we do throughout ingestion, going out to other sources for newer or better information, whatever it is we need. The ability to include it alongside everything that's already in the LLM, that's a huge deal. 13:31 Nikita: Ok, so I think the only one we didn't get to was Agents. Jeff: Yeah, so this one is maybe a little less relevant in HCM—for now anyway. But it's something to keep an eye on. Because remember earlier when I described our AI as having a great big brain but no hands? Lois: Yeah... Jeff: Well, agents are a way of giving it hands. At least for a very well-defined, limited set of purposes. So routine and repetitive tasks. And for obvious reasons, in the HCM space, that causes some concerns. You don't want, for example, your AI moving people forward in the recruiting process or changing their status to “not considered” all by itself. So going forward, this is going to be a balancing act. When we ask the same thing of the AI over and over again, there comes a point where it makes sense to kind of “save” that ask. When, for example, we get the “compare a candidate profile to a job vacancy” results and we got it working just right, we can create an agent. And just that one AI call that specializes in getting that analysis right. It does the analysis, it hands it back to the LLM, and when the human has had what they need to make sure they get what they need to make a decision out of it, you've got automation on one hand and human hands on the other...hand. 14:56 Have you mastered the basics of AI? Are you ready to take your skills to the next level? Unlock the potential of advanced AI with our OCI Generative AI Professional course and certification that covers topics like large language models, the OCI Generative AI Service, and building Q&A chatbots for real-world applications. Head over to mylearn.oracle.com to find out more. 15:26 Nikita: Welcome back! Jeff, you've mentioned the “Time to Hire” feature a few times? Is that a favorite with people who take your classes? Jeff: The recruiting folks definitely seem to enjoy it, but I think it's just a great example for a couple of reasons. First, it's really powerful non-generative AI. So it helps emphasize the point around the right AI for the right job. And if we're talking about things in chronological order, it's something that shows up really early in the hire-to-retire cycle. And, you know, just between us learning nerds, I like to use Time to Hire as an early example because it gets folks in the habit of working through some use cases. You don't really know if a feature is going to get you what you need until you've done some of that. So, for example, if I tell you that Time to Hire produces an estimated number of days to your first hire. And you're still Lois, and you're still Niki, and you're hiring for a Junior Podcast Assistant. So why do you care about time to hire? And I'm asking you for real—What would you do with that prediction if you had it? 16:29 Nikita: I guess I'd know how long it is before I can expect help to arrive, and I could plan my work accordingly. Jeff: Absolutely. What else. What could you do with a prediction for Time to Hire? Lois: Think about coverage? Jeff: Yeah! Exactly the word I was looking for. Say more about that. Lois: Well, if I know it's gonna be three months before our new assistant starts, I might be able to plan for some temporary coverage for that work. But if I had a prediction that said it's only going to be two weeks before a new hire could start, it probably wouldn't be worth arranging temporary coverage. Niki can hold things down for a couple of weeks. Jeff: See, I'm positive she could! That's absolutely perfect! And I think that's all you really need to have in terms of prerequisites to understand any of the AI features in HCM. When you know what you might want to do with it, like predicting the need for temp cover, and you've got everything we talked about in the foundation part of the course—the Gen and the Classic, all that stuff, you can look at a feature like Time to Hire and then you can probably pick that up in 30 seconds. 17:29 Nikita: Can we try it? Jeff: Sure! I mean, you know, we're not looking at screens for this conversation, but we can absolutely try it. You're a recruiter. If I tell you that Time to Hire is a feature that you run into on the job requisition and it shows you just a few editable fields, and then of course, the prediction of the number of days to hire—tell me how you think that feature is going to work when you get there. Lois: So, what are the fields? And does it matter? Jeff: Probably not really, but of course you can ask. So, let me tell you. Ready? The fields—they are these. Requisition Title, Location, and Education Level. Nikita: Ok, well, I have to assume that as I change those things… like from a Junior Podcast Assistant to a Senior Podcast Assistant, or change the location from Redwood Shores to Detroit, or change the required education, the time to hire is going to change, right? Jeff: 100%, exactly. And it does it in real time as you make those changes to those values. So when you pick a new location, you immediately get a new number of days, so it really is a useful tool. But how does it work? Well, we know it's using a few fields from the job requisition, but that's not enough. Besides those fields, what else would you need in order to make this prediction work? 18:43 Lois: The part where it translates to a number of days. So, this is based on our historic hiring data? How long it took us to hire a podcast assistant the last time? Jeff: Yep! And now you have everything you need. We call that “historic data from our company” bit “ingestion,” by the way. And there's always a really interesting discussion around that when it comes up in the course. But it's the process we use to bring in the HCM data to the AI so it can be considered or predictions exactly like this. Lois: So it's the HCM data making the AI smarter and more powerful. Nikita: And tailored. Jeff: Exactly, it's all of that. And obviously, the HCM is better because we've given it the AI. But the AI is also better because it has the HCM in it. But look, I was able to give you a quick description of Time to Hire, and you were able to tell me what it does, which data it uses, and how it works in just a few seconds. So, that's kind of the goal when we teach this stuff. It's getting everybody ready to be productive from moment #1 because what is it and how does it work stuff is already out of the way, you know? 19:52 Lois: I do know! Nikita: Can we try it with another one? Jeff: Sure! How about we do...Suggested Candidates. Lois: And you're going to tell us what we get on the screen, and we have to tell you how it works, right? Jeff: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Ok—Suggested Candidates. You're a recruiter or a hiring manager. You guys are still looking for your Junior Podcast Assistant. On the requisition, you've got a section called Suggested Candidates. And you see the candidate's name and some scores. Those scores are for profile match, skills match, experience match. And there's also an overall match score, and the highest rated people you notice are sorted to the top of the list. So, you with me so far? Lois: Yes! Jeff: So you already know that it's suggesting candidates. But if you care about explainability and transparency like we talked about at the start, then you also care about where these suggested candidates came from. So let's see if we can make progress against that. Let's think about those match scores. What would you need in order to come up with match scores like that? 20:54 Nikita: Tell me if I'm oversimplifying this, but everything about the job on the requisition, and everything about the candidate? Their skills and experience? Jeff: Yeah, that's actually simplified pretty perfectly. So in HCM, the candidate profile has their skills and experience, and the req profile has the req requirements. Lois: So we're comparing the elements of the job profile and the person/candidate profile. And they're weighted, I assume? Jeff: That's exactly how it works. See, 30 seconds and you guys are nailing these! In fairness, when we discuss these things in the course, we go into more detail. And I think it's helpful for HCM practitioners to know which data from the person and the job profiles is being considered (and sometimes just as important, which is not being considered). And don't forget we're also considering our ingested data. Our previously selected candidates. 21:45 Lois: Jeff, can I change the weighting? If I care more about skills than experience or education, can I adjust the weighting and have it re-sort the candidates? Jeff: Super important question. So let me give you the answer first, which is “no.” But because it's important, I want to tell you more. This is a discussion we have in the class around Oracle's Embedded vs. Custom AI. And they're both really important offerings. With Embedded, what we're talking about are the features that come in HCM like any other feature. They might have some enablement steps like profile options, and there's an activation panel. But essentially, that's it. There's no inspection panel for you to open up and start sticking your screwdriver in there and making changes. Believe it or not, that's a big advantage with Embedded AI, if you ask me anyway. Nikita: It's an advantage to not be able to configure it? Jeff: In this context, I think you can say that it is. You know, we talk about the advantages about the baked-in, Embedded AI in this course, but one of the key things is that it's pre-built and pre-tested. And the big one: that it's ready to use on day one. But one little change in a prompt can have a pretty big butterfly effect across all of your results. So, Oracle provides the Embedded AI because we know it works because we've already tested it, and it's, therefore, ready on day one. And I think that story maybe changes a little bit when you open up the inspection panel and bust out that screwdriver. Now you're signing up to be a test pilot. And that's just fundamentally different than “pre-built and ready on day one.” Not that it's bad to want configuration. 23:24 Lois: That's what the Custom AI path and OCI are about though, right? For when customers have hyper-specific needs outside of Oracle's business processes within the apps, or for when that kind of tuning is really required. And your AI for HCM course—that focuses on the Embedded AI instead of Custom, yes? Jeff: That is exactly it, yes. Nikita: You said there are about 30 of these AI features across HCM. So, when you teach the course, do you go through all of them or are there favorites? Ones that people want to spend more time on so you focus on those? Jeff: The professional part of me wants to tell you that we do try to cover all of them, because that explainability and transparency business we talked about at the beginning. That's for real, so I want our customers to have that for the whole scope. 24:12 Nikita: The professional part? What's the other part? Jeff: I guess that's the part that says sure, we need to hit all of them. But some of them are just inherently more fun to work on. So, it's usually the learners who drive that in the live classes when they get into something, that's where we spend the most time. So, I have my favorites too. The learners have their favorites. And we spend time where it's everybody's favorite. Lois: Like where? Jeff: Ok, so one is far from the most complex one, but I think it's really elegant in its simplicity. And it's the Celebrate feature, where we do employee recognition. There's an AI Assist available there. So when it's time to recognize a colleague, you just need to enter the headline or the title, and the AI takes it from there and just writes up the recognition. 24:56 Lois: What about that makes it a good example, Jeff? You said it's elegant. What do you mean? Jeff: I think it's a few things. So, start with the prompt. It's just the one line—just the headline. And that's your one input. So, type in the headline, get the recognition below. It's a great demonstration of not just the simplicity, but the power we get out of that simplicity. I always ask it to recognize my employees for implementing AI features in Oracle HCM, just to see what it comes up with. When it tells the employee that they're helping the company by automating routine tasks, bringing efficiency to the HR department, and then launches into specific examples of how AI features help in HCM, it really is pretty incredible. So, it's a simple demo, but it explains a lot about how the Gen AI works. Lois: That's really cool. 25:45 Nikita: So this one is generative AI. It's using the large language model to create the recognition based on the prompt, which is basically just whatever you entered in the headline. But how does that help explain how Gen AI works in HCM? Jeff: Well, let's take our simple prompt for example. There's a lot happening behind the scenes. It's taking our prompt, it's doing its LLM thing, but before it's done, it's creating the results in a very specific way. An employee recognition reads really differently than a job description. So, I usually describe this as the hidden part of our prompt. The visible part is what we typed. But it needs to know things like our desired output format. Make sure to use the person's name, summarize the benefits, and be sure to thank them for their contribution, that kind of stuff. So, those things are essentially hard-coded into the page. And that's to say, this is another area where we don't get an inspection panel that lets us go in and tweak the prompt. 26:42 Nikita: And that's generally how generative AI works? Jeff: Pretty much. Wherever you see an AI Assist button in HCM, that's more or less what's going on. And so when you get to some of the other more complex features, it's helpful to know that that is what's going on. Lois: Like where? Jeff: Well, it works that way for the About Me part of your employee profile, for goal creation in performance, and I think a really great example is in performance, where managers are providing the competency development tips. So the prompt there is a little more complex there because it involves the employee's proficiency rating instead of free text. But still, pretty straightforward. You're gonna click AI Assist and it's gonna generate all the development tips for any specific competency listed for that employee. Good development tips. Five of them. Nicely formatted with bullet points. And these aren't random words assembled by an AI. So they conform to best practices in the development of competencies. So, something is telling the LLM to give us results that are that good, in that particular way. So, it's just another good example of the work AI is doing while protected behind the inspection panel that doesn't exist. So, the coding of that page, in combination with what the LLM generates and the agent that it uses, is what produces the result. That's generally the approach. In the class, we always have a good time digging into what must be going on behind that inspection panel. Generally speaking, the better feel we have for what's going on on these pages, the better we're able to get the results we want, even without having that screwdriver out. 28:21 Nikita: So it's time well-spent, looking at all the individual features? Jeff: I think so, especially if you're anticipating really using any of them. So, the good news is, once you learn a few of them and how they work, and what they're best at, you stop being surprised after a while. But there are always tips and tricks. And like we talked about at the top, explainability and transparency are absolutely key. So, as much as I'm not a fan of the phrase, I do think this is kind of a “knowledge is power” kind of situation. 28:51 Nikita: Sadly, we're just about out of time for this episode. Lois: That's too bad, I was really enjoying this. Jeff, you were just talking about knowledge—where can we get more? Jeff: Well, like you mentioned at the start, check out the AI in HCM course on MyLearn. It's about an hour and a half, but it really is time well spent. And we get into detail on everything the three of us discussed here today, and then we have demoscussions of every feature where we show them and how they work and which data they're using and a whole bunch more. So, there's that. Plus, I hear the instructor is excellent. Lois: I can vouch for that! Jeff: Well, then you should definitely look into Dynamic Skills. Different instructor. But we have another course, and again I think about an hour and a half, but when you're done with the AI course, I always feel like Dynamic Skills is where you really wanna go next to really flesh out all the Talent Management ideas that got stirred up while you were having a great time in the AI course. And then finally, the live classes. It's always really fun to take live questions while we talk about AI in HCM. 29:54 Nikita: Thanks, Jeff! This has been really interesting. Lois: Yeah, thanks for being here, Jeff. We've loved having you on. Jeff: Thank you guys so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Lois: If you want to learn more about what we discussed, go to the show notes for today's episode. You'll find links to the AI for Human Capital Management and Dynamic Skills courses that Jeff mentioned so you can check them out. You can also head over to mylearn.oracle.com to find the live sessions for MyLearn subscribers that Jeff conducts. Nikita: Join us next week as we kick off our “Best of 2024” season, where we'll be revisiting some of our most popular episodes of the year. Until then, this is Nikita Abraham… Lois: And Lois Houston, signing off! 30:35 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
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.
Jeff Morris, VP of Product & Solutions Marketing at Couchbase, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss Couchbase's new columnar data store functionality, specific use cases for columnar data stores, and why AI gets better when it communicates with a cleaner pool of data. Jeff shares how more responsive databases could allow businesses like Dominos and United Airlines to create hyper-personalized experiences for their customers by utilizing more responsive databases. Jeff dives into the linked future of AI and data, and Corey learns about Couchbase's plans for the re:Invent conference. If you're attending re:Invent, you can visit Couchbase at booth 1095.About JeffJeff Morris is VP Product & Solutions Marketing at Couchbase (NASDAQ: BASE), a cloud database platform company that 30% of the Fortune 100 depend on.Links Referenced:Couchbase: https://www.couchbase.com/TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted guest episode of Screaming in the Cloud is brought to us by our friends at Couchbase. Also brought to us by Couchbase is today's victim, for lack of a better term. Jeff Morris is their VP of Product and Solutions Marketing. Jeff, thank you for joining me.Jeff: Thanks for having me, Corey, even though I guess I paid for it.Corey: Exactly. It's always great to say thank you when people give you things. I learned this from a very early age, and the only people who didn't were rude children and turned into worse adults.Jeff: Exactly.Corey: So, you are effectively announcing something new today, and I always get worried when a database company says that because sometimes it's a license that is going to upset people, sometimes it's dyed so deep in the wool of generative AI that, “Oh, we're now supporting vectors or whatnot.” Well, most of us don't know what that means.Jeff: Right.Corey: Fortunately, I don't believe that's what you're doing today. What have you got for us?Jeff: So, you're right. It's—well, what I'm doing is, we're announcing new stuff inside of Couchbase and helping Couchbase expand its market footprint, but we're not really moving away from our sweet spot, either, right? We like building—or being the database platform underneath applications. So, push us on the operational side of the operational versus analytic, kind of, database divide. But we are announcing a columnar data store inside of the Couchbase platform so that we can build bigger, better, stronger analytic functionality to feed the applications that we're supporting with our customers.Corey: Now, I feel like I should ask a question around what a columnar data store is because my first encounter with the term was when I had a very early client for AWS bill optimization when I was doing this independently, and I was asking them the… polite question of, “Why do you have 283 billion objects in a single S3 bucket? That is atypical and kind of terrifying.” And their answer was, “Oh, we built our own columnar data store on top of S3. This might not have been the best approach.” It's like, “I'm going to stop you there. With no further information, I can almost guarantee you that it was not.” But what is a columnar data store?Jeff: Well, let's start with the, everybody loves more data and everybody loves to count more things, right, but a columnar data store allows you to expedite the kind of question that you ask of the data itself by not having to look at every single row of the data while you go through it. You can say, if you know you're only looking for data that's inside of California, you just look at the column value of find me everything in California and then I'll pick all of those records to analyze. So, it gives you a faster way to go through the data while you're trying to gather it up and perform aggregations against it.Corey: It seems like it's one of those, “Well, that doesn't sound hard,” type of things, when you're thinking about it the way that I do, in terms of a database being more or less a medium to large size Excel spreadsheet. But I have it on good faith from all the customer environments. I've worked with that no, no, there are data stores that span even larger than that, which is, you know, one of those sad realities of the world. And everything at scale begins to be a heck of a lot harder. I've seen some of the value that this stuff offers and I can definitely understand a few different workloads in which case that's going to be super handy. What are you targeting specifically? Or is this one of those areas where you're going to learn from your customers?Jeff: Well, we've had analytic functionality inside the platform. It just, at the size and scale customers actually wanted to roam through the data, we weren't supporting that that much. So, we'll expand that particular footprint, it'll give us better integration capabilities with external systems, or better access to things in your bucket. But the use case problem is, I think, going to be driven by what new modern application requirements are going to be. You're going to need, we call it hyper-personalization because we tend to cater to B2C-style applications, things with a lot of account profiles built into them.So, you look at account profile, and you're like, “Oh, well Jeff likes blue, so sell him blue stuff.” And that's a great current level personalization, but with a new analytic engine against this, you can maybe start aggregating all the inventory information that you might have of all the blue stuff that you want to sell me and do that in real-time, so I'm getting better recommendations, better offers as I'm shopping on your site or looking at my phone and, you know, looking for the next thing I want to buy.Corey: I'm sure there's massive amounts of work that goes into these hyper-personalization stories. The problem is that the only time they really rise to our notice is when they fail hilariously. Like, you just bought a TV, would you like to buy another? Now statistically, you are likelier to buy a second TV right after you buy one, but for someone who just, “Well, I'm replacing my living room TV after ten years,” it feels ridiculous. Or when you buy a whole bunch of nails and they don't suggest, “Would you like to also perhaps buy a hammer?”It's one of those areas where it just seems like a human putting thought into this could make some sense. But I've seen some of the stuff that can come out of systems like this and it can be incredible. I also personally tend to bias towards use cases that are less, here's how to convince you to buy more things and start aiming in a bunch of other different directions where it starts meeting emerging use cases or changing situations rapidly, more rapidly than a human can in some cases. The world has, for better or worse, gotten an awful lot faster over the last few decades.Jeff: Yeah. And think of it in terms of how responsive can I be at any given moment. And so, let's pick on one of the more recent interesting failures that has popped up. I'm a Giants fan, San Francisco Giants fan, so I'll pick on the Dodgers. The Dodgers during the baseball playoffs, Clayton Kershaw—three-time MVP, Cy Young Award winner, great, great pitcher—had a first-inning meltdown of colossal magnitude: gave up 11 runs in the first inning to the Diamondbacks.Well, my customer Domino's Pizza could end up—well, let's shift the focus of our marketing. We—you know, the Dodgers are the best team in baseball this year in the National League—let's focus our attention there, but with that meltdown, let's pivot to Arizona and focus on our market in Phoenix. And they could do that within minutes or seconds, even, with the kinds of capabilities that we're coming up with here so that they can make better offers to that new environment and also do the decision intelligence behind it. Like, do I have enough dough to make a bigger offer in that big market? Do I have enough drivers or do I have to go and spin out and get one of the other food delivery folks—UberEats, or something like that—to jump on board with me and partner up on this kind of system?It's that responsiveness in real, real-time, right, that's always been kind of the conundrum between applications and analytics. You get an analytic insight, but it takes you an hour or a day to incorporate that into what the application is doing. This is intended to make all of that stuff go faster. And of course, when we start to talk about things in AI, right, AI is going to expect real-time responsiveness as best you can make it.Corey: I figure we have to talk about AI. That is a technology that has absolutely sprung to the absolute peak of the hype curve over the past year. OpenAI released Chat-Gippity, either late last year or early this year and suddenly every company seems to be falling all over itself to rebrand itself as an AI company, where, “We've been working on this for decades,” they say, right before they announce something that very clearly was crash-developed in six months. And every company is trying to drape themselves in the mantle of AI. And I don't want to sound like I'm a doubter here. I'm like most fans; I see an awful lot of value here. But I am curious to get your take on what do you think is real and what do you think is not in the current hype environment.Jeff: So yeah, I love that. I think there's a number of things that are, you know, are real is, it's not going away. It is going to continue to evolve and get better and better and better. One of my analyst friends came up with the notion that the exercise of generative AI, it's imprecise, so it gives you similarity things, and that's actually an improvement, in many cases, over the precision of a database. Databases, a transaction either works or it doesn't. It has failover or it doesn't, when—Corey: It's ideally deterministic when you ask it a question—Jeff: Yes.Corey: —the same question a second time, assuming it's not time-bound—Jeff: Gives you the right answer.Corey: Yeah, the sa—or at least the same answer.Jeff: The same answer. And your gen AI may not. So, that's a part of the oddity of the hype. But then it also helps me kind of feed our storyline of if you're going to try and make Gen AI closer and more accurate, you need a clean pool of data that you're dealing with, even though you've got probably—your previous design was such that you would use a relational database for transactions, a document database for your user profiles, you'd probably attach your website to a caching database because you needed speed and a lot of concurrency. Well, now you got three different databases there that you're operating.And if you're feeding data from each of those databases back to AI, one of them might be wrong or one of them might confuse the AI, yet how are you going to know? The complexity level is going to become, like, exponential. So, our premise is, because we're a multi-modal database that incorporates in-memory speed and documents and search and transactions and the like, if you start with a cleaner pool of data, you'll have less complexity that you're offering to your AI system and therefore you can steer it into becoming more accurate in its response. And then, of course, all the data that we're dealing with is on mobile, right? Data is created there for, let's say, your account profile, and then it's also consumed there because that's what people are using as their application interface of choice.So, you also want to have mobile interactivity and synchronization and local storage, kind of, capabilities built in there. So, those are kind of, you know, a couple of the principles that we're looking at of, you know, JSON is going to be a great format for it regardless of what happens; complexity is kind of the enemy of AI, so you don't want to go there; and mobility is going to be an absolute requirement. And then related to this particular announcement, large-scale aggregation is going to be a requirement to help feed the application. There's always going to be some other bigger calculation that you're going to want to do relatively in real time and feed it back to your users or the AI system that's helping them out.Corey: I think that that is a much more nuanced use case than a lot of the stuff that's grabbing customer attentions where you effectively have the Chat-Gippity story of it being an incredible parrot. Where I have run into trouble with the generative story has been people putting the thing that the robot that's magic and from the future has come up with off the cuff and just hurling that out into the universe under their own name without any human review, and that's fine sometimes sure, but it does get it hilariously wrong at some points. And the idea of sending something out under my name that has not been at least reviewed by me if not actually authored by me, is abhorrent. I mean, I review even the transactional, “Yes, you have successfully subscribed,” or, “Sorry to see you go,” email confirmations on stuff because there's an implicit, “Hugs and puppies, love Corey,” at the end of everything that goes out under my name.Jeff: Right.Corey: But I've gotten a barrage of terrible sales emails and companies that are trying to put the cart before the horse where either the, “Support rep,” quote-unquote, that I'm speaking to in the chat is an AI system or else needs immediate medical attention because there's something going on that needs assistance.Jeff: Yeah, they just don't understand.Corey: Right. And most big enterprise stories that I've heard so far that have come to light have been around the form of, “We get to fire most of our customer service staff,” an outcome that basically no one sensible wants. That is less compelling than a lot of the individualized consumer use cases. I love asking it, “Here's a blog post I wrote. Give me ten title options.” And I'll usually take one of them—one of them is usually not half bad and then I can modify it slightly.Jeff: And you'll change four words in it. Yeah.Corey: Yeah, exactly. That's a bit of a different use case.Jeff: It's been an interesting—even as we've all become familiar—or at least junior prompt engineers, right—is, your information is only going to be as good as you feed the AI system—the return is only going to be as good—so you're going to want to refine that kind of conversation. Now, we're not trying to end up replacing the content that gets produced or the writing of all kinds of pros, other than we do have a code generator that works inside of our environment called Capella iQ that talks to ChatGPT, but we try and put guardrails on that too, right, as always make sure that it's talking in terms of the context of Couchbase rather than, “Where's Taylor Swift this week,” which I don't want it to answer because I don't want to spend GPT money to answer that question for you.Corey: And it might not know the right answer, but it might very well spit out something that sounds plausible.Jeff: Exactly. But I think the kinds of applications that we're steering ourselves toward can be helped along by the Gen AI systems, but I don't expect all my customers are going to be writing automatic blog post generation kinds of applications. I think what we're ultimately trying to do is facilitate interactions in a way that we haven't dreamt of yet, right? One of them might be if I've opted into to loyalty programs, like my United account and my American Express account—Corey: That feels very targeted at my lifestyle as well, so please, continue.Jeff: Exactly, right? And so, what I really want the system to do is for Amex to reward me when I hit 1k status on United while I'm on the flight and you know, have the flight attendant come up and be like, “Hey, you did it. Either, here's a free upgrade from American Express”—that would be hyper-personalization because you booked your plane ticket with it, but they also happen to know or they cross-consumed information that I've opted into.Corey: I've seen them congratulate people for hitting a million miles flown mid-flight, but that's clearly something that they've been tracking and happens a heck of a lot less frequently. This is how you start scaling that experience.Jeff: Yes. But that happened because American Airlines was always watching because that was an American Airlines ad ages ago, right, but the same principle holds true. But I think there's going to be a lot more of these: how much information am I actually allowing to be shared amongst the, call it loyalty programs, but the data sources that I've opted into. And my God, there's hundreds of them that I've personally opted into, whether I like it or not because everybody needs my email address, kind of like what you were describing earlier.Corey: A point that I have that I think agrees largely with your point is that few things to me are more frustrating than what I'm signing up, for example, oh, I don't know, an AWS even—gee, I can't imagine there's anything like that going on this week—and I have to fill out an entire form that always asked me the same questions: how big my company is, whether we have multiple workloads on, what industry we're in. And no matter what I put into that, first, it never remembers me for the next time, which is frustrating in its own right, but two, no matter what I put in to fill that thing out, the email I get does not change as a result. At one point, I said, all right—I'm picking randomly—“I am a venture capitalist based in Sweden,” and I got nothing that is differentiated from the other normal stuff I get tied to my account because I use a special email address for those things, sometimes just to see what happens. And no, if you're going to make me jump through the hoops to give you the data, at least use it to make my experience better. It feels like I'm asking for the moon here, but I shouldn't be.Jeff: Yes. [we need 00:16:19] to make your experience better and say, you know, “Here's four companies in Malmo that you ought to be talking to. And they happen to be here at the AWS event and you can go find them because their booth is here, here, and here.” That kind of immediate responsiveness could be facilitated, and to our point, ought to be facilitated. It's exactly like that kind of thing is, use the data in real-time.I was talking to somebody else today that was discussing that most data, right, becomes stale and unvaluable, like, 50% of the data, its value goes to zero after about a day. And some of it is stale after about an hour. So, if you can end up closing that responsiveness gap that we were describing—and this is kind of what this columnar service inside of Capella is going to be like—is react in real-time with real-time calculation and real-time look-up and real-time—find out how you might apply that new piece of information right now and then give it back to the consumer or the user right now.Corey: So, Couchbase takes a few different forms. I should probably, at least for those who are not steeped in the world of exotic forms of database, I always like making these conversations more accessible to folks who are not necessarily up to speed. Personally, I tend to misuse anything as a database, if I can hold it just the wrong way.Jeff: The wrong way. I've caught that about you.Corey: Yeah, it's—everything is a database if you hold it wrong. But you folks have a few different options: you have a self-managed commercial offering; you're an open-source project, so I can go ahead and run it on my own infrastructure however I want; and you have Capella, which is Couchbase as a service. And all of those are useful and have their points, and I'm sure I'm missing at least one or two along the way. But do you find that the columnar use case is going to disproportionately benefit folks using Capella in ways that the self-hosted version would not be as useful for, or is this functionality already available in other expressions of Couchbase?Jeff: It's not already available in other expressions, although there is analytic functionality in the self-managed version of Couchbase. But it's, as I've mentioned I think earlier, it's just not as scalable or as really real-time as far as we're thinking. So, it's going to—yes, it's going to benefit the database as a service deployments of Couchbase available on your favorite three clouds, and still interoperable with environments that you might self-manage and self-host. So, there could be even use cases where our development team or your development team builds in AWS using the cloud-oriented features, but is still ultimately deploying and hosting and managing a self-managed environment. You could still do all of that. So, there's still a great interplay and interoperability amongst our different deployment options.But the fun part, I think, about this is not only is it going to help the Capella user, there's a lot of other things inside Couchbase that help address the developers' penchant for trading zero-cost for degrees of complexity that you're willing to accept because you want everything to be free and open-source. And Couchbase is my fifth open-source company in my background, so I'm well, well versed in the nuances of what open-source developers are seeking. But what makes Couchbase—you know, its origin story really cool too, though, is it's the peanut butter and chocolate marriage of memcached and the people behind that and membase and CouchDB from [Couch One 00:19:54]. So, I can't think of that many—maybe Red Hat—project and companies that formed up by merging two complementary open-source projects. So, we took the scale and—Corey: You have OpenTelemetry, I think, that did that once, but that—you see occasional mergers, but it's very far from common.Jeff: But it's very, very infrequent. But what that made the Couchbase people end up doing is make a platform that will scale, make a data design that you can auto partition anywhere, anytime, and then build independently scalable services on top of that, one for SQL++, the query language. Anyone who knows SQL will be able to write something in Couchbase immediately. And I've got this AI Automator, iQ, that makes it even easier; you just say, “Write me a SQL++ query that does this,” and it'll do that. But then we added full-text search, we added eventing so you can stream data, we added the analytics capability originally and now we're enhancing it, and use JSON as our kind of universal data format so that we can trade data with applications really easily.So, it's a cool design to start with, and then in the cloud, we're steering towards things like making your entry point and using our database as a service—Capella—really, really, really inexpensive so that you get that same robustness of functionality, as well as the easy cost of entry that today's developers want. And it's my analyst friends that keep telling me the cloud is where the markets going to go, so we're steering ourselves towards that hockey puck location.Corey: I frequently remark that the role of the DBA might not be vanishing, but it's definitely changing, especially since the last time I counted, if you hold them and use as directed, AWS has something on the order of 14 distinct managed database offerings. Some are general purpose, some are purpose-built, and if this trend keeps up, in a decade, the DBA role is going to be determining which of its 40 databases is going to be the right fit for a given workload. That seems to be the counter-approach to a general-purpose database that works across the board. Clearly you folks have opinions on this. Where do you land?Jeff: Oh, so absolutely. There's the product that is a suite of capabilities—or that are individual capabilities—and then there's ones that are, in my case, kind of multi-model and do lots of things at once. I think historically, you'll recognize—because this is—let's pick on your phone—the same holds true for, you know, your phone used to be a watch, used to be a Palm Pilot, used to be a StarTAC telephone, and your calendar application, your day planner all at the same time. Well, it's not anymore. Technology converges upon itself; it's kind of a historical truism.And the database technologies are going to end up doing that—or continue to do that, even right now. So, that notion that—it's a ten-year-old notion of use a purpose-built database for that particular workload. Maybe sometimes in extreme cases that is the appropriate thing, but in more cases than not right now, if you need transactions when you need them, that's fine, I can do that. You don't necessarily need Aurora or RDS or Postgres to do that. But when you need search and geolocation, I support that too, so you don't need Elastic. And then when you need caching and everything, you don't need ElastiCache; it's all built-in.So, that multi-model notion of operate on the same pool of data, it's a lot less complex for your developers, they can code faster and better and more cleanly, debugging is significantly easier. As I mentioned, SQL++ is our language. It's basically SQL syntax for JSON. We're a reference implementation of this language, along with—[AsteriskDB 00:23:42] is one of them, and actually, the original author of that language also wrote DynamoDB's PartiQL.So, it's a common language that you wouldn't necessarily imagine, but the ease of entry in all of this, I think, is still going to be a driving goal for people. The old people like me and you are running around worrying about, am I going to get a particular, really specific feature out of the full-text search environment, or the other one that I pick on now is, “Am I going to need a vector database, too?” And the answer to me is no, right? There's going—you know, the database vendors like ourselves—and like Mongo has announced and a whole bunch of other NoSQL vendors—we're going to support that. It's going to be just another mode, and you get better bang for your buck when you've got more modes than a single one at a time.Corey: The consensus opinion that's emerging is very much across the board that vector is a feature, not a database type.Jeff: Not a category, yeah. Me too. And yeah, we're well on board with that notion, as well. And then like I said earlier, the JSON as a vehicle to give you all of that versatility is great, right? You can have vector information inside a JSON document, you can have time series information in the document, you could have graph node locations and ID numbers in a JSON array, so you don't need index-free adjacency or some of the other cleverness that some of my former employers have done. It really is all converging upon itself and hopefully everybody starts to realize that you can clean up and simplify your architectures as you look ahead, so that you do—if you're going to build AI-powered applications—feed it clean data, right? You're going to be better off.Corey: So, this episode is being recorded in advance, thankfully, but it's going to release the first day of re:Invent. What are you folks doing at the show, for those who are either there and for some reason, listening to a podcast rather than going to getting marketed to by a variety of different pitches that all mention AI or might even be watching from home and trying to figure out what to make of it?Jeff: Right. So, of course we have a booth, and my notes don't have in front of me what our booth number is, but you'll see it on the signs in the airport. So, we'll have a presence there, we'll have an executive briefing room available, so we can schedule time with anyone who wants to come talk to us. We'll be showing not only the capabilities that we're offering here, we'll show off Capella iQ, our coding assistant, okay—so yeah, we're on the AI hype band—but we'll also be showing things like our mobile sync capability where my phone and your phone can synchronize data amongst themselves without having to actually have a live connection to the internet. So, long as we're on the same network locally within the Venetian's network, we have an app that we have people download from the Apple Store and then it's a color synchronization app or picture synchronization app.So, you tap it, and it changes on my screen and I tap it and it changes on your screen, and we'll have, I don't know, as many people who are around standing there, synchronizing, what, maybe 50 phones at a time. It's actually a pretty slick demonstration of why you might want a database that's not only in the cloud but operates around the cloud, operates mobile-ly, operates—you know, can connect and disconnect to your networks. It's a pretty neat scenario. So, we'll be showing a bunch of cool technical stuff as well as talking about the things that we're discussing right now.Corey: I will say you're putting an awful lot of faith in conductivity working at re:Invent, be it WiFi or the cellular network. I know that both of those have bitten me in various ways over the years. But I wish you the best on it. I think it's going to be an interesting show based upon everything I've heard in the run-up to it. I'm just glad it's here.Jeff: Now, this is the cool part about what I'm talking about, though. The cool part about what I'm talking about is we can set up our own wireless network in our booth, and we still—you'd have to go to the app store to get this application, but once there, I can have you switch over to my local network and play around on it and I can sync the stuff right there and have confidence that in my local network that's in my booth, the system's working. I think that's going to be ultimately our design there because oh my gosh, yes, I have a hundred stories about connectivity and someone blowing a demo because they're yanking on a cable behind the pulpit, right?Corey: I always build in a—and assuming there's no connectivity, how can I fake my demos, just because it's—I've only had to do it once, but you wind up planning in advance when you start doing a talk to a large enough or influential enough audience where you want things to go right.Jeff: There's a delightful acceptance right now of recorded videos and demonstrations that people sort of accept that way because of exactly all this. And I'm sure we'll be showing that in our booth there too.Corey: Given the non-deterministic nature of generative AI, I'm sort of surprised whenever someone hasn't mocked the demo in advance, just because yeah, gives the right answer in the rehearsal, but every once in a while, it gets completely unglued.Jeff: Yes, and we see it pretty regularly. So, the emergence of clever and good prompt engineering is going to be a big skill for people. And hopefully, you know, everybody's going to figure out how to pass it along to their peers.Corey: Excellent. We'll put links to all this in the show notes, and I look forward to seeing how well this works out for you. Best of luck at the show and thanks for speaking with me. I appreciate it.Jeff: Yeah, Corey. We appreciate the support, and I think the show is going to be very strong for us as well. And thanks for having me here.Corey: Always a pleasure. Jeff Morris, VP of Product and Solutions Marketing at Couchbase. This episode has been brought to us by our friends at Couchbase. And I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment, but if you want to remain happy, I wouldn't ask that podcast platform what database they're using. No one likes the answer to those things.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.
Join us for a fascinating discussion as we unpack Amazon unBoxed 2023, exploring the most exciting releases such as generative AI and more that can level up your advertising game. Our co-host from Pacvue, Anne Harrell provides us with a unique perspective on the advertising industry. Let's start with our chat with Jeff Cohen, Principal Evangelist, Advertising API at Amazon, as he shares his transition journey and the biggest differences he's noticed. Listen in as we dive into the role of ad tech in digital transformation and its implications for brands. We examine Amazon Ads' new offerings like generative AI and sponsored TV, which promise to revolutionize brand imagery and audience engagement. Get the inside scoop on Amazon PPC and new-to-brand metrics that could redefine your brand's success measurement. We also explore Amazon Publisher Cloud, a game-changing technology for publishers that promises unique and differentiated opportunities for advertisers. Get to know Miranda Chen, the director of growth and modernization for Amazon Marketing Cloud, as she walks us through its potential. Learn how lookalike audiences can help your brand reach new customers and how templatized analytics can make AMC more accessible. We also examine Amazon Marketing Stream and Rapid Retail Analytics, which provide valuable data on retail signals. Discover how sponsored products can appear on platforms like Pinterest and the features that make Amazon's new Sponsored TV offering a game-changer. All this and more, right here on our podcast! In episode 504 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Anne, and our special guests discuss: 00:00 - Amazon unBoxed 2023 04:31 - Insights on Amazon and Advertising Growth 08:29 - Sponsored TV and Ad Tech Announcements 12:29 - Embracing Change in Amazon Advertising 20:40 - Amazon Advertising Full Funnel Solutions 23:39 - Benefits and Capabilities of Demandside Platforms 28:25 - Lookalike Audiences for Reaching New Customers 34:59 - Amazon Marketing and Rapid Retail Analytics 41:15 - Amazon's Sponsored TV Announcement ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/video Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got a special episode here at Amazon Unbox 2023 where we're going to talk about all of their releases, like generative AI and sponsored brand hats, and also a lot of cool things like sponsored TV. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. If you're like me, maybe you were intimidated about learning how to do Amazon PPC, or maybe you think you just don't have the hours and hours that it takes to download and sort through all of those sponsored ads reports that Amazon produces for you. Adtomic for me allowed me to learn PPC for the first time, and now I'm managing over 150 PPC campaigns across all of my accounts in only two hours a week. Find out how Adtomic can help you level up your PPC game. Visit h10/adtomic for more information. That's h10.me/adtomic. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10 I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We're here at Amazon Unboxed in New York. I've been on the road for like three weeks and there's a second there where I wasn't quite sure where. I was. I've been in so many countries lately, but we've got a co-host today and from Pacvue, and how's it going? Anne: Great. How are you doing? Bradley Sutton: I'm just delightful. Now, what is your background? What do you do at Pacvue? Anne: Yeah, so I'm a product solutions director for DSP at Pacvue, so I do basically anything related to DSP and AMC help with our product road mapping, help with strategy for some of our enterprise level clients doing customer within AMC marketing you name it, I probably do it. Bradley Sutton: How long have you been at Pacvue? Anne: I've been at Pacvue for coming up on four years now, so about three and a half years total. A lot has changed since I joined. I started at Pacvue focusing on our managed services team, so I was primarily working with some of our strategic accounts, helping to build out their capabilities, doing strategy not just for DSP but across kind of omni-channel focuses, so for search as well. Prior to working at Pacvue, I actually worked in an agency in Austin, Texas, where I'm normally based, where I again did omni-channel strategy for enterprise level accounts. So my background is not just with programmatic and DSP, but I really gravitated to it. It's just one of those types of advertising channels that really allows you to have a lot of flexibility and creativity and really is conducive to innovation. So I really enjoy working on the DSP side of things. Bradley Sutton: Cool. Now what did you go to school for? Anne: I went to school for advertising, so I think I'm in the right place. Bradley Sutton: Okay, so you're right. Where did you go to school at? Anne: It's called St Edward's University. It's in Austin, Texas. So I've been in Austin since I went to school and I just never left about a decade. Bradley Sutton: Okay, I was about to say, because you don't sound like you were born and raised in Austin. Anne: I was not Okay. Bradley Sutton: What were you born and raised? Anne: Well, where I was born was Hattiesburg, Mississippi, but raised is a harder question. I moved about 10 times before I graduated high school. So you pick a state, I probably was raised there. Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool, yeah, because I was like wait a minute, she doesn't sound like a native Texan here. Anne: I know no accent yet. Bradley Sutton: All right, maybe 15, 20 years from now you might have a little twang in here. Anne: Right, right, I actually have a little bit of a Southern accent, I think I kind of got rid of it as I moved around. Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Now what are you? We're going to be talking to some people that probably people have never heard of podcasts, right? You know there are exactly executives here at Amazon who are you most excited to talk to today. Anne: If I were to have to say, my favorite subject matter is definitely the DSP AMC side of things, and I know that we're speaking to Kelly, who's the VP of DSP, so that's obviously a great place to start. We're also going to speak to Miranda, who is a director for AMC at Amazon, so I think there's going to be a lot of really great content around that. But in general, we're also talking to a lot of people who are very broadly focused across all of ads, and so I think we'll have something for everyone in this one. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, so you guys might be. There might be some newbies out there, don't tune out. This is stuff that you're going to need to know If you're an advanced seller. We're going to talk about some stuff that you guys might be able to use right away. That was just announced this week at Amazon Unbox, so let's go ahead and hop right into the interviews, all right. First up, we've got my brother from another mother here, jeff Cohen. Jeff, how's it going? Jeff: Everything is great. So great to see you, so great to see the whole Helium 10 Pack View team at this conference. It's great to catch up with everybody. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, Now you've been in the game longer than me. I remember the very first conference I spoke at. You were a speaker and you were already a veteran speaker at that time. You know side note that that conference there probably had the best food I've ever had at the conference. This is probably the second best Like. Jeff: I'm really impressed with the offerings here. Yeah, I'm curious what conference that is, but we don't have to go into that now. Bradley Sutton: But it was right here in New York. But you were on the SaaS side. You know, like I am now. Now you're at Amazon, like what's been the biggest you know kind of eye-opening thing or difference, now that you're on the other side of the aisle. Jeff: Yeah, interesting because I always like to joke that you know I drink the Amazon Kool-Aid before I ever like came here. I've been an Amazon like fanboy since like 2005 when I started textbookscom and it's been interesting because I'm in a unique position where I can bring the outside in and the inside out, and I think that you know, one of the many things that I've learned is maybe like the patience that you have to have with Amazon Maybe I didn't have as much patience when I was on the outside and the amount of time that it takes for some of the things to develop at Amazon. But when they like grow and they go to scale, it then moves at like this rocket ship pace. And so I think you're starting to see that with some of the tools, like AMC or even like you know what's happening with, like Amazon Studios and some of the new, you know productions that are coming out, you have this like rocket ship pace of what's happening in terms of the development and the new opportunities and how advertisers are using the technology, and so you have to kind of be patient when new things come out. So when you have a totally new product like Sponsored TV, you got to realize that it takes a little bit of time to kind of figure out how does it work into the individual advertisers media mix, and so that's the measurement work for each brand along the way. But then once it kind of gets up to full speed, you get to see like how it all works and you know and how it's really excelling brand growth. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, now we're going to be interviewing a lot of your colleagues here about some very specific announcements that happened here at Unboxed and before I ask you to give a rundown, you know, one of the things that was announced today it's on the website too is about the new generative AI that can help people doing Sponsored Brand Ads to generate some new creatives. Can you talk about that just a little bit? Jeff: Yeah, I think there were like three themes to the keynote today that I kind of jotted down. One was this idea of, like digital transformation and one was this idea of like how ad tech plays in in a responsible way. And then the third one was like how we reinvent, right, how we have reinvent what's possible. That was said numerous times, and I think Gen AI kind of fits into almost all three of those categories. And you know, we saw a lot of opportunity, a lot of new changes with Gen AI that have come out of AWS. We saw a lot of changes with Gen AI that came out of Amazon Accelerate, and now we're starting to see some come out of Amazon ads and I'll you know it's cool, right, we can take a product and we can turn that product into a full lifestyle image. And I think it's if you can just start to kind of think about where the possibilities go from there and what else brands can do and how we can enable that, either with what Amazon ads is doing or with what our partners are doing right, because it doesn't always have to be invented by us at Amazon it's really making it easier for brands to be able to take advantage of this technology that maybe was a little expensive or time consuming or difficult to use, and now it's all done with prompts and it's really simple and easy and that's really cool yeah. Bradley Sutton: Now, what about some of the other announcements? Say you have any. You know things that stick out that you're especially excited for. Jeff: Yeah, I think that what we're doing I mentioned it during our opening segment but Sponsored TV, I think is a really cool one and you know, in short, it's democratizing the ability for brands to be able to place ads into our streaming portfolio right so across Prime Video, free V and all the other channels that we have that I can't even remember them all because I'm supposed to think so quickly and I think that's really cool. And again, like there's no budget for that, you do have to have the creative, but Amazon has services that can help you make that creative or there's third parties that can help you make that creative. And I thought that was a really exciting announcement that was made, you know, on the heels of the announcement that was made a month ago. It was kind of reinforced about like what's happening with Prime Video and it moving to an ad supported network, creating a ton of, you know, new inventory for brands to begin to explore, and that's really super exciting as we start to go into it. And then there was like a bunch around ad tech and like what's happening around measurement and I know, like from you know, we're all near and dear to this idea that measurement is critical to our overall success and new metrics that are being released, making it available to understand how new to brand customers are impacting the business, and I think those are all really important for us to be thinking about because we have to close the loop. As advertisers and as we move to this cookie-less world right, it's signs point to it happening in 2024, we have to find ways to be able to close the funnel and understand how our ads are working, and Amazon's working really hard to help brands be able to do that, both within our suite and also when you're outside of our suite. Anne: Yeah, you mentioned the new. New to brand metrics, new to brand consideration metrics, I think is what we're calling them. Can you walk our listeners through what those really are? Jeff: Well, when you're looking at new to brand, right from like a super high level, new to brand is starting to give you this metric that's beyond ROAS, and it's starting to allow brands to look at who was not buying their brand within the last 12 months. Who's now buying their brand, and there's a suite of metrics now that are available for you to be looking at so that, as you're looking at different inflection points of your advertising, you can start to actually dial down into what action you're looking for people to take. And I think that's what's really cool. And it's like this evolution and brands have to think through this evolution like one of the simplest ways to think of this, right for people who maybe, like this concept's a little far for them. One of the simplest ways to think of this is around this idea that, like, if you're trying to get more awareness of your product, when you're looking at a video, you don't want to just see video views, you want to see how long they've been watching the video, and so you might start optimizing your campaign based on video length, how many people get to a half the video or three quarters of the video. And so, when you start to get into the new to brand type of metrics, you're actually saying, okay, I want incremental growth and by definition is, you know, sales you wouldn't have had before. One of the best ways to measure that is by people who are new to your brand, and so by having multiple metrics now to be able to understand how those are being impacted, you can now go back into tools like AMC and see how that funnel is working and which ones are driving the actual you know points that you want to drive and that that's really cool, right, it's, it's very excited about. Anne: I'm very excited too, yeah. Bradley Sutton: Awesome, all right. Last question for you know maybe not something that was released here at Unbox, but you know you're very active on LinkedIn. You see what people are posting about. You know I'm sure you look at metrics about what advertisers are using. Is there something in Amazon advertising that you feel is is kind of being slept on or not enough people are talking about it, that you think more people should be using it? Jeff: I mean more people should be using Helium 10 and Pacvue. Bradley Sutton: That goes without saying. Jeff: Okay, besides that, I think that you know, bradley, you and I get asked this question a lot, right? And? And our answer is always it depends. And I think that, instead of like saying, like this is a tool that you should be using or this is a a, an advertising function, you should be trying, I think that advertisers need to be open to the idea of test and learn, and I think the more you can train your mental model to work in a test and learn type of environment, the more open you are to change, because the only thing that's constant is going to be change. Right, and you started by saying like, where this industry was years ago when we both started, think about all the change that's happened and all the change that's occurred, and the brands that have not just survived but thrived through that are brands that have taken advantage of new opportunities, have invested by testing and learning and have then double down on the things that we're working. And I don't mean to oversimplify it, right, but it's not a very specific answer of like, use helium tens tool for keyword, blah, blah, blah, but it's like that's just one piece that you then use to implement the strategy. So work backwards. What's your goal. How are you gonna get there? And then figure out what tools you need to help you scale. Bradley Sutton: Awesome. All right, well, jeff. Thank you so much for joining us. We've been trying to get you on the podcast for like two years. I'm happy it finally happened and we'll definitely be keeping in touch. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. All right, next up, we've got Kelly here. Now, Kelly, can you go ahead and introduce yourself? Tell us what you do at Amazon. Kelly: Absolutely so, Kelly McClain. I lead our demand side platform at Amazon, so we call it ADSP, and excited to be here. Bradley Sutton: Thank you for the time. Awesome, Awesome. Now you were, you know. Just saw you on stage a few minutes ago. What were your big reveals of the day? Kelly: Yeah, really good question. So I think if, if you think about Amazon ads and kind of where we've, where we've been and where we're going, we've really continued to make a lot of progress on on how, what we've been building a lot of our goals. We're focused a lot on interoperability with our ad tech solutions, so making it easier to use. We're focused a lot on performance improvements and then again, all of this is underpinned by making sure that we're putting privacy at the core of everything that we're doing, and so, with that in mind, we've been kind of launching this week in particular, a lot of different updates around, as you think about planning, activating and measuring, right. So within planning, we were launching Cross Channel Planner, which is a new way for you to really think about full, full funnel planning. We announced Amazon Publisher Cloud, which is the new clean room technology for publishers, which we're really excited about. We've been making a lot of performance improvements to the demand side platform, both with the user interface as well as the backend performance, and then we've also been been launching a lot more on our measurement capabilities, right, so making sure that marketers are getting the insights real time, making it a lot easier for them to kind of understand. You know how they should be looking at performance and where they should be making future investments. So we're excited about it. It's going to be a really fun week. Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome. We have our resident DSP nerd here, Ann, so she's going to go ahead and ask have some follow up. Anne: Definitely. Amazon Publisher Cloud was announced today, which is a big step for your publishing partners, obviously. Do you see any benefit for advertisers with this release? Kelly: Yes, definitely, and you know, I think to your point. I mean we've had, if you think about kind of clean room technology, right, really starting with cloud solutions. Then Amazon marketers cloud right thinking for marketers on how we can help support them. And Amazon publisher cloud it's going to be a mouthful after I'm speaking all morning. So excuse me, but you know that's really about a solution for publishers, right, giving them much more of the ability to pair any unique insights that they have right Demographics that they might know, of course, with folks who are coming to their site and then pairing that with Amazon Ads data. But the real core of that is, of course, providing opportunities for publishers but making it easier for them to connect with advertisers, right, advertisers. Often that you know there's so many different deal opportunities out there. A lot of the kind of deal process is very manual today and it's hard to discover the right deal and knowing which deal is right for you to reach your audience and so you know. A simple example, right is, if you're, let's say, you're a common website and you know the different demographics that are coming to your site every day, but by layering on Amazon audiences, you might realize, oh, I actually have pet food lovers who or sorry, pet food lovers- I have pet lovers who are coming to my site that I didn't realize, and so then that offers publishers the ability to maybe customize some unique deal opportunities to advertisers who might be trying to target pet lovers right, or specific brands who might be selling pet food, and it provides much more unique, differentiated opportunities, and we actually had a recent test with NBC Universal and they were able to offer three and a half times more reach than what they'd seen in the past, which is really exciting. So we see this as beneficial to both marketers and to publishers by really making it a lot more simple to connect with audiences. Bradley Sutton: At the end of the day, you know, pet food lovers are pets in about 10 years at Unbox. I predict like there's going to be some DSP where pets can actually base, you know, based on what they see on TV. Anne: They've already made more of the food, Exactly exactly, so we just launched something. Kelly: And if that's possible, maybe pets will be transformed into some sort of language that they can then activate. Anne: I think so, I think so. I don't even want to think about that. Kelly: I know, I never really thought about that? Anne: Yeah, that's very exciting. So, essentially for the advertisers listening, it's going to make your reach potentially broader but also more relevant, right? So the publishers have the ability to make targeting more relevant Absolutely Great. Another big announcement was the cross-channel planner. Yes, so can you walk us through how you think the ability to forecast reach will change how advertisers perform through their DSP program? Yeah, absolutely. Kelly: I mean, I think one of the biggest challenges today, as you all know right, is the fragmentation of channels and information and the overload of signals, right, and so that's where we're excited with Cross Channel Planner providing more of the ability to help marketers understand who they should be reaching right across the funnel and get much more information on how to kind of more efficiently drive their spend. In the past, we've launched Channel Planner, so that was our first product for mostly catered towards streaming TV, right, and how do you think about reach curves and how do you make sure that you're delivering against that for upfront pitches and so forth, and this is really kind of the next iteration to driving more efficient spend. So, ultimately, we think this is going to be kind of the next step of just providing much more granularity across all of the Amazon ads products on Amazon beyond Amazon, to make it easier to figure out. Okay, where should I be allocating my budget in the best way possible? We had a baby brand who actually was reaching audiences and they activated. So they leveraged Cross Channel Planner, activated via the DSP, and then they used custom advertising to direct customers to their online store and actually had four and a half times click through rate and 11% increase in impurchase rate, which was pretty cool to see. So again, I think the ability to plan and then easily activate is something that we're really committed to and excited about. Anne: Do you think this will be applicable for advertisers who are advertising both on Amazon and off, so more so that third party placement this will help plan for that as well. Absolutely. Kelly: So Amazon is known for retail media and driving conversions in the Amazon store, and we've been making so many investments over the past several years to really drive much more full funnel solutions and making all of our solutions work for all types of advertisers whether you're an advertiser that sells on Amazon or not because we're really excited about the power of again combining Amazon signals with marketers, third party and third party signals in a way that you can actually drive conversions, drive reach and have more of a full funnel experience and conversation. And that's where our Amazon publisher direct team comes into play, where we have a lot of these relationships and can reach anyone across the internet. But we've also been investing in modeled audiences and the performance through the DSP, and so a lot of people are kind of thinking about the loss of cookies in a negative way. We actually see this as an opportunity. We see this as a way to really innovate and rethink how marketers can potentially reach people in a privacy, safe way. That also drives performance, and so this is why we've also been investing in our modeled audience solutions right so, especially as we think about driving sales or reach off of Amazon, and we've been seeing over 25% increase delivery with a lot of the solutions, as well as 12% less cost per click per impression, which I'm barely able to talk. I'm going to lose my voice by the end of this day. But so, yeah, I think all of these from again, the planning, how you can activate all of the performance improvements we've been doing within our DSP we're excited. We'll continue to help accelerate marketers across full funnel wherever they want to reach people, which we're thrilled about. Anne: Definitely the ever looming third party cookie deprecation. Yes, exactly. Kelly: Yeah, a lot of energy, but understandably, and I think it's the right thing for us to rethink how we can really connect marketers and people in the right way, moving forward. Anne: Agreed, agreed. Another thing that was mentioned was the bidding enhancements that are now going to be available through the DSP program. So, essentially, you pick a KPI and you let Amazon do all the bid optimization in order to get to that KPI. Do you think this is going to change costs for advertisers, like, will CPMs go down in highly competitive categories or go up because of this automation? Kelly: Good question and, being a DSP enthusiast, I'm sure you know that our system has been really hard to use in the past. We've heard feedback from customers and partners that it was very complex, and so we've really been. So this goal seeking bidder, as well as re-augmenting our interface so that it's much more anchored on goals, has been paramount. We want to make it easier to use the DSP. We want to understand what is your goal, what are you trying to do? What outcome are you trying to drive for your business? And we've been making a lot of user interface improvements. And then the goal seeking bidder, on the back end to your point, I'm not sure what it will do in terms of you know, I can't talk to overall pricing in the system, right, but what I can say is that we're already seeing, you know, up to 40% reduction in CPAs, where we're able to better optimize against a goal, and we're seeing marketers just really gravitate towards the ability to kind of have much more of a simple experience. But we also believe in control, and so I think that's one of the powers that we think the Demand side platform has is, if you want all of the customization, if you want the complexity, we have that right. You can really adjust whatever types of bids that you want. You can layer on various different types of audiences. You can play around with different creatives. You can, you know, make a ton of different ads to try and test and at the same time, if you want a more simple, easy experience, you know what your goal is. We're able to help optimize and provide recommendations on the best way to do that. So we see it as kind of a nice balance in providing marketers kind of that wide range of capabilities, because we think there's a lot of different discussions in the industry right now on what way folks are going to be going. Bradley Sutton: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time and thank you for all you do at Amazon. We appreciate it. Kelly: Thank you for the partnership. Appreciate it, of course. Bradley Sutton: Thanks, thank you All right Now we've got Miranda. Miranda, this is our first time meeting you, so can you introduce yourself and tell us what your position is at Amazon? Miranda: Absolutely. I'm Miranda Chen. I'm the director of growth and modernization for Amazon Marketing Cloud, or AMC for short. I've been at Amazon for 11 and a half years now, live in the Bay Area and at AMC I lead several teams responsible for product and engineering, developing our audience activation capabilities, making AMC easier to use for more and more customers, as well as our go to market and customer enablement activities. Bradley Sutton: All right Now. We have a wide variety of listeners, anywhere from brand new people selling on Amazon to humongous billion dollar brands. Now, the billion dollar brands probably know all about AMC, but some of our newer ones might not understand that. Maybe there can feel like wait, marketing, stream, marketing, AMC, there's all these acronyms. So can you just give a quick, maybe 30 second, one minute introduction about what is AMC? Miranda: Yeah for sure. So Amazon Marketing Cloud, or AMC, is Amazon ads as clean room, so it's private and secure by design. Each advertiser has their own campaign signals of all their various Amazon ad spend within their particular instance. So we have signals from sponsored products, sponsored brands, streaming TV effectively like all of the actual campaign events and enables custom flexible analytics on those signals. And then it also enables advertisers to be able to upload their own first party signals or third party signals so you can think of, like product catalog, retail conversions, things like that, and so then you can generate really really flexible insights, typically using SQL, such as path to conversion, reach and frequency, overlap analysis and then actually take actions on them. Bradley Sutton: Cool, so most of our listeners probably weren't able to attend here at Unbox. What's the big release for your department here at Unbox? Miranda: Yeah, so we had a couple different releases specifically related to AMC that I can touch on. The first was AMC template analytics. So it takes some of our most popular queries, such as path to conversion, reach and frequency, and then allows users to be able to generate those insights without needing to touch any codes. So that's a pretty exciting development, particularly since we know that not everybody no SQL has taught themselves SQL overnight. And then the second one was AMC lookalike audiences. So we already have the capability where one can generate a custom audience based on specific parameters. So let's just say, an advertiser saw, wanted to create an audience of folks that had seen their detail page view or even added to cart but didn't actually activate and then wanted to drive better performance. They could create a particular, they could run a query, generate that insight and push that directly to the DSP. So that's one way. That's AMC rule based audiences. And then now we launched this enhanced capability for lookalike audiences. So it enables effectively exactly what it sounds like. So finding alike audiences based on that same seed, leveraging machine learning in a clean room capacity trained on Amazon, shopper and customer signals, but all still in a private and secure place. Bradley Sutton: All right, you're already starting talking technical terms that are over my head, so let me bring in the smart one of us. And to clean rooms. My room's not clean, I don't know. That's not what we're talking about here, but go ahead and please follow up and make me sound smart here. Anne: Yeah, of course. So I'd like to talk about lookalike audiences more specifically, because this is a way for brands to reach highly relevant, essentially new customers. So do you think this will change the way people are targeting that new to brand customer targeting incrementality? Miranda: Yeah, I mean we think it's going to be a great way for brands to be able to reach more and more shoppers. So, as I mentioned, the lookalike audiences are trained on based on deep, deep ML, based on lots of very, very, very good signals, and then the advertiser can actually leverage, can get to choose what's their specific seed for the audience, like what's the general size of the audience, based on their objective and then also the relevance. So I think it'll be a really key tool as a part of the marketer toolkit. Anne: Yeah, definitely. Do you think lookalike audiences are scalable for brands that maybe have lower purchase data or lower engagement data that are using AMC? Miranda: I think so. I think they're precisely like the brands that actually could benefit from it, right Because they have a small bit of deterministic signals that they actually want to be able to enhance. And then also because AMC is private and secure by design, as I mentioned, they can also choose to upload their own first party or third party signals and then create a seed based on that and then continue to go find additional customers that seem similar to that seed. Anne: Right, I love that you call it a seed, because it sounds like it will grow over time if you're utilizing these tactics, so that's a great way to phrase it. Miranda: Thanks, it didn't come up with it. Anne: Well, we'll give you credit anyways. So you talked about the AMC templatized analytics, right? Is this a way to make AMC more accessible and, if so, are the queries that are available through those templatized analytics? Will it grow over time? What's available through that? Miranda: Yeah, so we think it's a first step towards making AMC easier for more and more customers. So we don't have a specific timeline yet on additional templates, but it is something we'll be continuing to evaluate. We have been talking to different customers and internal teams about how we can also make AMC easier to use through point and click applications as well. We also work with dozens of partners that are making AMC easier to use, either through visualizations or through their own innovative dashboard. So I think through the combination of either homegrown or partner built capabilities, we'll be able to continue to bring AMC insights to more and more customers. Anne: Yeah, pacview is one of those partners. We do have an AMC dashboard Great, I think. Another question that's kind of just in general about AMC do you think there are any verticals or categories that benefit the most from this data, or that you've seen a lot of growth and success with using AMC? Miranda: Yeah, we think of AMC as equal opportunities. So we look at the data a lot. We're very, very data driven surprise, surprise at Amazon and what we've seen is that there's penetration for AMC across brands and partners and agencies as well as across all verticals. So we've seen, certainly, strength from brands that sell on the Amazon store, but also pretty strong results with entertainment, with automotive, financial services. So you can think of someone who's like automotive who might have a bunch of local dealerships. They want to be able to do more fine event grained analyses based on specific geos, and so something like AMC is perfect for that be able to do more precise measurements. So, yeah, certainly we think it's a great product for all, but it really depends on that particular advertiser's objective and then what are the types of signals that they want to bring in and what kind of insights they can generate. Anne: Definitely, it is flexible. Miranda: Exactly Infinite and flexible. Yes, Great. Anne: My last question is just a kind of a fun one. Do you have any specific query or an example of a query that you think was really innovative that's been pulled through AMC that you can recall? Miranda: I think it's probably a generic answer, but I think the Path to Conversion one is probably one of my favorites, just because it's the simplest. I think AMC was actually the first place where an advertiser could see all of their signals across all of the Amazon ad products, and so someone who was buying sponsored products and DSP might not have realized before that they actually were driving better results together, and so Path to Conversion, and actually be able to understand how those two products were interacting, for example, really brought a lot more power and insight, I think, to advertisers. Anne: So I don't think that's generic at all. I love that one too. Miranda: There's a reason. That's core kind of at the top of the instructional query library. Anne: Right. Miranda: Agreed, all right. Bradley Sutton: I have another question for you. I like asking stuff that maybe nobody else is going to ask. When you want to take off your Amazon hat and kick back with a hobby to kind of like balance work life, what's your go-to hobby? Miranda: Well, I have an almost four-year-old so she is probably my hobby in most of the time. I'm going to try and go do fun things on the weekend, whether it's exploring new coffee shops or going to find music. Bradley Sutton: The four-year-old is a coffee drinker, is she? Miranda: No, she's not, but she's an avid consumer of chocolate croissants, and so we sample baked goods in lots of different places. Then mom gets her coffee. I think that's probably it, but in my prior pre-kid years I did a lot more yoga and hiking and things like that. Bradley Sutton: So enjoy those years. You know, my kids are over 20 already, so I wish I had a four-year-old. I remember those days All right. Thank you so much for joining us and you educated me a lot. It sounds like Ann knows all about what you're talking about. It was like a different language to me, so I appreciate you educating us on IMC. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. Miranda: Thank you so much. Bradley Sutton: Alright, we've got Teresa here. Teresa, could you go ahead and introduce yourself? Teresa: Sure, I'm Teresa Uthralton. I'm the Director of Partner Development here at Amazon Ads. Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome. How long have you been here at Amazon? Teresa: I've been at Amazon for almost 10 years, so I'm approaching that red badge. For those of you that know our badging conventions, Nice, nice. Bradley Sutton: Now you're from here in New York. I've always been in New York, yep. So I'm going to start off with maybe the most important question of the day Julianne's Pizza in Brooklyn. Is that the best representation of New York pizza, or not? Teresa: Oh, that's tough. There's so many really good pizza places now I can't even keep up with them. There's so many. Bradley Sutton: Alright. Well, we're going to have to connect right after this, because I have two days left and I need to maximize my time here. Teresa: Yes, Alright now. Bradley Sutton: We're not here to talk about food here. Teresa: I recommend checking out Roberta's in Bushwick though. Bradley Sutton: Roberta's in Bushwick. I have not been there. Anne: Yes, I think you'll really enjoy that. Bradley Sutton: We're going to that one. Anne: Right now. Yeah, actually, cancel the interview. Let's go there, we go. Yes, of course. Bradley Sutton: Now Anne here is going to ask a lot of the more technical questions, especially those that have to do with enterprise. Now I'm here to represent, kind of like, the voice of the average Amazon seller, and you know, there's some people out there who might not fully know what Amazon marketing stream is first of all. So could you just go ahead and just kind of give a quick elevator pitch for what that is? Teresa: Sure. So Amazon marketing stream is a partner-facing product, and what it does is it provides really granular hourly signals on all our advertising metrics through the Amazon API, and what that means to a seller is that they will be able to get all sorts of insights about their business that normally they would not have known. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right, I love that. Did you practice this? I didn't even tell you I was going to ask that. All right, cool, cool. How about rapid retail analytics, your other specialty? Teresa: I know I love rapid retail analytics, so Amazon marketing stream obviously totally focused on advertising signals. As we know, so much of what's exciting about Amazon ads is that you got online retail and digital advertising Right, and so rapid retail analytics provides that level of granularity on retail signals, and one of the reasons that's so exciting is that that data used to be available at a daily cadence with a 72-hour lag, so we literally it's almost near real time now, which is a really, really exciting development. Bradley Sutton: Okay, all right. Well, now that I got that out of the way, let me turn it over to the smart one of us too, and for some follow up questions. Anne: Yeah, so I kind of want to double click into Amazon marketing stream, specifically the fact that it was recently released for DSP or it's being extended to DSP. How do you think this will change the way advertisers manage their DSP campaigns now that they have that real time data that we were talking about? Teresa: Well, it's interesting. I think one of the things that I've learned is I've been humbled by our partner's creativity. Right, you know, I was just. I was just telling someone. I joined this team three weeks before Can last year and so I showed up at Can meeting all my partners for the first time, and we had just launched the first version of Amazon marketing stream and I was like this is the coolest product. But what really got me excited was it's a product that we developed based on the feedback we got from partners Like they, they have a seat at the table, they participate in all our betas and our product teams love them, right, because they get like this incredible, you know, they get their hands dirty and they come back and they're like these are the 27 things that are wrong and you need to fix right, which is if you're a product team, that's actually like really helpful, right, so, and what? The thing that's so interesting is like it launched and everyone loved it, but then people are like well, but it only has sponsored products. Right, like, I want more, I want more, I might want more. So I think what's exciting about having ADSP signals in there is that's going to unlock a whole bunch of opportunity around partners that are deep on ADSP Right. Definitely and I think you know, probably a few months from now, we'll have some really interesting case studies, success stories. There's really like almost no end to the creativity of our partners, which is really great because they're such awesome builders. Anne: I agree. I'm curious AMC they not AMS? AMC? I know they get our accurate, our Amazon accurate. I know, there's so many of them Also provides hour by hour data for both DSP and for sponsored ads. Prior to this, especially prior to AMC, but also prior to AMS, this wasn't available for advertisers, so you kind of had to guess when you were running, like day parting or anything along those lines. Do you think the release of the stream data for DSP will eliminate the need for the AMC hourly data? Teresa: Well, I think you got to go back to like what are the use cases that people use other product, right? I think, like what is great about Amazon marketing stream? Right, it's an aggregate, aggregate data pipe, if you think about it, right, and so ultimately that's going to help people build solutions that are evergreen. It's going to help people train AI models right, because how do you train AI models? You need, like, lots of granular signals, right? And whereas the Amazon marketing stream is really about very specific use cases around, like understanding the customer purchase path, understanding incrementality, understanding attribution, so I don't think it's like one or the other, I think it's very like use case specific. Anne: Right. That actually leads perfectly into my next question, which is how you see these two datasets working together with advertisers currently, or how you see in the future that they can work together. Teresa: Yeah. So I think, like what I think is really exciting about partner innovation is, ultimately, I don't think there's ever been a better time to be a marketer, right, like there's that whole age old question about, like I know half my advertising is working, but I don't know which half, and I think we're getting about as close as we're going to get probably in our lifetime, but we're on the cusp of that with a lot of these tools, and so I think the the part about Amazon marketing stream that I think is so exciting is that it will allow the kind of automation that makes brands so much smarter and helps them do more with less. Right, and we're seeing like especially like this year has been an uncertain economic climate for a lot of folks, right, and a lot of a lot of folks are trying to figure out like my budget has been cut or my budget is capped, but I'm being asked to drive more growth Right, and I think, like partners have been able to deliver solutions based on Amazon marketing stream and rapid retail analytics that have really enabled that Awesome. Bradley Sutton: And you had a last question. Anne: I did. It's a fun one. What's your favorite thing about being at conferences like unboxed? Teresa: Oh, it's meeting my partners. You know, I learn so much from from meeting with partners, right, like I said, it's very humbling. The innovation, the creativity, what they teach us about our customers, what they teach us about our products and it's such an incredible learning experience is so energizing. Were you at our our cocktail party last night? Anne: No. Bradley Sutton: I was not. Anne: We had a lot of cocktail parties. I'm sure it was very. Teresa: That was like such a fun buzzing party and I got to meet partners from all over the world. At our award ceremony on Monday we met partners that came from Delhi and it was just really, really exciting. Bradley Sutton: Awesome, all right, well, thank you so much for coming on the show and we appreciate all that you do at Amazon. Teresa: Thank you, thanks guys. Bradley Sutton: All right, we've got Ruslana here. Ruslana, welcome to the show. Ruslana: Thank you, Bradley and Anne, for having me. Bradley Sutton: Are you based here in? Ruslana: New York no, I'm based in Seattle. Bradley Sutton: Seattle. Okay, Seattle was just there for accelerate, lots of rain, but I like. I like Seattle weather a lot. Quick question for you, first of all just how long have you been at Amazon and what is your title there? Ruslana: I'm a vice president of sponsored brands display in TV advertising and I just celebrated my 10 year anniversary Last week awesome, congrats, congrats. Bradley Sutton: now we're gonna go into like what you announced today, but you know something while you were on stage, you also referred to something that was, you know, launched a little bit ago. We're how, now you know, sponsored products can show up on websites like Pinterest and things like that, and one thing that was I have a bad memory, but it was new to me, maybe I knew about it, I guess, didn't know was like it's not just a product that's gonna display, but it'll also show, I believe, like the reviews count and even the shipping time did I, did I hear that right. Ruslana: Well, with sponsor products, our goal is to deliver the same value that Advertisers are getting today by having sponsored products was an Amazon store and some of the critical sort of trusted Amazon attributes, such as reviews, pricing information, as well as Prime delivery promise, are essential elements To helping customers make decisions and actually purchase. So yes you are, you got it right at that. Sponsor products will be containing Kind of product level or Amazon key, amazon trusted information Within these new and exclusive placements across some of these sides to help our advertisers to really go quickly and with ease from discovering something or exploring something to actually purchasing awesome, awesome. Bradley Sutton: That's been. That's been out for a while, but today, when you're on stage, you announce something brand new, and that was sponsored TV. So just give us maybe a quick 30 second, one minute overview of what that is, and Anne has some follow-up questions on that. Ruslana: Well, we see a sponsored TV, tv advertising as a whole, as a critical element of brand-building strategy. That should not be something that Brand cannot do. Any brand of any science should be able to tap into this opportunity and reach these engaged audiences on a big screen In the living room, and so sponsored TV is aiming to accomplish just that. We have worked very closely with our brands and our customers and Backwards from them, to understand what their key pain points have been and why they have not potentially used TV more actively Was in their overall brand-building strategy and, as a result, launch sponsored TV. I'm trying to eliminate three main pain points no guarantee commitments, no spend, minimum creative support and, lastly, access to first-party Amazon, first-party signals. Even when you advertise in TV, powered my machine learning and Right measurement so that advertise and send value, because what we've learned is spend is intimidating, a Lack of the right creative or ability to create the right credit. Just knowing what resonates on such a screen is Hard and intimidating and, lastly, just understanding the value that TV delivers for these brands was difficult. And so, given those three main pain points, that's there. That's why we're sponsored TV. I think to wrap like there is another element right. We at Amazon, we very custom obsessed and in this instance, we have two customers right. We have brands, and we just talked about the value we deliver for the brands, but there's also another key customer, which is the viewers, and for viewers, this is an opportunity to discover diverse collection of brands and products in places where they choose to spend their time. Bradley Sutton: Okay, now I'm just wondering where, like? What kind of placements are these? Are these like, like, like trailers that come up, or are there just actual, you know, banner ads that might pop up while you're watching a TV show? Ruslana: Oh, this is a TV advertising we're talking about, so they are video, so this is not this not sponsored display. Jeff: Yeah. Ruslana: This is video ads and they sponsor TV. Today service was in freebie content. Like I don't know if any of you watch freebie, I do. I love certain shows there, so big fan. So there is freebie content. There is streaming. Do you stream? Do you twitch? Bradley Sutton: Yes. Ruslana: Okay. Well, when you twitch during live streams, that could be. Another opportunity was in. Bradley Sutton: There might be people watch watching this right now on our rebroadcasts of this. Ruslana: People that twitch. This is where the ads would show. And then, lastly, was in a fire TV apps. Bradley Sutton: Okay, excellent yeah. Anne: So it was mentioned that the goal of this campaign, or at least one of the goals, is to make it more accessible to Advertisers who have lower budgets, don't necessarily want to deal with spend minimums etc. Do you feel like there's a lower level of budget sufficiency for running these campaigns, or can it be tested with a small amount of money? Ruslana: Well, we, as I said earlier, right customer obsessed, working back, working backwards from our brands and working backwards for them. I'm really observed that they do want to be able to engage with this audience. Why wouldn't you like if you launched a product that is net new, delightful, on the market? Why wouldn't you want to tell? Like you know, I talked on my keynote about hex glad. I don't know if you don't know, if you have it in your kitchen, but if you don't, I highly recommend. I discovered through our sponsor TV offering the brand and I love the non-stick and also non scratch. Bradley Sutton: Oh no, you had me out when you showed part of the video where it flipped over and nothing Was coming on. Anne: I like that. Ruslana: Very impressive and so at the end of the day, like that is the brand that I'm delighted to cook with every day, and I like my eggs for breakfast. Doesn't matter if it's Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday or Sunday, so in at the end of the day, I think these are the type of brands. They want to engage with the right audience at the right time, and I think this is the right time. Anne: Great. Can you walk us through some of the targeting that will be available with this type of advertising? Most of sponsored ads is keyword basis. That going to be the truth for Sponsored TV, or is it going to be more signal-based behavioral audiences? Ruslana: Well, we always try to help our brands reach the right audiences. So let me Maybe adjust one statement here Most of sponsor brands is not keyword based sponsored products. Keyword based sponsored Products is keywords based. Sponsor brands has keywords Elements in their way and how you express intent. Sponsored display doesn't have that way to express intent. But our aim is to always work with our brands and help them, give them the right tools to express the intent in the best possible way so we can deliver their message and their story in the right place at the right time. So in the case of sponsored TV, the advertisers could use both sort of category based interests and as well as Genre based interest. Bradley Sutton: I've got a spooky brand on Amazon, so like come Halloween season gonna be Maybe throwing some ads on some spooky Halloween shows or horror show. Anne: Perfect, I think we have time for one more question. So I'm curious how do you recommend brands measure success with these campaigns? Do you have specific KPIs that you think you know appropriately measure the success for sponsored TV or anything along those lines? Ruslana: So they reach. Traditional metrics are available similarly how they would be available for any other TV offerings, but in addition, we are sharing branded searches as well as detail page and store page Traffic, and so that is a starting point for the offering. We will continue evolving our metrics and help brands understand the value they're getting out of their sponsored TV offering Wonderful. Bradley Sutton: Thank you so much for joining us today. Ruslana: Thank you for having me and in Bradley.
Fans of Travolting, let's imagine what this phone call was like for a moment shall we? Jeff calling StuartStuart: Hello?Jeff: Stuart.Stuart: Yes Jeff.Jeff: I'm so sorry to have to tell you this.Stuart: Oh great what is it now?Jeff: I was looking at our roster for The Fraser's Edge…Stuart: Yes?Jeff: And I've discovered something that I cannot believe we didn't think about.Stuart: OkayJeff: Remember during season one of Travolting when we covered The Poison Rose? Stuart: Yes. I try not to, but yes.Jeff: Well you know who else was in that movie?Stuart: Morgan Freeman?Jeff: Yes but not him. Stuart: Ella Bleu Travolta?Jeff: Yes but Stuart you're missing the obvious. Brendan Fraser is in that movie.Stuart: Wait… so you mean…Jeff: Yes Stuart. We must cover The Poison Rose…AGAIN.Stuart:.... hangs up
Welcome my friends to season 3 of the Determined to Dance podcast. My prayer is that you'll be encouraged to persevere daily in our chaotic world. Show Notes: An Interview with Jeff Walling Today I'm honored to welcome Jeff Walling: author, speaker, and the Director of the Youth Leadership Initiative at Pepperdine University to the podcast. We've spent this season learning from his wonderful book, Daring to Dance with God. Jeff, I'm so glad you've joined us today. Jeff: Well, thank you, Jennifer. It's a blessing to be with you and so encouraging that your podcast listeners have been walking through the book. I do pray that God used it to bless them. Jennifer: It has. This has actually been my best season yet as far as downloads and stuff. I think a lot of people have listened to it and also the podcast is heard on internet radio, Christian Mix 106, in over fifty-five countries. So, there is no telling who all is hearing it. Jeff: Wow. I wasn't nervous about being on your show until that moment. Thank you. Jennifer: Anyway, so who knows? Someone over in Ethiopia or China could be listening and buying your book right now. Jeff: Well, God has a way of putting us where we need to be, and in this wonderful day and age something I wrote—oh goodness, I hate to even think of it now—twenty-plus years ago continue to resonate and has people reach out to me about it. God deserves all the praise. Jennifer: Amen. First, go ahead and tell us a little about your ministry and your family. Jeff: Sure. Sure. I am blessed to have been a preacher for forty years now. And my sweet wife, she and I are celebrating forty years together also. We have three sons; one of which is a minister himself, Taylor. He is about to start a new ministry out here in California: a church focused on reaching young people here on the Pepperdine campus. My middle son and Taylor will both be living here in Southern California and my youngest son is in Denver. They are all married and I am blessed to have four grandkids and two granddogs. It's a lot of fun. I work here, trying to raise up the next generation of young Christian leaders. I preach as a teaching pastor for Shepherd Church about eight to ten times a year which is a church here in the Los Angeles area. Jennifer: Okay. That sounds really interesting and like a much-needed mission in that area. Jeff: Blessed to be involved with it. Jennifer: Going back to the book—as I was telling Jeff earlier—the book meant so much to me when I was younger and I read it. I'm so excited to do a podcast about it. Can you explain to my listeners the central idea discussed in Daring to Dance with God? Jeff: Well, I'll give it a shot. The very first chapter of the book tells about how I was raised in a home that believed that dancing was not a thing that Christ would want us to do. And it was a big shock to me and I immediately called my mom the first time that I really took a look at the beautiful parable called the parable of the prodigal son. When the father comes out from the house, where there is the sound of music and dancing emanating. And the scripture uses the word there for dancing. And that father has always represented to me: God. So, here is God coming out here to this older son, who doesn't want to come in and celebrate what has happened to his younger brother. To think that God would come out and say, “Come dance with Me. Come dance with us.” This idea that God invites us, not into a drudge march or inviting us to get in line. But this idea of dancing. Dancing to me has always carried a sense of joy and getting connected with something bigger than yourself. I mean, if you've been to a wedding recently, right, you see a lot of people who never dance any place else dancing at a wedding. And quite frankly, I'm one of them. It's wonderful to see folks who are all connecting in different ways to the same piece of music. And I guess that idea of trusting God enough to step ou...
Working with amazing, hard-working property management entrepreneurs is what makes being a coach worth it. Join property management growth expert Jason Hull in today's episode as he interviews DoorGrow client Jeff Garner. Jeff went from 150 to 420 doors in 4 months! Learn how he did it. You'll Learn [02:35] Why would anyone get into property management? [12:40] Fixing the foundation of a property management business [15:14] Importance of culture in a business [25:05] Why you need a coach [27:34] Navigating operational issues Tweetables “No matter what market we're in, it's good. If we're going to the moon, management's great. If we're crashing, it's even better because people can't sell their properties and they go, ‘Oh shoot, we'll turn them into rentals.'” "Go where they won't go and do what they won't do. That's where the money's at," “It all starts with your mindset.” “Weekly commitments, and you'll start to see the momentum build big time when the team are all visible and can be seen and there's accountability and they get recognized because you have that system installed, performance sometimes goes up.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jeff: I have 420 doors and I have more peace of mind, more direction and I know where I'm going to be and where I'm going and how to get there. [00:00:12] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow Hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not [00:00:38] because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the bss, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert Jason Hull the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show. [00:01:08] And today's guest is Jeff Garner. Jeff, welcome. [00:01:14] Jeff: Thanks man. Glad to be here. [00:01:17] Jason: So Jeff, what's the name of your property management business? [00:01:19] Jeff: Homes Stretch Property Management [00:01:21] Jason: Homes Stretch. All right, cool. And why'd you pick that name? [00:01:26] Jeff: I feel like real estate investing it's a long-term play. It builds wealth over the long haul. And for our home stretch of our life, whether you decide your home stretch starts at 40 because you retire early, or whether it's 60 or 70, if you are buying real estate, really it, you know, It's about letting the tenants pay down, you know, principal balance, pay down, depreciation, tax, write-offs, appreciation. Sure cash flow's nice every month, but you can make millions over, you know, 20 year period, 25 year period. And so I see the real value in real estate is being that, so we want to get our owners to the home stretch and, you know, that's kind of how we look at it. So we want to improve and maintain your property so that someday you can either sell or refi and it's in great shape and it's an easy process. Or you just want to keep it in cashflow forever. So our job's to give you freedom and peace of mind knowing that your properties are being taken care of better than you can or anyone else so. [00:02:29] Jason: Nice. Love the brand. So Jeff. Why don't you give people a little bit of background on you. How did you start getting into real estate and what made you decide to do the crazy thing of starting a property management company? How did this all happen? [00:02:43] Jeff: Yeah, it was the crazy thing because-- so I'll tell you a little bit about me. Real estate's the only business I've ever been in. I got my real estate license when I was 22. I was going to be a real estate agent. Found a niche working with investors because when you're 22, you know, growing up doesn't come overnight. And so when you're got all your, "oh shoot, I'm showing property today," and you have to crunch the beer cans and put them under your seat. because you just turned 21 a year before, you know, it can be a little awkward putting the 40 year old mom and dad and their kids in the car to go show them property. [00:03:18] Right. Which I did okay at. I did fine. But I found a niche in working with investors because you could sell them one house and most of the time they don't even want to get in your car. Half the time, once you get know what you're doing, you just give them a lockbox code and tell them to call you back and tell you what you think, and they give you a number and you write it and put it in. You could sell them 10 or 20 houses. So I developed a niche at that. I got really good at finding deals and I would send them to my guys. Shortly after that, I decided that I was on the wrong side of the table, you know, three or four years of that. I go to closing, I collect my $2,500 commission check, and he gets a check for $20,000 because he flipped it, right? And I just thought, wait a minute, I'm finding the deal. I'm calling him up, I'm telling him what number to put it in at and he's making all this money. What am I doing wrong? So I got into that side of the business, you know. So, 08 hit crashed. All of us really put me in a position to where I to make a decision on what I wanted to do because all my investors were gone. Right? [00:04:17] They were trying to stay alive. Yeah. You know, in 08 for the people that didn't go through it, was like If you worked in Walmart and all of a sudden the next morning you woke up and no one will shop at Walmart again. [00:04:31] Jason: Right? [00:04:31] Jeff: Yeah. Never walks through the door. [00:04:34] Jason: Yeah. So must have been scary. [00:04:37] Jeff: Yeah. And so, I thought, "well, this investment thing's really what I want to do. So I'm going all in. It's time to restart. So that's what I'm going to go all in at." So I really looked at what happened and I realized that history, you know, tells the story and that everyone was riding this wave and had no idea it was a wave because no one does the research to, you know, see what the cycles are. I didn't know there was a cycle. I was young. Yeah. And so the common sense thought came, well, we were at a high. If I was a real investor and I was really good at what I did, I would've been taking vacations, waiting for this crash to happen, and then I'd go out and buy everything I could find and hold it. Yeah, so I did that. I bought 110 rentals over a three year period, all at, you know, probably 20% of what the market is today. And outsourced the management a couple times. Horrific. Cost me more money than you know, one, when I was at 110 properties, I had to take them back overnight because I realized that I had 16 vacants and they didn't even know about half of them. [00:05:42] Really? Yeah. It was horrible. They just they got overwhelmed and so I built a management company overnight to manage my own properties and had zero desire. It was the last thing on the absolute planet I wanted to deal with was tenants and toilets. I did not get into rentals to deal with tenants or maintenance. It didn't, yeah. So I put together a makeshift management company and decided I'd never take on another property of anyone else's. I'd only do my own, because I was going to do this, it was going to be for myself. There certainly wasn't going to make a hundred dollars a month on a property and do all this for somebody else. Right. That's, that was my thought on being real. And a few years went by '16, '17, realized that I'd gotten tons of equity and I had properties sitting there with 50, 60,000 in equity and I'm making 200 or 300 a month. And I thought, this math doesn't make sense anymore, right? So I sold off over a two or three year period, about 50 of them. But everyone apparently, everyone knew management is a tough gig and there's not a lot of good management companies out there. Why? Right? There was no DoorGrow then that I'm aware of at least. Right? So everyone in the management business just thought, "this looks like we can make some money, let's do this." [00:06:57] But they had no idea. The machine, it has to be to run well. Yeah. And so they said, "well, I'll buy that property. I'll even give you retail for it, but you have to keep the management." So to this day, I still manage all 110 of those properties, even though I only own 60 of them. Right. So to get the money I wanted, I had to keep the management. And then I just kind of started looking at it is in the last couple years when I realized that we could potentially be getting to another place. If you look at the charts and you look at history that we're you know, we're at a high now, will it last four years longer? Probably. So I had to kind of reevaluate what I wanted to do and I looked at all my businesses, flip business, wholesale, you know, my rental portfolios and my management company, I went, wait a minute, what am I doing? I'm focusing all this energy and chasing down deals and having all these, you know, taking all the risk on everything I buy and just grinding away constantly. For over 20 years now. And I got this management company, although it's not sexy, everyone tells me it's the worst thing in the world to do. Yeah. You know, I realize it was the one thing that was repeatable, scalable, and I could predict. And no matter what market we're in, it's good. If we're going to the moon, management's great. If we're crashing, it's even better because people can't sell their properties and they go, oh shoot, we'll turn them into rentals. I thought, "wait, what am I doing? I'm looking at this all wrong." I just started to look at it and so I started working on getting really good at it and filling all the holes on my own, right, with my own. And it's, you know, and I realized that with the right team in place and the right mindset, you know, which is we want to help landlords, right? I want to take 20 something years of resources and try to convert over this management company and give them to everyone else-- that it could be a great business. And then I realized, like I preach, because I did some coaching in the real estate space throughout the years "go where they won't go and do what they won't do. That's where the money's at," right? So if everyone's going after retail flips and a really nice b and b areas, then go look in the C areas because they're being neglected. If everyone's after all the C properties because the cash flows, so well then go up to your A or B areas and start doing flips because those are being neglected. Nice. Certain town everyone's afraid of? Good. Let them be all fighting in one place and you go there. And so I realized that was what was going on in the real estate market for the management business. So I decided that's what I wanted to focus my energies on. So I literally burned all the other boats, man. No marketing, no wholesaling, no flipping. [00:09:40] Jason: Wow. You went all in on property management? [00:09:42] Jeff: All in on property management, period. I got online, I did what I did 15 years before, after 08 happened, and I thought, "I'm going to redo myself. How do I do this?" And so I just got online and I started digging around and trying to teach myself things and I got coaches back then, and even though I knew 90% of what they were trying to teach me, because I got coaches in the flipping side, right? I knew you know, 80, 90% of what they were teaching me was that 10 or 20% where I knew would bring me all my money, right? So I did the same thing here and that's how I came to DoorGrow is I found you guys really were the only real system oriented, you know, nuts and bolts teach the how and not just the why. You know, a lot of people want to tell you why you do. Oh, well, you know why? They want to give you the why on, you know, but they don't want to give you the nuts and bolts of the how and tell you connect A to B to C to D and you'll get your results, right? And so, I found you guys, and I knew that's all I was missing to having success because the rest of the management companies all had bad raps. You couldn't talk to a landlord that really loved their management company. Yeah. So I knew I could fix, put those pieces together and really treat it like a business based off of giving people their freedom and peace of mind, knowing that their properties are being taken care of better than theirs. [00:11:10] If you can do that, anyone listening to this, if you can wrap your mind around being of service. No one else is doing that in the management business. Right? Yeah. You will dominate, it's like I used to say when I had lots of rehab crews going, if someone shows up and does what they say and has half of the talent that I need them to have, they could be rich. That's all they have to do. Just not be the best, but do what you say and show up so it's predictable and we can communicate well and get stuff done. So if you did that, and you can do that with a mindset of, "I want to be of service to the industry." Be the best. You'll dominate, end the story, but you have to wrap that around your mind, you know, and it'll come out in your calls. It'll come out in your conversations at the grocery store. It'll come out everywhere. [00:12:00] Hell, I pulled 16 doors out of my gym in the first 30 days after joining DoorGrow because I just got the structure when we went through mindset and and some sales stuff of. Really taking what was in my mind and putting it in paper and going through the process of splitting the page into four spots and right. You know, going through everything. I got to dial it in and then boom, that was it. There's nothing else to talk about, but what I came up with there, you know, home stretch was the name of the business because it fits what I'm trying to do. I know what our mindset is, the culture for my company and you know, we started just plugging in systems and processes. [00:12:40] Jason: So let's talk a little bit about it. because you said nuts and bolts, but to most property managers, they're like, "nuts and bolts means how do you like do maintenance and how do you plunger a toilet?" you know, like it's like the practical stuff where you know how to manage properties. Yeah. You know how to deal with tenants, you know how to like do all that. What challenge were you dealing with that brought you to DoorGrow and how did that help? [00:13:04] Jeff: It's really hard to explain that. What I really had was is I had a business and it functioned and I did okay, but I did not feel at 150 properties, I did not feel I could bring on 10 more doors. I felt like it would all crumble and break because I had no idea what I was doing really. Right. I had nothing to model. I had just said I got maintenance, my maintenance was horrible. I had all these guys that that was one of the hardest parts to find. But I had all these just subcontractors and every once in a while we'd find someone to come on full time, but you'd have to trust them to be out there all day doing what they said they were doing. And I didn't know how to run that. I didn't know how to manage that. I didn't know how to systematize that where I knew what was going on at all times. And I didn't feel comfortable going any bigger because, I felt like I could see why other management companies had problems, and I don't think they want to suck, right? No, I don't think so. But they just don't want to say no to the money. [00:14:06] "Hey, I got 20 doors." oh, we're going to do a great job for you. Let's bring it on. And they're already struggling with what they have. Yeah, right. Just think it's magically you're going to work, or, you know what? It'll give me more money in that way. More money will mean I can do more things. And no it doesn't. It creates more problems that cost more money. So I needed the systems, I needed the processes. Those are the nuts and bolts I'm talking about. Got it. Who to hire to do what and to, because that's it. [00:14:34] Jason: I mean, so what's changed then? Like you had 150 doors, you came to DoorGrow and we started helping you change a lot of stuff, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, what things have you changed since joining DoorGrow? Yeah. What are some of the first things we start working on with you? [00:14:51] Jeff: Okay, well, really it was just getting my mindset right was the biggest one because once my mindset was correct and I knew and I had our, what we were trying to do, where we could be of service, that opened my mind up to, " how do we do that then?" Right. So that's sort of answering questions for me, you know. [00:15:14] Jason: So with mindset, what you're saying is I believe you're talking about all the culture stuff that we took you through stuff. Just the culture stuff and just kind of, I mean, that's the core foundation of the business. Like if we want to make this business built around you, we've got to figure that piece out, right? So we started with that and that probably had a significant ripple through everything. [00:15:33] Jeff: Imagine like this, you have children, you all of a sudden you, "I'm going to be the best dad ever and I'm going to have kids." Next thing you know, you got two or three of them, they're under five. You have no, literally imagine your parents weren't good. I don't know. They didn't model worth a crap. Okay. Like, how do I do this? Like, I can feed them, I can put them to bed and I can keep them from killing themselves, but do I really know how to raise them to have commitment, how to be honest, how can I make a five year old a strong member of society at 28 years old, right? But if you have a culture and a mindset, you know, "I want my children to be like this. I want them to have this belief system," and how do we give them that belief system? Okay, "well, let me look into that. Okay. Well, if we go to this school, it'll give them these values and then I can back them up at home. And then with bedtime and, oh, I did a little research here. If I put them to bed at this time, get them up at this time. Oh wait, the sugars and dyes are bad. It makes them spastic and oh, well I'll take that out." And you start learning, right? But it all starts with your mindset. Right. And so my mindset changed and it started making me go down the rabbit holes that are all in DoorGrow of, "Okay. Leasing-- my leasing person that we're just winging it and working out of this software that we really were just doing all workarounds and spreadsheets because we really didn't know how to use it. Watch this. Watch these videos on leasing, watch these videos on placing tenants." And then I would watch them and then we would meet and put together a process and a system on how it's going to go instead of just winging every call we got. [00:17:17] So I started building it out position by position. I went and I found a new property manager that had the capacity to be a really good property manager and grow from some of the-- I'm still new inDoorGrow. I'm only six months in. Right? And honestly over the last month I've had a two months, I've had a really hard time getting into DoorGrow because I. [00:17:42] I'm up 420 in doors. Right. [00:17:45] Jason: So, yeah. So, and let's get to that. That's interesting. But so the children, in your analogy here, this is your team you're talking about, and this is my team. Yeah. And you were in it for what, maybe a couple months and then you started replacing the entire team? [00:18:00] Jeff: The entire team is gone except for two people. And one of the two was almost gone. Because of just be all of a sudden having this parent mindset, I kind of coached him, or you know, raised him in a way in this little short period of time to where he's changed. Nice. And he is just, and the reality of it is, what I found out is he was so unhappy because of how screwed up systems were that everything rolled down to him that once I realized that I got to take things away, put them create and find out what was broken on his role. And he was a main construction manager that we created a different systems and now he's probably one of my strongest pieces. So everyone knew the whole team is new. [00:18:50] Jason: So new team, you installed a good culture, you're then able to work with us on the hiring piece and getting good team members in place. Absolutely. You've leveled up some team members because you have culture and you know, like what you deserve and want as a business owner and what have the type of team and we want to build around you. Absolutely. Most business owners build teams around the business, and that's probably what you did before. [00:19:15] Jeff: Absolutely a pure necessity. And I, I didn't but hire people that fit the culture or what I was looking for. I just hired a warm body that seemed like they would work, and I thought, we'll just teach them what we need them to know. Yeah. And their mindset or what they did in their off time or their goals didn't mean they were their business. [00:19:36] Jason: Right. Yeah it's amazing. Some simple frameworks like just understanding the three fits to hiring. Yeah. Like culture fit, skill fit, personality fit can shift hiring significantly. So then you started working pretty quickly with one of our coaches on acquisitions. You went out and found a deal. And in four months you were at 420 units. [00:19:59] Jeff: Yeah. Yep. 420. And I've got probably we're I'm just, we might be at four 40 or four 50 because we have 20 or 30 vacants that Okay. That are under, that are kind of on make ready that we took over that we haven't been able to fill yet because we have this construction backlog, not on our end, but on his backend. The guy that I bought the management from, which was part of the deal, and one of the reasons he sold was because he had done exactly what everyone else did. He got too big and wasn't saying no, and got backlogged and yeah, he was starting to provide really horrible service, so I went in, bought it from him at a really good price for me, but I think it was still a good price for him because if you're at a point to where you're going to, it's stressing you out, you can't get it all done. [00:20:46] It's affecting anything, all your other revenue streams and people are getting ready to start leaving you. Someone walks in "wait, you can take this off my hands and give me money? Okay. Where do I sign?" You know? [00:20:59] Jason: So what are the things did you do with our team? Have we done a website for you? [00:21:03] Jeff: You did a website. [00:21:05] Jason: What about your branding? Did you change your brand at all? [00:21:08] Jeff: Yeah. Hell, hell yeah. I was starting point property management. I changed my brand. We rebranded a week before this acquisition, which I was like, I'm going to put this rebranding thing off because that's another, and then we sat down and I was talking to the team and I don't think they loved it, but they agreed that doing it before we transition all these new owners and tenants over was going to be the way to go because then we would have to change it all up in a couple months anyway when we rebranded and had them in a new website and portal and such so. [00:21:38] Jason: How about pricing? Did you change your pricing? [00:21:41] Jeff: I'm on the hybrid pricing. Okay. The three plans. The three plans now, which is exactly from you guys. Which was another thing that really helped me because with changing the pricing and doing the hybrid plan and going through that training, and it was, once again, it was all the why's we're doing it. I got to design the plans that fit our culture and provide the service we wanted to provide. It gave me more confidence, honestly, in what we were doing, even though I was going to be charging more now. So yeah, we're on the three tier pricing, hybrid pricing. [00:22:19] Jason: So you've changed your team, you changed your branding, you changed your website, you changed your pricing model. You've probably made some adjustments to your pitch. Do you do the Golden Bridge stuff? [00:22:31] Jeff: I didn't have a pitch before. You didn't have a pitch? I didn't have a pitch. I'd just say, "Hey, we do management. Can we manage your properties?" And I just like, that's what I'm saying, when I didn't know, like I couldn't wrap my mind around, because I'd been flipping houses and wholesaling. I had that down to a science. I am a fricking ninja in that. Yeah. But the management side, it was just, "Hey, we manage properties." Yeah. This is what we charge if you want to come over. Cool. If not, I got to go. I got other calls with me, you know, and to have a pitch. So it was literally everything and the pitch made it. That's what I'm saying. I pulled 16 doors out of the gym. Yeah. Just "what are you doing now? Oh, I'm doing management and it's--" 'boop,' just going into my pitch casually, just real casual because we're at the gym. "Do you know anybody that manages any properties? Yeah, I do. I got this buddy. Cool. Could I talk to him? That was it. [00:23:23] Jason: So I love clients like you, Jeff. because you implement, like you went through the rapid revamp and you did it rapid, like you got that stuff done. Yeah. Pretty quick. And then you start working on acquisition because you saw that opportunity with our acquisitions coach and you're like, "I'm going to do that." and you're just doing stuff and I think that's a testament to you. You know, this is part, I think when we work out more often at the gym, and I think our brains work better. I think that's science, like that's been proven. Like there's something released in our muscles. And you're a big dude. I got to get to your point. I'm trying to work out to catch up to you. [00:23:59] Jeff: I'm going to be pitching you on coaching you in that area. [00:24:02] Jason: But I think I appreciate that you've been implementing this stuff rapidly and I asked you at DoorGrow Live, I was like, "where do you see yourself, you know, do you think you could get to a thousand doors?" And you were like, "yeah, probably a year and a half." Like it's nothing. Like it's nothing. And you're like, "well, maybe two years." And I was like, "do you know how ridiculous that sounds to most people?" Yeah. So, but I believe it. I believe it for you. I believe it's possible for you. And I believe any of our clients could do it if they just. Take action and implement. And in order to do that, they've got to trust us. And I appreciate you putting your faith in us and trusting us and just putting your head down and doing the work. [00:24:41] So what would you say to other property managers that are maybe like the company that you bought or maybe like the way you were before if they've just been watching DoorGrow on the sidelines and they think they know what we're about and they think we're just marketers or something that like have a decent sales pitch, but they don't know if they can trust us? You're behind the paywall. What would you say to them? [00:25:04] Jeff: Well, I mean, besides being behind the paywall and doing it and having experience with it, I know coaching and I know that space, and so I recognized DoorGrow immediately from watching your marketing and just digging in a little that you guys taught the business. It wasn't a marketing ploy to get people to sign up to you. Actually, it wasn't like I was just going to get a bunch of motivation, "go out there and do it!" right, right. Because I motivated it was, like I said, it was the whys and the hows and and the all the processes and systems. And so man, it's all there for you to just do it. You would just do it. You would literally just go, "okay, I'll start at one and work to 10." I had a management company already. If I had to redo it all when I got real life processes and systems, and then I saw that there was people in it that had a hundred doors, 500 doors, a thousand doors, and I'm like, "that's what I need." I need to be surrounded by people that are at a higher level of success and have been where I am and now are where I want to go. And so if you are watching and you have management already and you are struggling, and it sucks. Whether it's for you or your customers, or both? I have 420 doors and I have more peace of mind, more direction and I know where I'm going to be and where I'm going and how to get there. And more time to myself if I wanted to take it. I don't take it because I still have big goals and so I'm working a lot. But then I did with 150 doors. That's awesome. I had more certainty with 3x almost than I did where I started. I got the team in place. I watched them problem solve all day long on the chat and working systems and the processes and everything happens the same over and over again. [00:27:01] So it's really a business in a box, but you have to do it. You can't question yourself. You can't make excuses. You just have to do it. It'll be really easy if you just one foot in front of the other and take the steps. It's all there. And I had to stop because I can't wrap my mind around everything until I get to another place. Right. Yeah. Like I can only do so much and it's growing and working and so like, I've got to pause and then I'm going to dive back in and I don't know I'm still in DoorGrow obviously regularly. [00:27:34] Jason: Well, let's do some co coaching live on air. Let's figure out what's your next step? Ready? Okay. Yeah. You open? Okay, cool. So you're at 420 units right now. Yeah. Yeah. You've finally got a good team, you've got good culture. Yeah. So the next level to get to, you know, to break past that next kind of major barrier, which maybe is 600 doors, you have to have a great team, but you got to get three major systems installed. Those three major systems are going to be, you have to really get a good process system installed. Not just process documentation, but a system to where they're running the processes each time. So we've got DoorGrow flow. You can use that, lead simple, process street, something, but you need a good process system. That's one piece. The other piece you need is you need a really good people system. So you've started to create the culture, you've started to install that system. Then we want to make sure-- and did you use DoorGrow hiring and do grow ATS and work with Sarah on some of that stuff? [00:28:32] Jeff: I watched the coaching and implemented some of the things I learned just like I did with Clint. So yeah. [00:28:38] Jason: So we want to make sure we have a solid system so that as you scale, you can get the right people and get those people quickly. So it sounds like you've done some work on that. And then we want to make sure you have a really good planning system. So once you have a team of people you trust to execute, your executive team, then we want to install a planning system. Now these three systems should not be run by you because as a visionary and an entrepreneur, it's not fun for you to do this. So the key person, the most important hire you will have on the team will be an operator. Somebody that runs the operations. Do you feel like you have that key person right now? [00:29:15] Jeff: I do, but she is one of the people I brought on the most valuable hire I've made after I came to DoorGrow. And it was to have that operator, but she's a CFO. Okay. And she's grown another insurance company to probably where we're at now from scratch, which, you know, I think I'm blowing her mind a little on where we want to go, how fast we're going. But yeah, my goal is to make her the operator. She's the CFO. And so you know management's an accounting business, really at the end of the day, and so we are doing so many changes to our software and our accounting to make sure that all those processes and automations are in place that she is buried every day, but she helps with the team. She helped on the hiring. And she's going to be the operator to try to shorten that. We're working her into that role because as she figures pieces out, we hand them off. So it frees her time up and she's not doing the 15- $20 an hour work because they're paying her more than that. Handing it off and it's freeing up her time and she's. Then we're putting in place some of that more operation stuff, so in process. [00:30:23] Jason: Nice. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. So when she's ready, one of the things we'll want to do is start to get her to show up on the Friday coaching call, which is operations, and to do that super system breakout and work with her and you to get DoorGrow OS installed. Once you get DoorGrow OS installed, the planning system is that next level system. This is going to allow you to have your team start to function like a visionary, like the entrepreneur, they're going to start to innovate and move goals forward without you having to, you know, push them. And she will run that system. She'll run the meetings, and then you'll be able to set goals and break them down from quarterly to monthly to weekly commitments, and you'll start to see the momentum build big time when the team are all visible and can be seen and there's accountability and they get recognized because you have that system installed, performance sometimes goes up. When I first install a system like that, we grew 300% in a year. And so that is kind of the next level I think for you guys is when she's ready for that, we start to get DoorGrow OS installed and get that planning system and cadence. Because cadence in a business is the communication, cadence is the culture, cadence creates all of this, and it gets everyone rowing the boat in the same direction. So instead of you saying, "Hey, let's do this to everybody, watch this video at DoorGrow," et cetera. They will start to innovate and move outcomes forward because they're given goals and deadlines and then support instead of tasks. And that's where you'll start to see your team really perform. This is where you get like three times the output from your team members. This is where your operational costs drop significantly in relation to the number of people you have per door. And so that's what I see next level for you guys. And once you have that system installed, 600 doors is going to be a piece of cake. [00:32:17] Jeff: Yeah. The other thing too is that I know we need a sales funnel. The funnel right now is this mouth, that's it right now. [00:32:27] Jason: We got to get you out of that. So what'll be next is either we get you, if you don't have this already, we get you an assistant, a setter, or a sales assistant. And that person will then help you double your capacity currently. because they'll be doing all of the follow up, getting you on calls to close and you can use tactics like the double barrel close and some of these things we talk about. That's maybe, that's like level one, baby step. Level two, we just get you out of doing that all together. We get you a full-time BDM. Just like James Wachob 's team installed Brad, he's been showing up to each of our Wednesday calls where we support the BDMs or the people working on growth and I think he's helped him add like 250, something like that. They've added 400 doors organically in less than a year. [00:33:18] Jeff: Is that Brian Bouler guy? [00:33:20] Jason: Yeah, Brian Bouler's their operator. And he's, he actually just, yeah, he's a stud. He just became the director of the property management. So he's running all property management and he just hired an operator to replace himself from a Fortune 50 company. Right? So this is like once you have your operator fully functioning as an operator, you get her out of CFO role and you get her into being an operator, then we can start to install DoorGrow OS, get that team to the next level. And part of that plan, I think for your 90 days would be to start to focus on that sales side. If you're ready to ramp up lead gen and growth, then we get you maybe a setter initially, and then we get you a full-time BDM or you can jump straight to getting a BDM and we help you find somebody that can just crush it at sales. We identify the right personality type, they're great at this, and they will go out and just make it rain and create business for you. [00:34:13] Jeff: I got the hiccups all of a sudden, so I'm like, this is going to look great in the podcast. [00:34:17] Jason: You're just so excited about the future. Excited. Yeah. And you know, and that BDM could also, and then I think what you would do, if you want to focus on the growth side, if that's still fun for you, you just go out and find more acquisition deals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. You can even get your BDM to start hunting for acquisition deals as well and feed them to you, and then you do double barrel close that way. They're feeding you to close it. Right? So, anyway, I think that's going to be the next level for you and, you know, maybe what I would maybe have your CFO do is do a time study and maybe you do a time study if you haven't done one for a while, so that you can see where can you support her even more and more quickly to get things off of her plate. What are you doing? Which things do you love the most? Which things don't you? And start to take some things off of her plate and give them to other team members as quick as possible. So, and then you'll know like, this is what she spent her time doing over the last two weeks. You're like, cool, we, these are minus signs. These are things that are lower level dollar an hour work. Let's define these processes and we make that a goal and all that. When you have a cadence and a planning system, you can plug all that into your goals. Like one of your quarterly goals would be transition CFO to operator, for example. Yeah. So we could start to build out those systems even right now with her, we just need to get you and her on board with that. And then you'll see things start to go even faster because you're already working a plan. When we put the plan in a way that everyone else can see it and everyone can contribute, the whole business starts to go faster. Otherwise, it's you pushing her and her pushing everybody else, and it's very top down. When you create a bottom up system, you'll start to feel a lot of momentum. Okay. It's a weird feeling when you start to feel the team pulling you forward instead of you pushing them forward. [00:36:10] Jeff: So, when you say that, what does that, what do you call that then? Like when you're saying bottom up, you know? When you, everything you just said, like, what is that? Like, what do I call that? [00:36:21] Jason: So I call that the planning system or DoorGrow OS, the operating system. The operating. So we want to get this operating system installed so that there's this planning cadence and communication. So I'd start with by doing a six core functions assessment with your team brainstorming session. That'll be quarterly planning and it'll take like an hour and a half or two hours. First time you do this as a team. [00:36:44] Jeff: That's all in os. That whole process is an OS. The step-by-step on that. That was my direction. I need OS, and I need Flow, and I'm like, oh, another thing I got to plan. [00:36:53] Jason: Yeah that's DoorGrow OS. The planning system. What's cool about it and, if you do the math on this, right? Let's say you do in your annual planning, you spend maybe an hour, a half. Your quarterly planning, you do four times a year. You spend maybe an hour, a half, two hours, right? Each of your monthly planning meetings, which you have 12, that adds up to 12 hours, maybe an hour each, right? Then you're doing your weekly commitments meetings every week. Maybe you'll do about 50 of those a year. Maybe those take an hour, sometimes even just 30 minutes, depending on the size of your team and the aggressiveness of your goals. And the goal on a weekly basis is to hit 80% of your weekly commitments. That's a lot of goals getting achieved. This is outside of the tactical work, outside of the day-to-day work. This is innovating and moving the business forward towards your core functions and what the business needs most and what you need most. [00:37:49] If you stack and add all this up, maybe even add a culture meeting here or there, and you add your daily huddles with your teams that are like maybe 15, 20 minutes, all that combined adds up to, you can run the entire business on 300 hours a year, and it eliminates a massive amount of 'got a minute?'s, sneaker net communication, interruptions, and it makes the business far more efficient. [00:38:14] Jeff: And that's all lined out in OS. Like I start OS, it's like everything step by step. I can do this. How? [00:38:22] Jason: Yes. However, my disclaimer is, this is not stuff that you're going to want to do. This is stuff that your operator will probably enjoy doing. Okay, but not you. Okay. Like me, I hear a bunch of meetings. My initial gut reaction is like, "oh gosh, shoot me now." Right? Yeah. Like that sounds like a cumbersome and a waste of my time. It actually speeds you up and speeds up the business and gives you more time, but you don't want to run it. You need somebody else to run it because otherwise you end up as the emperor with no clothes because everybody's going to agree to you, say "whatever Jeff says," you need somebody else to run it. And you're last to speak in all these meetings. Yeah. Then you'll start to see the magic and the genius of your team. because some of them are more closely connected to some of the things that need to shift or move or be innovated or move forward than you are, right? Your maintenance coordinator can see what's going on in maintenance and they probably have ideas. And so this will allow them to start to, you know, bubble up some of these ideas and it'll allow them to innovate. When team members don't get deadlines and outcomes that they're given to achieve. And then they can see that there's need for improvement, instead of innovating, they go and try and spend more of your money. Yeah, exactly. And so the team gets more expensive. And then you, if you give them a blank check, they'll just spend like, "let's go buy this new thing and let's buy that. And that might do this," right? When you give your team a deadline and some constraints and an outcome, they will start to get creative and innovate, and you want your team members to start to think like that. That turns them into intrapreneurs. So getting this system installed, I think will be the big next level thing, and we can start getting that installed right away so Sarah can help you get that set up. And set up a call with you and your operator and you're already working on some goals. So let's just get those goals into a system where everyone can see and make sure you start to move the plan forward, create the plan, work the plan, and you'll start to see the team move forward way faster. [00:40:16] So I'm excited for you man. [00:40:19] Jeff: Can you believe I got the hiccups? I get hiccups like once every 10 years. I get in the middle of the podcast. Yeah, I'm very excited about that because here's the truth is you're right, like you get to this place at, you know, 150 doors on my own right, that's capacity really no capacity would've been much higher. But doing it well, capacity was 150 doors. Now I'm at 400 something and we're going, well, yeah. I think I could add another a hundred doors before anything breaks, but I know we're there. We're 50 to a hundred doors away from having to do new stuff again. Yeah. I can feel it. And so that's exciting, but dreadful to think, to have to implement myself. [00:40:59] I think that's why I've kind of like, "let's just wait till we get everything we're doing dialed it perfectly before I get into that," but I need to just suck it up. I got to call with Sarah coming up the next couple days and I just need to tell her, okay, let's do OS, whatever. Tell me what to do next. Let's go. [00:41:14] Jason: Yeah. And really we're just going to start working on creating a plan. Then we'll put in the software and you'll start to see when you start having these weekly meetings with your team, you're going to start to see stuff move forward. Like our goal, we sometimes have like 40 things in a single week that we're working on as a team outside of our daily work, like 40 tasks that are assigned to different team members. [00:41:38] And my team members do not want to show up with a red 'no.' Yeah. And this increases their performance level, like you would not believe. They want green yeses when they show up on Monday for our weekly commitments meeting. And that means we are really likely to get all of our 30 day goals done, which means we're really likely to get all of our quarterly goals done because they're all connected. [00:41:59] Yeah. You'll start to see your business move forward really quickly. This is a next level thing. So I'm excited for you to get that installed. because first, you got to have an operator. because I've tried to do it on my own without an operator and I really, I get lazy because I just don't like it. Like, I don't like running the meetings. I'm like, "all right, anyone's stuck on anything? Let's move forward faster." And I just skip steps and I tell people, do things, but when the team starts to run this, your operator will start to run the business. The business will start to run itself. Things will start to move forward without you, and then instead of you feeling like you're the entrepreneur pulling your entire team up the hill in a wagon, which is what it feels like until you get a system like this, you're going to start to see them moving forward ahead of you, and you're going to be the one that is in the wagon and they're pulling you up the hill. You're just going to be there like giving some feedback, coaching them, supporting them, but you'll start to see the business move forward. I'm the biggest constraint on my team. Sarah and the team are using DoorGrow OS, and they're moving the whole business forward constantly. And they're like, "Jason, keep up. We need more from you." And so they're keeping me accountable now. I don't need to keep them accountable because I've got A players and I've got a system that brings that out in them. So that's the next level. Cool, man. Awesome. Well, hey, thanks for coming on the podcast and being vulnerable and sharing some of your struggles and your wins. [00:43:23] Really appreciate you as a client. [00:43:25] Jeff: Yeah. Appreciate you too, man. It's been a huge life changer. So cool. Well, keep pushing me. [00:43:32] Jason: Yeah, we'll keep going. We'll get you to that next level as well. So, thousand doors, here we come! [00:43:37] Jeff: Here we come. All right. [00:43:39] Jason: All right, thanks. See you. All right, so if you are a property management entrepreneur and you're wanting to get some coaching, you're tired of not having anyone in your corner, maybe nobody's believing in you, maybe not even your spouse is believing in you right now, and you need some hope, you want to have some results like Jeff, you're wanting to move your business forward. We would love to coach and help and support you. Join our mastermind. You can check us out at doorgrow.com. If you're looking like to get nurtured and warmed up a little bit more and you're not really sure about those DoorGrow people, then go to doorgrowclub.com. Join our free Facebook group. We give out better free stuff than most coaches in this industry give out that's paid, and you're going to get access to our master classes and some really cool stuff in there. Join that and you're going to see that we care and we want to see you succeed. And that will hopefully be a nice pathway into you becoming a client and working with DoorGrow and taking your business to that next level. And finally getting what you deserve, getting paid what you deserve, and having the business that you dream of having. [00:44:47] Until next time everybody, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone. [00:44:51] Jason Hull: You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow! [00:45:18] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.
Jeff: Well, it gives you, first off, I think in this fund. So let's say you want to invest in sports betting and gaming. One of the things that we're going to do better than other funds like this is we're going to give you we're trying to get you exposure to what's a really fast-growing marketplace, especially in the US. You know, in November, we have California potentially going to be legalized. When New York was legalized, they did $1,000,000,000 in betting in one month. There was $1,000,000,000 of what we call handles, which means how much-transacted money. Now, California is going to do way more than that. California is going to do three X that. Now, we don't know the permutations of whatever they're going to agree to there because they're protecting the Indian reservations a little bit, but it should be legalized. So what the point of the investment is, it's investable and it's growing. So at the end of the day, the simple answer is that you'll make money, because, with the growth of the investment of the opportunity, you will be able to put your money in and make money in a growing industry, just like anybody who would invest in tech stocks or the S&P 500. You know, and these and these can these are really like I say, it's a ground zero opportunity, meaning these companies are still growing. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/ - - - Jeff Kamys LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-kamys-19159174 Website: https://www.jeffreykamys.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffreykamys
Sean: So when you said you had partners and a lot of entrepreneurs today have partners, what made you say that? It's it complicated thing and it's better to go alone. Jeff : Well, in this case here. So what happened was, is I because they were going to bring business right But they had a majority, like I only had a third. They were going to bring business they kind of could control when they brought that business. And I took the lion's share of the upfront cost and not knowing how complicated it would get and continue to get without setting up the parameters of the project properly. I got taken down what we call project creep. Yeah, yeah. So it got it was, you know, this is something that I had budgeted maybe X for, but it turned into triple X and, and, and it took and the time it went from a project that I had like a 3 to 6-month time lag on into like two years. And so it ended up the ugliest way possible, which is why I'm not mentioning any names of whatever it was because it ended up in a lawsuit after all. And I did not break even. I lost a lot of money and a lot of time. But, you know, you learn from it. And I think it was kind of classic. I may not have enough focus on it. And I think that's what Tesla again it's only apt as a comparison because we're all human and I think that's what Tesla investors are worried about with Twitter you know is the focus going to stay there because we really think you can't. You know the one thing I joke about sometimes with my kids because I have things that I'm interested in is can we clone people? We can't clone people. And there are certain people who can ignite things a certain way that other people cannot and they won't have the same ideas. You know, we've all been in those rooms. You take that one person who can ignite the whole room with the idea or get everybody on the clear path. It changes the whole room. You can have ten people in there, but the 11th person comes in there with that one idea or that direction that no one else thought of. And you would have to say, that's probably Elon Musk, you know, that would be missing maybe in that scenario. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack Leadership Stack Merch: https://leadershipstack.com/shop/ - - - Jeff Kamys LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-kamys-19159174 Website: https://www.jeffreykamys.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffreykamys
Sean: The first one is from Vicente and from Facebook. I have a question. I just started a design agency and I have an upcoming project. It's a design and development project which will be a few months of engagement. Is it best to hire my dev team or partner with a dev agency? And Jeff, what do you think? I want to know what you think about this? Jeff: Well, Sean, I would always advise most of the companies that I consult with that they should always stick with their core competency and eventually outsource those that probably are on the side or do not fall under their core competence or something that is core to their business. Because different departments, especially this is a design, I would always argue with - not just with Zagana, but with the previous companies that I work with, creatives especially. It needs a different type of culture. And I think this is where a lot of companies fail because they try to integrate, you know, the right-brainers and the left-brainers in one culture, there is a saying that goes - "one size does not fit all," so to speak. So I would say it depends if this is their core business, then you should hire and develop that team to be the best out there. But if it's not and it's just going to be a one-off, it's best to eventually probably outsource to another company, or group, or agency that is highly specialized in that one, especially if it's just a project. Because it really takes a long time to eventually develop a team and the learning curve, you just cannot rush it. And it might eventually cost them to lose that client or at least provide, you know, not a half-baked project to them just because you're trying to subpar. Sean: Yeah, I agree 100%. I mean, just like with what Jeff mentioned earlier, that if you have a culture that's very creative hiring dev people might not, you know, it will disrupt the culture - 100%. And if you're not comfortable with your culture being disrupted in a more, you know, developers are usually more rigid, more straightforward. More structured. Sean: So that's going to create a little bit of tension in the culture. Usually, that's good. But if you're if you don't want to manage that tension yet, then maybe outsourcing would be a good option for you. It's not to say that it doesn't work because I have SEO-Hacker, both the web design and the web dev team under one roof, we were all in one office and they worked really well together. - - - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/leadershipstack Join our community and ask questions here: from.sean.si/discord Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadershipstack
INTRODUCTION:The Ramble by the River podcast is hosted by none other than Jeff Nesbitt!!! Jeff has been podcasting for quite some time and he brings a unique passion and flavor to the table that I resonate quite well with. In this interview we talk about how Jeff got kicked out of church for getting a divorce, how hypnosis plays into church services, male body image issues and Jeff's mushroom experiment in the Crack Shack. INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to):· Jeff's Recount Of Getting Kicked Out Of Church For Getting A Divorce· The Inspiration Behind The Ramble By The River Podcast· The Value Of Podcasting· Why It Is Important To Separate God From The Church· How Hypnosis Plays Into Church Services · The Pandemic And Maintaining Connections · Male Body Image Issues· The Family Gratitude List· The Marshmallow Test · Jeff's Mushroom Experiment In The Crack Shack CONNECT WITH JEFF:Website & Podcast: https://ramblebytheriver.captivate.fmFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeff.nesbitt.9619/Twitter: https://twitter.com/rambleriverpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ramblebytheriver/ DE'VANNON'S RECOMMENDATIONS:· Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX) - https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370 - TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEs SDJ MEMBERSHIP (FULL EPISODES):· $2.99 per month.· Donate any amount for 30 days of access.· $25 per year.https://www.sexdrugsandjesus.com/membership-account/membership-levels/ Jeff Nesbitt [00:00:00] You're listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to. And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right. At the end of the day, my name is De'Vannon and I'll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world. As we dig into topics that are too risky for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what's really going on in your.There was nothing on the table and we've got a lot to talk about. So let's dive right into this episode.Jeff: Ramble by the river podcast is hosted by none other than Jeff Nesbitt. Jeff has been podcasting for quite some time. Now when he brings a unique passion and flavor to the table that I personally resonate well with. You all will too. And this interview, we're going to talk about how Jeff got kicked out of his church for getting a divorce, how hypnosis plays into church services, male body image issues, and [00:01:00] Jeff's mushroom experiment in the crack shack.Y'all that right? There was a hoop and is totally worth sticking around to listen, to enjoy the show.De'Vannon: Jeff, thank you so damn much for coming on to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast.Today. I say that with my church finger up, like the ushers would have in church on a Sunday morning. It is so glad to have you. How are you doing my friend? Jeff: I'm doing fantastic. Thank you so much for having. De'Vannon: Well, of course, it's only the polite thing to do, and I am a Southern Belle. You know, you had me on your show and, and of course I would have you upon mine.I wouldn't dream of having it any other way. And I'm perfect. Now your show is called ramble by the river. And I want you to tell us where you came up with that name, [00:02:00] the flow of your show and why you were inspired to call it that. Jeff: All right. So yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show.It's been a pleasure already, and I think it's going to be a good episode. And I had you on my show last week, because as you mentioned, and it was really fun. So my show ramble by the river has been going out since January of 2021. And it started because I have a job where I spent very much of my time by myself, and I really enjoy connecting with people. It wasn't something I was getting in my day-to-day life and I started to miss it and I really just needed that connection.So I started trying to pursue different avenues of creativity, like. Just music was one of them. And just trying to find what was going to bring me some kind of satisfaction. And I've, I've been listening to podcasts pretty often since around 2015. And by pretty often, I mean like [00:03:00] every day for several hours, because I'm driving all the time and by myself, so you can really click in and engage to some content when it's just you and nothing else.And so, yeah, I ended up getting my favorite podcasts, which I'll shout them out right now, or the king of the staying with Brendan Shaw and Theo Vaughn at one that one's great. Feel Von is in general. Very good. He's got another one called this past weekend. He's a comedian from California. He's actually from Covington, Louisiana.So he's down there from where, from where you're at.He's let's see who else we get. Aubrey Marcus podcast is one that I like a lot. He's he's pretty cool. Joe Rogan obviously is like the godfather of podcasting, mark Marin, just, you know, the classics. And so I would basically felt like I built these relationships with these content creators who I already mostly knew through traditional media forms, like TV shows, movies, things like that, a lot of standup comedians.[00:04:00] And I just really started to like, the medium podcasting is different than anything else because it's long form. And I got so used to trying to communicate. Who I was through 140 characters or through a picture or through one Facebook post and especially in a climate of everybody, just bitching constantly about what other people post on social media.So I just felt very self-conscious because no matter what you post on those short form platforms, you're going to be misinterpreted by somebody. If it's worth even reading in the first place. If it's, if it's just boring as fuck in the first place, no one even cares. You're not even going to get any traction on it.And then if you're a little provocative to try to get a little bit more attention, then you're going to hurt somebody's feelings or piss somebody off, or create a disagreement with somebody. And it's just not a good way to communicate. It's not effective. It doesn't create that sense of community that we're all looking for and that we all need.It does actually quite the opposite. It [00:05:00] creates division and polarization and increases some of the tribalism that is causing havoc in our political system today. So I didn't want any part of that. And I really, I really have never liked social media. So it's, I mean, I like the idea of it. I liked it back in the very beginning days, like 2007, when it was like almost anonymous and it wasn't all talking to other platforms before Twitter and Facebook and Instagram all connected.It seemed better to me, but I digress. I didn't like those forms as a way to express who I am. And in this digital world, you have to do that. That's where we're living now. Especially during the pandemic, we are essentially living in a simulation. We're getting in, we're jacking into the system every day.We're going to work through our computers. We are living digital. And I wanted to do that in a form that could actually capture the most accurate representation of who I really am. [00:06:00] And I think that's podcasting because it's just a, it's a, it's a time capsule of your thoughts and opinions of that moment, because it's not always researched fully.It's not always supported with evidence. I like them to be ideally they will be, but a lot of the time it's just raw. It's emotional stuff. Just pouring out of you and anybody can do that once you open the tap and just try not to feel super vulnerable, it's, it's pretty therapeutic.So after that I was like, all right, I'm going to start a podcast. And Buddy who lived right down the road. I grew up with also named Jeff and I'm not, and hit him and me both kind of battle with depression. So it's something we've dealt with since like middle school. And we've been friends for a very, very long time and we both deal with it and we recognize that each other.So we've kind of talked with each other about it that entire time. And so [00:07:00] winter time, as most people who struggle with depression know winter time is the rough time. That's when stuff starts to get harder and you have to work a lot harder to stay. Just keep your head above water. It's dark, it's cold.It's wet. It's just like, it's a wet blanket on your soul, a Pacific Northwest winter. So we're like, let's start a podcast. Jeff and Jeff Inc. And which is like our pretend fake company that we started in fourth grade. So we started getting stuff together and he's a fishermen commercial fishermen. So pretty quickly he was, he was having to go work.And so I was out here building the studio and I did, I, the majority of it by myself, I painted this mural, I, which wraps all the way around the room. And I. Put in quite a few hours on the studio and it came together and I was like, well, [00:08:00] shit. Now I have a podcast studio. I better start a podcast. So I started workshopping names and I just keep a list in my phone.Every time I would think of one or something clever came up, I'd put it in the phone. And by the time I had around 50 names, I thought, okay, one of these has to work and I had a hell of a time picking because I wanted something that was memorable, but also kind of fit the style is just like, it's tough.So you, you also have a really good name by the way. I meant to compliment you on that. Yeah. So ramble by the river came from, I wanted to use the word ramble just cause I think it's a catchy word and I was like that song ramble and man, and I think it's the, all my brothers, I don't know. We'll get a copyright infringement if we sing it.But Yeah, from there, I buy a river, I tried it out and I liked the logos and I went with it. Plus I always kind of felt like this is my training wheels into the world of podcasting [00:09:00] because I, when I started, I didn't know how to podcast, I just started. And so I set a goal of accomplishing 50 interviews in the first year, and I needed a show to do that with, so that's how ramble by the river was born.De'Vannon: And so it is, I'm so glad that you gave birth to it. I bet you looked great when you were preggers.And so I I love everything that you said, and I, I feel like that even though like the guests that come on, a lot of our shows that may not have. Have like a, I want to be like a doctor, have some sort of acronym behind their name to necessarily justify their experience. I feel like that the guests experience is the most justifiable of all, because a person's lived experience to me, outweighs a PhD or an MD [00:10:00] or anything like that.And so for somebody to come on my show, I don't care if they have, you know, you know, a PhD or anything like that, they have to have had, you know, gone through something themselves, at least, you know, especially like from episode nine, moving forward, because that's when I took over, you know, production and recruiting and everything myself.And so because that's what I want to know about, you know, that's, my audience is trying to hear, you know, know, you know, which one did you go for? We need, we need to hear about that because people will. When they people feel like they can relate to a person, you know, then they will listen to them. And it's easy to relate to somebody who's been divorced.Who's been kicked out of church. Who've been slapped across the face, or who's had the whip of bitch ass at some point, you know, it check all Jeff: those boxes. De'Vannon: Right. And so, as opposed to somebody with a PhD, because less people [00:11:00] have PhDs than do, but Mo everybody has had a bad day, you know, or has gone through a terrible experience or has, you know, a little skeleton tap dancing in their closet.They may not want somebody to know about, you know, or hadn't learned exactly how to kill that bitch yet, or just let him out so he can just twirl for fuck's sake. And so that, and then I'll also like, like he referred to podcasts as a time capsule. I agree. I felt like every episode we record. When we write blogs books, we keep a website, you know, those things that write music and things like that, you know, those intangible electronic things will outlive us, you know?And so once we you know, as long as the earth remains, you know, these platforms are going to be here because there's so much money in it. And so much people doing it, you know? You know, so once we're all like dead and spirits floating around doing whatever the fuck [00:12:00] spirits do you know, this work will still be here.So in future generations, when people come along, who is going, going through the same shit, cause everything kind of seems to happen these generation over again, you know, then they'll still be able to hear what we have to say. And our voices will be heard. We are eternal until there is no more earth. And so to agree, that's a great reason to have started your podcast.And I'm glad that you have it. Jeff: Yeah. I mean, you could go to a Tupac concert in 2018 because they recorded his voice. They recorded his, his physical form and, and they're reproducing it digitally. That's that's exactly the same thing. It's just, we're trying to become immortal essentially. De'Vannon: And, and, you know, and I appreciate the transparency because, you know, you didn't go have your personal experiences, which we're about to get into some of those and go, you know, achieve your successes with that, and then go [00:13:00] run off and have your happy, successful life, you know, taking time to talk about that, to help somebody else.That's a huge thing because you know, like in the Bible, you know, Jesus heals those seven lepers, I think it was. And then most of them skipped off, you know, where joystick and seedsman what they had received, but only one came back to give things. And so to me, every episode, you know, you record is a way of giving thanks, you know, for the blessings that you have and everything like that.So I look at it as a project of gratitude. Jeff: That's so exactly what it is. I pray every time I do one of these things before I do it, but I just, I will know what to say. And if I don't know what to say, that it comes off at least as funny so that people can get some benefit out of it. But yeah, I think that a lot of what I do every day is, is practicing gratitude.I love my life and I didn't always love it. And so I appreciate the contrast. Okay. De'Vannon: Absolutely. And we're going to talk about [00:14:00] your your family gratitude list and stuff like that later on. So for now I want to get I want to get more into your history, like with the cherishes, you and I both have an interesting relationship with the church and.This concept of Christianity here in America. Now I know that you were kicked out for some things that happened. I want you to tell her story. Jeff: Yeah, happy to. So kicked out is probably a little bit strong of a term. I don't want to talk down on the church at all or anything, but essentially I had been teaching a Sunday school class for kids for a few years, and I don't want to my own horn, but I was fucking good at it.And so, you know, just showing up every Sunday, just kind of killing it as a Sunday school teacher, the kids love me. I really I was doing the Lord's work and. My marriage was not going great, which, you know, wasn't surprising to anybody, including the pastor who married us, [00:15:00] who subsequently asked me to please not teach Sunday school class anymore because I was getting divorced and he thought it was going to set a bad example for the kids.And I, I disagreed, I still disagree because that was like my church family. And it as even I tried so hard, I was, I was understanding and I just, it hurt my feelings. It really, it really kinda was just like thing, I guess. I, because I had thought that I was providing more value to the church family than just like sending an example of a, what a good marriage looks like.There are other facets of the human experience that I, that I felt like I was still doing. Okay. That one part of my life was falling apart. And I guess that was enough to make me not. Role model. I don't know. It wasn't, I, the justification for it was, was not really my concern. After that point, a lot of people were like, oh, you should have fought that or gone back, but it wasn't, I don't want to [00:16:00] do that.I don't want to force myself into any place. It's like this podcast, if you don't like it, turn it off. I don't care. I'm just trying to be me. But and I have stuff to share. So I that's, I was trying to do that and it didn't work out. So I haven't been back to that church since, but I heard, I hear good things about it.I know it's grown and I hope I wish them the best, but yeah, it was a sad, sad moment. I haven't really found a good church home since then. And that sucks. I like, I think the community is, is crucial and church, whether you're fully onboard with the faith aspects of it or not. It's a really good exercise in, in human connection.I think like even going to church that you don't traditionally follow the religion. It's it's. Interesting experience to put yourself through that. Cause they're weird. De'Vannon: Cause they're weird. Yeah. They're weird. Jeff: If you go into a church and you've never been to church before and they're speaking in tongues or, or they're wearing dresses [00:17:00] and given piece of price, I mean there's some baffling shit going on at church and I grew up with it.So I didn't realize how silly it seems to those who haven't been indoctrinated, but look at it through fresh eyes and you're like, okay, this is all equally baffling, every religion. So it's like, I don't know. I'm, I'm really not critical of people's faith because everybody's just searching for meaning and people find it in different places.De'Vannon: I'm sorry that happened to you, Jeff. And although you, you don't want to talk bad about your church. I will, they can eat a Dick and, and I would extend the middle finger to them. Jeff: That's not Christ-like De'Vannon: no, it isn't, but you know, I'm not a spirit and I'm not Jesus Christ. So I don't, I'm not being Christ like all the time.So I just stepped in the flesh for just a moment. Now I'm back out of the flesh. Jeff: And so I appreciate you sticking up for me. I De'Vannon: won't do it. [00:18:00] I know like, you know, you know, there are people out there who. You know, maybe they don't cuss as much as I do or they won't do, you know, things like what I just did with flipping off churches and what not.And I'm happy to do it for them, you know, because it just needs to be done sometimes. And you know, I'm aware of my spirituality and my power in Christ and the holy ghost and all that. And I'm also very grounded in the fact that I'm still a human and I just, you know, you know, every now and then, you know, a bitch's ass might need to get up and they might need to get flipped out.I flipped out out or something like that. And I'll pray about it later, you know, and then it'll be all right. And so, and I feel great. And so this is a huge thing that I want to take some time that to, to marinade here because. There's many people who've been kicked out of churches. We've only seen a few of the accounts on the news for various reasons.You say kicked out as a strong term. But like when [00:19:00] I was, when I was technically removed from ministry at Lakewood, because they found out that I was LGBTQ and therefore unfit to serve in the adult choir or around children anymore, you know, then nobody specifically said, don't come back to the church, but Jeff, you know, the feeling, once you throw somebody out of something that meant so much to them, like you said, I just wanted to come and share my gifts.You know, there was, you know, and now I can't do that here. You dislike it. It's like getting a divorce. It's like, it's like being married and getting a divorce, but then trying to stay in the same house. Jeff: Yes exactly. It's a De'Vannon: rejection, you know, you're not going to do that. Now. Now the church in their arrogance thinks that Y you, you, you probably can, if not, should just come on back and sit through a service, you know, like nothing's changed, but everything's changed because they made you look like a heretic, [00:20:00] you know, in bad and terrible.And they took one thing that they didn't like, and they let that overshadow all of the great and fabulous things that you had been doing, you know, nevermind your work ethic, consistency, qualifications. And actually, it seems like you were called by God to be doing this. As you said, you were damn good at it.Well, the only way that happens is if the Lord is with you, you know? And so, you know, in terms of like your effectiveness and actually reaching people and connecting, like, it sounds like you were, and so. Humans decided that you have reached a, a stumbling block in your life or at impasse or a rough spot.This is the priority. And this now defines you what fuck them, because they don't get to pick that. But see, this happens to a lot of people. And like you said, you never really found a good church again. You know, it was a [00:21:00] long, long road. Like, I don't know, 10, 15 fucking years before I found what I was comfortable.You know? And again, that sort of break up of is, is catastrophic to somebody, you know, in, in the, not only us, but also people, our friends who have watched us get kicked out of allies, both, both LGBTQ allies were even friends of straight people like yourself. Who've been kicked out. They go, it didn't happen to them, but they're like, look at what you did to my friend.I'm not fucking with churches either. You know? And so. What would you say to people who who have been kicked out of churches before removed from ministries, you know, in the, in the friends and allies of those who have watched this happen to people who they know are good people and could, could not understand why the church was being so antagonistic, Jeff: I would say to try to find God where you can.And like I said before, that does [00:22:00] not look the same to everybody. And God doesn't even mean the same thing to everybody. To me, God means one thing. But to my, like my mom, it means a completely different thing. And so I was raised very. I, I was hesitate when I say I was raised very religiously, but I was, my mom is a very religious woman and she believes completely in the doctrine of the Christian Church and not the Catholic church, which is like the old Christian Church, but like contemporary American Christian Church.And it's where I grew up in a, it was called well, let's see, it was a community church, but. Denominationally. It was kind of like an evangelical, so it was big and showy and the music was everything. And lots of speaking in tongues and it's, so I go back and forth on that. So because of that early exposure to that kind of culture, I am extremely hesitant [00:23:00] to get involved in any kind of group hypno, hypnosis, bullshit.Like everybody puts your hands up or everybody do that. I don't like any of it. I'll barely do the wave at a football game. Like you try to get me to do a chant with hand motions, fuck off. I'm not doing it. You're not hypnotizing me because I understand psychology. That's what's really going on is you're you're engaging in a map mass hypnosis.And so when you do that and you're bonding your consciousness with all the. People in the collective consciousness, under a banner of some kind of greater purpose, it's extremely powerful. And you open yourself up to all kinds of manipulation. And so it's just, that's not to say that every time those tools are used to open your operating system, that doesn't mean that every time that happens it's for malicious means, but it does mean that that's always a possibility.So I'm skeptical. And when they, you know, people are, I love to see people [00:24:00] praising God and worshiping and stuff, but when they bring out the basket of ribbons and the ladies are twirling them and, and your people are speaking in tongues and falling over and stuff, it, I start to really feel uncomfortable.So yeah, I don't know. I, I can appreciate spirituality. And at the same time, I understand that it has a lot of power to control and. Corrupt people. So I'm really skeptical of, of really, really highly emotional groups of people, I guess, is probably the best way to say it. On the other side of that my father was not a highly religious man.He tried really hard, but deep down, he's kind of a thug and kind of at times criminal and just, he was kind of an abused child and he led a very difficult life and he taught me the way of the world was to protect yourself and everybody's out to get you. You've got to learn how to fuck them before they fuck you.And [00:25:00] so I had this strange, just the juxtaposition of the turn, the other cheek mentality coming from my mom where, you know, put yourself last, be humble. The. Be humble, be the servant to the world. And then on my dad's side, it was like, take care of yourself, protect your family, get yours. Don't let somebody make you their bitch, just, you know, get out there and set yourself up for success as a human being.And so those are two very far points from each other on the whole spectrum of existence. And so I landed smack dab in the middle. So I feel like I'm kind of a unique perspective and it definitely shaped the way I see the church. And to get back to your question, but what, the way I would tell a person to handle that situation where they've, they've seen people in the church doing things that they shouldn't have done, or they, somebody they trusted let them down or they're.I mean, [00:26:00] there is always going to be those times because we're all human and we all make mistakes. And as much as we want to think of religious figures as above suspicion, they're fucking not. They're just humans too. And they get into flesh and they like titties and they liked sex and he liked drugs and they like all the same stuff we like.And they honestly, they like stuff. That's a little bit naughty, just like humans. Everybody's a human. So I really try to separate God from the church, from the people in the church, because I think all three of those are very separate and distinct things. So I would, I would just suggest that people look for God somewhere where he is, because he's not in every church.And he is in every, I mean, he's in everything. He is a, is a bad term, but God is everywhere. God is what holds the universe together. And that's what I believe in. I think that if you open your heart and look for God, you can find him in very unexpected. De'Vannon: I concur.[00:27:00] You don't necessarily need a physical building in order to communicate with the Lord.As the Bible says, in my understanding that he is as near as a very air that we breathe. And so there's no need to go searching about, you know, he's already there, it's a matter of your awareness and tapping into his presence. And then I agree, God is not in every church in the sense that his love is not necessarily being expressed there through the people in charge and running, things like that.So Jeff: some, you could feel it and in the building, you can feel it when you're there. Like you can tell when the, like, this group of people is United to help the world. And sometimes this group of people doesn't give a fuck about what's going on outside these walls. De'Vannon: Right in. So, and like, so y'all what Jeff was saying about like hypnosis and stuff like that has to do with.How overwhelming all the different practices and things like that can be from my study of [00:28:00] hypnosis and stuff like that. Basically when you have a whole lot of summit, when you have a whole lot of different shit going on your critical mind, which is only like 12% of the brain, like your subconscious mind is like 88% of it.It's like way more than what you might think. But when you overwhelm the critical mind, you know, you stop being so critical and then you just kind of start accepting a bunch of shit. So when you have the people speaking in tongues and twirling about in the music it's playing and you've already got a whole platform set up and the people are up there on stage.And so though, you're, they're already looking down at you and you're already looking up at them. You don't really have much of a, you know, a critical mind left by the, by the time all that is done. And like he's saying, you're in a state of what is known as hypnosis at that point, when your critical mind has been broken down enough for you to be on the receiving end of stuff, that.Otherwise be more critical of, sometimes it can be used good. And the places where the love of God actually. And sometimes it's not in [00:29:00] places where it isn't and perhaps they might use that to manipulate even all kinds of things, give given money, you know, especially stuff like that. You know, you just, you do have to be careful for, you know, in the falling out, falling out in the quote unquote Ms.Spirit shit. I've been in unfortunate situations before where they're happy. Who like literally tried to put their hand on people and make them lay on the ground. You know, stuff like look, the holy ghost is real. There is a version of that. That's actually authentic, but those free people, people are gifted like that.And the Lord is using them. Them don't even have to touch people. They're going to fall out like that. And the Lord is going to slay somebody in the spirit as it is called it. Ain't going to have to be forced. And then you're not going to have people like I've seen. Making people talk in tongues and telling them to do it, you know, and then dancing in the spirit and stuff like that is real too.But then you've got sister, Sarah who [00:30:00] every damn Sunday at 11 o'clock that she go up and down the aisle, you know, like clockwork, we not talking about that. Bitch has Jeff: got a word again.Of course De'Vannon: she has a fucking word. She always had a damn word.So the Sarah needs to go sit her ass down somewhere because this is Sarah is addicted, is addicted to church and doesn't realize it. And there's so much ego and pride tied up into all of the reasons whyY people. You know, fill the need to do these things. But community, like you said, is a huge part of it. We were going to seek a group of people, no matter what the bucket is, you know, and in your podcasts, I listened to you say how you, you don't have been kind of alone or in life and stuff like that. And yet, you know, now are who you talk, you know, more [00:31:00] about you know, like your connectedness you know, and stuff like that. You haven't, you know, you haven't always felt as so connected in life and your podcast. I was listening to you say how you used to push people away because you thought they would threaten your autonomy. And connected connectedness is so important. Now I hear the importance of it in the things that you say now yet you've experienced so much rejection in life.How have you managed to, to maintain your connection with people during the pandemic is what I'm curious about? Jeff: Well, I think primarily the pandemic especially kind of helped me to realize that prior the priority that needs to be placed on connection. Because like I said before, I was just spending a lot of time by myself and it wasn't fulfilling.And even when cool stuff happens or you see neat stuff or anything, that is like what we think of as a genuine. [00:32:00] Rich experience is just dramatically reduced by being alone. You don't, you don't, it's not the same. You don't form the same kind of memories when you're alone sharing it with another person is important or another group of people or whatever.But yeah, so the podcast really helped me because it gave me an excuse to not only invite somebody to my house, to just talk, but an excuse to ask real questions and to talk about something beyond the weather and which vaccine you got De'Vannon: and on your podcast, I thought it was very bold and very courageous of you to get into body image issues that you've had in the past.You know, a lot of men, especially men who identify as heterosexual, don't just go around, you know, talking about the way they feel about their body, you know? And so. I want you to walk us [00:33:00] through that. Cause you know, the, the issue that you had, you know, with your body, since you were a teen and the way you feel about your your dad bought now.Jeff: Yeah. So body image is, is a big thing for me and it always has been, it started with. When I was real young, I was very proud of my body because I was faster than most kids. I was a little bit bigger than most of the other kids taller. Like I liked, I liked my body a lot. It did well for me. And then around fourth grade, I put on some weight and started not loving my body so much.And at that point I really, it became kind of a, an unhealthy relationship between me and my body. And I, I would think a lot of negative thoughts and just regularly look in the mirror and just pick out all the stuff that I hated and that I would love to change. And I would fantasize about how great life would be if I could just be not quite as choppy or if my skin was a little bit better.[00:34:00] All those versions of me were so much happier and they were beloved by the world and all this things that are just fantasy and. When I hit, you know, later in high school, I started getting in pretty good shape and it, it happened through sports. I was always involved in sports throughout. And, but when you're younger, though, you can, you can be involved in sports and be athletic and still be kinda chubby.It's not that hard just because I didn't know anything about nutrition. And during those years I also developed some pretty unhealthy relationships to food, which I still struggle with. Now I'm a sugar junkie, like crazy. And it's something that I go to when I'm really stressed. Something that I go to when I'm feeling happy and I want to celebrate.It's just like, it's, it's, it's a weird thing because it's something that you do actually need to survive. It's food, but it's sugar in particular is not a, not a necessary ingredient. It's not iodine. Like you don't have to have it to live. So it's, and it's, I mean, that's [00:35:00] debatable, I guess, because of like the glucose, you need to fuel your cells, but you can do that.Ketosis, but that's a whole nother topic, but yeah. So as I got into my college years, I started getting in really, really good shape to where I was very much proud of my body. And from that point on, I really kind of was able to let go of the shame that I had kind of acquired and carried with me since childhood of just not loving myself, of just being afraid to let people see me with my flaws and everything.And I started realizing like, this is who I am. I don't need to sit there and fantasize about changing and wishing I was different because that's wasted energy. This that's, that's not who I am. This is who I am. So I got to love this. And now I really do. And I don't mind having a dad bod, I will, I will say I do wish it was a little bit tighter.I'll tight. I'd like to tighten up a bit, but it's hard to find the time I feel like lately I've been choosing between. Podcasting [00:36:00] family time working out and preparing healthy meals is like extra, but it's, it's hard. It's, there's just so many things to do so many ways to spend your time in this world, but it's definitely important to me.De'Vannon: Well, thank you for sharing that Jeff, you know, these bodies are not going to last forever anyway. And so, you know, I think working on your legacy, you know, with your podcast is spending time with your family, you know, you know, would come before that because you're already doing, you know, making sounds like making healthy meal choices, you know?And so as long as you know, your blood lab results and test results are good in terms of like, and you feel good, you know, in terms of like how everything looks and everything like that. Well, you know, are, you know, I like to. I like to, I really just view us, you know, you know, temporary physical beings. And so, you know, getting spiritually fit [00:37:00] to me is more important than getting physically fit.Now I do work out and I have a gym in my home and everything like that, but, you know, if it comes down to it on any given day you know, I'm going to skip the gym and do some sort of spiritual work instead, you know, if I don't have time because once I die and everything, if I have a six-pack or not, which I don't, but if I, if I did, you know, that ain't gonna, that ain't going to go with me, you know, until the spirit around, whereas my spiritual fitness will, you know, cause how we live in this.Tends to have an impact as I understand that on the next one. And so I agree. Jeff: I think that actually ties right in with the fact that it's all one being. So like, I feel my best personally, when I am physically fit and spiritually fit, but I have been doing the work on both ends. That's when I feel like I've kind of reached my pinnacle and that's a hard, that's a hard place to stay because it, you feel like you can just top all over any direction and it takes so much work just to maintain, [00:38:00] but that's a, that's probably like the peak is when you're, you're feeling good on, on both fronts.De'Vannon: Absolutely. And speaking of your. Of your family. I want you to tell us about how you do your family gratitude list. You know, coming from a history of sobriety and recovery out, that's where I was exposed to gratitude lists. When you recovering from various addictions, they tell you to focus on being thankful.You say Jeff, on your podcasts at what you put your attention into is where your energy goes. And so you try to focus on what you're thankful for and not just you, I believe y'all passed your gratitude list around every day or something like that. So tell us about your family gratitude lists. Jeff: Yeah, so yeah.Gratitude is. One of the most powerful tools for improving your own mental health is especially if you're feeling down or like you've been rejected by society or that you're not getting what's owed to you. It's really easy to fall into those traps, [00:39:00] essentially, a psychological traps that we set for ourselves that are designed to help us to propel ourselves into another stage of life, like in a traditional environment, it would be a good thing.It'd be advantageous for you to feel like maybe you were owed more because that'll lead you to pursue more. But in this world of abundance, that at least I am operating in. I know not everybody is as privileged as, as I have been, but it is really about. Looking towards the future. Do you want to see, and really along the way, being able to look around you and say like, maybe this isn't where I want to end up, but while I'm here, I can definitely appreciate the value in it.And so what my family does is we will send a text. We have a group text that's me and my kids and my wife, and one of us, whoever has the idea. First, we'll send a group text. It just says today, I'm grateful for blank, blank, blank, and give three things. And it [00:40:00] can be anything it can be today. I'm grateful for blue skies pros and you know, a newly paved road, like random stuff.And I'll try to do random stuff so that it gets my kids thinking. That you don't have to just be grateful for your X-Box and the new puppy. You can be grateful for mundane things, and that is almost more powerful sometimes because it helps us to remember that we're always blessed. We're always lucky to be here.It's it's probably the probability of us existing is so small that it's really incredible that we do. So you can be grateful for that. And the psychology behind grateful attitudes is really pronounced. Everybody can understand it kind of implicitly, but when you actually look at the research, it has a huge effect on overall subjective wellbeing, just to recognize the things you're grateful for.De'Vannon: I agree, and it just feels [00:41:00] better, you know, and we all want to feel good. And it's something that changes, you know, in the metaphysical and more. You know, progressive thinking, you know, you know, we talk about like vibrations and things like that. And you know, like how do you focus on negative stuff? And that lowers your vibrations and how this contended to close doors for you in life.Perhaps you won't receive as many blessings because of the negative energy that you can be putting out. You know, when you're focusing on, what's not working as opposed to what is working and gratitude lists helped to reorient us and to not. And be overwhelmed with the negativity because sometimes on bad stuff, does that happen, we can make a really big deal out of them not to take any importance out of it, but then we can make it such a big deal that we lose sight on the fact that there is still good stuff going on in.So I love what y'all are doing with the [00:42:00] gratitude with, because it'd be pretty, you know, hard to let that, for that to happen. When each and every day you reminding yourself of, of the life that you have in your life. Jeff: Yeah. And sometimes it's real work. So when things are going badly and kind of, you don't realize it all the time, but you almost like it.You almost want to let it play out. So if you're having a bad morning and you know, there was ice on your windshield and the car wouldn't start and, you know, there was traffic and all this stuff, you're just, you're in that I'm in a shitty mood zone. And then you get a message on your phone from your daughter that says today, I'm grateful for clean school bus.You know, puppy dogs and jolly ranchers it, you have to respond to that with love. You. Can't just be like, oh yeah, well, I'm grateful that I don't have to be that. I don't know. I'm, I'm grateful for the ravages of old age. So I don't have to endure this life much longer. You can't do that. You have to respond to it, love it.And then all of a sudden [00:43:00] bang you're back in that gratefulness mindset. So doing it on a daily basis, it's not always just, you know, fluffy, good feelings. It's sometimes it's actual work and that's the times when it's the most meaningful. De'Vannon: And you said it another way in your podcast when, and you tied it into like how somebody maybe offended you and you had a choice and they apologize to, you know, let it go and move on or to follow the negativity, which is what you were saying.Like, if you're having a bad day and somebody counters that with positivity or you. Take the positive path that they're offering you or somebody that's offended you the apology, or are you going to press for, with the negativity and you sent the pick of the choice, that's going to lead to the best result for you not to pick the choice it's going to make you feel the best just in the next few moments.And so can you speak to us how the D the temptation of the shortsightedness to, why would we want to use it? [00:44:00] And you, you kind of already said it, you know, sometimes we want to chase the negative. Why have we become addicted to it? Is it doesn't then it's a long, that is what we're more accustomed to than being positive.What's Jeff: the temptation. Well, I think on a few different levels, you can think about it. So have you ever heard of the Mo the marshmallow test? This is a study that they did. I mean, they've done it since the fifties, I think, but they take children who are notoriously poor at self-regulation. So they, they would love to prefer immediate gratification over.Prolonging gratification for an extended benefit. So in this test, they, they sit the kids down. The kids can be anywhere from, I don't know, three or four to 10, actually, it doesn't matter. You can do it with adults, but it wouldn't be as interesting. And they say, here you go. Here's one marshmallow. And they plop a marshmallow down on the table in front of them and they say, we're going to leave the room and we're going to be gone for just a couple of minutes.And when we come back, If you have been able, if you have left the [00:45:00] marshmallow here, we're going to give you two marshmallows. You're allowed to eat the marshmallow while we're gone. If you, if you eat it, then you don't get the second marshmallow. But if you can wait, we'll give you two. And then they, they leave the room and the kid is in there by themselves, looking at the marshmallow and they film the kid.And so you get to see them. Some of the kids will cover their eyes. Some of the kids will pick it up and stare at it. Some of the kids will like cover their mouth and just, they do all kinds of like physical behaviors to express this desire that they're having internally to eat that marshmallow. And so like very few of the kids are able to hold off for the whole five minutes and get a second marshmallow.And they have found that the ones that do the ones that are able to delay gratification, go on to have a lot more success as adults in later life. And so I think that that is that little phenomena right there. Extend what, what, how we think about ourselves? Because in that specific circumstance that you just mentioned, where [00:46:00] you've just gotten into a fight, say it's with your spouse or somebody who you're close to and you you're mad.You're like, you're all, you're in the flesh. You're mad. Your emotions are wild and you have a choice because, okay, let's say they've apologized and they're trying to resolve it. They're not mad anymore. But you were in, you were the one who was in the right. So you won the fight. So you feel like you kind of are justified in staying mad a little longer.Then you have that choice. Do I just let it resolve and get over it or do I, you know, punish them a little bit? Let, let them know that I'm still mad and you have to kind of zoom out from your own experience of that moment and realize like, what are the consequences of both of those decisions? What are the consequences of staying mad and punishing this person?Well, it's going to continue the fight. It could hurt them enough to where then they're going to feel like they need to come back at me. It's going to just continue conflict. And it's going to continue this feeling of discomfort that I have because anger is not a pleasant feeling. And [00:47:00] it's, it's something that you should want to get rid of.But for some reason we kind of like it. And so, or you can have the choice of humbling yourself and, you know, ending, ending the conflict. But that feeling is not great either, because then we have this weird thing of like, Discontinuity. If that's the right word where you, you almost, as a person, you want your consciousness to feel like we're making smooth transitions from feeling to feeling in moments a moment so that we, because that's how we narrativize our existence.And it doesn't feel right when you just cut off that anger and say like, I'm not going to engage in this. I'm moving on, forgive and forget done over. And so it's tough. And like, everybody is different. I'm pretty quick to forgive. Once I decide it's over, I'm just, I let it go, but that's not going to happen for everybody.And it takes some practices. De'Vannon: It does say practice and sometimes counseling. I used to be very vindictive like that. You know, somebody did meet something, especially, especially like significant other, oh, [00:48:00] hail now, you know, it was going to be some shit, you know, until I said it wasn't going to be some shit and that was going to be hell to pay.But you know what, that, that gives us power over people. You know, when we feel like we have, when they, when they've heard us and then they, then people that have heard us before and we may need additional healing and stuff like that. But over time and through, you know, counseling and, you know, studying hypnotherapy myself and everything, which you, a lot of things you say, come, come directly out of the hypnotherapy school that who, you know, that I not saying you learned it from them or, you know, but I'm saying the, the, the knowledge process, you know, intersects with mine, you know, on many different levels.And it's absolutely fascinating. Oh, the Jeff: psychology background. De'Vannon: Okay. That's why then probably because hitting the therapist worked with you know, some running hand in tandem with a psych psychology psychologist. Do you have a psychology degree? Jeff: Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah. I studied it for five years. [00:49:00] I took the long way around undergrad.I studied all kinds of stuff. I just really enjoyed college. And so it took me five years and got the psychology degree and didn't really have the ambition to pursue an academic career. It just seemed like a kind of a hard route.De'Vannon: Okay. That's good stuff, man. Okay, so let's switch gears so you can talk about drugs, some drugs, man. And and we're going to talk about, we're going to kind of close the shout with your mushroom experiment that you did and the crack shack that I really want to hear all the juicy details of. But since we're talking about drugs, I want to take a moment to talk about what's going on in Portland, since you reside, not far from that area, you know, they legalized, well, they decriminalized all drugs.They're like back in February, meaning that they won't throw you in jail for it. They're not saying it's a great idea, but they're saying you shouldn't go to jail for it. I [00:50:00] agree with that. Everybody seems to be doing well and doing happy, but I want to hear your thoughts on it, especially since you live right there.Jeff: Yeah, sure. So, well, first of all, the whole strategy of drug decriminalization, it gets a lot of press. And I think a lot of people don't fully understand it in context because it's, it's, people are very reactionary about it and it's very taboo and we have all, anyone in our generation has been brought up during the drug war.And so, I mean, we're at war, that's the enemy. We're not going to decriminalize the enemy, but it's, it's fallacy. The drugs are not entities, their tools and their chemical tools that do a very specific things. And it's okay to take advantage of those tools under the right circumstances, the problems come about when people are not educated or when people don't understand what they're doing, or they don't know the history of what they're dealing with or just, I mean, there are so many possible pitfalls, which are the [00:51:00] re, which is the reason why we need to have good education about the subject and the idea that we are.Millions of people. I don't know how many people, a lot of people in prison for these nonviolent drug offenses just baffles me because it seems like such a waste of money. I don't, I'm sure a quick Google would probably reveal the number, but it's gotta be a lot of money per day, per inmate. And when these people were just trying to do something that just made them feel a little less shitty, that seems like a bad system to me.And obviously there are potential threats to assist them that doesn't have criminal penalties for drug offenses, but I think it could be designed in a way that really helps society instead of hurts society and could save a lot of money. Really, my whole, my main motivation for like taking this opinion is fiscal.I think that the idea of, of housing that many people for something that. Just, we're not, they're not protecting and they're not protecting society from these people. They're [00:52:00] punishing these people for doing something that was only meant to affect them. Now that's just for individual users to say the same about cartels and people who are managing massive drug rings and you know, basically black market stuff.That's, that's different. And that's, that is criminal because it's spreading around to other people. And I don't know, I think regulating that would eliminate that problem and create a regulated industry. Much like has happened in the states where marijuana has been legalized. I used to have to get into the car with strangers to go buy weed.I sat the meat, scuzzy, dirty people in Walmart, parking lots, get in the car, go down the road, all of the stuff. I don't want to do that shit. Nobody should have to, especially not as a teenager, like the, this it's dangerous. And in the world we live in now. Young people don't have to do that. Obviously teenagers shouldn't be doing any drugs, period.That was a joke, but I was doing them when I was a teenager. I was making bad choices and it's because I didn't [00:53:00] have education about what I was getting into education would be a huge step towards creating a system that actually works. And I think the one that we are operating in now, doesn't because people are still getting high and not always in a safe environment and not always under safe circumstances.And I think there could be a lot more just benefits extracted from the system rather than nothing but drawbacks. De'Vannon: Yeah. I've gotten in the car with my fair share of scuzzy, dirty people to go get crack and meth and you know, and everything else. I thank God that I'm still alive because I mean, it was bad.I would just find any like random person, like in the hood. At some point you can, especially since I used to be a drug dealer and a heavy user, I could tell who's getting high and who isn't. So all you gotta do is go down the street and you. That bitch knows where to find some shit and they ain't got shit to do anyway.So all you gotta do. And every time they'll get that, just getting in the [00:54:00] car, I think one person, maybe one night didn't, but other than that, a hundred percent of the time. So I'm all for illegal legalization tax that if you will, I don't give a damn, we should all be able to go down the fucking drugs or us and just, which is what I used to call my drug business back in the day.And you know, and just get whatever the fuck you need and do go home and leave her. But those fuck alone, Jeff: but it should have labels on it. And we should be able to tell where it was made and we should be able to call somebody if it's bad, or we should be able to not worry about going to jail. If you overdose, like there should be a system in place to protect people.People are going to get high either way. De'Vannon: Yeah. It's not about to stop, you know, but that's just conservative. You know, politicized who politicize that, you know, in the beginning, in the beginning, whoever that president was, I think that that whole war on drugs thing to either get reelected or to stay in, to stay in power with some sort of political gain, it Jeff: was a lot about was [00:55:00] controlling black people and Mexicans, the government knew that.So at least with marijuana, marijuana was highly associated with like jazz musicians and Mexican laborers in the south. And the president at the time, I forget which president it was, but the director of the DEA, I believe was Harry Anslinger. And he was quoted as saying like, we are going to do this to control these minority populations.And then, so they launched this whole misinformation campaign called reefer madness and, you know, convince a lot of people have some really big myths about drugs that are still, you know, pretty persistent to this day. But there's a lot of, a lot of misinformation out there and it's intentional. De'Vannon: It is, but we're going to get the victory over that.I think so. Oh, so tell, tell us about your mushroom experiment back in the crack shack and tell us what the crack shack. Jeff: Sure. So [00:56:00] I grew up in a small town, had a very tight group of friends and just a few miles down from my house. My friend Ronnie lived, and there was a, they had old like garden shed out behind their house that we had converted into like a hangout.I w converted as a strong word. We put a couch in there and it was still just as dirty and gross as before, but we hate like decorated all the walls with Sharpies and stuff. It was, it was like, Exactly what you would picture for a group of high school boys hanging out and mostly just like smoking weed and drinking beer and laughing a lot.And so that was where I spent a lot of my evenings and, you know, junior, senior year of high school and we got pretty interested in drugs. So not only was that kind of like the place I did them. There's also where I went to learn about stuff. He had a computer with good internet access and not a whole lot of adult supervision, which is exactly what I was after.So we were on the Shrew, Marie and [00:57:00] Erowid and all these mushroom sites back in the early two thousands, just when the, the field of psychedelics was still very taboo and still really kind of underground completely there wasn't studies going on at Johns Hopkins at that time, like there is now. And so we're everything is, is amateur.The information is amateurish and you're never sure it's not coming out of universities. You're never sure what to trust. And so I really trusted. My friends more than I should have in my own instincts, more than I should have. So we live in a place where there's a very, very potent strain of psychedelic mushroom called as a residence is Salafi as a residence.And they were first documented around the time I was in high school by a guy named Paul Stamets. And he found that they have a much higher psilocybin content than their close relatives. So we were all pretty stoked about that. And we decided to try to find them and identify them. And we did, and [00:58:00] my friends had all tried them a couple of times already and I had yet, and I decided I was going to go for it.So I showed up ready to go and didn't really know what to expect, but I was just coming at it with an open mind. And my friend handed me one of those red solo cups, stuffed, just packed full of fresh philosophy as a residence, probably between 35 and 40 full mushrooms, which is a lot I don't I don't know how much your listeners are familiar with the dosage for mushrooms, but what's referred to as a heroic dose, we'll take you on the hero's journey.That's usually five grams of dried mushroom material. And again, each species is a little different, so it's not always the same, but this is much, much higher than that. And I had never done it before. So within 20 minutes, my whole body was. Humming, this weird warm feeling where it's like, almost like your [00:59:00] blood turns into a bunch of microscopic canaries.Like they're just fluttering about your veins and you're just feeling different than you've ever felt before. And from there you start to slide and you don't really stop for quite a while. I was listening to this band called built to spill, check them out if, if you're into that stuff. And I remember it because it was such a profound moment that stuck in my head that I've heard the song a few times since and this was again like 15 years ago.I still, it takes me right back to that moment. And I was listening to the, built to spill this song called. It's a good song and all the colors from the Sharpies on the wall with the music where like pulsating, almost like the walls were breathing and super colorful. And then like with the symbol crash at the end, and it's like fading out all the colors just like started running down the walls and bleeding together.And I was like, all right, I think they're working. And then I looked up at the ceiling and it was [01:00:00] covered with spiders and I was afraid of spiders, but for some reason I wasn't feeling real scared at the moment. And that's the last I remember of that section. I know there was probably so much more, but next thing I remember.Standing in the middle of the room and looking like everybody's laughing at me and I'm like standing in the middle of the room and I have no idea what's what's really going on. And I looked at the TV and my face was on a TV and my eyes were bright red. And I thought this was a hallucination, but what had happened was my friends were actually fucking with me and they had hooked up a video camera and put it on me and then connected it to the TV.This was probably super mean. And I sh I would never do this to anybody, but they, they were trying to freak me out and I, I, it worked so I, I was started freaking out a little bit. Yeah, that part was, was scary, but you know, not that big a deal because I was still somewhat connected to [01:01:00] reality. And shortly after that, I, I remember hearing people say, Like leading up to the trip.When you see a door, go through it. When you see a staircase, follow it, like just do whatever the trip wants and open yourself up to possibility. And because if you don't, you're going to have a bad trip. So I took that little too literally. And when I felt the urge to urinate, I was like, just go with it, bro.Do it. This is what the trip wants. It won't, you're not peeing yourself in real life, but I was, and I paid myself in the middle of the room and that's probably the comic relief of the whole story. Because I was there with like a girl that I had just started dating and like didn't really even know her well enough to see me in a Somewhat vegetive state.And she had to change me. She said it was to like trying to change the 200 pound baby. Like it was, it was, it was terrible. But so shortly after I was put into some [01:02:00] fresh clothes, I lost connection with my body completely. And I, I experienced what I refer to as ego death. I could not remember is not even the right word because there's, there was no memory warehouse available, period.My, I, it's not that I just didn't remember who I was. I didn't even know that I was a person. I was just a, an energy field and I was in open space and I was going through different dimensions where sometimes it was all black. Sometimes it was like every color and sound and. Experience I could ever fathom.And other times it was all white and blank and it was just like the deep, deep layers of consciousness of what it means to be alive and to be a human. And I saw nothing. I got deep enough to where I had gone through all of the, the astral plane, [01:03:00] where everything exists in a possibility. And I had penetrated out the other side of that and entered a realm of nothingness.And at that moment, I just, I couldn't believe how Careless. I had been to, to put myself here because at this moment, I didn't know if I was ever coming back. I had lost all concept of time. So it's moment to moment. Every moment is its own. And it's just, it's, it's impossible to put it into words that accurately describe the experience.It's it's, that's why so many people feel driven to pursue it, I think. But yeah, I just, I realized that everything we have is so, so precious and so rare in, in terms of, of all that there is, and can be this, this small shred of existence that we can actually touch and taste and experience and feel and live in, in three dimensions in time.And it's beautiful [01:04:00] and it is the most beautiful thing it's, it's like, it's everything. So I. I don't know, it's just, this is the ultimate knowledge that we're lucky to be here. Just permeated my whole being. And I felt very connected to God and to the universe. And at this point I didn't even care anymore that I wasn't sure if I was a human or a doorknob.I just didn't, it didn't matter. I was just lucky to be experiencing an experience. And so from there it slowly pull me back little by little one, one click at a time, two into, you know, three-dimensional reality and into my timeline. And I slowly learned again, who I was. I remember sitting there with my friend.And this is like eight hours after ingesting the mushrooms so long enough for them to have mostly worn off. But there, I was just kind of buttoned back up and he was like, quizzing me on objects in my life that I would definitely know, [01:05:00] like he was, I, I, for some reason, I remember him asking me about football a lot, cause I was playing football at the time and he was asking me like the different positions and what, what a football was.And I remember being really excited when I remember what football was, because I couldn't have done that a few minutes earlier. And so eventually I reassembled the collection of memories and experiences that I call Jeff Nesbit and got back to live in. De'Vannon: Could you have been, do people overdose on a mushroom that you haven't been stuck in that vegetative state?Jeff: Huh? I highly doubt it. I don't, I've never heard of that happening. And if I think about it, biologically, I think your body would just metabolize the chemicals and transfer them out. So it's in order to be stuck in that state, you would have to have continuous exposure to the chemical. De'Vannon: So there's though I was thinking more in terms of like [01:06:00] brain damage, you know, Jeff: I would not say like physical brain damage, like as if you hit your head or something, but I will say that people with a pre pre
Jeff Eaton Jeff Eaton looks at content modeling two ways, both the traditional boxes-and-arrows way and the title-case Content Modeling way. Thinking about how you'll structure and organize your content will always be important. But the real power of content modeling emerges when it rises to a higher level and accounts for the shared understanding the people across your organization have of your content. Jeff calls this more sophisticated approach "The Content Model." We talked about: his work with Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte at Autogram his definitions of content modeling: 1) a relatively simple boxes and arrows approach and 2) The Content Model, a higher-level, big-picture look at your content and the shared understanding of it in your organization "what we talk about when we talk about content modeling" the truth behind the old joke that "the real content model is the friends we made along the way" the inevitability of spreadsheets in content modeling work some of the benefits of content modeling: communicating consistently across different teams getting clarity around how to structure content for various end uses how taxonomy and ontology practices can help bring order out of chaos the lack of agreement among content modelers about standards in modeling terminology the importance of stepping back and thinking about what you want your content modeling to do for you Jeff's bio Jeff helps large organizations understand, model, and manage their content. Whether he's fixing problems with CMS architecture or editorial workflow, his solutions sit in the overlap between design, communications, and technology. Jeff's website is eaton.fyi. He can also be found online at Twitter and LinkedIn. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWTF0kn5nhk Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 100. You can look at any organization's content through two lenses: either as a fairly simple body of work which you can contain in boxes and connect with arrows, or as a complex and nuanced ecosystem that shows the shared understanding of your content across your organization. Jeff Eaton finds value in both approaches to content modeling, but his most impactful work always includes a rigorous and robust accounting of the systems that drive the content. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 100 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Jeff Eaton. Jeff is a partner at Autogram, the legendary new digital agency along with Ethan Marcotte and Karen McGrane. But welcome Jeff, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to at Autogram. Jeff: Well, it's a pleasure to be here, especially for the monumental 100th episode, the entry into triple digits. So at Autogram, we're basically a consultancy agency. We focus on organizations that are building and maintaining complex content systems, communications oriented systems, and are facing challenges both with their governance models, how to transition from a rigid template-oriented approach to a more fluid compositional approach, and how to grapple with questions like transitions to decoupled and headless approaches and omni-channel and multi-channel stuff, and the role of design systems and what they're doing, that cluster of interrelated concerns is something that we've found as very rarely being dealt with holistically. But you start talking on one of them and yeah, the sweater starts unraveling and you find out that they're all related. Larry: No, the way you just said that and it's not like they're buzzwords, those are actual things happening in the discipline . . . to handle content, right? Yeah. We were talking before we went on the air and we were getting a little worried, this could go forever, but today we're going to focus this part of the conversation on...
Jeff Eaton Jeff Eaton looks at content modeling two ways, both the traditional boxes-and-arrows way and the title-case Content Modeling way. Thinking about how you'll structure and organize your content will always be important. But the real power of content modeling emerges when it rises to a higher level and accounts for the shared understanding the people across your organization have of your content. Jeff calls this more sophisticated approach "The Content Model." We talked about: his work with Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte at Autogram his definitions of content modeling: 1) a relatively simple boxes and arrows approach and 2) The Content Model, a higher-level, big-picture look at your content and the shared understanding of it in your organization "what we talk about when we talk about content modeling" the truth behind the old joke that "the real content model is the friends we made along the way" the inevitability of spreadsheets in content modeling work some of the benefits of content modeling: communicating consistently across different teams getting clarity around how to structure content for various end uses how taxonomy and ontology practices can help bring order out of chaos the lack of agreement among content modelers about standards in modeling terminology the importance of stepping back and thinking about what you want your content modeling to do for you Jeff's bio Jeff helps large organizations understand, model, and manage their content. Whether he's fixing problems with CMS architecture or editorial workflow, his solutions sit in the overlap between design, communications, and technology. Jeff's website is eaton.fyi. He can also be found online at Twitter and LinkedIn. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWTF0kn5nhk Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 100. You can look at any organization's content through two lenses: either as a fairly simple body of work which you can contain in boxes and connect with arrows, or as a complex and nuanced ecosystem that shows the shared understanding of your content across your organization. Jeff Eaton finds value in both approaches to content modeling, but his most impactful work always includes a rigorous and robust accounting of the systems that drive the content. Interview transcript Larry: Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 100 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Jeff Eaton. Jeff is a partner at Autogram, the legendary new digital agency along with Ethan Marcotte and Karen McGrane. But welcome Jeff, tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to at Autogram. Jeff: Well, it's a pleasure to be here, especially for the monumental 100th episode, the entry into triple digits. So at Autogram, we're basically a consultancy agency. We focus on organizations that are building and maintaining complex content systems, communications oriented systems, and are facing challenges both with their governance models, how to transition from a rigid template-oriented approach to a more fluid compositional approach, and how to grapple with questions like transitions to decoupled and headless approaches and omni-channel and multi-channel stuff, and the role of design systems and what they're doing, that cluster of interrelated concerns is something that we've found as very rarely being dealt with holistically. But you start talking on one of them and yeah, the sweater starts unraveling and you find out that they're all related. Larry: No, the way you just said that and it's not like they're buzzwords, those are actual things happening in the discipline . . . to handle content, right? Yeah. We were talking before we went on the air and we were getting a little worried, this could go forever, but today we're going to focus this part of the conversation on...
Now that the country is opening back up again, many people are excited to see their loved ones, eat at restaurants, go to shows, and live their lives in a more pre-pandemic way. But as excited as we all are, sadly, many of our favorite places to visit no longer exist. They shut down during the COVID-19 recession and couldn't survive. So today I am absolutely thrilled to welcome back my guest to the show. While others weren't so lucky, today's guest is excited to give us an update. I'm Hilary Topper and you are listening to Hilary Topper on Air. Joining me today on this episode is Jeff Jaffe. He's the founder and owner of Pop International Galleries. They are an art gallery on the Bowery at the junction of Spring Street in New York City. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Jeff - Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, given what we've all gone through this last year and a half or so. Hilary - Gosh, it's been, it's been crazy. Um, well, I'm very happy to have you back on the show and I'm so glad that Pop International Galleries, which is one of my favorite in New York City, is still open and doing well. Can you remind our listeners about who you are and what Pop International Galleries is all about? Jeff - Sure, The Pop Gallery started back, believe it or not, it's hard to even comprehend back in 1997 when I sort of came to realize that there was a need for an art gallery to focus on specific things. And in those days it happened to be pop art, which was Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and big names, John Michel, Basquiat, and Roy Lichtenstein and so on and so forth. And we did really well with that. But as things began to progress, it dawned on me that Pop International really meant focusing on pop culture more than pop art per se, that pop art fits into the realm and genre of, uh, what we're sort of interested in, but there were more things too, we were missing out on. And so we began to focus on sports, photography and rock and roll photography, and, more recently, street art and graffiti, and, as a consequence of which, Pop International Galleries has become this sort of iconic little center for focusing on anything that has to do with pop art and popular culture. Hilary - So, as we were talking at the beginning of the show, I said that this year had been like no other, how was the gallery doing? And how did you fare during all of this? And how did you survive? Jeff - It's funny. I was just going to say before you said the word survive that we dived into survival mode. There were choices that had to be made. And then there were decisions that were made for us that we had no power to overcome or resist or embrace. We just had to sort of take them on. And as a consequence of which, we sort of began to look at what the virtual world was going to offer us. What technology was going to offer us and help us with, that goes past the questions of having conversations with landlords and dealing with those kinds of things. And we were fortunate enough to have a lovely landlord who was willing to help work things out and help us through so that we could really remain in business. And then the other thing is I made a very, very strong decision. Some people questioned me why, but I decided not to let a single staff person go. I was just sort of, of that mind where I felt a certain amount of responsibility. And so I took steps to enable remote working and remote selling, which was very difficult because selling art remotely is not something that we would ever have thought we would ever encounter. People like to come to an art gallery, they like to look at the art and smell it and touch it and look at the frame and we really had to come up with different sort of means and strategies to get people comfortable with the notion that they could buy a lot this way. Hilary - So during this pandemic, you told me that you developed even stronger client relationships. Can you talk about that a little bit? Jeff - Absolutely we, well, again, it sort of goes back to this notion of virtual business and sort of doing things with Zoom and Skype and all kinds of things. And what we discovered was that by actually picking up the telephone as opposed to sending emails, reaching out to people individually and touching base with people, especially regular collectors about us. And we have, we have a huge collectors base and I mean, people have been buying from us for 25 years. We have thousands of people that we've sold out to and we decided that one of the things that we would do is reach out to people individually. And so it began. And emails became phone calls, emails became texts, messages, and text messages, became phone calls. And then it sort of blossomed into this ongoing dialogue between our consultants and our collective base and which led into larger events using a Zoom to have virtual openings and that kind of thing, which had been very successful. Hilary - So, can you tell us, or, share with us some of the interesting artists that you represent in your gallery today and why you represent them? Jeff - Well, we represent roughly about 25 artists or so from around the world. And again, it goes back to what I said a little bit earlier in terms of representing art is certainly pop related, but it has much more to do with the notion of what popular culture is. And subsequently, we still do represent Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and John Michelle Buskey out and so on. But we've edged out into other realms, which focus on things. Like, for example, we did a very, very special event with the godfather of street art, Ron English. And Ron was thrilled at the concept of making a type of work that he had never made before, which is paintings on paper in the manner he had never made them before. And so running this book has become a very important aspect of the pop gallery. We represent a Danish artist whose name is Ola Olberg and Ola has taken the cartoon character Tintin, who many people know lots of American people don't know about Tintin, but put Tintin into different scenarios, sort of naughty sort of sexual scenarios, which is something that most people don't associate Tintin with. But the idea of Tintin and popular culture and cartoons and things, that many people and I grew up with Tintin comics. So, that's been truly successful. We represent an artist by the name of Tony Ray Negro, who did all the backstage passes for the grateful dead. When, you know, from the age of 20 back in the eighties and nineties and so on. So the whole concept of rock and roll and music fits perfectly into this notion of pop culture. And then of course we represent two other artists that really fit into this concept so beautifully that I couldn't have even imagined it. It was just a natural thing. We represent the art of Dr.Seuss, which besides all this sort of nonsense and drama that occurred with the audit Dr. Seuss recently, we represent the estate of. Dr. Seuss, which means all the illustration drawings and things that he made limited additions of and the estate represents and a very special what we call the secret audit Dr. Seuss, which has stuff that he made in his spare time or the midnight audit Dr. Seuss, along with what he called the unorthodox taxidermy, which are these really beautiful, funny sort of taxidermy heads, which are just hilarious. And then we represent Tom Everhart, who was the protégé, if you will, of Charles Schultz of Peanuts and Snoopy fame. Tom was a young guy who saw Schultz Sparky as a mentor. And they had a really wonderful father, son type relationship. They and Tom started to interpret all the Snoopy characters and Schulz gave him permission before he died to be the only artist in the world to be able to make art using Snoopy and peanuts characters without a license. He has a lifetime license. They had a show together in the loop a number of years ago. So again, this whole notion of popular culture and pop, all these, The Seuss, the Tintin, the Snoopy Eberhardt pieces that all fit in really, really well. And then of course we move into street art and graffiti. And I have some lovely stories to tell you about that when you're ready. Hilary - Tell us we'd love to hear. So the very first sort of graffiti street art experience happened with pop and about 12 years ago, actually I got a phone call from a collector, a good friend collector. They said Jeff, these two boys who live in Bushwick in Brooklyn, I've started to collect their art quite, quite seriously. And I think you should go and visit them in their studio. And I said, Mike, if you are sure that's what you suggest, I trust you and happy to do it. So Mike set up this little meeting and I drove out to Bushwick 12 years ago. Bushwick wasn't what it is today, 12 years ago or so. And I arrived in this sort of funny little loft odd building where these two guys lived and worked. They had a studio together. Their names were, Mike Buck, Michael Bucca and, Fernando Romero, their street names, graffiti names were 2ESAE and Ski. So Fernando is Ski and Mike is a 2esae and I arrived at this place sort of not expecting a whole lot, but it was kind of exciting. And the first thing of course was they had a big pile of donuts and coffee for me on the table. And on the other side, they had a big bottle of Hennessy. They had no clue who I was going to be, and they were wondering what I was going to choose. It was really hilarious. And I meant, I went for the coffee and donuts just for the record, but, I'd forgotten to mention that they went by the name of a group that painted and work together. They went by the name of UR New York. And I saw their work around, you know, they used to sell this stuff on the street for a hundred bucks. And here I had this opportunity and as I went through the space studio, whatever you'd like to call it, I knew instantly that they belonged in the gallery. So I pulled him aside and I said, Fernando, Mike, we're definitely going to do something, but there are a few things that we have to deal with first. And they said, yeah, sure. I mean, they were really, really excited. And I looked at them and I said, you know, the 37 indictments that you have against you and the five years probation that you're on. I mean, these guys were like, looking, how do you know? How do you know all this? I said, how do I know it? Mike told me, you know, Mike referred me to you. He told me all of this stuff, they said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But how does Mike know? And I had to sort of at that moment in time, decide, should I say how Mike and I figured out what the heck? I said, well, I hate to break it to you but Mike is the undercover cop who arrested you guys. It was always the uniform guys who took you in, but Mike was undercover. So you never knew who he was. And he developed a relationship with your love, of art and started collecting your art. Hilary - That's so funny. That's a great story. Jeff - There's a documentary in there somewhere. I'm sure. Mike, I'm telling you, they went bananas. These two guys jumping up and down hooting and hollering. It was just hilarious. And I said, and based on what. In order for me to put you in the gallery, we have to get rid of those issues that we just discussed and the way we're going to do it is by doing community work and getting involved with children in need and homelessness and whatnot. My attorney is a former judge. Mike, the undercover cop eventually became a DA. We're going to write letters. We're going to do all kinds of things that are going to sort of help mitigate this. And so the first thing we did was a big project in Chelsea in that there's a public housing center in Chelsea, on the west side of New York City. And we arranged for the boys to do a big mural and to work with all the children, helping them draw and paint and do all that kind of stuff. Got a fair amount of press and coverage. And one thing led to another. And the boys started working with children everywhere working with charities and organizations that we were able to connect them with. They went overseas, they went to Australia to work with Aboriginal children. When they went to South Africa to work with children in need, they went to Israel to work with Palestinian and Israeli children to show them how we're all the same. They really did some beautiful things and, as a consequence of all of this, all of those charges and probations were dropped and they have gone on to become two of the most important artists that we represent here. And my relationship with them is incredible. I mean, we are talking about a father-son relationship, and we've sold hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of their art since then. Hilary - Two boys selling their art for 50 bucks on the street, wonderful story. That's awesome, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing those stories with me. So let's take this a step back. Someone walks into your gallery and they're looking to start a collection. How does that process work? Jeff - So the one thing about Pop International Galleries, which I believe was a game-changer and for many reasons, was that we decided to break down that whole barrier. You often walk into these galleries where someone's sitting behind a desk and you can barely see them. It's a high sort of desk and it's just white walls and maybe three pieces of art on the wall and nobody even talks to you. And then they look at you and they want to know what shoes you're wearing or what handbag you're carrying or how big the diamond is, or the watch on your hand. You know, that kind of stuff. We broke that completely. We have a much more open, friendly, inviting, environment. And as a consequence of which people absolutely love coming into the gallery. And so we focus on people who have never bought a piece of art before and on people who have big collections. And so we don't differentiate. We just help people find all that they love. We've always had a policy not to sell art on the basis of investment, when people say to me, well, if I buy this print, you know, it's 3,000 bucks, what's it going to be worth in 10 years? And I say, well, I have a really good stockbroker who has an office down the road. If you'd like, I could send you there, but we try not to. If you came to me with 5 million bucks and said, hey, could you help me invest in art? That might be a different story, but we break down all those barriers. Hilary - That's awesome. Let me ask you something. Do you have any exciting exhibits coming up that you want to share with us? Jeff - I do. Actually. There are a few things that we're working on. I'll just tell you about two that we had that sort of part of what this conversation was about. Where these virtual exhibitions, the first one we did was with Ron English and it was a big test for us to see if we could sell art while the gallery was shut down, or while we have contracted hours or while there were rules and regulations about social distancing and so on and so forth. So we did a test actually with two artists, Ron English, and McKenzie Papa, British artists who I'd been working with for many, many years. And they were amazing, absolutely amazing. They were RSVP events only. So you couldn't come to the Zoom call if you didn't get, if you didn't RSVP, couldn't join the thing. The idea was to show some videos, moderate with questions. My team here had questions for Oscar, the artists, and then, we opened up some of the questions to collectors and again, moderated things well enough so that it didn't get drawn out in long, sort of like into a sort of drawn out thing. And we sold a whole bunch of art. And so it opened up this idea for us. To do some more of them. And, we're now going to be working on a curated show of street art, that Ski from that team that I was just telling you about Fernando Romero is going to curate, that's going to be absolutely amazing, it's going to be a smash hit, no questions about it because he's going to, he has a lot of connections, obviously in the street art world and graffiti world. And he's going to bring in people who we've never represented, um, and curated in a way that will sort of open up art that had never been shown before in this manner. So we're very, very excited about that one. The other one that I'm working on is an Australian couple, the names are Gillie and Mark a husband and wife team who make art together. And, they're actually very well known in New York City for their outdoor monumental bronze works. And, before the pandemic, they did this beautiful, beautiful exhibition of women of valor. They had come to realize that women bronze, sculptures and statues of women, we're sadly lacking female sculptures, and monumental sculptures of women. There were less of them than there were men and they were going to change that. So they did this really beautiful collection of sculptures of some fantastic women, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and so on and so forth, it was just really beautiful. And then they've done these large outdoor installations. People may have seen it up at Astor Place in Brooklyn, the big rhinos stacked on top of one another. Monumental pieces and part of what they do besides them tease and make fun of themselves. Gillie and Mark, Gillie is a bunny rabbit and Mark as a dog in their paintings and they sit on Vespas and bicycles and do all kinds of sweet, lovely things. We're going to do an event with them online and sort of tied in with the time zone with Australia. Those are two really great things that are coming up. Hilary- So cool. How could our listeners get in touch and actually sign up for any of these events? Jeff - Really easy. All you need to do is shoot us either an email, to, you could send it to me, jeff@popinternational.com or just art@popinternational.com. And just say, Hey, I heard the podcast, or you could, um, just call the gallery. And the number is (212) 533-4262. And we'll put you on the list and, and sort of begin to develop a relationship with you the way we have with our many, many thousands of collectors that we have over the years, we look so forward to it. Hilary - This was really informative and congratulations on your successes. I really appreciate you being on the show. I want to also thank our sponsors, the Russo law group, The Profit Express with Tim Healey, Pop international galleries. Thank you. Gold Benes LLP, and the Pegalis Law Group. And last but not least, I want to thank you our listeners for tuning in. If you want more information on this show or any other show you could visit our website at hillarytopperonair.com or you can find us on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, apple podcasts, even Amazon Alexa, where out there you'll find you can find us have a great week and we'll see you next time.
Jeff Sussna is a consultant and author specialized in helping organizations deliver software more effectively. This is Jeff's second appearance on the show. In this conversation, he tells us about Customer Value Charting, a visual tool that helps teams balance strategy and agility. Listen to the show Download episode 61 Show notes Sussna Associates Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT in the Digital Service Economy by Jeff Sussna The Informed Life episode 15: Jeff Sussna on Cybernetics Customer Value Charting: A Visual Tool for Customer-Centered Discovery & Delivery by Jeff Sussna Software as a service Salesforce Slack's new DM feature can be used to send abuse and harassment with just an invite (The Verge) Promise theory Mark Burgess Wardley map Impact mapping User Story mapping ServiceNow JIRA Read the transcript Jorge: Jeff welcome to the show. Jeff: Thanks for having me. It's great to be on and great to talk to you again. Jorge: Yeah, I should have said welcome again to the show, because this is not your first time here. So, thank you for joining us again. Now, some folks might not have listened to our first conversation, so for their benefit, would you mind, please, reintroducing yourself? About Jeff Jeff: I'm Jeff Sussna. I live in Minneapolis and I run a software delivery consulting firm there. And our clients are companies that typically are doing some form of Agile and/or DevOps, and they're struggling with it. And what we typically find is that they face a conflict between agility and autonomy on the one hand, and strategy and alignment on the other. And Agile and DevOps by themselves... they're very much about breaking things down into smaller pieces. Smaller teams, smaller systems, smaller units of work, as a way of making change and adaptation easier. But they don't really have much to say about how you put the pieces back together. I like to say that customers don't want to buy microservices, they want to buy service. And so, there's this kind of big missing piece in the discourse around where are we trying to go and what are we trying to do? And so, our focus is partly on helping organizations do Agile and DevOps more effectively, but what that really ends up being is helping them overcome this conflict between, "this is what I'm doing today," and "this is where we're trying to go this year." What customers want Jorge: And this is the reason why I wanted to speak with you again, because this idea of striking a balance.... I'm going to frame it as striking a balance between agility and strategy — or you called that a strategy/alignment — is something that I think plays out in many fields, not just DevOps. This notion that the best way for us to make progress, let's say, is by working step by step and making small adjustments. But those small adjustments need to be in service to something, right? And... anyways, you shared a link to a post on your website about a tool called Customer Value Charting, which seems to get at this idea of striking a balance between agility and strategy, and I was hoping you would tell us about it. Jeff: Sure. But we need to start by taking a little bit of a step back. One of the things that we've learned working with our clients who typically are making the transition from software products to software services and cloud delivery, is that the cloud completely transforms the relationship between the customer and the software provider. I had an epiphany a number of years ago. I was looking at a marketing website for an early software as a service company; might even have been Salesforce. And right on their homepage, they were talking about things like multiple data centers, and offsite backup, and advanced security practices. And I realized that they were spending marketing dollars on IT operations. And then I read a sentence that really opened my eyes. It said, "we update the software so you don't have to." And the epiphany was the recognition that the cloud transfers the cost of change from the customer to the software provider. So, it used to be when software was a product that the feedback from the customer was things like, "well, we have to go through a three-month change management process before we can install the new version." Or "the new version requires an OS upgrade, and we're not scheduled to do that until next year." And with the cloud, the conversation is completely different. It's, "why is it taking you so long to deliver this feature upgrade, or this bug fix, or this stability improvement?" So, customers start to expect this continuous increase in value. And on the one hand, they become impatient with delay. No matter how good your feature is, if it takes too long to deliver, you start to lose customers. But at the same time, what they want is not just this continuous spray of random features. What they want is improved value. And what value is... I think of it in terms of three dimensions. The first is usefulness. Does it help me accomplish something that I'm trying to do? The second is usability in its largest meaning. Can I understand it? Can I adopt and onboard it? Can I administer it? Can I get help with it? Can I integrate it? And finally, dependability, which is everything from scalability to performance, to resilience, to security, to compliance, to trust. If you look at what happened with Slack this week, when they released this new global DM feature and then pulled it because it turned out to be this opportunity for a huge abuse. They violated people's trust. And so, they had to pull a feature. The missing piece in Agile and DevOps Jorge: I see dependability and usability as perhaps table stakes. And when you speak of creating value, that is where the usefulness dimension comes in. Is that a fair reading of that? Jeff: I think we could have a lengthy debate about whether dependability is table stakes. I mean, yes. Ultimately, what you're after is usefulness, right? The reason I need a dry cleaner is because it isn't feasible for me to clean my tuxedo at home. So, I need someone to do it for me and you're right, that ultimately, that's what I want: is to get my tuxedo clean. But I also need to get my tuxedo clean in time for tonight's formal event. So, things like speed may be important. I need to be able to easily get to and from the dry cleaner, so usability in terms of access to roads and shopping malls and whatever, may be important. The reason that I put these three together is... again, the shift from product to service involves this inclusion of operations. And that's something that often falls short. Product management tends to think of itself as being in the feature business. I do a lot of work with what I call cloud native product management, which is working with organizations and helping them understand that product managers need to be accountable for these usability and dependability metrics, as much as they are accountable for number of features delivered, or customer growth, or revenue, or anything like that. In any case, what customers are expecting is a continual evolution. So, across these dimensions that the service is getting continually better, not just sort of a random spray of things. And so, the challenge is how do you become more continuous and how do you have some strategic direction? And again, this is kind of a missing piece in the Agile and DevOps discourse, and I think that's why there's this kind of impedance mismatch intention and a certain frustration between Agile teams and designers or Agile teams and product managers or Agile teams and executives. And in thinking about how to resolve it, it occurred to me that the answer is simply to approach your work, both at the strategic and the tactical level, in terms of the outcomes as opposed to outputs. And what I mean by outcomes is customer outcomes. Customer benefit is maybe a better word. You know, the benefit of the dry cleaner is that I can get my tuxedo cleaned in time to go to the formal event. It's not fundamentally about a cash register or a counter or even cleaning chemicals. And I mention that because a lot of the conversation I see around outcomes over outputs tends to actually talk about business outcomes. You know, revenue growth and customer retention, and time on site and business outcomes are great. I don't have any problem with them, but people tend to skip this step. We have a hypothesis that this feature will cause this change in customer behavior, which will lead to this business outcome or business impact. But it leaves open the question of, well, why is the customer changing their behavior? What is the benefit to them? So, I started thinking about both strategy and direction and context, and also tactical work in terms of customer outcomes. We have an epic, or we have a roadmap, or we have a strategy, or we have a user story. Why are we doing that? Who cares? How does it help? And I started working with teams in helping them figure out, well, how do we start to put those two together? And a couple of things happened. One is that for a long time, I've been using some work in something called Promise Theory, which was developed by Mark Burgess, which is a way of thinking about how large-scale complex distributed systems can work well. Where a distributed system could be anything from a large-scale software system to a company, to a city, to an economy. And it's based on the idea that parts of the system make promises to each other. Where a promise is simply an intention to do something of benefit. So, we can think about Slack as promising the ability to get work done together across boundaries, right? Why do you need Slack? If everybody's in the same office, at the same time and they work for the same manager, you don't need Slack. You just talk to each other. It's when you're separated by space and time, and you're working across an organization, or across multiple organizations that you need help in order to get that done. And you can think about all of the features that Slack contains as working in service to that promise. And you can think of those features also as making promises of their own. You know, in order to work together across boundaries, you need to be able to have real-time and non-real-time conversations. You need to be able to find and start conversations and dip into them and out of them. None of that says anything in particular about a feature. We haven't said anything yet about a channel, or a thread, or an emoji. We're talking about what it is that Slack helps a user do and what the user can accomplish by doing that. So, I started working with teams in terms of thinking about what promises we would make. And these could be promises to end users, or they could be promises to other parts of the organization. I do a lot of work with platform teams and their customers are internal development teams. And what happens if you look at particularly traditional IT, there tends to be this approach of: if you want us to do something, file a ticket and we'll do it. It's very requirements-driven. It's very outside-in. We try and do what we're told to do and often we fail, for various reasons, most of which aren't our fault. They have to do with the way that the organization is structured and the way the work is structured. And this is really about turning it inside-out out and thinking about a platform or whatever the team is in the organization, as a service provider that is making and hopefully fulfilling promises to its internal customers. So, I work with them to understand, well, what promises are you making? How well do you fulfill them? And how can you both do a better job of fulfilling your promises and also think about more useful ones to make, which is where innovation really starts to happen. Promises The other interesting thing about a promise — and I should probably talk about this a little more — why this word promise? Why not contract or guarantee or requirement? A promise represents an intention that may or may not actually come to pass. I might promise to take out the trash, and then I might forget. So sometimes we break our promises. And counterintuitively, that's actually a really good thing. I had a conversation with a very thoughtful person once; we were talking about promises and then she sent me this email and she said, "I really don't understand why you would ever make a promise that you don't intend to actually fulfill." And I said, "well, you never would, but you can't guarantee things." So, the word "promise" forces you to think about the possibility of failure, which on the one hand helps you do a better job of not failing, but it also gives you an opportunity to think about improvement and repair. You could think of a promise as a bundle that brings together this idea of service, and customer jobs, and commitments to actually deliver service and continuous improvement. We can create this process where we think about our work at every level, from the tactical all the way to the strategic, in terms of how are we promising to help? How effectively are we fulfilling our promises? And how can we improve our ability to make and fulfill promises that are useful? The next step was to start developing a visual way of representing this. And in particular, a visual way of connecting tactical to strategic outcomes or promises. Customer Value Charting For a while I was working with something called Wardley Maps, which is a very powerful visual mechanism for identifying value chains all the way from the strategic, down to the very, very tactical and devolving that value. And the only problem I found is that when I was working with people who weren't sort of math or graphing nerds, if you will, they tended to find Wardley Maps kind of hard to look at. They're very much built around kind of graph theory and cartesian coordinates and that kind of thing. And people seem to get somewhat confused just by the visual representation. So, I was casting around for another way to present it. I started looking at Impact Maps and User Story Maps, which were very appealing, but what I found in practice was that they tended to kind of fall back into representing features, right? Here's this big feature we want to build and we'll make a User Story Map to represent the parts, and then we'll create slices and say, "we're going to create this set of sub features first." And I really wanted something that focused on this idea of outcomes and promises. And that's what led to Customer Value Charting. You could think of it as a riff on Promise Theory meets Wardley Maps meets User Story Maps. And it's a very simple visual representation, which is basically a grid of three rows and four columns. When you look at it from the top down, the top row is, "why is your help needed?" What is it that your customer or a potential customer is trying to do that they can't do on their own? So, if we continue with our Slack example, it's getting work done together across boundaries. If you look at the middle row, this is, "how do you help?" What promises do you make in support of that higher need? So, again, Slack promises things like the ability to have structured conversations that are both real time and non-real time so you and I can just chat and then one of us can go off to lunch and come back and continue the conversation. The ability to dip into and out of conversation. So, if I join a new team, I can find out what conversations have been happening. I can see what happened last night or yesterday. The ability to dynamically create and find conversation. And the bottom row is, "what help do you need in order to fulfill your own promises?" If you're on the Slack application team and you're building an application, you need things like elastic infrastructure, because it's a very dynamic system and users come and go. It needs to be able to scale up and down very easily. You also need help from the customer support organization, because you need visibility into how are customers using the application and how are they struggling with it so we understand where it needs to be improved. Once you do that, you have a nice visual representation of your value proposition all the way from the top to the bottom of what business are we in and how do we help and who do we help. Then, if you look at it from the left to the right, you basically lay out your promises in terms of how effectively do we fulfill them. So, at the left, you have promises that you don't make. This isn't part of our business. If you want to manage some very structured workflow like procurement or ITIL or something like that, you don't do that in Slack and do that in something like ServiceNow. Now, that's helpful because it bounds your scope. It allows you to say things like, "nope! We shouldn't be working on this because we don't do it. It's not our business. We don't make any promises about that." But it's also a great place to find opportunities for innovation by identifying underserved customer needs. This is a promise we don't make, but maybe we should. The second column is, "things that you're exploring." You're just dipping your toe in the water, you know? Maybe you're not sure if there's a market or a real need for it yet. You only did it in order to win a customer deal. For whatever reason you haven't fully invested. The third column is your bread and butter. This is the heart of our product. It more or less works the way it's supposed to and more or less does what people need. And the furthest column to the right is this is where our competitive advantage is. This is where customer delight happens. This is where we know people won't switch to a competitor because they really love or are hooked on this one particular feature. So now you have in one place, your value proposition and your operational reality of this is how we actually execute on our value proposition. And then the exercise becomes a matter of identifying areas where you want to move something from the left to the right. Where you want to become more effective at. This is an iterative process. You don't start with something that you don't do at all and try and make it highly effective or compelling in one shot. You start by exploring it. Let's dip our toes in the water and find out. And the final step is you start attaching actual work to it in terms of what is the next step we're going to take. An example of CVC Let's take the example of Slack where Slack doesn't do structured workflow. But a lot of times what happens is people are debugging together in a Slack channel and they find some infrastructure problem and they have to go over to ServiceNow in order to file a ticket. Wouldn't it be nice if you actually had the ability to integrate ITIL directly into Slack because there's a use for it. So, that's an area we want to invest in. We want to explore. And the first thing we're going to do is we're just going to build a very simple connector that allows you to create a simplistic incident ticket directly from a Slack chat. What you have now done is you have identified a simple small piece of work that you were going to use to validate and explore a larger, more strategic direction. And you use this as an iterative management and conversation technique so that you do some work and then you come back and you ask yourself, "well, how far did that get us along the path that we're trying to get?" maybe it was harder than we thought, and there's not really as much market need as we thought, and we should just stop. Or maybe we learn something from it, and we discover that the next thing we should do along that path is to build Y instead of X. And again, this entire process is happening in terms of promises of outcomes, not really in terms of locking down features. So, it gives you this ability to explore in an agile fashion, but to give everybody a sense of what direction we're moving in. What is it that we're trying to make better? You know, so often when I work with Agile teams, they do stand-ups and they drew retros and they define their sprint goals and things like that in terms of work and quantity and velocity. Our sprint goal is to finish these 24 stories, and we finished 23 so we're going to declare our sprint a success. Well, what did you actually deliver? What got better as a result, you know? Or what we need to do in this iteration is we need to add three database indexes. Well, what is the promise that we're delivering on? The promise is to make search 15% faster. And whether you do three database indexes or seven or one, isn't the essential point. The essential point is to make search 15% faster. So, if you connect your work to that promise, you give yourself the flexibility of how to actually go about doing it. But you have a goal that everybody understands and everybody can communicate to each other, to management, to your customers. And so, it brings together this idea of flexibility and agility with having some kind of direction that you're trying to go in that has value in everyone. A better roadmap Jorge: It sounds to me like a tool to help visualize in a more tangible way, the question, "what is this in service to and where might we be missing something?" And, in that way, it strikes me as a kind of more useful version of a roadmap, perhaps? Is that a fair read? Jeff: That is an excellent read. Yes! It is all about identifying value and evolving value. And it's funny, I'm glad you mentioned the word roadmap. If you think about a map, right? Like a real roadmap. And remember... you and I are probably both old enough to remember the days when you actually had one of those foldout paper maps. A map showed you how you could get from point A to point B. It doesn't tell you how to get there, right? You get to make decisions about, well, we're going to take highway or we're not going to take the highway, or we're going to go this way so we can stop here for lunch. It presents opportunities. And the problem I have with traditional product roadmaps is they cause, I think, unnecessary pain and frustration. You know, the underlying insight that Agile had is that when you're building something large and complex and novel — something that's a little different from what you've built before — it is extremely hard to perfectly predict exactly how you should build it, or even exactly what it should be. And if you look at a roadmap... and it's funny, I keep coming back to this idea of AgileFall, where people use Agile to do Waterfall. And there's a lot of grief and a lot of condescension... "Well, if you're doing AgileFall, you're doing it wrong. You're bad. You're bad at Agile." I think what that misses is that AgileFall represents this tension that hasn't been resolved around, "well, we need something more than just what we're going to accomplish in the next two weeks." And so, what happens is people trying to lock down the big picture. There's a presentation where somebody stood up and they presented this completely Waterfall 12-month roadmap that said, "this is what we're going to do in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4." And then they said, "but because we're Agile, we might change the dates." In other words, this roadmap is a work of fiction. And its primary purpose is to frustrate you because we are explicitly telling you that we're making promises, right? We promise to deliver this feature on this date. And we're going to break those promises. And I think that people do that because again, we all need a sense of direction and a sense of context. We need it for ourselves, our stakeholders need it, our executives need it, our customers need it. Where are we going? And we don't know how to communicate that other than in terms of work. But if we can communicate it in terms of value, right? So, if you think about Slack, the ability to find conversations is actually somewhat crude. You kind of have to know what you're looking for, right? You're looking for a particular name, which could be somewhat arcane. So, you couldn't actually really say that the ability to find conversations in Slack is as effective as it should be. If you tell your customers, "we are going to make the ability to find conversations more effective and more powerful and more flexible." — "Oh! That sounds good, because yeah, it really needs to be better. We're really excited about that!" You haven't locked yourself into a particular date or a particular implementation. You can explore and discover that as you go and you can tell your customers, "well, here's this thing that we're delivering this week that will make conversation-finding a little bit better in this particular way." And then, "oh! We can do that again. Well, next week, here's this thing that we're delivering that will make it even a little bit better." So, it allows you to plan, and it allows you to communicate without kind of forcing yourself into a model that doesn't actually work when you're building complex software systems. Jorge: It strikes me that the traditional roadmap is a forecast of what's going to happen that is, by definition, made at a time when your knowledge of the entire situation is imperfect. And the actual process is more like... it's stochastic, right? Every step that you take changes what happens next. If that's a fair read, then this artifact that you're describing is organic in the sense that it needs to be a living document that is revisited often. And a) I'm wondering if that's a fair read and, b) if that's the case, then who is responsible for being the steward of this chart? Jeff: It is a fair read. And I'm going to struggle with the answer to who is responsible. I think there are two answers. One is the product owner and the product manager. But two is the team. Because... you're absolutely right. Its intention is as a conversation and planning tool, not actually as a document. I don't care what it looked like last month. The point is to continuously have a conversation around, "are we getting where we want to go? What's the next step to go there? And do we still even want to go in that direction?" And so, it's simply a tool for that kind of conversation. The reason I hesitate is about who owns it or who shepherds it, is the team needs to be having the conversation. And it's less important to me who runs the session or who... you know, in the good old days, many, many moons ago, before pandemic, I would say: "create a three by four grid on a whiteboard and get stickies and put them up on the wall and move the stickies around." It's funny, because a couple of years ago I worked with a team and they were part of an organization that was very, very JIRA driven. And for whatever reason, they decided to just put stuff up on a whiteboard. And it worked perfectly.So, the mechanism is less important than the process. A high functioning team ought to be able to just have this conversation. Now, I think where it becomes interesting to think about product owners and product managers is the connection with the larger business context, right? Of why are we going in this particular direction? And how do we provide feedback to the rest of the organization about the success of going in that direction? That's really where I think that sort of... I think what you're talking about in terms of stewardship comes in is: this isn't just for teams, it's a way for teams to communicate with other parts of the organization. Or "well, you want to know what we're doing? Well, what we're doing is we're making conversation-finding better, and here's why, and here's how. Here's what we're doing next to move in that direction." And we can have conversations at a higher management level of, "is conversation-finding something that we want to be investing in?" The nice thing about that is that you stop having conversations about, "well, why didn't you deliver the feature that you said you were going to deliver on this date? Your team is not performing." Right? It makes your stakeholder and management-level conversation much richer and more productive, in my opinion. Closing Jorge: Well, this sounds like a tool that is much needed. And I'm grateful that you are writing and speaking about it. Where can folks go to find out more? Jeff: Well, they can go to the sussna-associates.com website, is the best place. There's various information about it there. This is something that I have primarily been using in working with actual clients, so I'm just starting the process of exposing it more generally and starting to talk and write about it more generally. So, I wrote a book, that was really about some of the theoretical underpinnings behind this several years ago. I've been toying with the idea of writing another one, much more practical, down to earth about how to use promises and how to use Customer Value Charts in order to run an Agile organization. So, it's very much of a work in progress. And thanks to you for helping me start to talk about this in a broader context. Jorge: Well, I'm very excited to see where it goes, and, looking forward to having you again in the show sometime, Jeff! I always enjoy our conversations a great deal. Jeff: As do I! Thanks for having me, and hopefully it'll be sooner than another 18 months when we do it again.
https://www.instagram.com/wearecurated/?hl=en 0:41 Vinny ran events at duPont Registry 1:56 buy a used car from Jeff Sterns, you get amazing resale! :) 2:25 Jeff: Well, my divorce was a little less amicable little, but quoting the great Tosh.0, "my ex took half my money. So I had to marry a girl half her age!" I 6:16 Vinny's dad was a was a mechanic for General Motors brands 7:44 Vinny's 1ft car: 79 Oldsmobile omega 0:10:15 Vinny meets Tom duPont and Steve Chapman at Amelia Island Concour and a career path change... 0:11:58 Vinny got to know his next team from Spyker. 12:55 Vinny compliments Victor Muller, CEO of Spyker and talks about the car and it's background and history. 12:56 on the open linkage in the Spyker 17:13 Vinny meets the Lamborghini people 19:30 Vinny talks about how he made calls as a warranty administrator on what to cover (warranty in effect or not). 21:33 should you "upgrade" or customize your car? ...SEMA 26:22 V 12. world, it could easily be a $100,000 repair. Jeff 26:25 these trade ins I used to get, that would have the 10 to 20 to 30 to 40 grand worth of upgrades. And, of course, the customer, God bless their soul would be proud of that, and expect more for their car because they've really improved it. And we don't have to reduce its value to put it back to original. 31:28 ("upgrades") Not only are you probably not going to get a dime back. Yeah. But you might even reduce the value.... it doesn't mean that you don't have good taste. 31:28You know, my personal 65 Cadillac coupe is completely different than what I'm surrounded by at work, you know, we're, you know, every day, but it's but to me that, if I want to feel that way, behind the wheel, there is no other vehicle that I can find that's going to make me feel that way. . 38:11 Jeff's Dad -would restore model A's. Oh, wow. And the guy Model A George had in his garage, the mohair interior stuff and could paint and how to start it with the spark advance on the steering wheel and all of that business. And my dad would retail these cars restored for $1295. He felt guilty because he was making $400 a car guy and he could barely look anyone in the eye. Because he was making $100-200 a car on a $599 traded in Chevelle. 41:00 Vinny goes to Maserati 43:21 Vinny left Maserati due to health issues and last year went to Hennessey and then to WE ARE CURATED. 43:50 Vinny saw 212 MPH as a passenger... 44:24 Vinny: "you hear 200 miles an hour, you know, and it's funny being car guys, you know, what we watch the police chases on TV, and they're like, they reach speeds up to 100 miles an hour. It's like I did that on my way to work." 44:50 200 miles an hour is a football field every second. 48:33 "The $10k Viper. Road track did an article on it" 52:57 Vinny: We Are Curated. We specialize in vintage supercars 54:05 Gemballa Avalanch 930 Turbo p 54:40 we sold these cars, there wasn't anywhere to get them serviced. 55:30 yellow Mura here in the shop right now that the the gentleman flew to us from Mexico. 56:09 FOR AUDIO- here is a piece that you might want to switch to YouTube for. 57:04 blue 74 Ferrari Daytona - only one ever made in that color. 550 Barchetta....it actually doesn't even have a top, you drive it completely open top. This one is a is a manual and it's actually serial number 01 out of the series of 448 they ever made. 57:52 Diablo VT 6.0 carbon body....Merci coupe. But it's manual transmission, very low miles...purple Diablo, it's a very unique color. ...Ferrari F40 which is the the pinnacle in the early 90s Ferrari supercar....White Countach... Mersi logo that's directly below me here is the only one ever painted in this color. It's a non metallic orange, also manual transmission. '59 Mercedes 300 Sl. 1:00 "how far up can a restoration run?" millions of dollars 1:01:33 I was working on a lotus a 180... It was one of the last Lotus Elise is a factory racecar and the fuel pump went out...shared the same fuel pump components as a Chevy Blazer. 1:04:08 I manage the service restoration department so I handled the whole the whole back of house 1:05:45 Bugatti Eb 110. Countach. Jaguar XJ 220s, they held the top speed for a short while of 217 miles an hour. 1:09:12 it's a labor of love, and I was lucky enough to find a path that led me to be able to be around this stuff without having to just come out of pocket for everything.
Max: Hello and welcome back to The Recruitment Hackers Podcast, I am your host Max and today I am delighted to welcome Jeff Wald. Jeff Wald is the author of two books including The end of jobs, The rise of on demand workers and agile corporations hot topics, kicking off into 2021, Jeff, welcome to the show.Jeff: Max, thank you so much for having me.Max: It's a pleasure. And we're at opposite sides of the planet Jeff is logging in from Florida, I'm in Hong Kong. But I think the world is smaller than it has ever been. With so many of the so many of those jobs being kind of remote, being advertised as it doesn't matter where you're, where you're hiring you know it's anywhere in the world as long as you've got the skills. So, it must have been a busy year for you, promoting the cause of the remote worker and the on demand worker. I'm even more excited about the international dimension of that, as opposed to, let's say, the creation of a new job category. I just like the fact that now the talent pool is universal and global.Jeff: I agree, I will say this man. Let's not gloss over this small little fact that you're sitting in Hong Kong, I'm sitting in Florida. This is mind blowing to me if your mind's not freakin blown by this anyone that's listening to the fact that the two of us are sitting on literally opposite sides of the planet. That is amazing. You know pre pandemic I'd said a bunch of times in the book down the hall, on another floor, down the block, or halfway around the world. You don't need to be in the same place to be on the same team. And that has become all the more true during the pandemic or I should say all the more true, it's always been true. Over the last few years it has been all the more aware than people become of that. And this is exemplified here I mean we had a wonderful conversation, prior to you know hitting record here, as if we were colleagues on a project, just working and it to me there was no difference the conversation we had then are having now than you, me sitting in your office.Max: Yes, yes, Well all the mess in my office is outside of camera view. It looks a lot better. Actually, I control this environment better. Jeff: I'd probably be wearing pants. Those are all things that are slightly different than if I were in your office. But still, it's all amazing to me.Max: That's great. So far listeners out there. Jeff is pantless.Jeff: Allegedly, allegedly!Max: Well. So Jeff, maybe you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, before you became an author on the topic of employment. It's probably not what you grew up, dreaming to become a kind of happened with life. Can you walk us through the main steps in your career. Jeff: Sure, I started my career in finance with JP Morgan,moved to venture capital, which was just an amazing, amazing experience working with entrepreneurs, and getting to see men and women that were just trying to change the world. So exhilarating that I left and started my first company, that failed miserably and basically bankrupted me. But that's the thing with entrepreneurship, pick yourself up dust yourself off and keep going. Second company we built up, and eventually got sold to Salesforce and that was a good outcome not a great outcome. And then this last company Work Market, founded 10 years ago. Work Market is enterprise software that enables companies to organize manage and pay their freelance population, raised about 70 million from Union Square ventures SoftBank and a few others sold the company to ADP almost three years ago. So it's been a great, great journey and the sale to ADP specifically gave me the space, Max to finally sit down and finish this book because I've been working on it for like four years prior to the purchase of ADP. Max: Okay. Well, congrats on that entrepreneurial journey. I haven't read that. After you sell your business, there was a moment. It's a moment where most entrepreneurs kind of struggle with depression. Suddenly a drop, drop in activity and energy. But apparently, you made the most of that sort of drop.Jeff: That's super super interesting. I guess I understand it conceptually. It's one of the silliest reasons to be depressed, not that I wish to ever make fun of depression. I will tell you having your business fail and going bankrupt. I'd say bankrupt as bankruptcy is a technical term. Have your business fail and virtually going bankrupt. That is something that did in general did a lot of depression in me. And, you know, having not leaving my apartment for some time. As I was super bummed out by that, but I had no experience like that with the sale of joy upon joy and gratitude and fortune. Max: Yeah. Good, I am really happy to hear that because you know who knows maybe one day I'll have to sell some of my shares. And I'd like it to be a happy moments as well. Jeff: God will. God will.Max: So, your new book, The end of jobs, The rise of on demand workers, I'm excited about this topic, because it is all of our, our mission in the corporate world and the enterprise world, to, to create a performance driven culture, and an output driven culture where people are measured on, you know what they produce, as opposed to you know how why they smile. And I think that the transition towards task base job assignment, as opposed to job descriptions, is one for the best because it actually gives more freedom to be able to just get the job done in as much in as little time as possible, which is giving people more freedom to run their lives the way they want. I mean it could be looked at. It could be looked in that way it could be looked at on the opposite side of the spectrum as like a cold market driven approach to employment. Instead of where many employers to position themselves as we are family. But I think the 'we our family' message is a bit outdated personally. How do you feel about that transition? Do you think that we're moving towards a world which is, is that what's covered in your book?Jeff: So there are a number of things that are ever covered in the book about the future of work. The first and the most important is to look at the history of work. I wrote the book because I get very frustrated with people that make predictions about the future of really anything quite frankly without evidence, specifically in the world of work. We have the history of work and how companies workers have come together to produce goods and services throughout different societal changes different technological changes. So let's study those. And the second body of evidence is data. What does the data, tell us how to data trends and patterns, play out. Currently, and obviously through history as well. The third is how companies actually engage workers. You know a lot of people think the labor resource planning meeting goes like this, CEO walks in and says, 'All right, what are we gonna do ot her workers. Let's hire the cheapest ones, meeting adjourned'. That is actually not how those meetings go, there's a lot of variables that go into that equation. And so understanding how companies actually engage workers, understanding the data and the data trends and understanding history, and how society has coped with some of these struggles before. That to me is a very thoughtful way to think about, or start to make predictions about the future of work and that's what we endeavour to do with the book.Max: So the book has a historical component that goes back to the the history of work. I was excited when I read about the time of Abraham Lincoln when they were talking about what's it called wage slaves, or where it was considered that every man should be his own employee, there was a vision that was articulated at the time that you know you were to be on a regular wage is somehow less envious, that everybody should be self employed as kind of coming back a little bit right from one or two years ago.Jeff: It certainly is coming back to the whole idea behind freelancing is the idea that you get to have flexibility and choose your own path that is a very very powerful thing it's something very encoded in our DNA to want to have control of our own destiny, of course, and all the things that the freelancer faces are starting to permeate the full time workforce. So, like called the book The end of jobs the rise of on demand workers. That is not to say I think everyone's going to be a freelancer, that is to say that all the things that the freelancer deals with task based labor, personal responsibility, algorithms, allocating work data driven HR all of those things Max are permeating the full time workforce and all workers are dealing with kind of things.Max: Okay, so, everybody who's looking at Uber drivers thinking, I'm glad I don't have an algorithm, looking over me. Time is coming up. Yeah,Jeff: it is coming. No question. It is coming.Max: Okay. From a talent acquisition perspective which is really my focus. How does this affect recruitment How does the rise of the on demand worker affect recruitment? Do you think that. Are you noticing that they're, they're being hired in a different manner than the permanent staff?Jeff: Well I think there are a few ways that all of these changes impact recruiting. The first is the recruiting is that tip of the spear right your listeners are the first people out there that are dealing with the changes and how companies are structuring their workforces. We need more of X we need less of Y. We need more people in this geography, fewer in that geography. And so recruiting is seeing in real time, the shifts in labor resource management, and that is super super interesting in and of itself. And we can spend some time talking about the types of recruiting they're gonna be more important as we get into skills based labor, and more remote work, and more on demand work and how robots and AI are going to impact the workforce with large. That's one conversation set that is a very interesting conversation to be had. The other part is how does that specific function change, given all of these things is more recruiting going to be done in an on demand capacity? is more recruiting going to be done via robots or AI systems going to be doing more recruiting? And that's another very big impact that quite frankly we don't know how that's going to play out yet. You know there are just way too many variables and it's way too early in the game, but we certainly have seen some trends around on demand recruiting. And we've certainly seen some trends around some of the tasks inherent recruiting starting to be done by machines.Max: With the start of the new year. Are you talking to companies who are setting targets around. I'd like to move, you know, 10, or 20% of my workforce to on demand, does that come down from the board to the operational level?Jeff: Short answer is, look from the board down the answer to that is usually No, that is. You'd hope, but boards, I don't think, sitting on a few public boards myself boards don't get involved that tactically even though I would argue it is strategic and they should be having that type of conversation. Those conversations are very nuanced very complex, and so I've never seen somebody come down and see any point out. When I was running Work Market because if you wanted to increase your usage of freelancers there weren't any really other places to go, if you wanted to manage a large freelance workforce and Work Market. So, I would usually get that call. And I will tell you we very very very rarely got the labor force transformation call. The call of a we're getting into the change how we're doing things we need to bring in, and we're frankly, what I would get those calls, I kind of was like this is going to be a two year conversation, this sucks, but it usually, the call will come from real big companies so you take it and start having obviously if we could work with fortune 50 company we're going to do it. What the call, we would get Max, the calls that we would get all the time is we currently manage a freelance workforce. It is a very large part of our labor force strategy and it has been for years or decades, in some cases, but it's a mess. We don't know who's where who sent what legal Raymond who is working on what is good and what we need a piece of software to help us efficiently and compliantly manage this workforce, that call, I would get all the time. But the idea that, whether it's on demand work or robots and AI, that there's going to be some huge shifts that data doesn't support it. History doesn't support it, and how companies actually engage workers does not support an argument that oh my gosh all those jobs are gonna go next year, 10% of those jobs are gonna go. Labor force statistics and labor resource planning happens very slowly and very methodically and that's that's just the reality. So it's that reality that people should be mindful of when thinking about the future of work.Max: And there's a huge regulatory component where a change in the law, and how easy it is to hire and fire will immediately impact the percentage of the staff, which is on demand right because it drives a lot of the demand.Jeff: It is a incredibly powerful maybe the most powerful, powerful variable and what I call the labor equation, very complex equations series have a system of equations, I should say that guide how companies actually engage workers, and the regulatory environment, especially when it comes to freelance workers, I would argue is the biggest variable in that equation. And the problem with that variable is that that variable itself is all over the map. It's very different how you engage worker in California than what you do in Louisiana. Workers comp board in Wisconsin has an entirely different point of view than the Labor Department in Portugal. So you got to be super super mindful of how complex it is and that's why most companies go, oh my god it's too complicated just keep everybody employed. Obviously that's a bit glib of an interpretation, but it's not that far from accuracy.Max: Yeah. Yeah, I believe it for sure. For me, I experienced it the other way I was like oh my god it's so complicated I have all these full time employees and be better I'd just have contractors, but either way. Either way, the decision towards a simpler way of doing things. I mean, I imagined that it's a little bit easier to decentralize, the compliancy, meaning. Instead of putting the onus on the employer to be in charge of everybody's, you know, being compliance is to say to the on demand worker, it's your responsibility. And by the way, here's a little bit of money to help you file your taxes or, you know, manager, your stuff.Jeff: That is a really good point there. A increasing number of companies out there that are helping the freelancer set up a corporate structure, which really makes it a vendor relationship, and that stuff certainly helps shield the company, but in no way can the company. And I would not pretend to understand laws in China, or anywhere else. But in the United States, you can't pass that liability down to the worker. So when the State Department of Labor comes, you can't say well I, you know, they all signed these legal agreements indemnify me the department labor's we go okay I don't care. There, we view them as your employees, where is our back payroll tax? Where's Social Security payments? Where's unemployment insurance? let's go gimmy gimmy gimmy. They couldn't care less. But there are ways to your point, that companies can certainly mitigate their risk.Max: Great. Well, what else can corporations think about your talking to you know it was in your title the Agile Corporation. What are some of the trends Do you foresee in 2021 for companies who want to become more agile, Besides that, besides work market. What other what other tools or methodologies do you recommend?Jeff: Well I don't anticipate a huge increase in the size of the on demand workforce. But the on demand workforce as a number shrank. So there were over 240 million workers in the on demand workforce now there are high 30 million workers in the workforce, but the labor force as a whole film. And so we're still trying to parse together, did the percent of the on demand workforce shrink grow or stay the same? My guess is that it probably that stayed about the same. So I don't anticipate in 21, a huge movement back. I think it will stay about the same. percent of the labor force, because companies are just focused elsewhere, right now, right they're trying to make sure their teams are safe they're trying to make sure that their supply chains are safe and trying to make sure that their employees are being productive and they're not thinking about labor force transformation and 21. 22 might be a very different scenario. And as we discussed earlier regulation I think it's going to be the biggest variable in that equation. But when we talk about agile Max there there are a host of different ways in which a company can be agile. The best way is managing an army of freelancers. They are completely agile. The next you know you can move into temps and the vendors to other types of relationships. The biggest change that we saw in the labor market unquestionably in terms of how work gets done, I think the biggest change was unemployment and obviously horrific impacts on labor because of the pandemic. But the biggest change in how work actually gets done was clearly remote. It was moving to remote work and does that make a company more agile? of course it does. Allow your workers to be able to work where they want how they want is a very important step in kind of breaking that bone of the one office one manager 9-5 job. And that's the job by the way that is referenced in the title the end of jobs. Robots are taking all of our jobs, far from it, they are not, that is a very clear conclusion from the book. But this idea that you have one office, one manager, you work 9-5 that job is dying and it gets replaced by people being nomadic people having flexible work arrangements, people working in different contexts so that certainly on demand. Temps of freelancers and all that jazz. Those are the kinds of changes that were sped up by the pandemic as companies had to become more agile, there was no everyone's got to come to the office from 9-5, that wouldn't happen in almost anywhere in the world, in April of 2020. So, that is a huge step forward in the Agile corporations.Max: Actually, to your last points on, I've noticed the same trends and of course but the 9-5 aspects, there are still a bunch of companies that still look at the nine to five hour. And, and there's a strong case to be made for for the work life balance to say, yeah, starts at nine five so you don't invade people's lives, but on the other hand, it does remove you know to do so because you, you say we want to create boundaries and we want to create overlap or people working at the same time. It does also mean you're removing a little bit of freedom from your employees, from your staff, let's say, to decide when they work. Jeff: Of course.Max: It's not that great right, like. I would argue like work whenever, and we try to minimize the number of conference calls if we can.Jeff: That is a fine way to think about it, but when we're thinking about 164 million people in the US labor force actually 154 million now, 164 at the beginning of the pandemic. That is not the way all of them are gonna work. If you have a shift at H&M. That's when your shift is, there's no hey I want to work from Barcelona this weekend no no your shift is here in the store and that's when your shift is, if you're working on the line at Volkswagen your shift is nine to five, or maybe, whatever it is, there is no a I'm going to you know come in late. And I'll stay later, I don't know, that's when the shift starts like you have to be there. So it's important to think about the full context of the labor force. When we have conversations about the future of work it's easy to slip into this idea that everybody works in these remote first type jobs that are very enabled by remote work and digital work and all these other things. The reality is most people don't, that's just not the reality for most workers in any labor force.Max: Agreed. Agreed. And I work in these industries where people do have to physically come a lot of the time, so I know that's the case, but I guess, for the knowledge worker. I still see, I still see people trying to cling on to this office. You know way of work, sure where, whereas all communication, eventually, as much communication as possible should be moved to the asynchronous. So because we can read faster than we can sit through a meeting.Jeff: I completely agree. But to your point, some people do enjoy it. And there are tremendous benefits to it. I saw a study that 93% of remote workers still live within a commutable distance of the office. Because going remote doesn't mean you never go to the office, there are benefits to having everybody come together and have brainstorming sessions and do small talk. Those serendipitous encounters at the watercooler, they're actually incredibly good for productivity, do they need to be every day? Of course not. Can we allow people to flexible work arrangements, those that want it and those that can do it. Sure. But here's another important thing 42% of the US workforce can work remotely. That's it. Max: yeah.Jeff: And the US by the way is the highest percentage of any workforce on the planet that can work remotely. But another way to say that is 58% of workers, cannot do this digital lifestyle, cannot work remotely their jobs won't allow it. So we need to be mindful of that when having these types of conversations.Max: Alright, so it was a bubble 2020 bubble and the narrative, to a certain degree that was not really supported by hard data. In fact, most people will still be coming into the office and, and the on demand worker or while it's an ongoing transition. We haven't seen a huge rise in the percentage of the workforce that goes on demand. And the robots will now take our jobs. I'm sure that there's a lot more depth to this book, than my cliff notes here. How do people find your book, I'm gonna put a link to where do you want to sell, are we selling through Amazon or is there another place?Jeff: There are tons of other places but 98% of the books that have been sold have been bought on Amazon and, you know, certainly when the book came out in June, there was almost no other place to buy the book. That's not true actually was on barnesandnoble.com, a few other web sellers but it's funny I'm down here in Florida now and Florida's COVID restrictions are much looser than my normal home in New York, and I passed the Barnes and Noble today. As I was going school, get my office set up down here. Home Office, and I'm super excited to go tomorrow and see if my book is there, so hopefully it is in bookstores where it's supposed to be but it'd be the first time I get a chance to go into an old school Barnes noble I'm super excited. Max: All right. Don't forget to put on your protective gear for that Barnes and Noble experience.Jeff: No question. No question.Max: And, well, how do people get a hold of you? What's the best way to reach you?Jeff: Well, you can certainly follow me on twitter at @Jeffreywald, that's the only place that I go by Jeffrey for wells I go by Jeff, but I couldn't couldn't get Jeff Wald, and LinkedIn, I'm always I will always accept connections on LinkedIn and Amazon is certainly the best place to find the book.Max: Wonderful. Well thanks Jeff for sharing your insights and coming on the show and. Well, I look forward to my FREE copy in the mail. No, I'll go and get myself a copy I've got a bunch of books,I am a little bit behind on my reading, and I'll go get myself a copy right now.Jeff: I appreciate it thank you so much. It was so great to chat and I look forward to listening to many more episodes of this podcast.Max: Thanks, Jeff. Jeff: Thank you.
My guest today is Dr. Jeff Johnson. Jeff has been applying his background in psychology towards designing better human-computer interfaces for over forty years. He teaches computer science at The University of San Francisco, and has written several influential books on UI design. Among these, he co-authored with Kate Finn Desiging User Interfaces for an Aging Population, which is the focus of this conversation. Listen to the full conversation Download episode 46 Show notes Jeff Johnson UI Wizards Cognitive Psychology Cromemco Xerox GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Dont's and Dos by Jeff Johnson Designing With the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Guidelines by Jeff Johnson Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design by Austin Henderson and Jeff Johnson (My notes on Conceptual Models) Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population: Towards Universal Design by Jeff Johnson and Kate Finn Tesla Model S Interior Google Maps Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the full transcript Jorge: All right, Jeff. Welcome to the show. Jeff: Thank you! I'm glad to be here. About Jeff Jorge: I'm very excited to have you with us. For folks who don't know you, can you please tell us about yourself? Jeff: Okay. Well, I have a degree in psychology — not computer science — from Yale University and then I went on to Stanford in graduate school in psychology. So, it was Cognitive Psychology and my research at the time focused on understanding human problem-solving and human memory. But I found that after graduate school, I could either become a professor of psychology somewhere or I could go into the computer industry and help companies make their products easier to use, easier to learn. And that's what I decided to do. I worked for a small company in Silicon Valley named Cromemco and then I moved from there to Xerox, where I was working on document preparation systems. And then I worked for a series of companies in Silicon Valley and around the country, essentially doing human-computer interaction. While I was doing that, it became fairly clear to me that companies keep making the same mistakes over and over and over. And they were design mistakes that were causing their products to be not usable. And so, I eventually quit working for companies and became a consultant. I started working for myself, as a consultant, but my clients were companies. And so, I'd go from one company to another. And I continued to find that they were making the same mistakes over and over again. And it got to the point where I could start to categorize the mistakes. You know, this is mistake number 47, this is mistake number 19, et cetera. And so then eventually, in the late nineties, I wrote a book called GUI Bloopers, which was basically a catalog of all of the common mistakes that companies make in their design that cause their products to be less than usable. And that book was very popular. It basically made me well known in the field as the guy who wrote GUI Bloopers. People started calling me “Dr. Bloopers,” which I at first thought, “well, that's great.” But then I started thinking, “well, I don't want to be stereotyped as ‘Dr. Bloopers'.” So, I wrote another book, which came out in 2010, called Designing With the Mind In Mind, which was the psychological basis for user interface design principles. You know, where do user interface design principles come from? And that book was fairly popular. And so now, that book is in its third edition. The second edition came out in 2014 and the third edition has just come out now, in 2020. Since 2016, I've worked as a professor of computer science at the University of San Francisco, teaching introductory computer science, introductory programming, and also human-computer interaction. In particular, I focus my human- computer interaction course on user experience design. And, so that's… that kind of brings us up to the current day. Jorge: I want to call out that you've also authored a few other books. Among them there's one that's been particularly influential to me called Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design. Jeff: Right! Yeah, I neglected to mention that book. So, when I was working at Xerox, they had an approach to design that involved understanding the conceptual model underlying a user interface design before starting to draw screens and figure out what the appearance of the application on a screen or on a device would look like. And I very much agreed with that approach… their approach. And so, I, and Austin also — Austin Henderson, my coauthor — also worked at Xerox, and so, later the two of us started pushing that approach — the conceptual models approach — throughout the rest of the industry. We would give talks here and there, we wrote articles for magazines and at one point, a publisher approached us and said, would you be interested in writing a book on this topic? So, we did. And so, in 2011, the book Conceptual Models came out, as a result of that work. Then, also around that same time, I became interested in how do you design for older adults? That is, the technology doesn't seem to work as well for older adults. And there are a number of reasons for that. And so, I started doing some research on that and reading and understanding, and then a colleague and I formed a consulting firm that was called Wiser Usability, as in older, but wiser. And we would help companies make their products more friendly for older adults. And then we eventually wrote a book about that, that is called Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population. And that book came out in 2017. Designing for an Aging Population Jorge: That book is part of the reason why we're talking today. Tell me about designing for an aging population; what is different about folks who are aging and other folks in the groups of people that we design for? Jeff: Okay. Well, number of things that make designing for older adults challenging. But first let me mention the irony in this situation, which is that older adults are in a sense the population that is most in need of technological assistance, because they could benefit greatly because of limited mobility, because of limited eyesight, because of limited other things, from technological assistance of various sorts. You know, the ability to shop online, the ability to do their government businesses online, getting a driver's license, and things like that. But the irony of course, is that the technology doesn't support them very well, and they struggle with using the technology — I should not say “they,” because I am myself over 60, and therefore I should say “we” older adults — but, that's the irony: they're the population that would benefit from it the most, but it actually is least usable for them. The question is why and how can we fix that? And there are a number of reasons for that. One of them is a whole collection of things that have to do with the fact that as we age, we experience certain disabilities of various types like failing eyesight, failing hearing, failing hand-eye control and other things like that, and therefore products and services that don't take that into account can become difficult for us to use. Now, the interesting thing about that is that, of course there are people of all ages who have difficulty with vision, difficulty with hearing, and difficulty with hand-eye control. And so, really making things and products more accessible to older adults actually helps them for all of us. One of the examples I like to give is that when you're on a bus and you're riding from someplace to another place, or in a car and you're riding from someplace to another place, and you are trying to use your phone to either get the weather report or to text somebody or something like that — and I'm not assuming that you're the driver, let's say you're a passenger in a car or even a bus — and you're trying to do that while the bus is shaking, now suddenly you are like a person who has hand tremors. If you've ever tried to text someone while you're in a car, then the is driving over a bumpy road, you know what I'm talking about. Those kinds of things are one of the family of reasons why older adults have trouble with technology. We just don't take them into account. But there's another set of reasons that are perhaps in my view almost more important than that category of issues that I would call accessibility issues that I've just discussed. And that is, issues that are more about how do they think? How do older adults think about the world and how do they think about doing things and accomplishing tasks? What are their models of how the world works and how the technology should work? And that is something that's quite interesting because that problem is not going to go away. The first set of problems isn't going to go away either because people are going to continue to age and experience age-related disabilities. But the second category of problems is going to remain with us too, and for a different reason. But let me back up for a second and say something: there is an argument floating in the computer and technology industry that the problems of designing for older adults are going to go away and that we don't have to worry about them forever because, they argue, that today's older adults are “digital immigrants” rather than “digital natives,” right? So, digital natives are kids of today who've grown up with technology all their lives and they know this technology and they're comfortable with it, and, it's not a problem for them. But the digital immigrants who are the current generation of what you would call “boomers,” and people who are older than that, are going to have trouble because they weren't used to this technology. The argument goes that once all the digital immigrants die, everything will be fine, and we won't have to worry about designing technology for older adults because everyone will be digital immigrants. So, that argument is false. That argument is wrong. Because technology does not stand still and people tend to get… they grow up in whatever the dominant technology is, as people are, let's say between ages 10 and 30, is the one that they become used to, and then they got stuck in that way of thinking about the world. But the world moves on. The technology moves on, okay? One way you can think of it is that the current generation of baby boomers, they grew up when the technology was analog electronic and mechanical. There were mechanical objects, and they were analog-electronic objects. Now, these boomers were born from between 1945 and let's say 1965. That means that they were 10 through 30 in the time between the sixties and the late seventies and early eighties. And so, the technology that was prevalent then was mostly analog electronic, and some mechanical technology, not so much anymore. And that's what they got used to. And that's where they got stuck. And so, the technology that came along afterwards, which was personal computers and the rise of the internet and digital electronics, was new to them. And so, they were not natives of the digital technology world. And so, today's kids… people who are born after that, the children of the boomers… I don't remember what the name of that generation is… Jorge: Maybe Gen X? Jeff: Gen X, yes. They grew up in a world where there were personal computers and the internet was just getting born. And there were online discussion groups, and AOL had become a thing and it was popular, and the web started during their maturation years. And so, they were natives of that. But the Generation X is not natives of social networking and Google and all of that. And so, basically everyone is natives of some technology and immigrants of the next wave of technology. That affects what you know, and that's going to keep going on. You know, my students at USF don't believe that they're going to get stuck in any particular digital age, but I keep telling them they're wrong. That their kids are going to be saying to them, things like this: “Mom, why do you keep Instagramming me? Nobody uses Instagram anymore. I use Brain Link. What are you talking about? Instagram?” And then the mom is going to be saying, “Oh, this Brain Link thing. I just can't get used to it.” And my students don't believe that's going to be them in 20 years. They don't believe it, but it is. They are digital natives and they're social networking natives and they're digital music natives, but they are not quantum computing natives. They are not neural-network-driven computing natives. Those are coming along, and they will be immigrants to that technology. Empathizing with Aging Users Jorge: I want to reflect back on what you've been saying here, because there's a lot of really interesting and important ideas that I want to follow up on. One is this distinction between a set of challenges that has to do with the usability of these artifacts that we're dealing with — I use the word accessibility — and the other set of challenges has to do with trying to bring a mental model that no longer fits the reality of the ecosystem that you're dealing with or the products that you're interacting with. And the thing that strikes me about those two is that the challenges for designers in both cases have to do with an ability to empathize with the people who are unlike them, who have a different set of physical or… I don't know if to say their motor skills are different and their perceptual skills are different. And also, what I'm hearing you say there at the end with the Instagram example, is the younger folks, who predominantly I see as representing the demographic that is actually designing these products, is unable to conceive of themselves operating in a world where their mental models aren't dominant. How do you overcome that? Jeff: Well, first of all, you have to teach methods, right? Methods for design that involve building empathy into the process. The methods for design should include having older adults on your team, or at least within easy access of your team. Your design team should be able to talk to a lot of older adults and run focus groups with them and show them examples of products, in fact, even before the products are designed. You know, storyboards and things like that. Or even just have discussions about what the older adults are having challenges with. That's one way to bring empathy into the design process. Another way is kind of interesting, and some companies have used this method — and in fact, this method I'm about to mention is actually called “empathic design.” What you do is you give prosthesis to the young designers that impair their perception or their movement in various ways. Some car companies have actually done this: When they're trying to design a car that will be bought by aging boomers of today, they actually will give the young car designers clothing to wear that impairs their movement. So here put on this jumpsuit that's got straps built into it that make it hard for you to turn and twist your legs and turn your head and get in and out of this car five times in 10 minutes. Please do that. And then the designer goes, “Oh yeah! These seats are too low.” Or, “This door doesn't open wide enough.” You know, things like that. So, you can do that in the physical realm relatively easy. Perceptual realm, what you can do is you can give designers glasses that blur their vision or that darken the world. One of the interesting things about older adults is that our eyes become less capable of taking in light over our lifetimes. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is that your cornea and your lens become yellowed over time with exposure to ultraviolet light, and therefore let through less light to your retina. Now, the retina also loses light sensitive cells over the course of your lifetime and therefore becomes less sensitive to light. And so, the upshot is that the average 80-year-old needs light to be three times as bright in order to perceive the same brightness as a 20-year-old. I may not have those exact ages right because I haven't memorized them, but they're in the book. So, in the perceptual realm, you can give your designers prosthesis, or artificial impairments that will affect their hearing or their vision or their touch. For example, the example I gave earlier, right? You put someone and tell them, “Okay, you got this phone and the buttons… we think the buttons are too small, but you think they're fine. Okay, here. Get into this car and we're going to drive over a bumpy road and you try to text somebody.” You know? So, you can make people situationally impaired, and that can bring empathy. Put somebody on a camel and tell them to use their iPad. Jorge: On a camel? I love that. I'm going to try to find out where we can procure a camel for a usability study. These all seem like good methods to use for the accessibility part of the equation. I'm wondering if there are similar methods we can employ for the mental model part of this. Where these folks like you said, they might have grown up in a world where the technologies were very different, and now they're being asked to somehow operate in this world where a lot is taken for granted that just isn't available to these folks. Aligning Mental Models Jeff: Right. Well, think of it this way: When I was 15 years old, all the user interfaces I used were right there in front of me. They didn't require any kind of a concept of navigation. I did not have to navigate to the function that I wanted to do. Whereas now, starting with, personal computers, but continuing through the web, continuing through social networking and continuing through the use of cell phones, navigation through a user interface became an important concept. It's part of the design, right? There's no way a cell phone with its small screen can provide all the functionality right there on the screen that you need at any given time. But the old telephones, there was no need to navigate from one function to another. You just pick up the phone and start dialing the number. Interestingly, the concept of dialing a number… we still use that word, even though nobody has dialed a phone for 30 years. But anyway, so I guess what I should say is that our terminology often gets stuck even though the technology moves on from that, right? I keep hearing people on the news say, we have film of this politician committing bad stuff. We have it on tape. We have it on film. We captured footage. Those are all words that apply to actual physical film. Some of my students have no idea where does this term “footage” comes from and why do we apply it to movies. But anyway, that's just a little aside. So, the concept of navigation is a new thing for many older adults. It's something that happened after their maturation period, after they got stuck in their technology. And so, when I'm driving in my Tesla and I want to use the radio, I actually have to navigate from the map screen, which is showing me where I am right now in my neighborhood to the radio screen, right? And in the old days — when I say the old days, I mean, the days that baby boomers were used to, they grew up in — I didn't have to do that. There was no map on the screen. I had a map maybe on the passenger seat next to me, unfolded, that I got from a AAA. But the radio was right there on the control panel — the dashboard — all the time, and so was the ignition, and so was the air conditioner, and so were all the other functions. They were right there. I didn't have to navigate from one function to another. So that's a confusing concept for many older adults. And yes, eventually, those older adults will eventually die, and tomorrow's older adults won't be confused by that, but they will be confused by other things that will change. Jorge: I was really intrigued by these methods that you called out like the bus example earlier for the physical challenges involved… what I think of as the UI challenges. And I'm wondering if there are equivalent methods for us to use for this more conceptual challenge. Are there like the dark glasses that I can wear, but for the conceptual models that have become part of my world? Jeff: Yes and no. It's easier to impair someone's vision and hearing and physical movement than it is to impair their brain function. I mean, you can impair the brain function by giving them a bunch of whiskey to drink, but that's not the right kind of impairment, right? What you need to do is to be able to make it so that certain concepts don't make sense to them. So, that is difficult. But there are some design techniques that one could use. For example, suppose I want to make a map app and I want to make it easier to use for a wider range of people, including people who don't have the mental model that involves a lot of navigation. Well then, I just build what's called a one-screen app — and those are actually becoming fairly popular, right? So, there are lots of companies that are going with this idea of everything should be on a screen, and I shouldn't have to keep moving around in the app from one place to another. Google maps is a good example of a one-screen app, right? And there are some others that are coming along. I'm having trouble remembering them right now. But the concept of one screen apps is actually becoming more of a thing and it actually is quite useful for mobile apps on phones. Now, the problem with a mobile app on a phone is that your screen is really small. So, a one-screen app is really challenging design-wise. But what you're trying for is to eliminate the notion that people have to find their way to the function that they want, right? When I buy an airline ticket on an airline's website, there's a whole series of pages I have to go through to get that ticket. And some older adults find that quite challenging, because just when they think they're close to getting their ticket, they see a link that says, “bargain prices here” and they click on it and suddenly they're nowhere near their goal. And they go, “Oh! This is crazy. I thought I was going to get a bargain price on that flight I was just about to buy!” There's an interesting design pattern that was invented actually maybe 15 years ago, by some colleagues of mine, I'm trying to remember their names. But the design pattern is called Process Funnel. And what Process Funnel is, is the idea is that once your app knows — once your website knows — what a user is trying to achieve, guide them strictly toward that goal, do not distract them. Don't put up ads. Don't put upside links. Don't put up little bargain links that take them away from that path. Once you know what they want, guide them to their goal. Because you make money when they get to their goal, and they are satisfied when they get to their goal. And if you distract them from their goal, you've lost them. You don't make money. So, process funnel is a very useful design pattern. Try to figure out… Yeah, offer a lot of different choices for them at the start, but once you know what they want, take them there. Make sure they don't get off-path. Benefits for the Young and Old Jorge: I love what you're saying here, and I have so much that I would like to follow up with you about this topic. Unfortunately, we're running out of time. But I just want to say that the things that you're describing — the methods, the processes, and just the mindset of empathizing with folks who have different abilities than your own — sounds like something that might be valuable not just for making your products sell better, for example, among older adults, but also would bring benefits to everyone. If you do what you're describing there of optimizing the path to completion of a goal, other people — younger people — are going to also derive benefit from that, no? Jeff: Yes. One of the things I have to say since I teach introductory computer science at a university, is that I don't think it's the case that all younger adults are tech-savvy. I have lots of students in my classes who don't know the difference between WiFi and cell service. “My cell phone's not working. Why not? I have WiFi!” “Well, people can't call you on your WiFi. Don't you know the difference between WiFi and cell service?” Okay? So, there are lots of young people who are not technologically savvy. But what we're trying to do as designers is to build essentially the equivalent of curb cuts. You know, curb cuts were put in for a specific purpose: to comply with laws that people with wheelchairs needed to be able to get around in cities. But actually, more than 90% of the users of curb cuts are not people in wheelchairs. The people who actually benefit from curb cuts are… the overwhelming majority of them are people with skateboards, and pushing shopping carts, and pulling roller bags, and pushing strollers, right? So, the curb cuts actually helped everyone, even though they were mandated for people in wheelchairs. And that's what we need to do in technology, is design not strictly for older adults — because that makes no sense — we need to design so that older adults and everyone else can use the technology. Closing Jorge: That strikes me as a great summary of the topic and a fantastic place to wrap up the conversation. Where can folks follow up with you, Jeff? Jeff: Well, I have a consulting firm called UIWizards.com. So, they can look me up there. I have these books, Designing With The Mind in Mind, GUI Bloopers, Conceptual Models, and Designing for An Aging Population. They can check out those books and, you know, get in touch with me that way. I teach at the University of San Francisco. You can get in touch with me that way. Jorge: Well, fantastic. It has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for making the time. Jeff: Thank you for having me.
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
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jeff: So we spent fourteen hours floating in the sea, and we floated all night until the next day. At mid-morning the next day, a fisherman -- we had drifted during the night. When we first went down, there was nothing, just open sea all around us, so it was very frightening, and then during the night we drifted with the current, so the next day we maybe five or six kilometers away from an island, so we were in view of an island, but still too far to swim. The current was too strong, but a fisherman in a small kayak saw us and paddled into the nearest island, and they rescued us with a bigger boat, and once my feet touched the land again I cried. I really cried for a good hard cry. I was so happy to be alive. It was the only time I cried in the last fifteen or twenty years.Mike: I've known you for a while, you're not a very sensitive guy.Jeff: And then we had to go back. My brother was hurt, so we had to take him to the hospital in London, and it took him a few weeks to recover, and after that we went back and reshot the documentary.Mike: What happened to your brother?Jeff: He was -- he got some cuts. When the boat was going down, he was cut from the barnacles on the hull of the boat, and he got a serious blood infection.Mike: I mean you're lucky there weren't any sharks or anything I guess.Jeff: Well that was a big fear. The captain was saying that all night long. He was saying, you know, there're sharks in this water, and you know, he was a bit deranged, and he was really worried about the sharks, so yeah, we were all pretty afraid of the sharks.Mike: Wow, you made it out. Everybody made it out OK. Everybody was alright?Jeff: Yep, survived to live another day.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jeff: So we spent fourteen hours floating in the sea, and we floated all night until the next day. At mid-morning the next day, a fisherman -- we had drifted during the night. When we first went down, there was nothing, just open sea all around us, so it was very frightening, and then during the night we drifted with the current, so the next day we maybe five or six kilometers away from an island, so we were in view of an island, but still too far to swim. The current was too strong, but a fisherman in a small kayak saw us and paddled into the nearest island, and they rescued us with a bigger boat, and once my feet touched the land again I cried. I really cried for a good hard cry. I was so happy to be alive. It was the only time I cried in the last fifteen or twenty years.Mike: I've known you for a while, you're not a very sensitive guy.Jeff: And then we had to go back. My brother was hurt, so we had to take him to the hospital in London, and it took him a few weeks to recover, and after that we went back and reshot the documentary.Mike: What happened to your brother?Jeff: He was -- he got some cuts. When the boat was going down, he was cut from the barnacles on the hull of the boat, and he got a serious blood infection.Mike: I mean you're lucky there weren't any sharks or anything I guess.Jeff: Well that was a big fear. The captain was saying that all night long. He was saying, you know, there're sharks in this water, and you know, he was a bit deranged, and he was really worried about the sharks, so yeah, we were all pretty afraid of the sharks.Mike: Wow, you made it out. Everybody made it out OK. Everybody was alright?Jeff: Yep, survived to live another day.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Jeff: So we spent fourteen hours floating in the sea, and we floated all night until the next day. At mid-morning the next day, a fisherman -- we had drifted during the night. When we first went down, there was nothing, just open sea all around us, so it was very frightening, and then during the night we drifted with the current, so the next day we maybe five or six kilometers away from an island, so we were in view of an island, but still too far to swim. The current was too strong, but a fisherman in a small kayak saw us and paddled into the nearest island, and they rescued us with a bigger boat, and once my feet touched the land again I cried. I really cried for a good hard cry. I was so happy to be alive. It was the only time I cried in the last fifteen or twenty years.Mike: I've known you for a while, you're not a very sensitive guy.Jeff: And then we had to go back. My brother was hurt, so we had to take him to the hospital in London, and it took him a few weeks to recover, and after that we went back and reshot the documentary.Mike: What happened to your brother?Jeff: He was -- he got some cuts. When the boat was going down, he was cut from the barnacles on the hull of the boat, and he got a serious blood infection.Mike: I mean you're lucky there weren't any sharks or anything I guess.Jeff: Well that was a big fear. The captain was saying that all night long. He was saying, you know, there're sharks in this water, and you know, he was a bit deranged, and he was really worried about the sharks, so yeah, we were all pretty afraid of the sharks.Mike: Wow, you made it out. Everybody made it out OK. Everybody was alright?Jeff: Yep, survived to live another day.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Mike: In all of the traveling that you've done around the world, what is the best travel experience you have had? What's the most memorable travel experience you had in your adventures around the world?Jeff: Well, that's a tough question, Mike. That's like asking what's your favorite food because you love everything. Everything's delicious and to pick one is very difficult but I think it's very simple. I think it's --- I like to think of --- India is a crazy place. It's a circus of a country, in a good way. It's like a circus where have --- you never know what you're gonna see, and it's very entertaining, but the --- and it's one of the poorestcountries in the world, India, it's just full --- there are a billion people there, and six hundred million of them are very poor, but they're so happy and so friendly, I remember that one of my first --- my first trip to India, and one of my first days in India, there was a man, a chai wall. And a wala means like a little businessman, and chai is tea, in India so this chai wall, he had his own little tea stand on the side of a busy road in Dehli, and it was a small stand, and it was noisy, and it was hot, and it was chaotic[混乱的；毫无秩序的], and crazy and he sold his tea for two cents a cup, and when I sat down I started talking to this man and told him and it was like my first or second day in India, and you know, I had just come to the country for the first time, and he welcomed me to India and he said, you know, it's so good that you came to our country, and have some free tea, and he gave me my first cup of chai ever, for free, and this man, he had nothing. he lived on the street, and he slept beside his chai wala at night, and he had old ragged clothes on, and I just remembered that I'm very wealthy and he's very poor compared to him, but yet the hospitality that he showed by giving me that free cup of tea when he really needed the money and the business. It stood out in my mind, even to this day, that the generosity even though he needs the money. He was still so generous and so nice and giving. It stands out in my mind that, you know, and I always want to try to be kind and nice like that.Mike: Can I ask you a question?Jeff: Sure.Mike: Was there milk in the tea?Jeff: Yes, there was. In India, they call it dude, and it's buffalo milk, buffalo milk in the tea. It was great. Great tea. India chai is the best.Mike: You just gave me a whole new meaning of the word dude. That's brilliant.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Mike: In all of the traveling that you've done around the world, what is the best travel experience you have had? What's the most memorable travel experience you had in your adventures around the world?Jeff: Well, that's a tough question, Mike. That's like asking what's your favorite food because you love everything. Everything's delicious and to pick one is very difficult but I think it's very simple. I think it's --- I like to think of --- India is a crazy place. It's a circus of a country, in a good way. It's like a circus where have --- you never know what you're gonna see, and it's very entertaining, but the --- and it's one of the poorestcountries in the world, India, it's just full --- there are a billion people there, and six hundred million of them are very poor, but they're so happy and so friendly, I remember that one of my first --- my first trip to India, and one of my first days in India, there was a man, a chai wall. And a wala means like a little businessman, and chai is tea, in India so this chai wall, he had his own little tea stand on the side of a busy road in Dehli, and it was a small stand, and it was noisy, and it was hot, and it was chaotic[混乱的；毫无秩序的], and crazy and he sold his tea for two cents a cup, and when I sat down I started talking to this man and told him and it was like my first or second day in India, and you know, I had just come to the country for the first time, and he welcomed me to India and he said, you know, it's so good that you came to our country, and have some free tea, and he gave me my first cup of chai ever, for free, and this man, he had nothing. he lived on the street, and he slept beside his chai wala at night, and he had old ragged clothes on, and I just remembered that I'm very wealthy and he's very poor compared to him, but yet the hospitality that he showed by giving me that free cup of tea when he really needed the money and the business. It stood out in my mind, even to this day, that the generosity even though he needs the money. He was still so generous and so nice and giving. It stands out in my mind that, you know, and I always want to try to be kind and nice like that.Mike: Can I ask you a question?Jeff: Sure.Mike: Was there milk in the tea?Jeff: Yes, there was. In India, they call it dude, and it's buffalo milk, buffalo milk in the tea. It was great. Great tea. India chai is the best.Mike: You just gave me a whole new meaning of the word dude. That's brilliant.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Mike: In all of the traveling that you've done around the world, what is the best travel experience you have had? What's the most memorable travel experience you had in your adventures around the world?Jeff: Well, that's a tough question, Mike. That's like asking what's your favorite food because you love everything. Everything's delicious and to pick one is very difficult but I think it's very simple. I think it's --- I like to think of --- India is a crazy place. It's a circus of a country, in a good way. It's like a circus where have --- you never know what you're gonna see, and it's very entertaining, but the --- and it's one of the poorestcountries in the world, India, it's just full --- there are a billion people there, and six hundred million of them are very poor, but they're so happy and so friendly, I remember that one of my first --- my first trip to India, and one of my first days in India, there was a man, a chai wall. And a wala means like a little businessman, and chai is tea, in India so this chai wall, he had his own little tea stand on the side of a busy road in Dehli, and it was a small stand, and it was noisy, and it was hot, and it was chaotic[混乱的；毫无秩序的], and crazy and he sold his tea for two cents a cup, and when I sat down I started talking to this man and told him and it was like my first or second day in India, and you know, I had just come to the country for the first time, and he welcomed me to India and he said, you know, it's so good that you came to our country, and have some free tea, and he gave me my first cup of chai ever, for free, and this man, he had nothing. he lived on the street, and he slept beside his chai wala at night, and he had old ragged clothes on, and I just remembered that I'm very wealthy and he's very poor compared to him, but yet the hospitality that he showed by giving me that free cup of tea when he really needed the money and the business. It stood out in my mind, even to this day, that the generosity even though he needs the money. He was still so generous and so nice and giving. It stands out in my mind that, you know, and I always want to try to be kind and nice like that.Mike: Can I ask you a question?Jeff: Sure.Mike: Was there milk in the tea?Jeff: Yes, there was. In India, they call it dude, and it's buffalo milk, buffalo milk in the tea. It was great. Great tea. India chai is the best.Mike: You just gave me a whole new meaning of the word dude. That's brilliant.
Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast
James: Hi audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieved Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing podcast. Today we are doing a podcast and a webinar as well because I've an awesome presentation from Jeff Adler who's the Vice President of Yardi Metrics. Yardi is one of the largest property management companies in the nation and they have a lot of data behind them and Jeff is going to provide a lot of insight, which is going to give us a state of the union of multifamily industry. Hey Jeff, welcome to the show. Jeff: Well thank you very much James. James: Alright Jeff, so let's go back to last year 2019 where we had a really good podcast. I believe that's podcast number one. Where we call it a state of the union of multifamily for 2019. So this time is 2020. So let's have a recap. What has changed from 2019 to 2020 for the multifamily market? Jeff: Well, you know, in one regard, not much. Okay. And another regard a whole bunch. So if you kind of recall at the beginning of 2019 from an economic standpoint, there was a fair amount of uncertainty. The fourth quarter of 18 was kind of a Swan dive, we had an, a big inversion of the yield curve. The Federal Reserve had kind of raised rates. Stock market had kind of gone into a significant correction and 2019 we really weren't sure whether the economy would continue to be able to grow. Would the fed take the corrective action necessary? And the economy would be able to navigate some of the trade pensions and basically the continued health of the multifamily industry would it still kind of advance at a good clip or what was the state of supply. So there was some uncertainty around some of those kind of components. And so the picture is a bit more clarified from the macro economic standpoint. The feds did cut rates, the yield curve stopped its inversion flat again. And the economy kind of advanced forward, we had 2.3% growth over the course of the year. Job formation has still been quite good. Difficulties with supply had kind of stretched out that supply delivery curve and occupancies have performed well. Overall rent growth across the country has been around 3% with fewer markets performing poorly. Some of the hot markets kind of beginning to tamp down. So the one I would say negative component in all of the multifamily world is the regulatory backlash that occurred from rent control legislation in Oregon, New York and California, which has made those markets less attractive compared to others. But the basic outlines of the economy are still quite good. I just came back from the NMAC conference in Orlando I guess it seems like forever ago, but I think it's was only last week. And there the mood is very good, lots of capital lots of activity going on. People always worried about are things kind of richly valued, and they are. But if you look at the spreads in cap rate in the 10 year, still pretty good. You look at good availability, still very good. More capital is flowing into the multifamily industry from not only outside the United States, but inside of the United States with a multifamily being one of the two top asset classes for investments. So when you look at the demographics continued to be on a positive, you look at the supply, which we do not think will be out of hand and we just finished up a new supply forecast by property almost. Taking into account a lot of the cycle time data we have on deliveries of projects. We think that we'll actually, as a country, deliver a tad less than the 300,000 odd units that were delivered in 2019. And we are in generally speaking housing shortage contrasted to the housing surplus that we had before the crash. So it's really a really good time to be in multifamily. It's almost so good we kind of pinch ourselves and saying we don't want it to be this good. There must be something bad. What's the horrible thing that's going to happen to us? We're just having a hard time dealing with good news as an industry. But I'm cautious. I continue to be cautiously optimistic. I don't see a recession at least until 2021 and quite frankly, with the way in which the economy has kind of come through this, I'll call it a mini manufacturing recession. It didn't really affect the services industry; it did affect manufacturing and sectors exposed to trade. With us actually coming out of that growth prospects for GDP are actually higher this year than they were in 2019. So I don't really see a recession till 2021 and one could argue very effectively, 2022 but certainly we have another good year ahead of us and inflation is not out of hand in any respect. And because inflation isn't out of hand, there really is no pressure for interest rates at the short end to move higher. And there certainly is no pressure on the long end. I mean, interest rates for the tenure are back down to below one six and they were at one nine, not just before this kind of corona virus scare. But if you look at that, like if there's no inflation, then you're not going to see kind of big interest rate moves. You're not going to see big interest rate moves. You're not even going to see moving in cap rates or movement associated with a recession. It's really quite positive. I think the biggest issue if you're a multifamily investor right now is it's hard to find deals that aren't very richly priced. You have to be very prudent with your underwriting and with your capital investment. The competition for assets is quite extraordinary, particularly in cities adjacent to California and the Northeast; there are capitalist fleeing those areas. I've been speaking to folks in Phoenix where the market for multifamily is so amazingly red hot because of all the California is trying to move their capital out of California on a gradual basis. So I think that the biggest challenge right now is to prudently underwrite and to find opportunities that make sense. And if you're going to overpay and the fact of the matter is if you're in a competitive bid situation and you won, you overpaid. The question is will the market kind of bail you out? Are you in a rising tide so that the fact that you overpay at any particular moment doesn't really matter because the investment overall will perform well as the market and your value creation strategy plays out. So, long answer James, but I'm pretty optimistic about where we are in 2020. James: So what would cause the recession in 2021/2022? Jeff: Well as I've been saying quite a while, I don't know if I had this little piece here. Let's see. I'm trying to find out how do I kind of explain, this is a classic way of thinking about, and by the way, this slide is the same slide I've had since Trump was elected in November of 2016. Alright. So seems like, okay, things are a little more positive than I think they were even in November. Alright. So the balancing act has always been the pro growth elements of the administration's policy compared to the anti-growth elements of the administration's policy. Pro-growth seemed first tax reform, regulatory relief, executive orders. The anti-growth came later immigration control, which has restricted the amount of labor coming into the United States. It has created a labor shortage which has boosted incomes at the lower end of the economics and education scale. So it achieved its objectives at the cost of some level of growth and trade negotiation. Because the tussle with China has scrambled supply chains. And so there's a little bit of clarity with the signing of the USMCA in North America and the first phase of the Chinese agreement in I think in mid January. So trade negotiation is less of an anti-growth element than it had been. Immigration control still is an anti-growth element and the program elements are still kind of there, but kind of burning their way in and nothing much has happened. Infrastructure, education reform or healthcare, nothing's happened there. So when you look at it, I would say it's more like three quarters full versus a half full that I said in November. So what would cause a recession to occur? Well if you had a sudden increase in inflation, either labor cost inflation or materials cost inflation that would raise shorter term interest rates, that would cause an inversion and then you'd have a recession. Some significant macroeconomic demand shock, negative demand shock would cause it; apart from either of those things, I don't see a response and the other thing I do look for constantly is where's the debt bubble? Recessions are classically caused by excess leverage in certain sectors of the economy. So you constantly, in my mind, I'm constantly looking for where's the debt bubble and it's a big enough to cause a recession? Right now one could argue that there's a bit of a debt bubble in consumer auto loans, not that big a deal. It's not happening in mortgage or real estate. That's clearly the case. Is it happening in corporate debt? Yeah, maybe, but they're sophisticated folks. Is it happening to a certain extent in oil? Well, one could argue that that the factors are a bit over levered and the banks are trying to sort of reel them back in. But at 55, 60 bucks a barrel, it's not so bad. I don't see, again, when you look around and say, where's the inflation coming from? It's not coming from materials and it's certainly not coming from oil. I'll go back here and kind of show you a little bit of slide on oil production. It's not coming from oil. It's not really coming from labor. If I kind of go back a further point, not really coming back from labor, rent actually; rent, real estate is a quite frankly a bit of a driver of whatever inflation we do have because of frankly regulatory constraints to supply and the cost of materials and labor. That's kind of hard to produce supply to enter the market. So I don't really see inflation cracking over too, I don't see from the material side, I don't see from the labor side. Read some interesting papers by the way, that one of the issues we kind of are scratching our head about is with all this labor shortage. Why aren't labor unit costs going up? Or the fact of the matter is the workforce is older, is less likely to move, is reasonably productive. So there is wage inflation at the bottom end of the scale, wages at the bottom end is going up 5% but it's not enough to offset people who are retiring it at higher wage rates and slower wage growth among older workers. So even, and we've had a long history of services inflation with goods deflation and seems to play out. Now long story is the multifamily, not exactly economic piece, but the basic point is if you understand the basic sort of lay of the land, interest rates lower for longer, not really no big inflationary pressure, then income producing real estate looks really good because you're not going to get a reprising on the value of the asset and that's the way real estate works and generally you got growing incomes. So that's the basis of not believing that there's going to be a recession kind of upcoming immediately. We always thought, we're going to eventually have recession, but I don't see the basis of the pressures that would give rise to that at least for the next 18 months or more. James: Got it. Got it. So a primary would be the political climate is what you are saying could be where we might be causing some of these potential recession. It depends on what's the policy and you don't see any other big risk, I guess, right. In any other... Jeff: Yeah. So I mean, so James, you're in Texas, I believe, Austin is that correct? James: Austin. Texas, Jeff: Yeah. So your state and your city is the beneficiary of misguided policies in other places. The growth in population, the growth in tech centers is really occurring in the South and the West. It's not to say that New York, San Francisco, LA, are not wonderful places have very deep tech hubs and tech ecosystems. But what's generally happening is that when a business decides it wants to scale, it doesn't scale. In California, it can't, it doesn't scale in New York. It scales outside. That's not the say that Google is building a big footprint in New York City to access that labor pool. That's not the say that there are large tech firms that are; just yesterday I think Google was trying to in a wall street journal get San Jose, we redeveloped the city of San Jose downtown as an employment and a commercial center. But the fact of the matter is the cost of housing and expansion is so difficult in these major gateway cities that places that are business friendly and have an intellectual capital infrastructure like Austin are growing quite rapidly. Ross, Austin, Raleigh, Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, these are places where the tech infrastructure on talent is expanding. Texas is a beneficiary of having a great business climate. And so population and I think I have a little slide on this one here, population is moving as one would expect. Population is moving domestically; Vegas, Austin, Phoenix, Raleigh, Charlotte, Nashville, Orlando, Dallas, and Denver. You know, these are places that have significant domestic inland ratio. If you look at the other, I'll call gateway cities, they have a significant amount of domestic out migration and in the past they really were covered by international immigration. Now that as coming down a population in the US is growing at seven tenths, I think now six tenths of a percent. So these cities over here are growing quite rapidly. And Austin is one of the beneficiaries of that. Jeff: Got it. Got it. So what about, I mean, in the beginning you mentioned about the cities just outside of California or like Phoenix, I mean, Phoenix and Las Vegas is beneficiary or people are moving out to California and why is that? Why is that driving? Why not they come to Florida or Texas? Why is Phoenix and Las Vegas which had a huge cycle in the past crash, it went from hype to so down. Why are they like now? James: So if you think about it both in New York and in California, you have a hollowing out of the middle. And so if you're extraordinarily wealthy, so let's convert this to almost a apartment investment discussion because of the structure of the economy if you can build a class A property in Northern or Southern California, you should continue to build it. They will continue to get occupied because there are a reasonable number of people that have continued to expand at the very high end of the market. Jeff: Got it. James: Conversely, in the very low end of the market, it is a draw for people from around the world who want to get a start in the United States. But if you're in the middle of the income stream, then your life isn't that great and your costs are quite high and you can improve your quality of life by going someplace not too far from where you are. So if you look at California, the people streaming out of California, Boise, Salt Lake, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and yes, companies are moving all the way to Dallas. But there's a steady stream of the middle income and I would say and low income and it will cost 50 to 150,000 a year. Educated, skilled, but not at the highest level, not the half a million dollar a year kind of thing or $300,000 a year, but right there in the middle. Now the same thing is happening coming out of the New York metropolitan area, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and that's streaming to the Carolinas and into Florida. That's what's happening. Orlando has a little bit of a bump from Puerto Rican immigration, but there's pretty much people streaming out of there. And if you're talking about people leaving Chicago, they're going more to the Tampa where they used to go for winters. The new workers are going to the gold coast and the people in Chicago go to the Gulf Coast and down to the Carolinas as well. And Carolina is Georgia and so forth. And this is just where, look at the numbers, look at where the people are coming from. I mean it's in the numbers, it's in the cost structure. Certainly the tax bill that it went to effect in 2018 is pushing people at the margin on a slow roll kind of basis, adding a little extra push to what's been going on otherwise. And so when I look at where the population is growing, where the new supply is going, where intellectual capital is moving this is what I see. That's what I see and that's where an investment standpoint, my own view is you want to be in places where the tide is rising. It's easier to make money where the tide is rising and populations are growing and the economy is boosting incomes and it is to kind of swim upstream. I'm not saying you can't make money in Buffalo or Syracuse or Cleveland, but it’s tougher. James: Awesome. Yup. Yup. So Jeff, I have a question in terms of the rising, I mean the capital is comprising the price of buying an apartment nowadays as reason now from, I mean if you look at Texas in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio and I think everywhere, I think everyone across nations. It used to be 50 a door to buy an apartment. Now it has gone like 80 to 100 and in some places 120, 130 a door even for a class B and C properties. So how does it make sense? Because you can construct new class A with that similar cost, like a hundred, 110, you should be able to? Jeff: But no actually you can't and that is the entire point. Because of restriction and again, we're obviously talking about the city and which part of the neighborhood, but the fact of the matter is that construction costs have risen significantly and regulatory burdens have risen significantly, particularly in kind of urban cores so that the cost of constructing new products is higher. Now there is a lot of work being attempted to bring down the construction costs through prefabrication, through potentially regulatory streamlining. But it's not as easy as it seems and there's a lot of institutional resistance to it. I've spent the whole year trying to help crack the sort of affordability code and it's literally just buried in a swamp. I mean, it's just, it's ugly. So can you build, if a city planner will let you build essentially what it was eighties product on sort of suburban ex urban land. Then yeah, you can deliver it at maybe 80, a hundred thousand dollars a door. But it's very hard to do so. And as a result, so if you think about values, values are driven by two things. One, what's the next best alternative? And two, are our incomes growing to increase the value of the asset? In multifamily, you have both of these dynamics happening. One, because of the general shortage of housing and the higher cost of adding capacity rents are rising. So if rents are going up three percent, NOI is easily going up five to six. Plus given the fact that interest rates are lower for longer and there's capital streaming into it that is saying, well my cost of capital is lower and all the institutions which started this cycle 10, 11 years ago, only in the urban sexy six all of them are spreading out all over the country and they're bringing their lower costs of capital with them and their lower return expectations and that is having an impact on values. A third component I would also argue that kind of fills into the second one is that as cities grow and develop, and I'll use Austin as an example, Austin has become an institutional grade capital city. 20 years ago it wasn't, you had opportunities to capital, but now it is. So what that tends to as a city changed in its nature and becomes more broadly diversified and more accepted as having a broader economic base, institutions with lower cost of capital and lower return expectations now make it appropriate for investment and they drive up values. So it's kind of tied up in a second lot that I discussed. So multifamily is really in a situation where yes values are going up, but the real question you have to ask yourself is what does the future hold? Are the conditions under which the fact that the values went up are those likely to continue or are they likely to end? And like I almost hit myself over the head, I don't see how they end. So suddenly, admittedly we had always expected as a homeowner interest rate would increase a little bit and I think it's up to 65%. But it's down from 69 but up from 63 and we are going through a period of time where the millennial are getting older and they will want to live in basically the amenity if they have had children, more than one, they are more likely to want to live in the suburbs in better school districts, which is in the historical pattern. So, but be that as it may have, demographics are still very much people are renting for longer. They're getting married later. They're having fewer children. All that was elongating the rental period initially. And then as people are living longer and living healthier they are selling the house and then moving back downtown in a multifamily asset. That one asset class you really have to worry about are very large suburban homes that are sort of ex urban go to Fairfield County, Connecticut. You can buy a big estate for a relatively speaking a song. Nobody wants to live there. The taxes are too high. It's too hard to get to New York. There's no reason to be there anymore. That asset class is going to experience some real problems, but if you're near an employment center with a modest sized home or apartment, you're going to do okay. James: Got it. Got it. Yeah. I mean, you don't see anything in the horizon as long as you're by the employment center you should be good from what we see right now. Jeff: That just looks pretty good. So yeah, that's when someone says, okay, the careful thing you have to be at worry about excess leverage and overpaying. That's the biggest problem one has to be concerned with right now is there will be a recession. I don't know when. But you do not want to be in a situation where you are squeezed out during a recession because you're over levered and you have a debt maturity and you basically you get pushed out of a great long-term investment. That's the biggest concern. James: So let's say we have a recession right now, so the rents are going to drop. So if you have a long term loan, you should be able to ride and you should have some cushion in your operation cash flow. But one trick that has happened, not say one trick, one thing that has happened that what I realized in 2015 onwards, there used to be a lot of interest only loan started being given out by lenders after 2015. I don't know. That's what I feel. I know I used to be very hard to get even one year higher loan in 2015 and now it's like so easy to get three to five years higher loan. So it's the lenders that made it easier for people to buy and extend this expansion boom? James: Yes. I mean, so what they're doing is in order to sort of compete to get the loans, while they're not reducing the LTV percentage, they are allowing you to go IO and not pay down the principal which effectively helps you pay more. That's what it does because you have time for the rents to rise. So that by the time the loan comes due, you can refinance it and do okay. So certainly if you can get an IO loan for three to five years and increasingly you can fantastic. If you're a 65% levered, you can ride out a 5 or 6% reduction in rent that do occur in a recession. Obviously the reduction in rents will be higher at the class A levels than the class B, class B has got some more insulation. Value adds assets right now are priced to beyond perfection. So a lot of folks are basically saying, particularly in the institutional level, 150 units and higher, 90's or 2000 vintages a lot of the folks that I talked to were just saying it's not worth it. The prices are basically, I'm going to work for somebody else. I'm paying him all the profits from the value add. There's no point doing the work. So they're going back to, it's called core plus or kind of just building new again because those are the better returns converted value add. So the value add, you can still make work but you may have to sort of go under 50 units. You may have to do something to avoid the institutional capital pressure on values. And I saw about a year and a half ago credentials saying they were suddenly going to enter the value add space; by the way, I love credentials, they are great people, but it's kind of like run for the hills man because they're going into a value add place where you know there's an innovation risk. And that's not something they usually price too. I usually price to kind of a buy and hold deal. So they're not the only institution. A lot of institutions have found values add, but they found it as usual a tad late. Jeff: Got it. Got it. So I want to come back to the high leverage comment that you made. So on a value add deal, usually even though you buy it at 1.25 DSCR. So, for example, most of the banks gives us a loan at 1.25 but when you do value add that 1.25 could be 1.85, [31:22unclear] in a couple of years. So even though... James: But when you're done [31:31unclear] in-going with the expectation that you'll invest in and raise the rents and then you'll be at a 1.75 when it's time to cash out. But my point being is, if you're paying a lot and you're not getting a big pop in the rent relative to what you paid, then that 1.25 may not move high enough to cover the risk. Remember, building a value add as anyone, I'm sure you and other people know. There's a lot of hard work. I mean, you've got to sweat for it. There's a lot of sweat to make a value add work. It's not just doesn't show up on its own. And I've seen a lot of value ads go horribly wrong. Because people didn't get the ducks in a row. So it takes skill to do one. But the fact of the matter is values add is really from a public policy standpoint and indictment of the inability of supply to expand to meet the needs of upper income renters because that's really what happens. What ends up happening is because there's not enough supply at the upper end value add is a near price substitute for new supply. It also happens to withdraw supply from the lowest income consumers. That is what it does because you don't add a new supply at the bottom end of the scale. And one could argue that the rent control in New York and rent control as executed in California are essentially a rebellion against value add because in New York they basically wiped out the value added trade entirely. And in California they basically changed the value adds from a maybe a two to three year exercise to a seven to eight year exercise. But remember they didn't say [33:30unclear] it's very difficult to build in any one of these locations to get through all the permitting and the environmental zoning and all these other kinds of garbage. But they're not stopping luxury housing. What they're trying to do is stop the value add trade because there's no structure to add supply in the middle to the bottom end of the stack. And the fact of the matter is that the public policy response is short term in nature. So rather than solving the root cause they are basically kind of putting a Band-Aid on the symptom and that's unfortunate. It's bad public policy. But I don't see it changing James: That's very interesting. Never heard anyone looking at that perspective that I know it's basically a going against value adds in that cities that's why the rank [34:25unclear]. But it absolutely makes sense. So I want to ask before we end because we are almost to the end, I want to ask a few more scenarios that may cost impact to the apartment; and you can answer it quickly in a short. Fannie and Freddie Mac becoming private, what could that be impacting? Jeff: Well obviously the intent is for there to be no impact and their current program and current capacity of 20 billion a quarter each without any kind of green exceptions is kind of, I'll say, calm the market. So it's always been profitable. It's been the most profitable part of the, the GSEs there is, I think, and the NHC and NAA are doing a fine job communicating to Congress the fact that multifamily isn't the problem. The blow up was in single family housing underwriting. So if you look at Brickman, David Brickman became head of Freddy and he came out of the multifamily industry. He was in charge of multifamily for Freddy. Now in charge of all of Freddy. So in my mind, that kind of bodes well because at least from Freddie and Fannie, they know how to make money doing what they do for multifamily. I mean, they make money, they know how to make money. It's always been profitable. They could rebuild their capital cushions relatively quickly. I think the issue will continue to be how does Freddie and Fannie support single family home ownership without pushing so hard on home ownership that it blows it up like the last time. So how can they retain their underwriting criteria? The fact of the matter is, should they be differentiate pricing by market for single family. They don't really do that and do that for multifamily much either; but they are supporting their mandate and really if you think about it Freddie and Fannie's mandate is to supply multifamily capital where the life insurance companies or other places won't go, which really is the middle of the stack. A smaller to mid size markets, class B assets. It's one of the reasons why Freddie and Fannie don't do construction lending. They say that's a commercial banks business. It's not our business. And so I'm optimistic that it'll all work out okay. It absolutely has been a tremendous boom to the multifamily industry to have Freddie and Fannie because it basically puts a lot of stability into asset pricing, but I think it's quite recognized. So I'm hopeful that that won't cause disruption. James: Got it. How was China's economy slow down could impact the US economy and multifamily? Jeff: The fact of the matter is the us economy is mostly driven by services and the dynamic and technology services in particular. So if you think about the recent trade spats, which really slowed and began separating the economies, the places that got hurt had a manufacturing or agricultural bend to them. Minneapolis, classic example right there. Even their urban jobs were tied to those sectors and then they lost employment. So I don't think it's a tremendous problem. The fact that there's excess capacity in China, for example, means that goods costs even less, there'll be less inflationary pressure on goods. What we sell to the Chinese are primarily agricultural goods that are what we sell. And anything else ends up being produced there with our intellectual capital. So, I think according to the trade agreement they'll buy some more agricultural goods, which will help rural areas, but they weren't big multifamily centers anyway, so it doesn't really have an impact. And for manufacturing centers, those were pretty much, manufacturing takes a lot of land that occurs in ex urban and rural areas where rents are low multi family, where it's done well is where it's tied to intellectual capital and technology that drives down costs globally. So all in all, I don't think much is what I'd tell you. James: Got it. Got it. And that's one piece of advice on how to be prepared as we move forward. And in case there's a recession, what kind of what would you advise a property investor that already owns a property or is going to buy a property? Jeff: Yeah. So I mean, first one should mind dependence. This is a relatively speaking low margin business. There is a increasingly systems and technology available to sort of squeeze expenses down. So the way one prepares for recession is always to really look at your cost structure and re-examine what you're spending money on in a very meaningful way. You need to sort of be mindful of your leverage and model up. What happens if your rents go down five or 6%. Remember, it won't happen all at once. What you'll see is the new leases will go negative, renewals will hang together. You will have a higher skipping of the upgrade. So you kind of need to model out what happens to you and in a recession, I don't think it'd be a big one, but only a mild one. What happens? Are you prepared? Do you have a cash flow reserve? Have you spoken to your investors and your lenders already about what you would do? So are you prepared? And then I'm chairman of a ULI council and our council members, about a year ago, we went through a recession planning exercise. Like what kind of recession we're going to have and what are you going to plan for right now; and so every one of the organizations that I was working with had had a recession scenario plan in place about a year ago. Not that they had to execute on it, but everyone had one. So what I've experienced in all of now I've seen through four or five recessions and a big blowout is you need to have a plan, you need to be prepared, in a calm moment have thought through what you're going to do because in the moment in the crisis your brain just doesn't work that well. Under that kind of stress you don't think it through. So I would argue whatever organization size you are, if it's just you and your spouse or you and a slogan of investors, spend the time now to come up with a recession plan, put it to paper, talk about it. And then begin asking on the steps that you can take right now to prepare yourself. Again, I hope you don't have to do it, but weaning and hoping it'll never happen and not being prepared for it is a sure fire away to not be able to capitalize on it. And we had a great session from Clyde Holland who basically he capitalized on recession. He's a chairman of Holland partners’ pledge, great guy. And he basically in preparation, he saw something bad coming in oh seven, he basically slashed costs built a lot of dry powder and basically waited to pounce and came out of the recession incredibly strong. Now I don't think we'll see another recession like that one in front of their 80 years. The recessions we're going to see it more like the typical post World War II recessions. But you can get yourself prepared and you can be ready to act. And with that James, I have to run. It's been a real joy speaking with you today. Take care now. Bye bye.
Debbi Mack interviews crime writer Jeff Lindsay on the Crime Cafe podcast. Read along with the podcast or, if you're in a rush, download a copy of the show notes here. Debbi: Hi everyone. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I'm your host Debbi Mack. Before I bring on my guest, I'll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two ebooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy links for both on my website, debbimack.com, under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book, if you become a Patreon supporter. You'll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so. Debbi: Hi, everyone. I'm thrilled to have with me today, the creator of my favorite serial killer, or at least one of them, Dexter Morgan, and he now has a new book out called Just Watch Me featuring his new protagonist Riley Wolfe. I just finished it and it's great, and my guest today is New York Times bestselling author, Jeff Lindsay. Jeff, it's wonderful to have you on. Jeff: Well, it's great to be had. Thank you very much. Debbi: Thank you very much. Tell us about Riley Wolfe and what prompted you to write this book. Jeff: Riley Wolfe is a master thief, maybe the best in the world. And the thing about him is for Riley, it's not about the money, it's about the challenge. He had a sort of traumatic childhood that made him grow up with two really overwhelming compulsions. And the first is to steal things that are impossible to steal. It just can't be done. And the second is, if possible, to steal them from the 1%. He has a real deep seated grudge, almost a hatred for the hereditary entitled people who just, in his mind, wallow in the money and sort of walk on everybody else with their ingrained privilege. So, it came because I wanted to do a new series and quite honestly I sort of needed to. And it was what we like to call a job of work there. I had to go through a lot of different changes, a lot of evolution. And I started with a conman and I realized that it'd be more interesting to make it someone that uses being a conman as a tool rather than an end. And so Riley Wolfe has those skills and he has an incredible skill for disguises and dialects and accents, but he uses those to get inside where you would think no one could go and steal things from the 1% that can't be taken. "Riley Wolfe is a master thief, maybe the best in the world. And the thing about him is for Riley, it's not about the money, it's about the challenge. " Debbi: Very interesting. I don't know if you did this consciously or unconsciously or if there's even a relationship, but there was part of what I saw in Riley was the Saint actually. Jeff: What's the what? Debbi: The Saint, if you're familiar with the character, the Saint. Jeff: No, I'm not. I'm sorry. Debbi: Oh, well that's, you should familiarize yourself with that character. Jeff: No, then people would say I was stealing. Debbi: Well, we don't want that. But it just reminds me of that, that mentality, that whole ability to transform themselves and then doing things just for whatever personal reason and having a deprived childhood also. Jeff: Well, so far I've also been compared to Les Mis and a couple of other things. So I guess I'm used to it. Debbi: Well, it's a very interesting psychological makeup on this character, and I have to say that he's capable of doing some really nasty things when he has to, which would make him awfully hard to like if you didn't know his backstory. So what did you do? I mean, what sort of research did you do to get into his backstory? Jeff: Well, I worked with a psychologist and I came up with a couple of basic things about him and ran them past her, and then she helped me refine it and bring it to a point. I don't know, every writer who is any good at all is at least part ...
Show Notes Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify, the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum and I’m back with Nachi Gupta. Nachi: For our regular listeners, you probably noticed a lapse in recent episodes as we pulled away from our usual monthly releases. Jeff: With both of us having increasing demands on our time -- myself with business school and the busiest 21 month old in the world and Nachi with yet another entrepreneurial endeavor on the horizon -- we decided that it would be best to pass the podcast on to another host, so EMplify can continue to create and deliver the high quality materials that you deserve. Nachi: We have obviously really enjoyed creating this podcast and working closely with EB Medicine to produce it. We are deeply appreciative of you, our listeners, and your wonderful feedback and comments over the years. Without you, there would be no point in us working so hard on this. Jeff: And keep the feedback coming as we hand the reins to Dr. Sam Ashoo as the new host of EMplify. Dr. Ashoo is an Emergency Physician based out of Tallahassee Florida with a keen interest in informatics who has been featured on several other podcasts you may have heard. We can’t think of a better person to take over for EMplify. I’m sure you’ll really like him and the content he produces. Well, with that, let’s get started on our final scheduled episode of EMplify! Nachi: As we are just about to see one of the busiest travel days of the year, that would be the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we thought there would be no better time to discuss the September 2019 issue of EMP: Assisting With Air Travel Medical Emergencies: Responsibilities and Pitfalls. Jeff: This was a fantastic issue, thanks to the hard work by Drs. DeLaney and Greene, both of the University of Alabama Birmingham School of Medicine. Thanks as well to the peer editors, Dr. Knight, and Dr. Hill of the University of Cincinnati. Nachi: And I think you have a bit of a disclosure for this month... Show More v Jeff: Well, this is a first! Finally at the point in my career where I can announce a disclosure, though it’s more of a potential conflict of interest than an actual disclosure, but certainly still worth noting. I currently spend some of my time working for STAT-MD - which is an airline consultation service run by the Center for Emergency Medicine and UPMC. Though I’m certainly a junior member of the team, in some sense, I’ve responded nearly 500 inflight emergencies over the last two years. Nachi: And this definitely places you are in a particularly nice position to share some information with our listeners this month, and I’ll have some questions scattered throughout the episode for you too. Jeff: Sounds great, so let’s dive in, starting with what I think is the most important point - qualified, active, licensed, and sober providers should volunteer to assist in the event of a medical emergency rather than decline out of fear of medicolegal concerns. Nachi: I couldn’t agree more, so let me reiterate, please trust the evidence. And volunteer to help should you hear the call. We’ll get to this in a bit but there is little medicolegal concern and you owe it to the sick passenger to help. Jeff: So what are the chances you are called - well, they are not particularly high, but certainly not negligible either. In 2019, of the 4 billion passengers expected to fly, there will be an estimated 60,000 medical emergencies. That means there will be about 1 emergency per every 604 flights. Nachi: So, I fly about 4 times a month for work. At 4 times per month, over the next 12 years I can expect about one medical emergency. Already excited! Let’s start with some physiology. Cabin pressurization varies, but is typically equivalent to an altitude of 8000 feet. Jeff: And this has a huge effect, in one study of healthy volunteers, this change in pressure resulted in a 4-10 point decrease in oxygen saturation and a 35 point drop in arterial oxygen partial pressure from 95 mm Hg to 60. Nachi: In another study of healthy volunteers on a long haul flight, this change caused 7% of passengers to report symptoms consistent with acute altitude illness. Jeff: Due to the principles of Boyle’s law, decreased cabin pressure also causes expansion of gases within anatomical spaces in the body such as the eye, GI tract, sinuses, middle ear, etc. This expansion can potentially threaten surrounding structures. Nachi: So there must be guidelines for those recent post-op for flying - right? Jeff: There certainly are, but I don’t think we need to get into the weeds on this one since nobody listening will likely be doing pre-flight screenings. I think one thing to remember here, is that though cabins are pressurized to several thousand feet, they CAN be pressurized even further if necessary. The airlines don’t do this because it takes a tremendous quantity of fuel to do so, but if pressurization will defer a diversion, this option may peak their interest. Though an anecdote, the only time I’ve ever suggested it is on a flight from someone recent post-op eye surgery who went blind midflight. We pressurized the cabin from 8000 to 4000 and then finally to sea level and his vision returned. Pretty cool stuff. But getting back to the text, next we have air quality. Only 50% of inflight air is recirculated, all of the flow is compartmentalized between sections of rows, and all the air is run through a HEPA filter. The authors note that the air is actually comparable to that of an operating room. Nachi: Then why are people always getting sick after flying…? Jeff: Well it’s hard to prove, but experts believe that most post flight respiratory illnesses are likely caused by exposure to fomites on high-risk surfaces of airplanes and in airports - like the trays on the seat back. Nachi: Interesting. Jeff: It’s also worth noting that the air is quite dry, though this is unlikely to produce any clinically significant events. Most of the dehydration that occurs is more likely due to inadequate water intake and excess caffeine and alcohol consumption depending on the time of day. Nachi: Don’t judge. Even though it may be 8 am, some of our night shift locums friends may prefer an airport cocktail after a long week away. Jeff: Oh I’m definitely not judging, facts only over here. Anyway, let’s move on to a little epidemiology. Nachi: Syncope and cardiac events account for a large proportion of in-flight emergencies, with cardiac events accounting for the largest percentage of diversions. Jeff: Gi, endocrine and respiratory emergencies follow syncope and cardiac events, with specific percentages varying based on which study you look at. Nachi: Thankfully obstetric emergencies are relatively rare, accounting for less than 0.1% of all emergencies. Jeff: Trauma and substance abuse related complaints have also been reported, but represent only a small percentage of inflight emergencies. Nachi: I think that covers the main pathologies you may encounter. Next we should touch upon the actual responders. Physicians reportedly respond 44% of the time, followed by nurses at 20% and EMS providers at about 4%. Interestingly, despite physicians being there only 44% of the time, they were involved in the care for over 70% of diversions. Jeff: It might seem crazy, but that’s definitely my experience. Many physicians, especially non-ED physicians are not familiar with caring for the acutely ill. Additionally, most physicians are very uncomfortable actually witnessing someone syncopize and then immediately checking vitals and finding the passenger to be bradycardic and hypotensive as is the case with many patients immediately after a vasovagal syncopal episode. I cannot tell you how many times we get called by pilots considering diversion based on a physician’s request only to have the symptoms completely resolve in just 10 minutes. Be patient, this is a common in flight pathology. Nachi: Your experience has not failed you - data from your own group showed that 31% of cases resolved before arrival. Even in cases where EMS was requested, patients were only transported 37% of the time and of those, only 8% were actually admitted for further work up. Death is also a very rare phenomenon, occurring in only 0.3% of cases. Jeff: Alright, so let’s move onto the actual logistics of responding. Each airline has its own protocols and policies with respect to medical responders - some will require credentials, others may not. In some instances, you may be the first responder, in others, the flight crew may have already been in contact with their ground based medical control. Nachi: In terms of supplies, the FAA requires an emergency medical kit and an AED on all commercial flights. These kits cannot be opened without direction from a medical professional on the ground or on board. Jeff: And while airlines may add additional drugs at their discretion, the FAA mandates certain supplies. You can remember these supplies by thinking of the 5 A’s - asthma, allergy, altered mental status, ACS, and ACLS. The 5 As should help you remember the bronchodilators, epinephrine, antihistamine, dextrose, nitroglycerine, aspirin, and lidocaine as the one antiarrhythmic available. Of course, there are also gloves, an IV start kit, and a few other basic supplies. Nachi: AEDs are also required and have been since 2001 and amazingly when a shock was delivered in flight, 40% survived to hospital discharge with a good outcome. Jeff: Just as on the ground, shockable rhythms do well with good BLS care. And lastly, airlines also have a portable oxygen tank in addition to the emergency oxygen that is stored in the event of cabin depressurization. The exact quantity varies, but portable cylinders are certainly available. Nachi: So next we have to talk about a topic that I’m sure many of you have wondered about - what are the medico-legal risks of intervening? Jeff: As with most incidents of concern over medico-legal risk, we really just shouldn’t be too concerned over the potential legal ramifications. Though we’ll get into specifics, the short answer is that you should definitely volunteer your services - there are lots of protections in place with a paucity of case reports of legal actions against medical volunteers who volunteers in flight. Nachi: Perhaps most importantly, remember that ultimately the captain is in charge and you are functioning in a strict advisory capacity. Remember that most airlines can handle most emergencies with their ground based medical control, their typical staff, and predefined protocols - you are an added bonus. Jeff: For many ED providers, functioning as a consultant will be unfamiliar. Nachi: If I’m a consultant, I’m going to demand a WBC before seeing the patient, as I’m fairly certain that’s rule number 1 in consultant school... Jeff: It’s actually rule #12, now get out of your seat and come see the patient…. But back to medicolegal issues. In the US, health care professions are protected by the good Samaritan law and the 1998 federal aviation medical assistance act. Nachi: The Good Samaritan law provides legal protection to medical providers who perform their services in response to medical emergencies outside of the hospital. The exact verbiage of the law differs from state to state, but all 50 states have some version of it in their legislation. Jeff: Similarly the aviation medical assistance act applies to “medically qualified individuals and offers broad medico-legal protection to the airlines in the event that a medical volunteer is accused of malpractice as well as to medical providers who respond to an in-flight emergency.” Nachi: More specifically, the act states that “...an individual shall not be liable for damages arising out of the acts or omissions of the individual in providing or attempting to provide assistance in the case of an in-flight medical emergency unless the individual, while rendering such assistance, is guilty of gross negligence or willful misconduct.” Jeff: That’s a bit of a mouth full to get out. But basically, you need to remember that the AMAA protects you from everything shy of gross negligence. Because of this, there have been no reports to date of a medical professional falling below that standard. Nachi: There is one caveat to all of this though: don’t forget about your own mental status - for example if you have taken any sleeping aids or had any alcoholic drinks. Though this may not preclude you completely from rendering care, do so only with extreme caution. Jeff: And I don’t think we were clear enough about this up front. Up until this point we have mostly talked about US based flights. Flights run by International airlines are a somewhat different ball game for a number of reasons. First, medication kits will vary widely. Many will carry medications similar to those mandated by the FDA, but there certainly is no international standard. Next, the availability of ground based medical consultation is similarly widely variable, with many in the middle east contracting for this service and almost no airlines in Africa offering such services. Nachi: And lastly, with respect to legal risk - the international laws also vary widely. According to French law, for example, a French physician who does not volunteer may be committing willful negligence. Similar laws exist in Germany, Australia, and Canada. However proving you were there and refused to provide care would be quite difficult. And lastly, it’s unclear how to determine which countries’ laws apply when - for example, is it the sending country’s laws, the receiving country’s laws, or the country whose airspace you are currently in? Jeff: All excellent points. Next, we are moving to my favorite topic of the article - diversion. This is a tremendously complicated topic and I think the authors handled it quite well. Remember, the decision to divert is multifactorial and you are only there to communicate your medical opinion about the passenger - leave the decision for diversion up to the flight crew. I cannot stress this enough. Getting on the radio with the pilot and ground based medical control and demanding a diversion is often very unhelpful and simply not the right approach and can really be quite costly. Nachi: All of this is so interesting. I can’t believe you do this and divert planes.... Can you go into a bit more detail about everything the pilot considers when they are deciding to divert? Jeff: So there’s quite a bit, but I can touch on some of the main considerations. First, you have to consider the medical needs of the passenger - can he or she be temporized to get to the destination? Is there a suitable airport for diversion with an accessible local hospital with the required resources? Logistically, you need to find an airport that can not only safely accommodate the plane you are on but also one in which the airline can refuel and guarantee that the passengers and crew are safe. Remember, if you are on an A380, there are only so many airports with runways long enough for a safe landing. Fun fact: planes also take off heavy - with tons of fuel that will be burned prior to landing. Say you were to take off from London, bound for the US. To turn around and land back at London Heathrow, you may have to literally dump thousands of gallons of fuel to get the plane to a safe weight for landing. Alternatively, you may have to fly in circles for some time to burn fuel off in planes that cannot dump. A heavy landing necessitates a thorough maintenance overhaul of the landing gear and can cost the airlines not only money but significant time, which is equally as valuable. Nachi: Speaking of cost - while exact costs are unknown, one airline estimates that the cost can be as high as $600,000 - we are not dealing with small numbers here... Jeff: No definitely not. That’s why it’s so frustrating when medical volunteers demand the plane divert without talking through the medical scenario with the crew and ground based control - often temporizing measures are adequate. Nachi: And we alluded to this earlier - Physicians advise diversion more frequently at 9% of the time followed by EMS providers and nurses. When the airlines are left to their own means, they divert at rates roughly half that - just 5% of the time. At half a million dollars for some diversions, and an overall very low level of morbidity and mortality, a 50% reduction amounts to massive savings for possibly no clinical difference. Jeff: I can’t stress this enough - you are a consultant, helping the captain and the ground based medical control to come to most appropriate plan of action. When your advice causes the airlines to deviate from their standard protocols, that’s where they potentially run into trouble. Nachi: There are just two controversies to discuss this month and I actually think they are extremely pertinent. The first one relates to using personal medication or medications from other passengers. Given the relative paucity of medications in most airline medical kits, it may occur to you that someone else may have a helpful medication on board. While there is no strict rule against this, it could result in an increased level of scrutiny if there is an adverse event. So consider this a last resort. Jeff: The next controversy to discuss is the issue of gifts. There is a widespread belief that accepting gifts from the airlines would void legal protections. To date, there is ample airline-based data to suggest that medical providers’ legal protections are not negated in the event that the airlines wanted to reward a medical volunteer. Additionally, there are no reported cases of providers losing legal protection for receiving compensation for their services in flight. Nachi: Interestingly, some international carriers even offer points or other bonuses for registering as a medical volunteer. While I’m hesitant to call this controversy a myth, it seems like there isn’t much evidence to support it. Jeff: Agreed, don’t expect a gift, but if you do receive one, you can keep it and enjoy it without concern for your legal protections. Nachi: Alright so that wraps up the new material for this special edition of EMplify - let’s close out with some key points and clinical pearls. Jeff: Aircraft cabins are typically pressurized to about 8000 ft, resulting in a 4-10 point drop in oxygen saturation in healthy adults as well myalgias, fatigue, and generalized discomfort on long haul flights. Nachi: Only 50% of the cabin air is recirculated. When recirculated, it is subjected to HEPA filtration, which is adequate to prevent infection by airborne pathogens but not the infectious respiratory viruses, which are spread by droplets. Jeff: Dehydration on long flights is likely due to inadequate water intake and the increased use of diuretics such as caffeine and alcohol. Nachi: There is about 1 in-flight emergency per 11,000 passengers or 1 in 604 flights. Syncope and cardiac events are most common followed by GI, respiratory, and neurologic events. Jeff: Most in-flight emergencies are minor. When EMS is requested upon arrival, roughly 1/3rd are transported and less than 10% are admitted, with mortality estimated at 0.3% of cases. Nachi: AEDs are required on all US-based flights. Jeff: Airlines have a limited supply of supplemental oxygen for use in medical emergencies in addition to that provided to the entire plane in the event the cabin becomes depressurized Nachi: All US airlines have some form of ground-based medical assistance. Ultimately any decisions are the responsibility of the pilot in command – medical volunteers function in a strictly advisory capacity. Jeff: Medical volunteers are protected by both the Good Samaritan law and the 1998 Aviation Medical Assistance Act. Nachi: The Aviation Medical Assistance Act protects medically qualified individuals, unless they are guilty of gross negligence or willful misconduct. Jeff: International laws and protections vary widely. In some European countries, for a physician to not offer their services during an in-flight emergency may constitute willful negligence. Nachi: The decision to divert is multifactorial and can cost as much as $600,000 in some circumstances. Jeff: When physicians and EMS providers respond to in-flight emergencies, diversion rates are nearly double that of when the airlines work solely with their ground based support, increasing diversion events from 5% to 9%. Nachi: It is largely a myth that accepting any gift or payment after responding to an in-flight emergency would void your legal protections; the AMAA has no language regarding compensation and to date there are no such reported cases of lost legal protection. Jeff: And that’s the end of this months episode of EMplify: Assisting With Air Travel Medical Emergencies. This also marks the end of our run as your hosts. Over the past 3 years, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed hosting EMplify and having the unique opportunity to share high quality evidence based medicine with you all. As health care continues to move towards a quality over quantity paradigm, understanding evidence based practice will be increasingly more important. Nachi: We thank you all for giving us your ears and your time to help hone your clinical practice. Naturally, a big thanks also goes out to all of the contrubutors to Emergency Medicine Practice -- authors, peer reviewers, and of course the kind and thoughtful staff at EB Medicine. Jeff: We have no doubt that Dr. Ashoo, who will be taking over, will keep you on the edge of your seat as he brings new material to you. Couldn’t be more excited to have him as our successor. Nachi: As always, 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 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 any images and tables mentioned. PA’s and NP’s - make sure to use the code APP4 at checkout to save 50%. Jeff: The [DING SOUND] 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.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jonathan: Have you ever heard about speed dating?Jeff: Speed dating? No. I have no idea. Fast....?Jonathan: This is a kind of thing that started up in the last number of years, and what happens is it there's an organizer and you go to some dates in a two hour period.Jeff: So this is organized... it's organized and it's... what do you do? Like what do you do?Jonathan: Well, you'll have a number and a little name tag and maybe you'll be Jeff number 7 and you'll meet and talk to these ladies. Those five minutes are yours to talk about whatever you like. Perhaps you're interested in finding out what the girls enjoy doing in their free time, their hobbies, what their background is. I'm sure they'll have questions for you, as well, and if for example out of those twenty dates, there are four or five that you would be interested in seeing again, you put a little check next to their name on your check-list. If any of those same ladies put a check next to your name, then you have a match, and you're able to contact those ladies. You are given their e-mail addresses and you can continue to be in contact with them and find out if someone might be right for you.Jeff: So that sounds great. Have you ever done it before?Jonathan: Yes, I have.Jeff: And any luck?Jonathan: A little bit of luck. You know hard it is. People are looking for sorts of different things, so maybe my lifestyle isn't really suitable for a lot of people I meet and vice-versa.Jeff: Well, sounds good. I'm in.Jonathan: OK, I'll sign you up.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jonathan: Have you ever heard about speed dating?Jeff: Speed dating? No. I have no idea. Fast....?Jonathan: This is a kind of thing that started up in the last number of years, and what happens is it there's an organizer and you go to some dates in a two hour period.Jeff: So this is organized... it's organized and it's... what do you do? Like what do you do?Jonathan: Well, you'll have a number and a little name tag and maybe you'll be Jeff number 7 and you'll meet and talk to these ladies. Those five minutes are yours to talk about whatever you like. Perhaps you're interested in finding out what the girls enjoy doing in their free time, their hobbies, what their background is. I'm sure they'll have questions for you, as well, and if for example out of those twenty dates, there are four or five that you would be interested in seeing again, you put a little check next to their name on your check-list. If any of those same ladies put a check next to your name, then you have a match, and you're able to contact those ladies. You are given their e-mail addresses and you can continue to be in contact with them and find out if someone might be right for you.Jeff: So that sounds great. Have you ever done it before?Jonathan: Yes, I have.Jeff: And any luck?Jonathan: A little bit of luck. You know hard it is. People are looking for sorts of different things, so maybe my lifestyle isn't really suitable for a lot of people I meet and vice-versa.Jeff: Well, sounds good. I'm in.Jonathan: OK, I'll sign you up.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jonathan: Jeff, I really don't understand how sometimes you have so much success with girls when we go out to the bar. It often seems like I'm the one sitting there and not really enjoying the conversation with the other girl's friend while you really hit it off with these women, and you're able to just walk up and talk to people. I don't know, maybe I just don't have the ability to go up and do that. How do you do that?Jeff: I don't know. That's a... there's no special formula I don't think. I think you have to be a little bit open. You've got to be a little bit nice.Jonathan: Do you have some lines that you use?Jeff: I don't think. It all depends on the situation. It depends of the girl and the place and how you're feeling and what the girl looks like, but I think it helps a lot to have a good wingman. You need a good wingman. If you're by yourself you look a little bit strange: Why is this guy here in the bar by himself, so you need a good wingman.Jonathan: Well, I find when I go out to the bar with you, you've been able to meet and talk to some people, yeah, I guess maybe when I go out alone I don't have quite the same success rate, but then a lot of times, you go out to the bar by yourself and you meet people and then I only hear about it afterwards.Jeff: Yeah, but I think it's... if you drink enough beer and you go out with the right mindset. Leave all or your parameter at home and everyone is good in their own way.... and if you're open to everyone, open to having a good time, I think girls can sense that and they like that.Jonathan: Or perhaps you're just strange enough that it doesn't seem all that different when you're out by yourself.Jeff: Well, it might be that. It might be that.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jonathan: Jeff, I really don't understand how sometimes you have so much success with girls when we go out to the bar. It often seems like I'm the one sitting there and not really enjoying the conversation with the other girl's friend while you really hit it off with these women, and you're able to just walk up and talk to people. I don't know, maybe I just don't have the ability to go up and do that. How do you do that?Jeff: I don't know. That's a... there's no special formula I don't think. I think you have to be a little bit open. You've got to be a little bit nice.Jonathan: Do you have some lines that you use?Jeff: I don't think. It all depends on the situation. It depends of the girl and the place and how you're feeling and what the girl looks like, but I think it helps a lot to have a good wingman. You need a good wingman. If you're by yourself you look a little bit strange: Why is this guy here in the bar by himself, so you need a good wingman.Jonathan: Well, I find when I go out to the bar with you, you've been able to meet and talk to some people, yeah, I guess maybe when I go out alone I don't have quite the same success rate, but then a lot of times, you go out to the bar by yourself and you meet people and then I only hear about it afterwards.Jeff: Yeah, but I think it's... if you drink enough beer and you go out with the right mindset. Leave all or your parameter at home and everyone is good in their own way.... and if you're open to everyone, open to having a good time, I think girls can sense that and they like that.Jonathan: Or perhaps you're just strange enough that it doesn't seem all that different when you're out by yourself.Jeff: Well, it might be that. It might be that.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So, Jonathan, I'd like to meet a nice girl. I'm looking to meet a nice girl but I'm not quite sure where we should go to meet women. What do you think? Where's a good place to meet some women?Jonathan: You know, that's hard to say, I mean, there are all kinds of things that work for other people that they haven't necessarily worked for me. I mean, I talk to people who say that met girls in libraries, but I don't really want to go to a library. Usually they've got a silence rule. I don't want to go up and try to talk to a girl and have the librarian say, SHHH!Jeff: Actually, one of my friends told me that he met a girl in the grocery store once in one of the aisles. He was looking at milk and she came up beside him, so maybe we should go get some groceries.Jonathan: That seems to be a really unnatural kind of way to meet women in a grocery store. Maybe is a woman sees that you're buying individual portions of something and you're buying like little TV dinners that are only put in the microwave oven, she knows that you don't have someone at home cooking for you, but if I go out and I see a woman filling a basket with lots of tomatoes and cucumbers and so on, then I imagine she's probably cooking for a family.Jeff: Well, why don't we go do something like bowling. Bowling! Women love to bowl. I'm sure we can meet some nice ladies at the bowling alley.Jonathan: Oh, but women don't like putting on those ugly shoes.Jeff: Well, then...Jonathan: It's unfashionable when they go to the bowling alleys.Jeff: Well, then, shopping! Let's go shopping. Girls love shopping. We can meet them at a store.Jonathan: Girls love shopping but then they're gonna make you hold their bags for two hours while they go and try on different things. That's no fun.Jeff: OK.Jonathan: How about a concert?Jeff: Ah, no, Too noisy.Jonathan: Yeah, I guess you can't talk to women there.Jeff: Well, I think actually, another one of my friends once met a lady at a bank - the bank teller.Jonathan: Bank teller.Jeff: Yeah.Jonathan: That would seem like a little bit of a strange thing, and there I think the woman would be judging you by how much money you have in your account. She'd be able to see all of your information.Jeff: Well, actually, I think let's just go to the pub.Jonathan: OK.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So, Jonathan, I'd like to meet a nice girl. I'm looking to meet a nice girl but I'm not quite sure where we should go to meet women. What do you think? Where's a good place to meet some women?Jonathan: You know, that's hard to say, I mean, there are all kinds of things that work for other people that they haven't necessarily worked for me. I mean, I talk to people who say that met girls in libraries, but I don't really want to go to a library. Usually they've got a silence rule. I don't want to go up and try to talk to a girl and have the librarian say, SHHH!Jeff: Actually, one of my friends told me that he met a girl in the grocery store once in one of the aisles. He was looking at milk and she came up beside him, so maybe we should go get some groceries.Jonathan: That seems to be a really unnatural kind of way to meet women in a grocery store. Maybe is a woman sees that you're buying individual portions of something and you're buying like little TV dinners that are only put in the microwave oven, she knows that you don't have someone at home cooking for you, but if I go out and I see a woman filling a basket with lots of tomatoes and cucumbers and so on, then I imagine she's probably cooking for a family.Jeff: Well, why don't we go do something like bowling. Bowling! Women love to bowl. I'm sure we can meet some nice ladies at the bowling alley.Jonathan: Oh, but women don't like putting on those ugly shoes.Jeff: Well, then...Jonathan: It's unfashionable when they go to the bowling alleys.Jeff: Well, then, shopping! Let's go shopping. Girls love shopping. We can meet them at a store.Jonathan: Girls love shopping but then they're gonna make you hold their bags for two hours while they go and try on different things. That's no fun.Jeff: OK.Jonathan: How about a concert?Jeff: Ah, no, Too noisy.Jonathan: Yeah, I guess you can't talk to women there.Jeff: Well, I think actually, another one of my friends once met a lady at a bank - the bank teller.Jonathan: Bank teller.Jeff: Yeah.Jonathan: That would seem like a little bit of a strange thing, and there I think the woman would be judging you by how much money you have in your account. She'd be able to see all of your information.Jeff: Well, actually, I think let's just go to the pub.Jonathan: OK.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So were you always able to live with only a few possessions?Jonathan: Oh, certainly not. The first trip I ever did to South America I had the most massive backpack you could imagine. I mean I had to get it from a sort of military surplus store because I needed to have the kind of volume that a World War Two soldier would have had to carry things, all of his survival gear. When I traveled to Africa in my early twenties, I brought along things like, for example, a jungle hammock, you know because I was convinced that I was going to be stringing up the ropes of this, and sleeping above the ground because I was worried about some sort of dangerous animals that might come after me. When, then later, you find out the reality is, that you're always able to find some sort of accommodation even if it's very budget type and wasn't a problem.Jeff: Do you think... would you recommend this type of lifestyle to someone else?Jonathan: I don't know if my life styles very suitable for other people because they have more roots than I do. They've settled down in some way. They have a regular job that they have to go to. Myself, usually only working perhaps four months a year, I don't have the same responsibilities that other people do and I'm not married. I don't have kids. I have no need to decorate a room in any way.Jeff: Well, tomorrow, I'm getting rid of my house, all my possessions and saying goodbye to my girlfriend and buying a suitcase.Jonathan: OK. As long as you don't try to live out of mine. There isn't enough room for you as well.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So were you always able to live with only a few possessions?Jonathan: Oh, certainly not. The first trip I ever did to South America I had the most massive backpack you could imagine. I mean I had to get it from a sort of military surplus store because I needed to have the kind of volume that a World War Two soldier would have had to carry things, all of his survival gear. When I traveled to Africa in my early twenties, I brought along things like, for example, a jungle hammock, you know because I was convinced that I was going to be stringing up the ropes of this, and sleeping above the ground because I was worried about some sort of dangerous animals that might come after me. When, then later, you find out the reality is, that you're always able to find some sort of accommodation even if it's very budget type and wasn't a problem.Jeff: Do you think... would you recommend this type of lifestyle to someone else?Jonathan: I don't know if my life styles very suitable for other people because they have more roots than I do. They've settled down in some way. They have a regular job that they have to go to. Myself, usually only working perhaps four months a year, I don't have the same responsibilities that other people do and I'm not married. I don't have kids. I have no need to decorate a room in any way.Jeff: Well, tomorrow, I'm getting rid of my house, all my possessions and saying goodbye to my girlfriend and buying a suitcase.Jonathan: OK. As long as you don't try to live out of mine. There isn't enough room for you as well.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So, Jonathan, what is home for you? Where is home for you?Jonathan: Where is home for me? Actually, I would have to say that I'm homeless.Jeff: Homeless! What do you mean homeless?Jonathan: Well, I don't call one particular place home. I pretty much live out of a suitcase. I don't have roots holding me to one particular place. I was born and raised in Toronto but from a very young age I was traveling for different purposes: some for the work that I was doing, some for just pleasure travel and even now when I go back to Toronto, it doesn't really feel like home. In fact people comment about my accent, and they say, "Oh, that's an interesting accent. Where you are from?" and I say, "Well, I'm from here."Jeff: So where do you split most of the majority of your time? Where's your base?Jonathan: Well, I don't really have a base. That's the thing. I spend about four, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, months in Japan and I usually visit my parents for about a month a year, sometimes in Canada where they spend spring, summer and early autumn, and sometimes in this small little town in Mexico that they like to go to avoid the harsh Canadian winter.Jeff: So, you and... in between those times, in between Mexico, in between Canada, in between Japan, where are you?Jonathan: Wherever I sort of feel like going. Now I don't draw the kind of salary that allows me to live a glamorous lifestyle and travel around the world with the jet set, but I can certainly go and spend several months a year in different destinations, living a very basic existence but having enough time to be able to travel around and stay in simple accommodation, go out and hit the bars at night, talk to the people I meet in those different areas. At different times I have different interests.Jeff: So that sounds like a pretty exciting, pretty fun life. Do you ever get tired of it?Jonathan: I think that it's the kind of life that doesn't appeal to everyone and some people think I have this wonderful, fantastic life all the time. Sometimes, I would like to work a little bit more. Sometimes, I think, "Oh, no! I have nothing to do for the next three months."Jeff: Except for travel.Jonathan: Yes. And as of now, this work that I'm about to do finishes in a couple of days and people have asked me, where am I going afterward and my honest answer is I don't know. I literally have no idea where I'm going to be four or five days from now, and I have no idea what I'll be doing for the next three months until I need to be back in Japan for work three months from now.Jeff: Well, good luck on your next trip.Jonathan: Thank you.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Jeff: So, Jonathan, what is home for you? Where is home for you?Jonathan: Where is home for me? Actually, I would have to say that I'm homeless.Jeff: Homeless! What do you mean homeless?Jonathan: Well, I don't call one particular place home. I pretty much live out of a suitcase. I don't have roots holding me to one particular place. I was born and raised in Toronto but from a very young age I was traveling for different purposes: some for the work that I was doing, some for just pleasure travel and even now when I go back to Toronto, it doesn't really feel like home. In fact people comment about my accent, and they say, "Oh, that's an interesting accent. Where you are from?" and I say, "Well, I'm from here."Jeff: So where do you split most of the majority of your time? Where's your base?Jonathan: Well, I don't really have a base. That's the thing. I spend about four, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, months in Japan and I usually visit my parents for about a month a year, sometimes in Canada where they spend spring, summer and early autumn, and sometimes in this small little town in Mexico that they like to go to avoid the harsh Canadian winter.Jeff: So, you and... in between those times, in between Mexico, in between Canada, in between Japan, where are you?Jonathan: Wherever I sort of feel like going. Now I don't draw the kind of salary that allows me to live a glamorous lifestyle and travel around the world with the jet set, but I can certainly go and spend several months a year in different destinations, living a very basic existence but having enough time to be able to travel around and stay in simple accommodation, go out and hit the bars at night, talk to the people I meet in those different areas. At different times I have different interests.Jeff: So that sounds like a pretty exciting, pretty fun life. Do you ever get tired of it?Jonathan: I think that it's the kind of life that doesn't appeal to everyone and some people think I have this wonderful, fantastic life all the time. Sometimes, I would like to work a little bit more. Sometimes, I think, "Oh, no! I have nothing to do for the next three months."Jeff: Except for travel.Jonathan: Yes. And as of now, this work that I'm about to do finishes in a couple of days and people have asked me, where am I going afterward and my honest answer is I don't know. I literally have no idea where I'm going to be four or five days from now, and I have no idea what I'll be doing for the next three months until I need to be back in Japan for work three months from now.Jeff: Well, good luck on your next trip.Jonathan: Thank you.
Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast
James: So few things; we want to go through some of the markets and some of the value-add stuff and I think you do a lot of student housing things. Also, we can go through that as well. Yeah, that should be what it is. And okay, let me just get started. So 1 2 3... Hey audience, welcome to Achieve Wealth Podcast where we focus a lot on value-add real estate investing. Today, we have Jeff Greenberg who has more than 40 years experience in management, staff supervision, development, and training. Jeff has been investing since 2007 and has more than 40 million multi-property projects consisting of around 2,000 units. So deals that he controls consist of student housing and some of the multifamily units across, Georgia, Arizona, Texas, and Ohio. And Jeff focuses a lot on value-add student housing, which is very interesting. Until now, we have a lot of podcast interview on conventional multifamily in workforce housing, but now, we're going to talk a lot more about student housing. Jeff has also done market rate and also senior living multifamily properties. Hey, Jeff, welcome to the show. Jeff: Well, how you doing today? James: I'm good. So thanks for coming in. I want to go with more details on how did you get started because you rent a thousand units across different states. So can you describe to our listeners and audience on how did you get started? Jeff: Well, probably similar to a lot of other people, I started out with single-family, but actually never did any single family deals. That was in 2007 when the prices were going down so fast that it was hard to do much in the single-family area as far as REO properties, the bank's weren't releasing them. So I did bump into a guru and so I did go to seminars and did get some mentoring around in 2007-2008. And then started with my first property that I ever bought, other than my own personal residence, was a 20-unit property and it was a syndicated deal. So we brought in investors into that first deal and that was essentially my entry into it. skipped right past all the single-family stuff. James: And what year was it, Jeff? Jeff: That was the first property we bought, actually it was in 2010. James: Okay. So 2010 you started with 20 units and the guru and the cost that you had taken was that more multifamily or was it more a single-family size? Jeff: It was all multi-family stuff. James: Okay, got it. So you got into that and then you started buying 20 units and which market was that? Jeff: Well, that Market was in Harlingen, which is in South Texas. Okay. It's near Brownsville and McAllen, for those people that know that area. James: Okay. Okay. So 2010 was supposedly supposed to be a perfect time to start investing in real estate after the 2008 crash. So can you describe what happened in your first deal? I mean at high level and what happened and how did you come up, in terms of the results for the first day of... Jeff: Yeah. The first deal, that property was only three years old. It was built in 2007. It was a hundred percent occupied and it was in a very slow growth market. So we had big plans for raising rents and they were already paying electric so we were planning on billing back water. And the problem was it was very difficult to raise the rents. We were getting a lot of resistance and doing the bill back of the water, we met with a lot of resistance. So we had nowhere else to go. It was already a hundred percent occupied because it was a new property. And so that was a plan which didn't work very well because we couldn't get those rents up. It took them a long time to get the rents up. So the lesson learned from there was that you needed to do more research on to the potential for the value-adds. And in that property, we held it for six years; we were supposed to sell in five. We held it to 6 because we drew a line in the sand as far as what price we would take and it took us an extra year before we are able to get that price in order to get the investors a fair return. But it took us an extra year. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been much much of a profit on that property. So it was a seminar. James: I mean, that's awesome that you're sharing your first lessons learned, right? Because sometimes you know, we forget that there are things that we missed out or there are things that you know, we don't really see it when you go and buy a multi-family. Sometimes you buy in a hot market and it went up 200-300%. People think that they did the work but that's not going to be the case all the time. Jeff: Well, that's basically what happened on the next property though. So the next property was a property we bought in Houston where it was a foreclosed property that we were buying it. The owner we were buying it from actually bought it as a foreclosure so he had had it for about two years. It is 62 units so he bought it for 600,000 and we bought it for 1.3 after he had it for two years and so we got it for about under 21,000 a unit. And at the time, in Houston, the values were going from 25,000 to maybe 35,000 a unit so we still bought it under market value and then in three years, we sold it for 2.7 million. And the reason we got that value part of it, it was 85 percent occupied when we got it. We got it up to 95 percent occupied. The revenue was about 36,000, we got it up to about 42,000. But also at that time, the cap rates compressed so we bought it at a 9 cap and sold it at a 7 cap. So we got the advantage of the market, the market appreciation as well as what we did for it so that was a perfect storm for us. So it completely made up for our first one, in that the investors got a 120% return on a three-year whole. So a 40% annualized return, which nobody complained about. James: Yeah, absolutely. Jeff: But that's unusual and that was totally different from the other property where the investors got a lot better than they would have in the bank, but they didn't get a fantastic return. So different properties, different deals. James: So I mean that too is conventional multifamily, right? Jeff: Yeah. James: And how many conventional multifamilies did you do before you start hitting into student housing? Jeff: Well, the next one after that actually was a student house. I mean, I was invested in another person's deal that was about 700 units 20 million dollar deal that we were in. But the next deal I did after that, actually, we broke up our partnership. My partner back decided not to do real estate anymore and I continued on my own and that's when I got a small property in Ohio. I had a 19-year-old student that went and found this property for me in Oxford, Ohio, and that's when I got into student housing. So we were talking, we mentioned earlier as far as how it getting into student housing, I really didn't plan on it. It was my intern that found the property and said, "Hey, let's get this," and the numbers look good and we got into it. So that was our first student housing deal in Oxford. James: Yeah. I mean, I'm going to go a bit deeper into that. But I mean you are now in California, you are based California, but you have been buying in McAllen, Texas and Houston and Ohio. So how did you decide on where to go or is it just whatever opportunity that comes to you? Jeff: Well, I've been pretty opportunistic, basically, when an opportunity comes in. Right now, we're kind of reversing out a little bit and trying to do more focus on markets. But at that point in time, we were just looking at opportunities and when an opportunity came we did our research on the market and did it afterward, rather than doing it up ahead of time. We decided do we really want to be in this market and if we did then we went up to the property. But it was more properties came to us from different directions. The one in Georgia, I had a lady working with me that I had trained and she developed a relationship with a broker in Georgia and that was pretty much where we got the Georgia property from, which was our next student housing property. James: So one thing I want to clarify. You said you had an intern and you have this lady that you have been training. So do you have interns working for you or do you have students that are looking for deals? Jeff: Yeah. The first one was an intern that I had trained and then after that, there was a group of people that came to me and asked me to train them and so I started training them and teaching them how to find properties. And in the last three years, we've done a couple of deals together, but they basically found the properties. Yeah, and you know that I've been training them as we've been going, showing them a lot of the different aspects of it; doing due diligence with them and taking them on the tours with a lot of those students. Since then things have changed a little bit but at that time, those were people that I have trained. James: So is it like part of your mentoring program or you just train for fun kind of thing? Jeff: It wasn't a formal mentoring program, but it was kind of a mentoring program. James: Okay got it. Jeff: But it was just more informal that I had helped people and in turn, they would bring properties in and if I like them, would go after them. Say it saves me underwriting a hundred deals to find one, they would underwrite a hundred deals, bring me one and I'd only have to look at a few of them. So much of our deals that I had to look at, you know, when they would bring them supposedly all ready to go and I would decide yay or nay on them if I liked them. James: Okay, got it. So coming back to the student housing and you said one of your interns found it. And, I mean, can you describe how did he find that deal? Jeff: Well, he was embarrassed to tell me, actually. He was embarrassed to tell me until after we had closed that he actually found in on LoopNet. And you know there are deals on LoopNet but usually, they're overpriced or maybe there's some other problem with them and it so happened that the seller was beaten up by two other buyers prior to my purchase. We got it for a much lower rate. So at the price that we got it at, it was a great deal but at the original price, it wouldn't have been. James: Got it. Got it. So let's describe the process. So this intern brought you the deal. So what are the few things that you look at the deal that you think you're going to take a second look at it? Jeff: Well, I mean several things. The one thing I had my interns do is I want to do as little work as possible myself. So I told them I want bullet points on why I want to be on that market, you know, what's the advantages of this market? With student housing, the emphasis is more on the school, but all the different reasons that this is a great market to be in and also as well as the numbers for the property itself. And basically, they have to come in and give me a sales pitch and convince me with a presentation that this is a deal I want to do. And on the regular market rate ones, you know the typical stuff with the employment and the population growth and the age of the population and all of that typical stuff that we look at. Over the student housing, it's the size of the college, the percentage of rooms available on campus versus off campus, basically, the health of the university. The location of the property, how close it is to the university, those kinds of things that we look for more so on the student housing. James: So, can you go a bit more, dig deeper into how far from the campus which you consider in campus versus other campuses? Jeff: Well, as far as what we look for, typically, we want something within a mile of the campus. My Georgia one is a block away, my Ohio one is within what they call a Mile Square. My Arizona property is a little bit farther out. It's two miles off campus and that one, it's a little bit more of a struggle but you're not going to get the prime rates and we understood that because when you're two miles out. So you want it close by the campus, you want it on the right side of the campus, rather than way away from the classrooms where people still have to walk a mile across the fields to get to campus. So you want to be on the the the closer side where the classes are but it will help you out also if you're near. the bar district or where all the hangouts are that sometimes will make up for being a little bit far from the campus. If you're where all the hangout places, the cool places are that helps you out. The other thing in student housing is the bedroom bathroom parody. If you could get a one-on-one with a one-bedroom and one bathroom that's going to be a lot better than your four twos or your 3 ones or whatever. The more bathrooms you have, they like that. Also, it seems that student nowadays, they want to share with fewer people. So a 4-2 wouldn't be as popular as a 2-1, you know where you still got two people sharing a bathroom, but you only have two people that have to get along with each other. And if you could get a 1-1, you're even better off; that they're a lot happier with. In fact, I was talking to someone the other day that I had some 4-2 that I actually split them in half and made two ones out of them. Just had to put a kitchenette in order that they have fewer people to share. James: Okay, interesting. So have you started focusing fully on student housing now or you're still doing conventional multifamily? Jeff: We're doing both because I do like the fact that people mess up student housing and it gives us an opportunity, you know, everybody we know from the groups we're in, everybody's looking for value-add multifamily, but there are fewer people looking for value-add student housing. And so that just gives me a little bit of an advantage on that. But other than that, I mean that's the main reason I'm looking at student housing is that there are fewer people looking at it and if you know what to do with the student housing, there are certainly some great opportunities. I don't think I would recommend it as somebody's first opportunity, the first investment because there is a little more risk into it, but it's a good asset class. James: So let's discuss some of the risks that's involved with student housing. So can you outline a few risks that a newbie should watch out for student housing? Jeff: Yeah. Well, part of the risk is missing the lease up window, wherein multifamily if you don't get it leased it up this month, maybe I'll lease it up next month. But on student housing, if you get it leased up by a certain time and each campus is usually different, if you don't get it leased up in time, during that time, you may be stuck with empty units for the whole year. So you've got to get it leased up during that time. The other thing is, you're going to have higher turnover and it depends on the property as well. My Georgia property, we're hardly getting any turnover because there are not a lot of other options in the market. My Ohio property there's plenty of other options so they may go from one property to another each year. Same with my Arizona property, they may switch around. So it's going to depend on what's available at their price range if there's going to be turnover. My first year on the Ohio property, I think was like 85 percent turnover, which most people will freak out thinking, you know, okay, 85% and it's all at once. It's everybody's gone at the same time. And so, you've got to turn all these units and have them ready for the new tenants coming in. So we always budget for a higher expense as far as because of the turnovers because turnovers, as we know, is one of our bigger expenses so we'll budget for that. A lot of people think that student housing, you have a lot more in the way of damage and we really haven't seen that, we haven't seen a lot of damage. And the thing is we charge back everything that's caused by the students that not that normal wear and tear. I mean, we get things; wine stains in the carpeting or iron marks where they put an iron down on the carpeting and melted the carpet, shot glasses or beer caps in the garbage disposal. We do get lockouts, you know, where were you're having to fix the door because somebody kicked it in, in order to get in or you get domestic disputes where some boyfriend goes and punches a wall because he's pissed off or something. I mean, we do get some of those but the deposits cover most of that stuff. James: Got it. I'm sure the parents will pay too, I guess. Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, if it gets beyond the deposit we have then the parents will usually jump in. James: And how much is the turnover cost that you usually budget for student housing like in conventional usually like for me I usually budget like $100 per unit, per year? Jeff: As far as for turnover? James: Yeah. Not repair and maintenance, just turn over. Jeff: Well, if we look at the overall repair and maintenance budget usually we're about five or six hundred, overall. And my student housing ones, my Ohio, I believe we're at 1,800 per units. James: Repair and maintenance? Jeff: Yeah. James: Well, that's a lot. Jeff: I have to lower that down. I don't even think we're using that but that's what I originally put it about. James: Okay. Got it. Yeah. Because usually total repair and maintenance plus turnover is like 500 to maximum $600 on conventional. Jeff: Yeah, I mean, mainly because of your turnover costs. On that property, we've been painting every wall every time we turn over. I'm not sure if we need that but we've been doing that. It's been a little bit higher. I mean, it's been higher on that one. The other one in Georgia, our turnover costs aren't nearly as much. James: And what do you expect other than, do you do anything special to reduce your turnover cost? Jeff: Well, we try to encourage re-leasing and we do give lower rates for those people that are releasing as well as if they release early, we do give them discounts on that. And in the thing is, on my Georgia property, if they release, we may keep their rents at the same rate or maybe just raise it slightly in order to keep them in because that saves us a lot of money. That saves us a lot of money on the turnovers. James: Okay, correct. What about the interior? Like carpets vs. vinyl vs metal. Jeff: Typically, I mean, we don't have to make it too fancy. But we do put, I believe in the Ohio one, we've got the role on vinyl flooring. In the bedrooms, we do have carpeting. It's just Formica countertops. We don't need to do anything fancy and that's going to depend as well on the demographics of your clients. My Ohio property is upper middle class. It's Miami University and it's probably an upper-middle-class clientele. My Georgia property is a very low economic clientele, they would be thrilled with anything we put in there. So we just kind of resurface the Formica countertops. We did some chemical wash on the showers and the tubs and repainted everything. We do have nice laminate floors in there, except for the bedrooms. The bedrooms are the only rooms with carpeting. We just painted the cabinets. From the state that they were in, what we did just totally brightened up the property. I mean, just totally changed it. They were a mess and this isn't an old property. That's a 1999 property but there was some old indoor-outdoor carpeting in the hallways that just look just totally disgusting. That we put all vinyl laminate in the hallway and it looks great now. James: Awesome. And what about during the summer? I mean a lot of them don't stay in the unit, right? So they still pay for the summer or does it get re-rent or is it vacant or what's happening? Jeff: Again, that depends on each of our markets. And the Georgia one, I believe we are 70% for this summer, which is high. I think last year we were about 60 percent during the summer. So those that are going to summer school can stay there. But in August, we'll be back up at 98 to 100% on that property. That was a property we bought at 30% occupied and now we're over 100, we're at 100 like it's not over. We're at 100% occupancy on that one. James: And what about students which is more like, you know, four-year degree versus postgraduate degree, have you tried experimenting with that? Jeff: You know, my Ohio property, we have some studio apartments and a lot of those are rented to graduates as well as young Professor. So yeah, those are great tenants if you can get them. The graduates, they're a little more mature and you never hear anything from them so those are great on some of the properties. We do have graduates in some properties, but most of them are second-year students. Typically the schools require that the students stay on campus the first year so as freshmen, so we usually get them as sophomores. James: Got it. So coming back to the demand side of it for student housing. I'm just trying to understand but I lost my train of thought here. I mean, for example, let's say the price, in terms of rent, I mean the rent is much higher compared to the normal workforce housing. Do you think that's a benefit as well? Jeff: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And the rent is higher than we get more benefit from the additional rent than it costs us on any additional maintenance expenses. So there is a higher cost benefit that we do get from the student housing. So that's one of the things we like. The other thing that we do like also about the student housing is it is fairly recession-resilient and you know, we all know that we're at a high point in our market right now, we don't quite know what's going on, as far as where we're going to be in the economy. And student housing, historically, has done very well during down markets and that's something also that I look at when I look at properties. How well did it do during the last recession and to see how far down it dipped. And typically you find that student housing and as well as self-storage typically do well in those markets. And so that's another reason why we like looking at those deals. James: Well, yeah, I mean the rationale is people go to school when the economy is downturn right? Jeff: That's part of it. And the other thing is parents are going to try to get their kids into college as soon as they get out of high school because if they lose them to the workforce for a year or two, it's going to be really tough getting them back in. So if a parent is going to be paying for their kid, they are going to find a way to do it. Otherwise, they may not get them in the college later on. James: Got it. So, in terms of value-add and I'm sure you are trying to make your community, in terms of student housing much better than other communities. So is there one of the value-adds that you do in your community that you think, you know, you will be able to command much higher rent and much higher occupancy? Jeff: Well, the one we haven't really done is the bed to bath parity. And as I mentioned the person that broke a 4 2 into a 2 1 that was a value-add because as I said, the students prefer not to share. If you could add another bathroom, so you've got 2-2 even if it's a small little bathroom, you know, or just a makeup area with a sink that's of great value because the students now don't like to share the bathrooms. In Ohio, I've got some 4-4s, as well as some 4-2s but they love having their own private bathroom. In Arizona is all 5-2s - five bedrooms, two baths. That's not as desirable. If I could put in some other baths, I would probably you know, make people happy but that's well expensive. That's not a real cost-effective way of doing it. But also in the Georgia property, we put Wi-Fi throughout the property. So essentially, anywhere they get on the campus or on the property they've got the Wi-Fi. So that was definitely a value-add that we put into it. James: What about other things like study rooms or the Library, the community? Jeff: We just redid our office and we did put in a workspace. James: A workspace, a business center. Jeff: Yeah a business center. Exactly. We did put in a business center where they could come in and print if they need to print documents because a lot of people, a lot of the kids have their tablets or their laptops or their phones or whatever, but they may not even have printers these days. And I guess a lot of the stuff they submit right online in a PDF to their teacher whatever but we did create the business center so they could come in and print stuff out if they need to. And also have a scanner where they can scan their documents. The other thing that we were looking at but we may leave for the next owner because we are selling this property, is a picnic area. We haven't built that yet; put a picnic area with some barbecues and that kind of stuff but that's the last phase of what we've been trying to do on this property. The main thing on this property is, the students have loved it, just fixing it up so it's much more livable. It was pretty disgusting when we got there. I mean it was a nasty place and that's why it was 30% occupied. And now, we've got the premium property in the market. James: Yeah. I mean, there you go. I mean, value-add in terms of managing it. So people love that. Jeff: And then the other thing that we did on this particular property is we got a relationship with the school. We went on campus and talk to all the coaches and told them we wanted them to send their athletes over to the property. And at first, well, the track coach went and looked at us like we were from Mars and said, "Why would I want to send my kids over there?" And then we invited him to come over and look at the property to see what we have done. And now we've got a bunch of athletes over there now after they've seen the improvements we've done. We also have participated as a sponsor with the athletic department where we give them a donation every year and we've been able to get an advertisement spot on their Jumbotron during all home basketball and football games and so we've been putting our advertisement there. That's why we're essentially 100% with waiting lists on the property. You know, we got a relationship with them, we went and communicated with the police chief and the mayor. The mayor actually came out to our open house wearing one of our t-shirts, the mayor of the city. So we got really involved with the community and it's a small market but we did get involved with that and all of that essentially added value. As I said, we've got a waiting list now, we can raise rents. The main thing that we were emphasizing throughout this two-year hold, we've only had it for a little over two years, was getting the occupancy up. That was the big thing. I wanted the occupancy up, I didn't care about raising rents. Now, we've got the occupancy now, we're going to start raising rents. Or what we're doing is we're actually selling it. So we're leaving it for the next person. The next guy could come in raise rents without having to do anything. They can come in and raise rents without having to do anything just because we've redone this entire property. James: Awesome, awesome. Very, very, very, very interesting tips on how to get engage in student housing marketing. So what about financing, who gives the financing? Is it still agency loans or is it small Banks or how's that? Jeff: Well, we'll start off with the Georgia, probably. The Georgia property we paid all cash. At 30% occupied we weren't going to be looking for a lender. Yeah, my Ohio property that was a challenge and it ended up that I went with a privately owned bank. It's not a small bank, it has 36 branches so I wouldn't call it really small but it's privately held and they loan in Kentucky and Ohio, I think. So if anybody's looking for either student housing or lending, they do those two states. They're actually a Kentucky-based lender. The Arizona one was just a regular bridge lender that funded that one and eventually, we'll go out of the bridge into an agency loan. James: So you think you can get an agency loan on student housing? Jeff: Yeah. We can get an agency loan. James: Because I know usually when I go to an agency, they usually ask, you know, how many percents are students, how many percents are corporate housing and all that so I'm not sure. Jeff: Yeah, I don't remember if it's Fannie or Freddie that will do student housing. But they do require a certain population. I think it's 15,000 student population, something like that. James: Got it. Oh, really? Okay, that's interesting. Jeff: Yeah, but I don't remember which one it was but one of them will do agency. James: Yeah, that's awesome. So, let's go back to slightly more personal questions. So do you have any proud moment in your real estate career that you're going to remember for a long time, that you think 'I really, really did something that I'm really, really proud of', do you want to share that? Jeff: Oh, I could go back to the Georgia property where I had a period that I actually was brought to tears. When we were doing that video that I was talking about that we gave to the school to put on there, our advertisement, I actually went down and did the interviewing of the students myself for that property because I have a background in video. And the stuff that our property management was taking was just horrendous. I went down there and interviewed the students and I didn't tell them who I was, they didn't know I was one of the owners or the owner. And the last question I asked them was if you had an opportunity to talk to the owner or to let the ownership know, what would you tell them? And some of the answers that I got were just tearjerkers. I mean, I had one girl that said that she was so happy with her new room that she now can actually bring her mom and show her where she lived that she was actually proud of where she was living now. And some of the other students were just saying, how much safer they felt, you know, much nicer environment. We had gotten rid of all the riffraff. We had gotten rid of a lot of people that were not students, but they were just living there and just smoking dope and we had increased the security and we had the police coming by, you know, just to keep things safe. And so just talking to these kids, they're not kids, they are 19- 20-year-old, you know, young adults, but that was one of the most rewarding moments I had. Because here they were, this is a low economic area where most of these students have very disadvantaged upbringing and we were giving them a nice clean safe place to live that they can be proud of. And they appreciate it much more so than some of the other properties where we may have upper-middle-class people in there that probably don't appreciate what you're doing as much as these guys do. So that was just an absolute, you know, great opportunity to be there with these guys. James: Yeah. It's very interesting on how we as entrepreneurs and operators change people's lives and it's just so fulfilling when you do that. And for me, It means a lot. Making the money, I mean, this story, you will always remember it. Sometimes you forget about how much money you made in that deal but you will remember how you impacted people's life, which is amazing. Jeff: Yeah, I mean, that's what I think about. I mean certainly we're all going to make money on this deal, you know, a good amount once we sell this but that feeling, you know, I'll have all the time. I mean that was great, you know hearing these guys. James: So any advice that you want to give for newbies who want to walk your path in multifamily and student housing in general; if they want to be as successful as you? Jeff: The thing is, find somebody that has walked the walk. You know, it could be a mentor, it could be a formal mentor, it could be somebody that's doing it. If you find somebody in your area or someone you meet up that is successful in whatever it is they're doing, be it multifamily, student housing, you know, senior living whatever; you find somebody else that's successful and find a way of being some kind of service to them. How you can help them out and go to them with that, hey, I would like to help you out. Do something and learn from them. That's the best way to learn anything is to be working with somebody else that's doing it. You know that would be what I would do. I did some formal mentoring in the beginning and that helped me get started. I would have loved to have been working side by side with someone with more experience. As it was, my partner and I were both about at the same level when we started but being around someone that's been there and done that is a great way to start out in this business. James: Awesome. Awesome. Hey Jeff, we almost there to the end. You want to let our audience know how to reach you? Jeff: Well, you can email me jeff@synergeticig.com or you could go to my website, which is also www.synergeticig.com You could also get a hold of me at Bigger Pockets and I'm around on the forms a little bit. James: Yeah, I remember when I was starting in real estate, I used to see you a lot on Bigger Pockets. So it's good. Jeff: I haven't been on as much lately. I need to start renewing some of that but I was on a lot in the beginning. That got me a lot. I mean it got me on my first podcast so... James: Awesome. Awesome. Well, Jeff, thanks for adding value to our listeners and audience here. I'm sure we learned a lot. I learned a lot as well, in terms of student housing and the nuances of how to add value in student housing and how to operate and at least look at the deal. And so it was very good to have you here, and that's it. Thank you very much and talk to you soon. Jeff: Thank you.
Show Notes Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum and I’m back with Nachi Gupta. This month, we are tackling a topic for which the literature continues to rapidly change - we’re talking about the ED management of patients taking direct oral anticoagulants or DOACs, previously called novel oral anticoagulants or NOACs. Nachi: Specifically, we’ll be focusing on the use of DOACs for the indications of stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation and the treatment and prevention of recurrent venous thromboembolisms. Jeff: This month’s article was authored by Dr. Patrick Maher and Dr. Emily Taub of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and it was peer reviewed by Dr. Dowin Boatright from Yale, Dr. Natalie Kreitzer from the University of Cincinnati, and Dr. Isaac Tawil from the University of New Mexico. Nachi: In their quest to update the last Emergency Medicine Practice issue on this topic which was published in 2013, they reviewed over 200 articles from 2000 to present in addition to 5 systematic reviews in the cochrane database, as well as guidelines from the American Heart Association, European society of cardiology, and the american college of cardiology. Jeff: Thanks to a strong literature base, Dr’s Maher and Taub found good quality evidence regarding safety and efficacy of the DOACs in relation to warfarin and the heparin-based anticoagulants. Nachi: But do note that the literature directly comparing the DOACs is far more limited and mostly of poor quality. Show More v Jeff: Fair enough, we’ll take what we can get. Nachi: Well, I’m sure more of those studies are still coming. Jeff: Agree. Let’s get started with some basics. Not surprisingly, DOACs now account for a similar proportion of office visits for anticoagulant use as warfarin. Nachi: With huge benefits including reduced need for monitoring and a potential for reduced bleeding complications, this certainly isn’t surprising. Jeff: Though those benefits are not without challenges - most notably the lack of an effective reversal agent and the risk of unintentional overdose in patients with altered drug metabolism. Nachi: Like all things in medicine, it’s about balancing and finding an acceptable risk/benefit profile. Jeff: True. Let’s talk pathophysiology for a minute - the control of coagulation in the human body is a balance between hemorrhage and thrombosis, mediated by an extensive number of procoagulant and anticoagulant proteins. Nachi: Before the development of the DOACs, vitamin K antagonists controlled the brunt of the market. As their name suggests, they work by inhibiting the action of vitamin K, and thus reducing the production of clotting factors 2, 7, 9, and 10, and the anticoagulant proteins C and S. Jeff: Unfortunately, these agents have a narrow therapeutic window and many drug-drug interactions, and they require frequent monitoring - making them less desirable to many. Nachi: However, in 2010, the FDA approved the first DOAC, a real game-changer. The DOACs currently on the market work by one of two mechanisms - direct thrombin inhibition or factor Xa inhibition. Jeff: DOACs are currently approved for stroke prevention in nonvalvular afib, treatment of VTE, VTE prophylaxis, and reduction of major cardiovascular events in stable cardiovascular disease. Studies are underway to test their safety and efficacy in arterial and venous thromboembolism, prevention of embolic stroke in afib, ACS, cancer-associated thrombosis, upper extremity DVT, and mesenteric thrombosis. Nachi: Direct thrombin inhibitors like Dabigatran, tradename Pradaxa, was the first FDA approved DOAC. It works by directly inhibiting thrombin, or factor IIa, which is a serine protease that converts soluble fibrinogen into fibrin for clot formation. Jeff: Dabigatran comes in doses of 75 and 150 mg. The dose depends on your renal function, and, with a half-life of 12-15 hours, is taken twice daily. Note the drastically reduced half-life as compared to warfarin, which has a half-life of up to 60 hours. Nachi: The RE-LY trial for afib found that taking 150 mg of Dabigatran BID had a lower rate of stroke and systemic embolism than warfarin with a similar rate of major hemorrhage. Dabigatran also had lower rates of fatal and traumatic intracerebral hemorrhage than warfarin. Jeff: A separate RCT found similar efficacy in treating acute VTE and preventing recurrence compared with warfarin, with reduced rates of hemorrhage! Nachi: Less monitoring, less hemorrhage, similar efficacy, I’m sold!!! Jeff: Slow down, there’s lots of other great agents out there, let’s get through them all first... Nachi: Ok, so next up we have the Factor Xa inhibitors, Rivaroxaban, apixaban, edoxaban, and betrixaban.As the name suggests, these medications work by directly inhibiting the clotting of factor Xa, which works in the clotting cascade to convert prothrombin to thrombin. Jeff: Rivaroxaban, trade name Xarelto, the second FDA approved DOAC, is used for stroke prevention in those with nonvalvular afib and VTE treatment. After taking 15 mg BID for the first 21 days, rivaroxaban is typically dosed at 20 mg daily with adjustments for reduced renal function. Nachi: The Rocket AF trial found that rivaroxaban is noninferior to warfarin for stroke and systemic embolism prevention without a significant difference in risk of major bleeding. Interestingly, GI bleeding may be higher in the rivaroxaban group, though the overall incidence was very low in both groups at about 0.4% of patients per year. Jeff: In the Einstein trial, patients with VTE were randomized to rivaroxaban or standard therapy. In the end, they reported similar rates of recurrence and bleeding outcomes for acute treatment. Continuing therapy beyond the acute period resulted in similar rates of VTE recurrence and bleeding episodes to treatment with aspirin alone. Nachi: Next we have apixaban, tradename Eliquis. Apixaban is approved for afib and the treatment of venous thromboembolism. It’s typically dosed as 10 mg BID for 7 days followed by 5 mg BID with dose reductions for the elderly and those with renal failure. Jeff: In the Aristotle trial, when compared to warfarin, apixaban was superior in preventing stroke and systemic embolism with lower mortality and bleeding. Rates of major hemorrhage-related mortality were also nearly cut in half at 30 days when compared to warfarin. Nachi: For the treatment of venous thromboembolism, the literature shows that apixaban has a similar efficacy to warfarin in preventing recurrence with less bleeding complications. Jeff: Unfortunately, with polypharmacy, there is increased risk of thromboembolic and hemorrhage risks, but this risk is similar to what is seen with warfarin. Nachi: And as compared to low molecular weight heparin, apixaban had higher bleeding rates without reducing venous thromboembolism events when used for thromboprophylaxis. It’s also been studied in acute ACS, with increased bleeding and no decrease in ischemic events. Jeff: Edoxaban is up next, approved by the FDA in 2015 for similar indications as the other Factor Xa inhibitors. It’s recommended that edoxaban be given parenterally for 5-10 days prior to starting oral treatment for VTE, which is actually similar to dabigatran. It has similar levels of VTE recurrence with fewer major bleeding episodes compared to warfarin. It has also been used with similar effects and less major bleeding for stroke prevention in afib. In the setting of cancer related DVTs specifically, as compared to low molecular weight heparin, one RCT showed lower rates of VTE but higher rates of major bleeding when compared to dalteparin. Nachi: Next we have Betrixaban, the latest Factor Xa inhibitor to be approved, back in 2017. Because it’s utility is limited to venous thromboembolism prophylaxis in mostly medically ill inpatients, it’s unlikely to be encountered by emergency physicians very frequently. Jeff: As a one sentence FYI though - note that in recent trials, betrixaban reduced the rate of VTE with equivalent rates of bleeding and reduced the rate of stroke with an increased rate of major and clinically relevant non-major bleeding as compared to enoxaparin. Nachi: Well that was a ton of information and background on the DOACs. Let’s move on to your favorite section - prehospital medicine. Jeff: Not a ton to add here this month. Perhaps, most importantly, prehospital providers should specifically ask about DOAC usage, especially in trauma, given increased rates of complications and potential need for surgery. This can help with destination selection when relevant. Interestingly, one retrospective study found limited agreement between EMS records and hospital documentation on current DOAC usage. Nachi: Extremely important to identify DOAC use early. Once the patient arrives in the ED, you can begin your focused history and physical. Make sure to get the name, dose, and time of last administration of any DOAC. Pay particular attention to the med list and the presence of CKD which could point to altered DOAC metabolism. Jeff: In terms of the physical and initial work up - let the sites of bleeding or potential sites of bleeding guide your work up. And don’t forget about the rectal exam, which potentially has some added value here - since DOACs increase the risk of GI bleeding. Nachi: Pretty straight forward history and physical, let’s talk diagnostic studies. Jeff: First up is CT. There are no clear cut guidelines here, so Drs. Maher and Taub had to rely on observational studies and expert opinion. Remember, most standard guidelines and tools, like the canadian and nexus criteria, are less accurate in anticoagulated patients, so they shouldn’t be applied. Instead, most studies recommend a low threshold for head imaging, even with minor trauma, in the setting of DOAC use. Nachi: That is so important that it’s worth repeating. Definitely have a low threshold to CT the head for even minor head trauma patients on DOACs. Basically, if you’re on anticoagulation, and you made it to the ED for anything remotely related to your head, you probably win a spin. Jeff: I suspect you are not alone with that stance... There is, however, much more debate about the utility of follow up imaging and admission after a NEGATIVE scan. Nachi: Wait, is that a thing I should routinely be doing? Jeff: Well there’s not great data here, but in one observational study of 1180 patients on either antiplatelet or anticoagulant therapy, a half a percent of them had positive findings 12 hours later, and importantly none required surgical intervention. Nachi: Certainly reassuring. And for those with positive initial imaging, the authors recommend repeat imaging within 4-6 hours in consultation with neurosurgical services or even earlier in cases of unexpected clinical decline. Jeff: Interestingly, though only a small retrospective study of 156 patients, one study found markedly reduced mortality, 4.9% vs 20.8% in those on DOACs vs warfarin with traumatic intracranial hemorrhage. Nachi: Hmm that actually surprises me a bit with the ease of reversibility of warfarin. Jeff: And we’ll get to that in a few minutes. But next we should talk about ultrasound. As always with trauma, guidelines recommend a FAST exam in the setting of blunt abdominal trauma. The only thing to be aware of here is that you should have an increased index of suspicion for bleeding, especially in hidden sites like the retroperitoneum. Nachi: And just as with traumatic head bleeds, a small observational study of those with blunt abdominal trauma found 8% vs 30% mortality for those on DOACs vs warfarin, respectively. Jeff: That is simply shocking! Let’s also talk lab studies. Hemoglobin and platelet counts should be obtained as part of the standard trauma work up. Assessing renal function via creatinine is also important, especially for those on agents which are renally excreted. Nachi: Though you can, in theory, test for plasma DOAC concentrations, such tests are not routinely indicated as levels don’t correspond to bleeding outcomes. DOAC levels may be indicated in certain specific situations, such as while treating life-threatening bleeding, development of venous thromboembolism despite compliance with DOAC therapy, and treating patients at risk for bleeding because of an overdose. Jeff: In terms of those who require surgery while on a DOAC - if urgent or emergent, the DOAC will need to be empirically reversed. For all others, the recommendation is to wait a half life or even multiple half-lives, if possible, in lieu of level testing. Nachi: Coagulation tests are up next. Routine PT and PTT levels do not help assess DOACs, as abnormalities on either test can suggest the presence of a DOAC, but the values should not be interpreted as reliable measures of either therapeutic or supratherapeutic clinical anticoagulant effect. Jeff: Dabigatran may cause prolongation of both the PT and the PTT, but the overall correlation is poor. In addition, FXa inhibitors may elevate PT in a weakly concentration dependent manner, but this may only be helpful if anti-fXa levels are unavailable. Nachi: Which is a perfect segway into our next test - anti-factor Xa level activity. Direct measurements of the anti-Fxa effect demonstrates a strong linear correlation with plasma concentrations of these agents, but the anticoagulant effect does not necessarily follow the same linear fashion. Jeff: Some labs may even have an anti-FXa effect measurement calibrated specifically to the factor 10a inhibitors. Nachi: While measuring thrombin time is not routinely recommended, the result of thrombin time or dilute thrombin time does correlate well with dabigatran concentrations across normal ranges. Jeff: And lastly, we have the Ecarin clotting time. Ecarin is an enzyme that cleaves prothrombin to an active intermediate that can be inhibited by dabigatran in the same way as thrombin. The ECT is useful for measuring dabigatran concentration - it’s not useful for testing for FXa inhibitors. A normal ECT value could be used to exclude the presence of dabigatran. Nachi: So I think that rounds out testing. Let’s move into the treatment section. Jeff: For all agents, regardless of the DOAC, the initial resuscitation follows the standard principles of hemorrhage control and trauma resuscitation. Tourniquet application, direct pressure, endoscopy for GI bleeds, etc... should all be used as needed. And most importantly, for airway bleeding, pericardial bleeding, CNS bleeding, and those with hemodynamic instability or overt bleeding, those with a 2 point drop in their hemoglobin, and those requiring 2 or more units of pRBC - they all should be considered to have serious, life threatening bleeds. This patient population definitely requires reversal agents, which we’re getting to in a minute. Nachi: A type and screen should also be sent with the plan to follow standard transfusion guidelines, with the goal of a hemoglobin level of 7, understanding that in the setting of an active bleed, the hemoglobin level will not truly be representative. Jeff: Interestingly, in the overdose literature that’s out there, bleeding episodes appear to be rare - occurring in just 5% of DOAC overdose cases. Nachi: Finally, onto the section we’ve all been waiting for. Let’s talk specific reversal agents. Praxbind is up first. Jeff: Idarucizumab or Praxbind, is the reversal agent of choice for dabigatran (which is also called pradaxa). According to data from the RE-LY trial, it reverses dabigatran up to the 99th percentile of levels measured in the trial. Nachi: And praxbind should be given in two 2.5 g IV boluses 15 minutes apart to completely reverse the effects of dabigatran. Jeff: As you would expect given this data, guidelines for DOAC reversal recommend it in major life-threatening bleeding events for patients on dabigatran. Nachi: Next up is recombinant coagulation factor Xa (brand name Andexxa), which was approved in 2018 for the FXa inhibitors. This recombinant factor has a decoy receptor for the FXa agents, thus eliminating their anticoagulant effects. Jeff: Recombinant factor Xa is given in either high or low dose infusions. High dose infusions for those on rivaroxaban doses of >10 mg or apixaban doses >5 mg within the last 8 hours and for unknown doses and unknown time of administration. Low dose infusions should be used for those with smaller doses within the last 8 hours or for last doses taken beyond 8 hours. Nachi: In one trial of 352 patients, recombinant factor Xa given as an IV bolus and 2 hour infusion was highly effective at normalizing anti-FXa levels. 82% of the assessed patients at 12 hours achieved hemostasis, but there were also thrombotic events in 10% of the patients at 30 days. Jeff: And reported thrombotic events aren’t the only downside. Though the literature isn’t clear, there may be limited use of recombinant factor Xa outside of the time of the continuous infusion, and even worse, there may be rebound of anti-Fxa levels and anticoagulant effect. And lastly, the cost is SUBSTANTIAL. Nachi: Is there really a cost threshold for stopping life threatening bleeding…? Jeff: Touche, but that means we need to save it for specific times and consider other options out there. Since this has only been around for a year or so, let’s let the literature play out on this too... Nachi: And that perfectly takes us into our next topic, which is nonspecific reversal agents, starting with prothrombin complex concentrate, also called PCC. Jeff: PCC is FDA approved for rapid reversal of vitamin K antagonist-related hemorrhagic events and is now being used off label for DOAC reversal. Nachi: PCC comes in 3 and 4 factor varieties. 3-factor PCC contains factors 2, 9, 10 and trace amounts of factor 7. 4 factor PCC contains factors 2, 9 10, as well as purified factor 7 and proteins C and S. Jeff: Both also contain trace amounts of heparin so can’t be given to someone with a history of HIT. Nachi: PCC works by overwhelming the inhibitor agent by increasing the concentration of upstream clotting factors. It has been shown, in healthy volunteers, to normalize PT abnormalities and bleeding times, and to achieve effective bleeding control in patients on rivaroxaban, apixaban, and edoxaban with major bleeding events. Jeff: In small studies looking at various end points, 4 factor PCC has been shown to be superior to 3 factor PCC. Nachi: Currently it’s given via weight-based dosing, but there is interest in studying a fixed-dose to decrease both time to medication administration and cost of reversal. Jeff: Guidelines currently recommend 4F PCC over 3F PCC, if available, for the management of factor Xa inhibitor induced bleeding, with studies showing an effectiveness of nearly 70%. As a result, 4F PCC has become an agent of choice for rapid reversal of FXa inhibitors during major bleeding events. Nachi: Next we have activated PCC (trade name FEIBA). This is essentially 4Factor PCC with a modified factor 7. Though traditionally saved for bleeding reversal in hemophiliacs, aPCC is now being studied in DOAC induced bleeding. Though early studies are promising, aPCC should not be used over 4factor PCC routinely as of now but may be used if 4Factor PCC is not available. Jeff: Next we have recombinant factor 7a (trade name novoseven). This works by activating factors 9 and 10 resulting in rapid increase in thrombin. Studies have shown that it may reverse the effect of dabigatran, at the expense of increased risk of thrombosis. As such, it should not be used as long as other agents are available. Nachi: Fresh Frozen Plasma is the last agent to discuss in this section. Not a lot to say here - FFP is not recommended for reversal of any of the DOACs. It may be given as a part of of a balanced massive transfusion resuscitation, but otherwise, at this time, there doesn’t seem to be a clear role. Jeff: Let’s move on to adjunct therapies, of which we have 3 to discuss. Nachi: First is activated charcoal. Only weak evidence exists here - but, according to expert recommendations, there may be a role for DOAC ingestions within 2 hours of presentations. Jeff: Perhaps more useful than charcoal is our next adjunct - tranexamic acid or TXA. TXA is a synthetic lysine analogue with antifibrinolytic activity through reversible binding of plasmin. CRASH-2 is the main trial to know here. CRASH-2 demonstrated reduced mortality if given within 3 hours in trauma patients. There is very limited data with respect to TXA and DOACs specifically, so continue to administer TXA as part of your standard trauma protocol without modification if the patient is on a DOAC, as it’s likely helpful based on what data we have. Nachi: Next is vitamin K - there is no data to support routine use of vitamin K in those taking DOACs - save that for those on vitamin K antagonists. Jeff: Also, worth mentioning here is the importance of hematology input in developing hospital-wide protocols for reversal agents, especially if availability of certain agents is limited. Nachi: Let’s talk about some special circumstances and populations as they relate to DOACs. Patients with mechanical heart valves were excluded from the major DOAC trials. And of note, a trial of dabigatran in mechanical valve patients was stopped early because of bleeding and thromboembolic events. As such, the American College of Cardiology state that DOACs are reasonable for afib with native valve disease. Jeff: DOACs should be used with caution for pregnant, breastfeeding, and pediatric patients. A case series of 233 pregnancies that occurred among patients on a DOAC reported high rates of miscarriage. Nachi: Patients with renal impairment are particularly concerning as all DOACs are dependent to some degree on renal elimination. Current guidelines from the Anticoagulation Forum recommend avoiding dabigatran and rivaroxaban for patients with CrCL < 30 and avoiding edoxaban and betrixaban for patients with CrCl < 15. Jeff: A 2017 Cochrane review noted similar efficacy without increased risk of major bleeding when using DOACs in those with egfr > 30 (that’s ckd3b or better) when compared to patients with normal renal function and limited evidence for safety below this estimated GFR. Nachi: Of course, dosing with renal impairment will be different. We won’t go into the details of that here as you will probably discuss this directly with your pharmacist. Jeff: We should mention, however, that reversal of the anticoagulant in the setting of renal impairment for your major bleeding patient is exactly the same as we already outlined. Nachi: Let’s move on to some controversies and cutting-edge topics. The first one is a pretty big topic and that is treatment for ischemic stroke patients taking DOACs. Jeff: Safety and efficacy of tPA or endovascular therapy for patients on DOACs continues to be debated. Current guidelines do not recommend tPA if the last DOAC dose was within the past 48 hours, unless lab testing specific to these agents shows normal results. Nachi: Specifically, the American Heart Association suggests that INR and PTT be normal in all cases. ECT and TT should be tested for dabigatran. And calibrated anti-FXa level testing be normal for FXa inhibitors. Jeff: The AHA registry actually included 251 patients who received tpa while on DOACs, which along with cohort analysis of 26 ROCKET-AF trial patients, suggest the risk of intracranial hemorrhage is similar to patients on warfarin with INR < 1.7 and to patients not on any anticoagulation who received tpa. However, given the retrospective nature of this data, we cannot exclude the possibility of increased risk of adverse events with tpa given to patients on DOACs. Nachi: Endovascular thrombectomy also has not been studied in large numbers for patients on DOACs. Current recommendations are to discuss with your stroke team. IV lysis or endovascular thrombectomy may be considered for select patients on DOACs. Always include the patient and family in shared decision making here. Jeff: There are also some scoring systems for bleeding risk to discuss briefly. The HAS-BLED has been used to determine bleeding risk in afib patients taking warfarin. The ORBIT score was validated in a cohort that included patients on DOACs and is similarly easy to use, and notably does not require INR values. Nachi: There is also the ABC score which has demonstrated slightly better prediction characteristics for bleeding risk, but it requires high-sensitivity troponin, limiting its practical use. Jeff: We won’t say more about the scoring tools here, but would recommend that you head over to MD Calc, where you can find them and use them in your practice. Nachi: Let’s also comment on the practicality of hemodialysis for removal of the DOACs. Multiple small case series have shown successful removal of dabigatran, given its small size and low protein binding. On the other hand, the FXa inhibitors are less amenable to removal in this way because of their higher protein binding. Jeff: Worth mentioning here also - dialysis catheters if placed should be in compressible areas in case bleeding occurs. The role of hemodialysis for overdose may be limited now that the specific reversal agent, praxbind, exists. Nachi: In terms of cutting-edge tests, we have viscoelastic testing like thromboelastography and rotational thromboelastometry. Several studies have examined the utility of viscoelastic testing to detect presence of DOACs with varying results. Prolongation of clotting times here does appear to correlate with concentration, but these tests haven’t emerged as a gold standard yet. Jeff: Also, for cutting edge, we should mention ciraparantag. And if you’ve been listening patiently and just thinking to yourself why can’t there be one reversal agent to reverse everything, this may be the solution. Ciraparantag (or aripazine) is a universal anticoagulant reversal agent that may have a role in all DOACs and heparins. It binds and inactivates all of these agents and it doesn’t appear to have a procoagulant effect. Nachi: Clinical trials for ciraparantag have shown rapid and durable reversal of edoxaban, but further trials and FDA approval are still needed. Jeff: We’ve covered a ton of material so far. As we near the end of this episode, let’s talk disposition. Nachi: First, we have those already on DOACs - I think it goes without saying that any patient who receives pharmacological reversal of coagulopathy for major bleeding needs to be admitted, likely to the ICU. Jeff: Next we have those that we are considering starting a DOAC, for example in someone with newly diagnosed VTE, or patients with an appropriate CHADS-VASC with newly diagnosed non-valvular afib. Nachi: With respect to venous thromboembolism, both dabigatran and edoxaban require a 5 day bridge with heparin, whereas apixaban and rivaroxaban do not. The latter is not only easier on the patient but also offers potential cost savings with low risk of hemorrhagic complications. Jeff: For patients with newly diagnosed DVT / PE, both the American and British Thoracic Society, as well as ACEP, recommend using either the pulmonary embolism severity index, aka PESI, or the simplified PESI or the Hestia criteria to risk stratify patients with PE. The low risk group is potentially appropriate for discharge home on anticoagulation. This strategy reduces hospital days and costs with otherwise similar outcomes - total win all around. Nachi: Definitely a great opportunity for some shared decision making since data here is fairly sparse. This is also a great place to have institutional policies, which could support this practice and also ensure rapid outpatient follow up. Jeff: If you are going to consider ED discharge after starting a DOAC - there isn’t great data supporting one over another. You’ll have to consider patient insurance, cost, dosing schedules, and patient / caregiver preferences. Vitamin K antagonists should also be discussed as there is lots of data to support their safety outcomes, not to mention that they are often far cheaper…. As an interesting aside - I recently diagnosed a DVT/PE in an Amish gentleman who came to the ED by horse - that was some complicated decision making with respect to balancing the potentially prohibitive cost of DOACs with the massive inconvenience of frequently checking INRs after a 5 mile horseback ride into town... Nachi: Nice opportunity for shared decision making… Jeff: Lastly, we have those patients who are higher risk for bleeding. Though I’d personally be quite uneasy in this population, if you are to start a DOAC, consider apixaban or edoxaban, which likely have lower risk of major bleeding. Nachi: So that’s it for the new material for this month’s issue. Certainly, an important topic as the frequency of DOAC use continues to rise given their clear advantages for both patients and providers. However, despite their outpatient ease of use, it definitely complicates our lives in the ED with no easy way to evaluate their anticoagulant effect and costly reversal options. Hopefully all our hospitals have developed or will soon develop guidelines for both managing ongoing bleeding with reversal agents and for collaborative discharges with appropriate follow up resources for those we send home on a DOAC. Jeff: Absolutely. Let’s wrap up with some the highest yield points and clinical pearls Nachi: Dabigatran works by direct thrombin inhibition, whereas rivaroxaban, apixaban, edoxaban, and betrixaban all work by Factor Xa inhibition. Jeff: The DOACs have a much shorter half-life than warfarin. Nachi: Prehospital care providers should ask all patients about their use of anticoagulants. Jeff: Have a low threshold to order a head CT in patients with mild head trauma if they are on DOACs. Nachi: For positive head CT findings or high suspicion of significant injury, order a repeat head CT in 4 to 6 hours and discuss with neurosurgery. Jeff: Have a lower threshold to conduct a FAST exam for blunt abdominal trauma patients on DOACs. Nachi: Assessment of renal function is important with regards to all DOACs. Jeff: While actual plasma concentrations of DOACs can be measured, these do not correspond to bleeding outcomes and should not be ordered routinely. Nachi: The DOACs may cause mild prolongation of PT and PTT. Jeff: Idarucizumab (Praxbind®) is an antibody to dabigatran. For dabigatran reversal, administer two 2.5g IV boluses 15 minutes apart. Reversal is rapid and does not cause prothrombotic effects. Nachi: Recombinant FXa can be used to reverse the FXa inhibitors. This works as a decoy receptor for the FXa agents. Jeff: Vitamin K and FFP are not recommended for reversal of DOACs. Nachi: Consider activated charcoal to remove DOACs ingested within the last two hours in the setting of life-threatening hemorrhages in patient’s on DOACs. Jeff: Hemodialysis can effectively remove dabigatran, but this is not true for the FXa inhibitors. Nachi: 4F-PCC has been shown to be effective in reversing the effects of the FXa inhibitors. This is thought to be due to overwhelming the inhibitor agent by increased concentrations of upstream clotting factors. Jeff: tPA is contraindicated in acute ischemic stroke if a DOAC dose was administered within the last 48 hours, unless certain laboratory testing criteria are met. Nachi: Emergency clinicians should consider initiating DOACs in the ED for patients with new onset nonvalvular atrial fibrillation, DVT, or PE that is in a low-risk group. Jeff: So that wraps up Episode 31! Nachi: As always, 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 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 any images and tables mentioned. PA’s and NP’s - make sure to use the code APP4 at checkout to save 50%. Jeff: And the address for this month’s cme credit is www.ebmedicine.net/E0819, so head over there to get your CME credit. As always, the [DING SOUND] 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!
In today's podcast Mason chats to Jeff Chilton. Jeff has been working in the medicinal mushroom industry since 1973 and is an absolute specialist in his field. Jeff is the founder of Nammex, the leading supplier of organic mushroom extracts in the world today. With over 40 years of mushroom growing experience, Jeff was one of the first people to bring mushroom extracts to the North American market. All you medicinal mushroom nerds out there make sure you catch this episode, Jeff is a deep reservoir of knowledge and insight! The gents wax lyrical over: The ins and outs of mushroom harvesting. The difference between products made from mushroom mycelium as opposed to their fruiting body. Cordyceps Cs-4. The inferior nature of grain grown medicinal mushroom products. The nature of the medicinal mushroom industry at large, and what to look out for in regards to quality and authenticity. Following your passion in business. Retaining your integrity in the mushroom industry. Polysaccharides and betaglucans. China as a superior source Who is Jeff Chilton ? Resources Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus we're on Spotify and Soundcloud! Check Out The Transcript Here: Time to talk tonic herbalism people. Maybe some medicinal mushrooms and philosophy for longevity, so pour yourself a tonic and get ready to get super human, baby. Let's start the show! Mason: Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Got one that, I've been really looking forward to doing this interview. Jeff Chilton, I'll go into a little breakdown now, rather than just jumping ahead to why I'm really into his work. He's been in the mushroom industry since 1973. When it comes to mushroom cultivation, back then, he was really pioneering. Especially, a lot of the mushrooms that we have available today via cultivation in the west. Mason: He had a lot to do with the developing the manufacturing of those. Then in 1989, switched over to the manufacturing of medicinal mushroom extract, so he's OG in this medicinal mushroom world. There was no real trending back then. And I, like him, we met two years ago at a herbal symposium in Oregon. That's when I really ... super aware of him and just how he was just via just his own integrity and just educating the market. Mason: He became this internal watchdog of the industry. Just in the sense of just calling out real bad practices that are going on in the medicinal mushroom industry, and still today, and educating people, so you can spot a product on the market which is telling fibs, and really doesn't have the good stuff that we have all come to know and love about medicinal mushrooms. Mason: So NAMMEX is his company, also Real Mushrooms, and I love the fact that we can sit down as colleagues, offering medicinal mushrooms, having more at it from the Taoist perspective and Jeff just rocking gin that specialization of mushrooms and especially being such an originator of the entire industry. I really love to be able to sit down, talk with him and ask him about the history, especially he's really been shining in educating people about the difference between growing medicinal mushrooms on wood and on mycelium. And we dive into nuances of that. Mason: Basically we talk about the industry and we talk about setting up relationships in China and just how amazing it is to be able to source really incredible, the most high quality mushrooms that you're gonna be able to get in the world outside of a wild cultivated situation. Where we are talking about medicinal qualities. Getting those from China and being able to educate people about the beauty of getting them from China. We talk a little bit about that. Mason: Also what it's taken for us to develop the relationships with growers and farmers and so I think you'll find it really interesting hearing me from 2011, Jeff from 1989 really navigating the difference in our stories. As well we go into organic because Jeff has pioneered in getting the first certified organic mushroom supplement in the US which is really amazing. We go a little bit into that, I share my two cents on where I see organic is at. More so the reason why I like Jeff is because he's not like most companies that just think the be all and end all is paying for this little sticker, jumping through a couple of hurdles and getting the sticker on your product. Mason: But what we call going beyond organic. And Jeff does that with the organic certification and I share my two cents on where I'm at with that whole thing. But mostly just how much I love that he's non-stop out there educating people. Not just trying to flog a product, not just trying to grow this crazy big business. But I think that's kind of inevitably happening, it's just a nice slow growth of a business. Because it has a lot of trust and it has a lot of consistency in its messaging. And we talk a lot about that and have a lot of laughs and get a couple of stories about the history of the mushroom kingdom and those mushroom people back in the day. We talk about mushroom conferences and a bunch of other things. I think you'll really enjoy it, I hope as much as I did, here's Jeff Chilton from NAMMAX. Mason: Jeff, thanks for joining me, man. Jeff: Hey Mason, thanks a lot for having me. Mason: Absolute pleasure, so remind me where are you again in the world? Jeff: I am in British Columbia, Canada. I like on Vancouver Island out on the West Coast. You and I are actually connected by the Pacific Ocean. Mason: Vancouver Island especially, for some reason that just keeps on calling in. I keep on having friends, awesome friends and now you. You're waiting there. And I'm like "What is the pull?" Jeff: Yeah. You have gotta come. Definitely come in our summer time because otherwise you'll just be hit by all of those things you don't like, which is rain and all the rest. Mason: Well, it brings mushrooms, yeah? Jeff: It's true. Mason: When is it really on for you there? What months is it on for mushroom harvesting? Jeff: Mushroom season is really going strong in October. First couple weeks in November still happening but then things cool off too much then it slows down and there's nothing happening. We get rains in August, which really primes things then in the last couple weeks in September we could see things starting to pop up. Mason: All right, I love it. October, that sounds good to me. Let's dive in a little bit because we met maybe we were chatting it must've been two years ago. Jeff: At the American Herbalist Guild Conference in Oregon, which was just awesome. Mason: That was amazing, I mean, we were in Silverton? Is that right? Jeff: Silverton, exactly, yeah, that's where we were. Mason: But apparently not the witch one. No, I think that's on the other side. Tony was looking at Silverton but that's where all the witches were. Jeff: Oh, ah Mason: That's a different Silverton. I can't remember the name of the hotel but their grounds rolling in and the ginkgo trees, big ginkgo trees as well lining it. And then all the herbalists who came and did their herb walks were just frothing at how much they were able to go and show everyone how to forage, how to identify. Because the array of herbs there was incredible. That place is designed. Jeff: It was absolutely designed. It was a huge property and they put in all sorts of different plants, herbs and different kinds of trees. It was a beautiful venue there are a great place to have that. Even on the Saturday night when they had a band playing and everybody was dancing. I had a great time. Mason: That's so good, yeah. I imagine that place gets a lot of herbal symposiums going through it. And man, the best thing, the fig tree was kicking. Did you get up there and face on the fig then, during that symposium? That was the best part of it. Right next to the pine. Jeff: Oh my goodness, no. I hardly had a chance to get outside which is back to my place where I was staying on the grounds and then down to the venue. But I was locked into my booth most of the time and talking to people. And then in the evenings it was nice. It was a fun thing. And I know you said you had a chance to get to hear Christopher Hobbs while you were there. That had to have been really great because I always enjoy seeing Chris. I know he was really busy in fact, funny thing was Chris told me, he said "God, I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with you. I ran into an old girlfriend." Mason: Oh, right, I'm happy for him. Jeff: Me too. Mason: You're like, 100%, I can't contend with that. So '86 Hobbs wrote the book. Were you aware when his book 'Medicinal Mushrooms' came out, because when was NAMMAX first created? Jeff: I started the business in 1989. I'm trying to remember whether I knew Chris at that point in time or not, but he was part of the whole herbal industry, so to speak, and Herbalist Guild and all of that back then. I wasn't nearly as much in touch with herbalists until I started my company. Before that it was just pretty much just mushroom people and all the people that were in the mushroom world over here. There are a lot of them. Mushrooms really happening. Long before the herbal industry figured it out and got wind of it.Chris was one of the first because he was an herbalist but also was interested in fungi. So that was really cool. Mason: Yeah, I think he studied and formally became a mycologist as well. Jeff: Well, no, he was a botanist, definitely a trained botanist and a history orf botany in his family. Herbalists and things like that. And now he went on and he got a PhD in molecular genetics. Mason: Okay, he's going down that route. I like that book because he was really able to balance the mystical aspects of the mushroom herbal kingdom especially and then dive deep down into the science. It's something that only him and Steven Hardliner. Steven is the master at going down deep, molecular how a particular compound is interacting with a particular viral passade. And then blowing into full throttle Earth poetry in the next paragraph. It's a real gift. Going back to the 80s, you were running with the mushroom clique in America. Yeah, tell us the story. Jeff: The thing was in the 70s... Well, first of all in the late 60s magic mushrooms were really great interest. That was one of the things that I was really studying at university. I had this interested in mushrooms in the 60s and I reading all about a man named Gordon Wasson. Are you familiar with Gordon Wasson? Mason: Just the name and loosely, but not really. Jeff: Yeah, so Gord Wasson was a New York banker with a Russian wife. He learned about mushrooms being used deep in the mountains of Mexico by Curanderez and went down there in the 50s and spent the next five summers down there. He classified a whole bunch of different psilocybes during that period because he took a French mycologist with him. And so, five summers. But he basically opened up this whole world of Look! Still today after thousands of years there are people in the world that are still using these psychoactive mushrooms in their healing practices. Man, that was a mindblower. Jeff: So I was reading Watson and other people that were involved in that and they had published these books that were incredible books. I mean Watson went on to publish a book called 'Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality.' He published that in 1968. Jeff: Then somebody came along a man named John Allegro came and published a book called 'Sacred Mushroom and the Cross,' which talked about mushrooms in early Christianity. So, Mason, listen, think about it for a second. In 1968 two books are published. One says that a mushroom is at the root of Christianity. The other one says a mushroom is at the root of the Hindu religion. Jeff: And then all of a sudden from there it just... You get going forward and you find that mushrooms, you see symbols of them and you start to hear stories about them used through all sorts of different groups throughout history. Pre-history actually, because as that came out people started looking and discovering this. That was really part of my study in university because I was studying anthropology. And mycology on the side. Jeff: Going into the 70s in Olympia, Washington where I lived and worked on this big mushroom farm there was a whole core of people that were interested in mushrooms. It was an amazing group of people. Paul Stamos is one of those people. Ultimately he and I wrote the book called 'The Mushroom Cultivator' in 1983. We even had a group. We had four people, Paul and I and two other people, where we had four different mushroom conferences. These conferences were so ... You would have enjoyed it so much. We had people there that were speaking about how to identify mushrooms. I was speaking on cultivation of mushrooms, speaking on the anthropological aspect of mushrooms. We had great people there speaking. There was Andre Wyle was at our conferences. And it was just a great time had by everybody, right? You can imagine. All these mushroom people coming together. 200 people coming together for a weekend. Amazing. Mason: So good. I mean, it's different, you got this original crew, there's always something special when you've got the original crew. Jeff: Yeah. Mason: There's a medicinal mushroom symposium every year that moves around the world. It was in Colombia a couple of years ago and then in Italy. Do you know that one? Jeff: You're actually talking about the International Medicinal Mushroom -- Mason: Conference? Jeff: Society IMMS and you know what? And that was more of a scientific group that was formed much later. I know the principles of the group. It started somewhere around 1999. They're having a conference in China on the 18th of September this year. You should come. I'm gonna be over there at this conference. I know lots of other people are gonna be there as well. It's gonna be an interesting time. I'm gonna be giving a paper there, which will be fun. There will be lots of other people too. I don't know what time of year you go to China. Mason: Yeah, I go in September. I think this year we've got our staff retreat in September. I'm gonna check the dates, but otherwise I've been wanting to get along anyway. I've been trying to revolve it around going to Wudang mountain and doing some Taoist training as well. This is where I've been tossing up this year, what time to get over there. But that sounds a bit serendipitous. Jeff: Yeah, well, the conference is I believe the 18th to the 22nd of September. That's normally kind of early for us. We like to go over more in November. We go every year. November's really harvest time for a lot of mushrooms like Shiitake, Maitaki, Wood ear. A little bit later is Hericium, Lion's mane. In September it's the Reishi harvest. Mason: Yeah, Reishi harvest is normally for us in September. Where's your Lion's mane growing? Which region? Jeff: It's growing in Fujian province. Mason: Okay. Ours is a little bit earlier, in September as well. In Heilongjiang. In the northeast. Jeff: Okay, yeah, because in Fujian province it is late, late November when it's quite cold. It's back to the mountains, quite cold. Maybe up in Heilongjiang it's colder in there right? Mason: It's chilly. Jeff: (laughs) Mason: That's spoken like a true Australian. Jeff: Let's fly in and start up north there and step off. I just can't wait to get to Yunan province. Mason: (laughs) Jeff: I can't wait to get down into that tropical vibe. Although, nothing beats that crisp air. Jeff: Well that's good. I'm at that point where -- I don't know when your periods of this business growth have been -- but I've been real head down, bum up in the business. Not really been in that space of upgrading my information. Of course, I'm always reading and everything, doing all these things. I feel like that's like, you're at a point in your business where you are traveling around and you're educated. You're back at that point where you're free to go and educate and then go and educate yourself non-stop, constantly, which is really nice. I'm nearly back there. Jeff: Yeah, you know what it's like. We are so swamped right now. We've got so much demand for the product right now. We're growing and over the past two years we've hired four people, two people for lab and another person for regulatory and, can you imagine, we've got one person that's strictly regulatory affairs and deals with all the paperwork that we have to deal with. The paperwork is really monumental. We get forms from companies that are 220 questions! Mason: Companies that you're doing business with and they wanna know, looking at purity or is it you getting stocked with them that they want all those questions answered? Jeff: No, they qualify their suppliers. And so this is all about GMPs for the most part and how your product is manufactured. They want to know that everything is according to the GMP, quality, and the standard operating procedures and all the rest. Mason: I think that's where Real Mushrooms. Was it your son that created Real Mushrooms? Jeff: Real Mushrooms, yeah. Sky created Real Mushrooms in 2015 as part of NAMMAX so it's just one division of the company. He runs Real Mushrooms as well as other things because he's in training to allow me to go fishing and he can stay and do all the work. Mason: Great. NAMMAX is providing more providing bulk for people that are putting it into products and stuff? Jeff: We're a business to business. We sell the raw materials and then Real Mushrooms is retail products and mostly sold online. Maybe getting it into the stores at some point, but right now an online business. But we're business to business where we sell to companies that then put the raw materials out under their own brand. Mason: Does NAMMAX do... I'm increasingly aware because I think NAMMAX... we get a lot of people asking at SuperFeast but we don't really specialize in that B2B space. But one thing I want to talk a little bit about later is a lot of people who, like NAMMAX has bridged it and made it really accessible. Especially with you and the middlemen not having to deal straight with trying to... I'm still appreciating, it took me quite a few years but you'd know the in's and out's beyond what it's like developing relationships, critiquing, getting the authenticity on the testing. Also developing a relationship based on integrity and qualifying on that level takes so long. I feel like NAMMAX has really made it possible. Mason: I know a lot of people in Australia who are like "Ah, great, I can just go and NAMMAX can just do it all for me." Which is really great, because there's a lot of people. I like it because there's a lot of people jumping onto the bandwagon, and Australia has got this nice buffer. We don't have too much shit here, which is really good. And that's something that's nice for me to be able to say about my competitors as well. Australian community doesn't need to be as wary, I think, as the U.S. world because the U.S. is a bit...I didn't realize it's a shit fight. I know talking to you a lot back in the day, I don't think I presented that I was from SuperFeast. We were just talking about mushrooms and I was just learning a bunch off you and learning about your history. Mason: As a company when I started out it was an absolute no-brainer that we weren't gonna use fillers, that I wasn't going to be using mycelium product myself. We'll talk about that, it has its place. Of course, growing on good-quality wood. In Australia we're just small companies. I started in Mum's spare room getting products for me and Mum. Then talking to you I was like... and then reading your blogs and really falling off the back of it just like that. Wow, because you actually really inspired me after that talk going, "Well of course, I do talk about the fact that we don't use fillers and we don't grow on grains." And all these kinds of things, but it was getting to that point I didn't realize people really needed to know the in's and out's of your product and be able to ... Mason: After seeing what happened in America with how much trickery there is and the percentages of polysaccharides there is, lets' go into it a little bit now. You've been watching it and been the internal watchdog of the industry, which I really like. When did that first start cropping up? When did people start jumping on the mushroom bandwagon and fibbing about the levels of polysaccharides and active ingredients? Jeff: The interesting thing was that having been in the supplement industry since 1989, the key thing for me was that I was a mushroom grower by trade. So i spent ten years as a commercial mushroom grower on a very big, big farm. Not a hobbyist growing in my basement or a closet or something like this. A commercial mushroom grower, large farm. Millions of pounds of mushrooms every year. So I knew how it all worked, I knew the economics of it all. I realized back in the late 90s, for example. Or even the early 90s that you couldn't actually produce mushrooms in North America and turn them into a supplement, because it's a dry powder it's not a fresh product. Once you dry that thing out it's 90% water you gonna get ten times as much money for that pound of mushrooms. It doesn't work in the supplement world. Jeff: That's where going to China and I went to farms, I went to factories, I went to research institutes, I went to conferences. The 90s was just amazing to see what was going on. I went north to south, east to west. Yunan province all the way up to Jilin province. It was all over China seeing this industry and seeing the research. One of the things, you talked a bit earlier about quality how do you know. Here I am visiting these companies going to all of these conferences. I'm having people coming up to me all the time saying, "Will you buy my product? Here it is." And they just show me a brown powder and I'm just like, it's a brown powder, I don't know what it is! How can I really know what that is. And then getting to know companies and people that were genuine and you could go to their factories and see what they were doing. Especially if they were only producing mushroom products and then building the relationships to that. Jeff: Then I turned around and back in the United States here are these companies that come along and they start to produce mycelium on sterile grain. The worst part about it is they sell it as a mushroom. Mason: Some people might not know what, so, we're talking about the fact, which you alluded to, which I completely agree with, that the only way to make a viable super high-quality product that's a powder is doing it in China. Based on the fact that, say you have 10 or 20 kilos worth of raw product that's gonna then give you a kilo of the powdered product in the end, it's not viable in the U.S. so to make it viable in the U.S., the way it generally works is that it's grown on a grain substrate, like rice, brown rice, oats, this kind of thing. Jeff: Yeah, and the thing is, what people need to understand is that a mushroom is just one part of this fungal organism. So the other parts would be a spore, the spore germinates in to a fine filament, those filaments come together, they create mycelium, which is the actual body of the fungus. Which normally if you're out there hunting mushrooms you never see that because it's in the ground or it's in the wood. So most people are unaware of that. But that mycelial network amasses nutrients. When the conditions are right it produces the mushroom. That's what we see because up it comes and it's like "Wow, look at that thing there!" And then that matures, it produces spores, and then we have a complete life cycle. Jeff: The interesting part, Mason, is that growing mycelium, which is the vegetative part of this organism, on sterile grain as a mushroom grower, what that is and what that was developed as mushroom spawn. Which is like the seed that is used to grow mushrooms. Because mushrooms don't have seeds they have spores. You don't plant spores when you grow mushrooms, you plant live mycelium. The mushroom growing world, what they developed is "Okay, we'll take that live mycelium and we'll put it onto some kind of a carrier. Then that carrier we can spread into our compost or whatever it was that they're growing their mushrooms in. If you take a gallon of grain, you've got maybe thousands of grains in there you coat that with mycelium, and then you take those thousands of grains and you can mix them into a big pile of straw or compost or something. Each one of those mycelium grows off of and it grows into this thing. So that myceliated grain actually was developed in the 1930s as mushroom spawn or essentially seed to grow mushroom. Jeff: It's an easy process, it's done in a lab and people in the United States, we can't grow mushrooms. Why don't we just take that process, we'll grow out the mycelium. Mycelium in and of itself it's got beneficial properties because it is a fungal hyphae that has beta glucans in its cell walls. If you grow it in a certain way like in liquid or something it can produce certain medicinal compounds. But when you grow it on grain and then you don't separate it out from the grain at the end of the process you end up with mostly grain powder. That's what companies started to do. They started to grow the mycelium on grain. At the end of the process they would dry it -- just like you're drying a mushroom, but -- they'd dry it, they would grind it to a powder. No mushroom there at all. No mushroom, it's just myceliated grain, and it's mostly the grain powder. Finally, the worst part about it is then they call it mushroom when they sell it. Mason: I definitely know I've been surprised, because my first trip to the States I went and bought all the different brands. I was floored by some of the grainy non-mushroom powder that I was buying. That was like white powder, it's in your face. Jeff: Yeah, white powder and you taste it and you're like, "How's it supposed to taste like mushroom? It tastes kind of like flour." Mason: Yeah, it's like flour, sawdust. So are there companies doing a mycelial growth that are more on the ethical spectrum, that they're not doing a full grain wash and that they're growing on a particular grain that they're able to separate out a lot of the mycelium? I know that a lot of the mycelium is embodied grain. That's just a reality that you're not gonna be able to get rid of. But I'm trying to play that... is that possible in your experience? Jeff: In China they grow mycelium in large tanks of liquid. Mason: Like Cs-4 Cordycep, yeah. Jeff: Yeah, Cs-4 Cordyceps. They've been doing that for 50 years. But the thing is that it takes a lot of money to put in a big facility that can grow and these tanks are huge and you have to have a steam generator. It's a big investment but to actually grow out the mycelium on sterilized grain does not take a lot of money, it doesn't take a lot of expertise. It's a very simple process. Anybody can do it. In my book that I published in 1983, it tells you how to manufacture mycelium on grain at home in your kitchen. It's not difficult so it's very easy and ultimately, the stuff is so cheap to produce. And these people are selling it as mushroom and making a fortune doing it. It's really immoral in my opinion, and unethical. And especially if you're calling it mushroom. Mason: I think because we sometimes maybe look at the market and what we subconsciously are looking for when we want a mushroom and most of the studies have been on if you're like... Most of the time we're looking for a fruiting body. That's the mushroom. It's the unspoken that we know that we're talking about is the fruiting body there? And I guess there are some companies that have been quite averse or trying to sign typically validate the mycelium. When I was first kicking around all this there were people going "Look, just have it all. Have the fruiting body, have the mycelium, have all these..." and I very quickly, before I had a company was like "Mmm, no." I'm not in this to justify a particular aspect of the market or go for ease. I'm in it personally, and especially in the beginning, being a dreadful romantic, trying to connect to a herbal system, particularly Taoist tonic herbalism for me. Jeff: Exactly. The people who grow those products and they say "Oh, we want to have all parts of this. We want to have the spore, we want to have the mushroom, we want to have the mycelium." It's like they say "It's full spectrum." Well, the problem is that they leave out the fact that (A) there is no mushroom in it, and (B) the grain! How can it be a full spectrum product if they've got all of this grain in the product? That's what they don't like to talk about. They don't like to talk about the fact that it's mostly grain and all of this other stuff about "Oh, you know, the fruit body's in there and the spore's in there." Absolutely not. It's really a lot of smoke and mirrors. Jeff: That's what's so hard to take is that when there are people out there actually espousing that and claiming that they've got a full spectrum product when in fact it doesn't take much in the way of analysis to prove what they do and they don't have. We've run analysis and what's really interesting is if you analyze it, for example, with a proximate analysis, which is proteins, carbohydrates, fats, ash, minerals. Those products line up perfectly with the grain they're grown on. Mason: Are there exceptions to that? Jeff: No. All of these products and there, it's the myceliated grain products. If it's grown on brown rice it lines up with brown rice. If it's grown on oats it lines up with oats. Literally the two lines run together. The way I like to think about it too is I talk to people and I tell them what they're growing is tempeh. And they say what tempeh is, it is cooked soybeans with fungal mycelium grown on it. If you look at that tempeh and it's all white that's the mycelium but if you look at tempeh and you cut it open you can see it's mostly the soybeans. And if you were to dry it out, look, Mason, mycelium is 90% water. Just like a mushroom. The soybeans are 50% water. When you dry that tempeh out the mycelium just goes "Fffft!" Just tell me, where's the mycelium? And you've got all of these dried soybeans and you're like, well, it's mostly dried soybeans, that product. Mason: I'm sure you get it a lot as well. Yours, there's obviously a few brands in the U.S. becoming more aware of the others. I didn't go looking for them but as you move into a market. SuperFeast, I spoke to you about it the other day. We've got so many people ... like [inaudible 00:29:50] story. I've realized in business a lot of the time it's like, same with you, I like the people. I like the unique stories. People are like "Bring SuperFeast over, there's no one doing that like what you're doing over there!" I like, yeah. Jeff: (laughs) Mason: And it's the same. When you're upfront about the nuances although there's a lot of companies doing medicinal mushrooms like yourself and Taoist herbs like us, medicinal mushrooms. There's nuances there and the sourcing and there's nuances in the story. What I like is, which is going to get to the polysaccharide claim, and the full spectrum claim for the people growing the mycelium. Because people are in an egoic, competitive make money mentality a lot of the time. They think they have to be everything to everyone. Versus just being very upfront. I'm always quite upfront, I don't really look at that. I don't try and standardize color or anything in any way. I don't try and standardize the constituents. I don't even sell on the percentages of constituents. I don't focus on it. I'll move more in that direction because more and more people want to be satiated. I can say yes, we test for percentages of the active ingredients to ensure that they're in alignment with the Chinese cornucopia and ensure that they're actually active. And all that kind of stuff. Mason: But going over into the States now and hearing about all these other brands and I'm with you whenever it's growing on grain I can't get behind it. Not to be disrespectful, and I'm always trying to be really amicable in my talks. There's a place for it, but less and less can I find that place. Jeff: And I understand what you're saying too because if a person is genuine. For example the herbalists, who are at an American Herbal AHG conference. These are people that want to provide good products, they want to provide a body of knowledge to help people. That's who you wanna be, that's who I wanna be. I'm not in this to make a lot of money. I'm not in this to build some big company and go Oh, gee, isn't this great? Because I'm selling $20 million a year of this or that. That does not excite me at all. That has no meaning for me. What has meaning for me is that I'm producing a quality product that I've been working on for years and I can tell you the product is what I say it is and I want it to help you. I want you to be able to take this product and feel confidence that you're getting what the Chinese have used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. That's what I want. Jeff: I don't want to sell you something that is not what it really is and is a placebo and expect you to buy the product from me and I walk away going "I'm managing this great at my company. I'm making so much money and it's wonderful." No, I'm sorry, that's not me. I'm not interested. Those people turn me off. It's like the difference between being in a group of people that really understand mushrooms or herbs and being in a group of people that are just talking business and numbers and all that kind of stuff. And I don't give a shit about that. Mason: Yeah. I think it's interesting. Watching your business I can see in the beginning it probably would've started out that everyone knew Jeff and knew your level of integrity and how you just wanted a good product. In that little circle it was like 'Great, we'll just go and get Jeff's product.' Then as you grow I think what you've done really well ... just to put it as an example of why I'm bringing this up, we're getting to this point where we're growing as a company where it's beyond Mason at the markets and everyone knows that Mason has the badass tonic herbs. Or people are coming along to the talks and all the health clique. We've started emerging. Mason: I think you would've gone through this years ago when you emerged beyond the health clique. And it's very dramatically people aren't associating directly with you or the founder, it's the company. They don't even know or care who the founder is and therefore you need to have these things in place. We're getting to the point where everyone who's a SuperFeast customer is just like, "Yeah, we don't even care about organic, we know what you guys are doing," and we're going on that old philosophy and we're documenting that and there's all those other checks in place like independent testing for pesticides and metals and all that in place and available. Mason: But it's getting to that point now where the people on the very outside... I still don't know if we're really gonna shift because I still personally don't care and I don't change my company for perception's sake. But you can see Wow, that organic would be really, really useful for those people on the outside. Or the testing to know what percentage of what's going on inside and being able to present that. I think we'll move in that direction. I think you've done that really well and really maintained the trust in the brand of course, and in yourself. But maintaining you there as the one that's rolling this along and not then just relying, you know, the organic certification or the percentages. Mason: I think that's what I find really commendable, because most people then they rest on their laurels. Once they change over into, not standardizing but testing for minimum constituents like beta-glucans or organic. they then rest on that. Whereas that means nothing to me at all. Being able to talk to you I'm like, Yeah, because organic, I don't know what your take on that. I know there's some terrible organic products out there. Just the fact that we know we can go organic there's five different companies we can go to, so you just go and find the company that suits you. We can go with the company that's the hardest to jump through. Mason: I won't go into the details of what's going on, why we're probably not going to go in that direction. For us there's so many little micro-farms that we're being nimble with whom we're working with. When we're beyond mushrooms we've got a lot of other herbs going on. We need to cut that farm out if they need to move on and do something else and we'll go and we've got that team to go around and constantly go and find these people. So every time we want to nimbly adapt and go down a different direction when someone's doing a little more traditionally than the other person, all right, get the organic certify up. Or lie, which is what I think a lot of people are doing. They get the organic certification, then when they change up those little farmers, because we're dealing with independent farmers as well, not a company that can provide the organic certification. I don't know why I went on that rant. So that's why we're not going on down that route. Mason: It's something I see. I know there's a bunch of companies who are coming to NAMMAX, which I think is just been so good for the Australian industry. For people to know that they're very quickly going to be introducing a really good quality. You can tick off the organic but I hate it when it's just organic that they are going for and not just an incredible product with a story behind it as well. So I really commend you for offering that out. Jeff: I've always really believed in chemical-free food. Organic is more than just chemical-free it's how it's grown. When you're growing out of soil it's building the soil and not just depleting it. For me organics is a holistic way of looking at things. I've always considered that to be very important and I support that type of agriculture no matter what it is. A lot of these companies that are producing myceliated grain, they're organically certified! Jeff: It doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be a great product. These companies have what I call all sorts of merit badges. 'We're big and we're organic, we're kosher, we're this, we're that,' which ultimately means nothing at all. There's a lot more to it than just that. The one thing I really like about what you're doing too is that you're introducing the philosophy of it and that's something that you really believe in. That to me is important and that's what people look at. They look at who's behind the company and what that person has to say, is that person ethical, righteous, person or not. You're not up there as a smooth talking business salesman or anything like that, right? Mason: You should see me try and sell something I don't like. I'm a bumbling mess. I think I told you that back in the markets people used to say god-made...you could sell ice to the Eskimos. But I'm terrible if I'm not talking about herbs or philosophy behind it. Jeff: That's because you're doing something you believe in. That's where everybody should be. Not everybody has that opportunity, but if you can have that opportunity. I was lucky enough that I followed my passion and I didn't do that because I wanted to be rich. I did it because I loved it. I always say to people, if you really like to do something, whatever it is, just do it. Follow your passion. Maybe you're going to be poor for a long time. Make something that you feel good about. Mason: Honestly, and I really mean it not just because you're on the podcast talking it up or trying to flatter you. But when I met you, you had a happy disposition to be in business that long. In the beginning I was trying to escape the business side of things. Quite scared about having a business and not coming out the other end alive. You have a sunny disposition and you still have control of your company and the standards and you're still educating about the same thing that you're educating, of course it's evolved, but you were educating about beforehand. And there's something that I've learned a bit about in that. There's something humbling and nice about not being in that pursuit for aggressive growth while still growing at a nice, sustainable rate. But staying true to what you were doing in the first place. I educate about basics of herbalism and medicinal mushrooms in the beginning and then I'll move on and doing other things. The more I go along the more I want to settle back into doing what I did all along. Mason: I've got a weird thing about going back to the organic, I'll almost shy away from something if it's organic because I see it as a marketing ploy a lot of the time. And I think it is a lot of the time. With little things. When growing Lion's mane there's a lot of people who will use organic fungicide because they don't pick when they're watering out to the Lion's mane. I like to use this example because we don't have a plastic covering, it's just a straw and a hut to keep it nice and dark and it gets watered. That's the only part that gets watered. And one of the things I talked about in the beginning with Lion's mane, I just heard about it through the grapevine, that fungicide is needed if you're watering straw a lot of the time in order to, all right, we know why fungus grows. But found someone who wasn't doing that and found people who were doing organic Lion's mane who were using organic fungicide on the huts. Little things like that they get me so dejected about the marketing ploy behind it. But I think you're the one organic product that I would be over the moon to use. Mason: And the other example is Ron Teeguarden. I think we talked about him. He was such a rogue in the industry herbally. You were telling me about the acupuncture when he was offering acupuncture because he's a barefoot herbalist and all the acupuncture's guilds are like "Screw you, you need to be regulated." And he's like "Hey." Jeff: I know, it might've been somebody when you were in LA but it wasn't me. I don't know Ron that well. He's been around a long time. He's done his own thing, he's not out at the shows or anything like that. He's very well-known and in a sense he's been the herbalist to the stars. He's in Los Angeles, right? A lot of people in Los Angeles that are into herbal medicine and living properly in term of what they eat and things like that. They would go to Ron and Ron has one of the very first herb bars where you can walk in and have this type of a drink or that type of a drink. He was really in it very early and doing stuff that nobody else was. He was an outlier in that sense. I don't think he really needed to go into the industry proper. He's done a little more now that before. He didn't have to. Mason: He, on the level of sourcing philosophy. I bumped into him years ago. I was at that place where I was starting to grow, people are asking why I'm getting my herbs from China and people asking me if I'm organic and all these kinds of things. I want to keep on doubling down on my philosophy, what I'm doing here. One thing that I drew from yourself as well and then be proactive and educating the market. Not in pushing your own product, just generally being happy about the market being educated as well. And Ron was like...In fact I talked with him for about five minutes. More or less he was like "Listen, if you have that spark," I remember, "do not deviate from that sourcing philosophy." And it really stuck with me and from that day I did. I doubled down and I was not going to try and... I'm going to continue to not worry about what's going on and just do me. It's a lot of fun. I was at Dragon Herbs Tonic Bar about three weeks ago. I frequent the Hollywood one when I'm in L.A. Mason: Before we go too far off the mycelium grown, one of the things you've really educated, not only the market, but businesses in the market around medicinal mushrooms in the market, is how to identify a true polysaccharide read on medicinal mushrooms. Rather than people including 60% polysaccharides or even 30%, yet when you go down into the class of beta-glucan it's actually been tested you've been hoodwinked and they've gone dry from age or whatever. Can you talk a little bit about that? Jeff: This is something in the herbal industry too that you learn right away, and I learned it back in the 90s, was that so many herbal extracts, when you make the extract they oftentimes need some kind of a stabilizer. Otherwise they can get gummy, they can jut come together if it's a powder. Putting a carrier with a lot of extracts was pretty common. What happened was sometimes companies would cheat a little bit. The next thing you know instead of 10% carrier it was 50% carrier or 80% carrier. And they're not revealing that to anybody. You think you're getting an herbal extract, not just mushroom extract, an herbal extract and it ends up being mostly maltodextrin or dextrose or something like that, and they're not telling you, then it is really deceptive. So there's a lot of companies that were doing that in the industry. Jeff: As I went along, the whole time that I'm working with people in China I'm like, "Look, I want extracts where we aren't using any carriers. It has to be made in a certain way," because I'm looking for the pure essence. In traditional Chinese medicine they take the herbs and they throw it in a pot and they boil it up and pour it out and "Here, drink this!" There's no carriers in there. Mason: That's right, not sliding agents. Jeff: That's right. If you have to put something in a capsule you've got 150 milligrams of different types of fillers and binders and flow agents. Putting it into a pouch is so nice because then you don't have to put those things in with it. It's just the pure herb. Early on in the 90s everybody's testing for polysaccharides and nobody's testing for beta-glucans. And beta-glucan is a polysaccharide. Unfortunately all these carriers are polysaccharides too. A lot of people can hide that from you that you've got carriers on their product. No, no, we don't use carriers, it's 100% mushrooms, stuff like that. That's where with any kind of supplier you have to build up a level of trust. Like I say, they show you a brown powder and say. "Here's our product, it's shiitake mushroom extract. Isn't it great?" You can test it. Jeff: This is the thing, Mason, it's not like you can take a mushroom product other than a reishi extract, consume it, and then a few hours later or a day later go, "Wow, yeah! Did I ever get a kick out of that!" No, it doesn't work that way. You can organoleptically, I can taste the shiitake extract and I can tell you yeah, that's definitely essence of shiitake. Or with reishi it's so bitter I can taste all those bitter notes in that reishi extract, that is an awesome extract. Jeff: I used to give a reishi extract to a friend of mine who was a deep herbalist making his own liquid extracts and a big business ultimately. He'd taste some of my extracts in the beginning and he'd go, "Not bad, but it tastes a little bit burnt." And I'm like, "Oh shit." When it was dried it was maybe in the oven a little longer, and he could pick up on it. I thought that tastes pretty good. That was in the early days when I didn't know any better. I thought it's great and high triterpenes and all this. He'd go "Yeah, it tastes a little bit burnt." Those kind of things teach you a little bit about, okay, how's it made. Let me tell you, in the 90s the facilities that were making herbal extracts were nasty. They were old facilities Mason: Not too much GMP regulation back in those days. Jeff: It wasn't like stainless steel everywhere, no. Everywhere was dark from all the herbs they'd been cooking for who knows how many years. Now all that's been torn down and you see nothing but brand new factories in China. Everything is stainless steel and it's beautiful and there's none of that anymore. But back then, actually, it wasn't until we got the megazyme test and I started using that. And that was in 2012 or 2013. Up until that point I thought, well, the polysaccharide number was high, that's great. Then we starting testing the products and that's where we really pulled back the curtain. My main supplier, awesome! The test results we got from that. Beta-glucan and alpha-glucan and the alpha-glucan, that was where any of the carriers were revealed. Jeff: And then another company that was supplying me with some products, only a few, not many, fortunately. And was swearing up and down they never used any carrier. Jesus, their alpha-glucan level was way up there. I was shocked and really upset because I thought their product was good because occasionally I'd test it for polysaccharides it was 50-60% and I was thinking, great product. I could taste it, it tasted okay. Nothing but mushrooms they were producing. But here they were. They were putting them on a carrier and telling me they weren't. That's the kind of thing that you face when you're over there. Jeff: How do you qualify these products? You can go to the factory. They can show you around, you can look at all the mushrooms in their warehouse, you can look at them cooking these things up, the final products. They don't show you the bags and bags of maltodextrin that are hidden back in the warehouse somewhere that they're using as a carrier for the liquid extract. That literally pulled back the curtain and I went and confronted that with them. They claim no. Finally they actually admitted it and I'm like, okay, see you later. I'm not buying another product from you because you lied to me. Fortunately it was a secondary supplier. They weren't my main supplier at all, but I needed a secondary supplier. I visited them and it was all mushrooms that they were doing and they were in the heart of mushroom country and it was nothing but mushroom. Yet they had all these carriers in there. I was really upset not only with them but with myself because I got taken in by it too. And that's what you have to do. Jeff: Look, Mason, have you ever been at Ali Baba and looked at all the mushroom products being sold? Mason: It's always funny, and as you know, everyone's jumping onto the bandwagon right now. You can see people trawling through Ali Baba going "Oh, just tell me which one is awesome." I haven't been in there in a long time. I got curious, to be honest. I think we were in the office having afternoon drinks and seeing what was on Ali Baba. It is insane. Jeff: It's totally insane. So many companies selling mushroom extracts. Sometimes they're selling at prices where you're like, "No, wait a minute, you can't sell me that extract for $20 for a 10:1 extract. That's impossible. You load it up with starch, that's quite possible, right? That's where analysis, for me, has been very helpful. Especially the beta-glucan analysis because that gives me that alpha-glucan which is the whole carrier. That's what unmasked all of those myceliated grain products. There's definitely a place for analysis. There's also a place for getting to know the grower. I don't believe in organic pesticides. I don't give a shit. Don't use whatever it is, you have to grow this. I know it's more difficult but you have to grow this without sprays and all that. Jeff: The thing about China is that when you're traveling through China and I've been back in the mountains in all these different places and you go back and you look down and this little valley and here's this beautiful rice fields down there and you're going "Oh, isn't it great, back here. Everything's idyllic." And then you see somebody walking through the rice field and they've got a backpack sprayer. And they're going along spraying chemicals on this rice crop. I'm like, "Ugh, shit. Really? Do you have to do that?" And I think to myself, even the smallest growers out there are using some chemicals. That's where I'm like... And I want to be sure. And that's where we test and test to make sure that everything is staying on track because these things can slip in. Somebody can cheat. You have to ride herd on the whole thing. Otherwise it can slip right through your fingers. Jeff: That's been good for me in the sense of having an organic product that has meant that we put these constraints on the people that we work with. We say look if your product shows one of these things in there I'm sorry we're not selling it. If you and if you shipped it over to us and we find it in there after you've done the testing that's all good and we find it in there it goes the landfill I'm sorry, we can't sell it. That has been a really good quality, that's how we keep that quality up. In that sense I kind of believe in it all and think it's important. It helps us keep the product a little bit more real. Mason: As you say said there's all these things that can go by... even though it is organic, you can get organic pesticides and all this kind of stuff. I have taken your product and of course I really love it. You know that you're going to go that extra mile with it. It's a trip around it, there's a stigma around China is isn't that whole thing polluted? Jeff: Well, that's the other side of it right now, Mason. People are so afraid of anything coming out of China that this gives them a little bit more confidence in it. They can say what they want about organic and all but we've got pesticide tests that can demonstrate what it is and of course the always have to do heavy metals and micros and all of that. Mason: Alpha-toxins Jeff: For us, especially as a raw material supplier to companies large and small we have to be able to give them confidence because you know they're selling a Chinese product that they buy from us and lot of people are just like you know when it comes to China it's like no no no no it's like not going to do it so I have to talk to a lot of people. And I say, well, hey look. There's products in the United States that are absolutely full of chemicals. So it doesn't matter where it's grown. It matters where it's grown but it's not this country or that country. You can grow good, clean products anywhere in the world if you're doing it properly. Mason: It's so good. Of course people are realizing that the ultimate Chinese herbs and medicinal mushrooms are going to be coming out of China. I really like how it's still dominating and making it really easy for people to get One thing that's organic and Two very quickly have all those things to provide so enough people are going to be able to go, Oh, okay, so it's from China and we can trust it. That's something that makes it really easy, because people are going to jump on the mushroom bandwagon. We found it as well, a similar thing. People want to come, they're like okay, tell us about Chins. Okay, tested three times for pesticides before it comes to market, each batch. Plus here in Australia the TGA facility and heavy metals and alpha-toxins and microbes. At some point people go "Hmm, shit, okay." And testing of the water. And when we can going and doing radiation testing in the areas. And then going live and seeing pictures of you at your reishi farm is magic. Mason: When I was going live around China going, you know we're still going up while we're outside the mountains going to the fields where the eucommia bark trees were grown or up in Yunnan. Just drove five hours in the middle of nowhere to get to the poria farm, where there's wild pine and people are going "Holy shit! Look at that land! The land of the dragon. It's calling me. It's real." All of a sudden popping that thing that first of all, yes, you just need to be vigilant, that's absolutely number one. I've only changed suppliers once. In the beginning I found someone I had really enjoyed their product. And then what I've decided was one of my areas in going forth is I need someone that could absolutely school me. If I'm requesting things and they weren't able to "bang" school me on that immediately, then I'm not going to be able to do business. Mason: And it got to this point where I was confirming no municipal water. Only springs, only well water. Only creek water in the area. Nothing from the tap every touching the crops. At one point "Okay, sometimes that's a bit hard." I was like "All right, I'm gonna change now." That's when I started going down that route and ended up... developing relationships, developing a friendship first, understanding the intent behind the philosophy behind the business, understanding who owns the business that you're going to be dealing with and what their motives are and what their history is. These are the things where people don't realize what goes into it. People go "Can you tell me your supplier?" And you're like Jeff: (laughs) Mason: At this point it's not about me being scared about you having access to that supplier but so much has gone into this relationship. It's not just about finding someone and sourcing off them. Although, it's nice and easy to do that. If I was beginning right now I'd love to be buying just from suppliers on NAMMAX because it's cool. All the certificates, all the independents, and then all the years of vetting and tweaking that leads to this point where trust is inevitable and you become even more switched on to what to look for if anything ever comes up. If anything slips or changes you know the questions to ask and where the slip in quality could possibly be. And large ways you know how to put things in place that would stop that from ever happening to begin with. It's an interesting industry. Jeff: We go there every year and we'll do an audit. We'll visit farms, the factory we'll be sure we confer with our partners to make sure everything is good. This year we're at the point where we're hiring someone to be on the ground in China that will do a lot of checking and stuff for us on a regular basis. More regular than us going over there once a year. It's gotten to a point where we really need that coverage of somebody right there that we can say "Can you go out to this farm or this factory?" Also, communications because sometimes communications... although some of our partners speak English but some of them not so well and then they have to use a go-between and that's not always the best. So we're gonna have somebody now that's right there in China and can do that for us. Can you imagine going to China and traveling around without having somebody with you to help you through the liaise and talk? Mason: I have the best intentions of getting my Mandarin up to scratch and as soon as I'm out of it, it all slips out of my head. I haven't fully entered into that poetic language realm. The language is sticking. Can you speak Chinese? Jeff: No, I speak Spanish, but Sky's learning Chinese. He has three classes a week, an hour each class with a Chinese speaker he does it over Zoom or something like that. He's very diligent about it. We get over there. He's speaking with them in Chinese and they love it. He's learning more, but unless you actually go and live somewhere for a while it's always tough. I've been thinking about it. You go over and spend two weeks, three weeks, whatever, then you leave. That's nothing in terms of really getting in and learning a language. That's swimming on the surface. Mason: I gotta get onto it because I'm gonna do some Taoist training there. Jeff: Yeah, that'd be really cool. You're young enough that you still can do that. I'm way beyond doing anything like that. Mason: Come on, they'd love you up in the temple. Jeff: Not only that, where I love to be is in Patagonia Mason: Dude, that's the other place my heart lies, down in Patagonia. I want to become an old Argentinian man. I want to become a cowboy. Jeff: Exactly, I know where we can get some horses, Mason, so let me know. Mason: All right, that's it. That's on. China this year, maybe Patagonia next year. Jeff: Yeah, two years ago Andrea and I went out and spent the day with, we had a gaucho that took us out. We went all over this one area. It was a hot day too. We were on horseback the whole time, cruising through, very slow. Slow living at its best, right? Mason: Yeah, that's it. Drinking, eating a lot of meat, drinking a lot of yerba mate. Jeff: Yeah, when you're on a horse you're not going to go very fast. You're going to cruise along. It's life in the slow lane. Mason: I love it. So before we finish up is there anything that is coming up now that's exciting you about educating people about this market and about this industry with medicinal mushrooms? Jeff: People really still need a lot of education with mushroom. Part of what I do too which I really like is I talk about the nutritional value of mushrooms. My thing too is eat mushrooms. I think mushrooms may be the missing link in terms of food. A lot of people are like, fungus, never eat it, right? And I'm like, "Dude, you've gotta get on and eat mushrooms, it's a fabulous food. They've got great benefits, you get medicinal benefits as well as nutritional benefits." That's the key for me, I'm pushing that really hard when I talk to people, saying "No, it's a fabulous food." And in China they have this whole thing of food is medicine. Jeff: That's in Ancient Greece too. Food as your medicine. Everything that you take into your body should be something that is beneficial. And medicine as a very loose way in terms of it's feeding you and keeping you healthy. And that's what we should all be thinking about. What we consume is keeping us healthy and we should look at our food as that. That's providing me with all of these benefits. I say if you want a supplement, you feel you need more, that's great. You can supplement. But definitely use mushrooms for food. That's a big category for me. Jeff: As a mushroom grower, can you imagine? I'm working on an agaricus farm. For ten years every day I'm going in I'm going through the rooms and each room ultimately is producing 20,000 pounds of mushrooms. There's mushrooms everywhere around me growing and I'm stoked. I love this. I've got mushrooms that I'm eating all the time. I've even got small beds of mushrooms that I bring stuff home and I'm growing them in my house because it's so interesting to me. The farm I was on it wasn't just an agaricus, we had a scientist that was growing shiitake and maikitake and oyster mushrooms. Back in the 70s when those weren't even on the markets anywhere. And I had access to these mushrooms. Besides the wild mushrooms that we were navigating. I'm like, make them part of your diet because it's a wonderful food. Jeff: That's my message to people is this is a forgotten food, bring it home. Mason: I love it so much. Thanks for reaching out, I really appreciate you reaching out and having you on here. It's not only do I admire you as a person, admire what you've done and your business. I spoke to you a little bit about it. I like talking to the other people who are perceived competitors. There's so much room in this market and everyone's doing their own thing and has their own story. This whole red ocean we have to fight over a scrap of people who are going to be buying mushrooms and not focusing on educating together is absolutely ridiculous. It's always awesome to meet people who trail-blazed that attitude in the industry. Calling out people that are bullshitting and then coming together and educating together and getting the world healthy together in our little way. There's something really nice about that that makes it possible to be in business for so much time, for so long, see so much shit yet still have such a positive attitude about it. Jeff: That's absolutely right. I really love what you're doing too and I love the whole Taoist part of what you're taking to people and bringing to people. That philosophy is really awesome. That's what brings something really unique. When I hear you talking about mushrooms up around, what's the lake up there in the mountains? Mason: Mumbai Jeff: Yeah, that was so cool and you're hanging out there, talking about the mushrooms really excited about it all. That is really special. I love your energy, Mason, I'm really happy that we've been able to get together and have these meet-ups, speak and let's carry it on, let's keep doing it and stay in touch for sure. Mason: Absolutely. We'll get some videos in another podcast together, 100%. I'll go check out these dates, see if I can swing a Jeff: I'll send you the info on it so that you can check it out. If you can come you'll have a ball because there's gonna be lots of mushroom peop
My guest today is IT consultant and author Jeff Sussna. Jeff's liberal arts background has given him a unique perspective on digital transformation. In this episode, we explore the relevance of cybernetics to today's complex design and DevOps challenges. Listen to the full conversation https://theinformeddotlife.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/the-informed-life-episode-15-jeff-sussna.mp3 Show notes Sussna Associates @jeffsussna on Twitter Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown Norbert Wiener Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, The Father of Cybernetics by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by Norbert Wiener The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society by Norbert Wiener Lean startup Agile software development Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems, by Joanna Macy Claude Shannon The Net of Indra Ranulph Glanville Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT in the Digital Service Economy by Jeff Sussna Read the full transcript Jorge: So Jeff, welcome to the show. Jeff: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Jorge: For folks who are not familiar with you and your work, how do you describe what you do? Jeff: Well on a basic mechanical level, I founded and lead a consulting agency in Minneapolis. Our focus is helping organizations learn how to move fast without breaking things, and we do that through the entire digital product lifecycle from design through product management all the way to development and operations. It's about bringing together agile and devops and design thinking. We do coaching. We do workshops. A lot of it is about helping people understand: what are we really trying to accomplish when we do things like agile? I go into a lot of organizations where they do scrum for example, and they may do it reasonably well, and they have a bunch of agile activities going on but they're not necessarily really getting where they want to go. And typically that's because they don't fully understand where are they supposed to be going and how is agile supposed to actually help them get there. And it's interesting because the way I got there was actually a somewhat unusual path and I think that that path and how it's gone along really informs my work and my approach to my work. Jorge: I am not familiar with your backstory, so you've said that and now I'm completely curious. Jeff: That was intentional. I figured I'd give you a chance rather than just rambling on for 20 minutes give you a chance to say, “Now would you like to ramble on for 20 minutes and tell us about your background?” Sure, so my background is actually liberal arts. I studied visual arts, anthropology, and political science in college and one day my advisor suggested that I should take a class that had absolutely nothing to do with what I was studying. And so I took an artificial intelligence programming class. This was back in the early 80s, the sort of first or maybe second golden age of AI. And I became captivated both by that but more so programming and and system programming. And I graduated from college and managed to worm my way into the software industry. I've been there for the last 30 years. I've built systems. I've led organizations across the entire development, QA, and operation spectrum. But I always had this background of being in artsy liberal arts person. And I found myself thinking about things a little bit differently and I can never put my finger on it until I read Tim Brown's Change by Design book, which is a popular introduction to design thinking and went, “Oh, that's it! That's me. That's how I naturally think about things.” At the same time, cloud computing was starting to come about. And when I put those two things together what I realized is that service — because we were talking about it as a service and software as a service and things like that — service and the human-centered design that's part of service is really at the heart of everything we do. And so that's really been behind my approach to my work ever since then. And one of the things that happened when I was in college and I was reading about artificial intelligence and playing with it was I read someone, some little paragraph somewhere, about some guy named Norbert Wiener who back in the '40s had invented something called control theory that was peripherally related to AI. And I kind of went okay, that's interesting and didn't make much of it and went about my business. And then about five or six years ago, I happened to be in the library one day and I saw a book called Dark Hero of the Information Age, which was a biography of Norbert Wiener. I thought, “Oh, I remember that guy, you know, I should check that out. I should find out more about him.” So I read it and I was instantly captivated. And I was introduced to this world of cybernetics, which was the thing that he was really responsible for. And cybernetics is really interesting because it was a very big deal in the '40s, '50s, and into the '60s. Wiener wrote a book about cybernetics, which is about 50% post grad level math, you literally can't read it unless you're unless you're a math major. But from what I've read apparently in the '50s every single college student in America was walking around with a copy of that book under their arm. So it was a very big deal and then for a variety of reasons it fell out of favor and disappeared and was completely forgotten. The irony is that anytime that you say a word that begins with cyber — you know cyber-terrorism, cyber-security, cyberspace — the cyber comes from cybernetics. And cybernetics is really at the heart and the origin of computing and actually the heart in the origin of information. When we talk about information architecture, information theory, we have to talk about cybernetics. And it gives kind of a different flavor to what information is and how we work with it. So what is cybernetics? Cybernetics is the idea that in complex systems — particularly the kinds of systems we find in the natural world and in the social world, whether it be cities or economies or companies or markets — that control has to be adaptive. It has to be based on listening and responding as well as just telling people or things what to do. If you think about the most basic cybernetic device, it's a thermostat. A thermostat doesn't actually control the temperature of the air in the room directly. What it does is it, you could say that it listens: it detects what the temperature is, and it detects the fact that the temperature isn't what it's supposed to be, and then it tells the furnace to do something about it. And so the furnace pumps warm air into the room the room warms up, the second law of thermodynamics kicks in the room starts to cool down again. The stat goes. “Uh oh, things aren't as they're supposed to be! We better do something about it.” So you could say that the thermostat in the furnace have actually no control whatsoever over the temperature of the air in the room. Only the second law of thermodynamics does that. But they're continually having a relationship where they're adjusting things. And the way that works is based on a principle that Wiener developed or identified called feedback. And we use that word all the time. But feedback has a very specific meaning which is information about the gap between actual and expected. So if the thermostat is set to 72 degrees and the temperature in the room is actually 71 degrees the thermostat gets some information that says well, it's one degree colder than its supposed to be. So we have a tendency to think about information as the thing, right? We architect it, we store it in databases, we pass it back and forth. But from a cybernetic perspective, information doesn't have any real meaning aside from the context in which it's happening. And its purpose is not just to be a thing its purpose is to help you understand what it is you need to do. One of the things that I learned from studying art and also to some degree from my own just kind of life is that mistakes happen. Things don't always go the way we expect them to. And that's perfectly fine. That doesn't prevent us from getting to a good place if we can have kind of a dance, and to some degree give up the idea that we're fully in control, and instead have a relationship with our world of, “What is it that you're telling me and what do I need to do based on that?” So it's much more relational. I think that companies are beginning to discover that. The reason they're reaching out for things like agile is that they're realizing that they can't control the markets anymore the way they used to, so they have to have the ability to understand and respond to situations — environments — over which they have less and less control and ability to predict. Jorge: You talked about Wiener's book and how fifty percent of it is college level math, and that brings to mind the the idea that some of this stuff can be complicated for folks. And hearing you describe it in this way, it sounds more accessible than other introductions I've heard before to the subject — and more relevant. I'm hearing you say that and thinking, “Yeah, definitely.” I mean that maps to my experience of reality; the fact that if you're going to act you have to get a read on your surroundings and then you must have some kind of model where there's an objective that you're going towards and you need to somehow compute at some level the difference between where you are and where you want to be and adjust your direction. So the question is, when presented at that level it is kind of obvious. Why do you think it fell out of favor? Jeff: Well, part of it was Wiener's fault. He was a very eccentric person. And well, let me take a step back first and say that that Wiener's first book was called Cybernetics: Communication and Control in the Machine and the Animal. That's the one that's full of math. He wrote another book called The Human Use of Humans, which is much more accessible and it presents the concepts of cybernetics in a much less technical way. The amazing thing about it is it also predicts many of the trends that we're seeing now in terms of the dangers of computer-centric society. It's quite an amazing book given that it was written something like 60 years ago. But aside from that, I think the reason it fell out of favor was to some degree because it's too simple and too elegant on a very simple level. I think that part of it is that basically what it's talking about is circular causality. If you really kind of go beyond the surface of just well, we have a thermostat, we want to control the air if we talked about your example of I have an objective and I need to make sure I get to my objective, the real implication of cybernetics is that you're also adjusting your objective. Right? If you look at things like Lean Startup and the whole idea of a pivot, right? Step one of Lean Startup is let's make sure that we're accurately getting where we want to go. But Step 2 of Lean Startup is let's make sure we're trying to get to the right place. That is not exactly a 20th century Western approach to thinking about things. There's been interesting things written about the relationship between cybernetics and systems thinking and more kind of Eastern philosophical approaches. So I think, to be honest to some degree, it just blew people's minds and the world wasn't ready for it. And what I'm seeing now is that maybe the world is starting to get ready for it. It is beginning to be sort of culturally resuscitated again and people are starting to become interested in it again and going, “Oh, maybe there's actually something here.” Jorge: I am very intrigued by this notion of the relationship between systems thinking and Eastern philosophy. You have written very compellingly about this, and I'm wondering if you can delve a bit more on that connection. Jeff: Well, that's a big one. Well, there's… I'll actually refer to a very interesting book by Joanna Macy called General Systems Theory. Now I'm not remembering the name; it's something like Buddhism and General Systems Theory. And she is a system thinking practitioner. She's also a Buddhist teacher and practitioner. And she talks a lot about the Buddhist view of interdependence, which on one level means that the reason that you and I are here now is because of a whole set of things that happen that brought us to this place. You know if if Wiener hadn't thought about feedback systems and if Claude Shannon hadn't figured out how do you transmit feedback reliably in a noisy channel there would be no such thing as information Theory there would be no such thing as computers. There were no such thing as binary logic there would be no such thing as Zoom you and I wouldn't be sitting in different cities talking to each other. So on one level it means that the causality behind what you and I are doing right now is much richer and much larger and much more complex and intertwined and tangled. So to some degree your karma and my karma and Norbert Wiener's and Claude Shannon's karma are all intertwined with each other. On another level and a deeper level what it means is that when I think about myself and who I am that is defined as much by my relationship to you and my relationship to Apple Computer who made the computer that I'm using as it is my idea of who I am internally separate from the world. That this whole idea of you and I and the other things that we see around us is being fundamentally separate from each other is according to Buddhism A) an illusion and B) the cause of suffering — because it is an illusion. So you could say that you caused my experience and I caused your experience as much as each of us causing our own experience. So there is a circularity to how and why things happen, which is a very Buddhist view which comes very much out of an Indian tradition and very compatible with a cybernetic view. Particularly when you go beyond this idea that cybernetics is just about, “How do I control things out there?” and the notion that what it's really about more fundamentally is, “How is it that I dance with this relationship that I have with the world where myself and my environment are creating and driving each other?” Jorge: The image that comes to my mind hearing you describe this, which is an image that I believe comes from the Buddhist tradition, is this notion of the Net of Indra, where there are jewels that are all interconnected and all the jewels reflect the other jewels and you can't intervene in one of them without impacting the others. And in this notion of systems thinking, one of the distinctions I make between that worldview and other approaches is that you're taking in a holistic perspective — as holistic a perspective of the situation as possible — whereas if you contrast it in a more reductionist approach, where we try to divide so we can control. It is a completely different approach, and I'm wondering — just because this subject can get fairly abstract fairly quickly — if there are ways that that impacts your approach both to how you do your work and perhaps the work that you do for clients? Jeff: Very much so. And it actually has very practical down-to-earth ramifications both for IT and also I think for design. One of the things that we've begun to learn in IT is that as we go to the cloud, the systems we manage become more complex. Which means that the parts become more and more intertwined with each other and I think actually the Net of Indra is a wonderful metaphor for that, where it's no longer possible to say, “Well there's a database over here, and there's a network over here, and we have an ERP application over here, and a website over there, and they're all independent from each other, and we can manage them separately.” It doesn't really work anymore; they all impact each other. And one of the practical ramifications of that is that when things break, what we typically try to do is to find the “root cause.” What is the one thing that was the original source of the problem? And in complex systems, you can't actually do that. What you find are contributing causes. That the problem happened because of A and B and C and D coming together. And if any one of them had not happened or happened differently or happened a little slowly or happened at a different time of day either the outage wouldn't have happened or it would have been more or less severe. And this perspective is actually really influenced by work that people have done in industrial safety systems, people who work on things like looking at airplane accidents, nuclear power plant meltdowns, that kind of thing. And they've been discovered for they've come to realization seems like this whole idea of identifying human error — the train conductor, the train driver fell asleep, that's why the train crashed therefore we need to automate the train and get rid of the drivers — that that doesn't actually work. That you need to take a much more holistic perspective on how all of the pieces fit together. Why did the train conductor fall asleep? Well, there are lots of technical reasons, there are political reasons, there are bureaucratic, financial, so on and so forth. And you have to look at them as a whole, and you have to understand that when you fix one thing, you cannot fully predict what changes will ripple through the system. So you might fix one thing a break another, and you there is no way to guarantee that you won't do that. I also think that has very profound implications for design right now, because design is going through this process of grappling with ethics. That we thought Facebook and Twitter would be the most wonderful thing in the world, and what's happening instead or in addition, perhaps, is that they are enabling manipulation of democratic processes and online hate and bullying and so on and so forth. And there's an idea that as designers, you have a responsibility to design systems that don't cause harm. The problem is that what you're trying to design are very, very complex systems and on some level, while it's important to think in terms of doing good and not doing harm, I think you also need to confront the inevitability that you will do harm on some level that there will be unintended consequences. And what's more interesting — and to me where the cybernetic approach comes in — is you could say that doing harm is is a very compelling version of there being a gap between actual and desired, right? We wanted to build a system that would help people collaborate better and instead we built a system that's starting to help people dislike each other more.Let's assume that's going to happen and let's look for it and let's design for it in a much more continuous way. Jorge: We're recording this in the second week of July. And I bring up that that time stamp because next week, we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, which in my mind is kind of the apex of big pre-planned projects. People refer to things that are hard to do as moonshots. Hard to do but achievable, right? And because this is happening next week I've been watching documentaries and reading books and listening to podcasts on the subject — I'm just fascinated by it. And one of the things that's come up over and over again is that the people who are a part of that project, many of them have expressed the belief that they would not have been able to successfully land people on the moon if Apollo 1 hadn't catastrophically burned in the launch pad. That accident was kind of a jolt that the program needed to bring up all these flaws that they had not accounted for. And they completely redesigned the command vehicle as a result of that happening. And unfortunately if three astronauts hadn't died in that accident, they probably wouldn't have had the shock to the system that the system needed in order to — pardon my French, to get their asses in gear, basically. Jeff: Well, that's a pretty provocative statement. Jorge: It's not mine. It's… I was very surprised to hear that, but it's a feeling that I've heard expressed several times by these folks that the accident is what actually got them to the Moon. Jeff: So that's a very interesting… It is a provocative statement, whether it's yours or not, and I'll give you a couple of responses to it. The first one is that one of the things that I think is mostly healthy — there is a little misunderstanding — is the whole idea of moving fast and breaking things is being met with new skepticism. Right? My business is predicated on the idea that it's possible to move fast without breaking things. And I teach people how to do that. I think the way that you do that is that you break things in much smaller units and much earlier in the process when it's safer to do it. I am certainly not recommending that doing things where people die as a learning mechanism is a good thing. However, I will go out on a limb. I had some things happen in my life when I was younger, which, looking back, felt like potentially large failures at the time. And when I look at what happened as a result, my life got tremendously better as a result. One of which was that I had cancer when I was 20 years old. I was at college, I'd been having my first year in college was sort of a mess. I'd gotten my act together; I was doing very well. I was very happy. I got very sick. I left college. I went home. I went through chemotherapy treatments — this was back in the early '80s when chemotherapy was really awful — I spent time in the oncology wing of the University of Pennsylvania hospital, watched a lot of people die from leukemia, face the prospect of my own death. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. It gave me a level of sort of resiliency in my life. And it's funny because you know at some point they said, “Okay, you're done with your treatment, you're in remission. Now, you can go on with your life.” Two weeks later, I was back in school. People were kind of freaked out like, “Who is this guy?” And, “He was gone and now he's back. And what does that mean?” But it was a it was a very positive thing for me and one of the things I've learned is that, you know, we have this idea of well, “Fail early, fail fast.” Is it really good? What we really want to do is learn. And it is true that what we really want to do is learn, but I think we have to deal with the fact that one of the ways we learn is by failing. By getting it wrong. Jorge: I hope my comment about the astronauts didn't come across as callous. I don't think that anyone involved in that program, from what I've heard them say, I don't think any of them wished for that to happen, much as what you are relating is an experience that fortunately, I've not had myself but I've read of folks saying, “You know, I almost died and it was the best thing that happened to me.” Because somehow it forces the… It's like a focusing force, right? And you're talking about learning, which as I understand it, an important part of systems thinking and cybernetics, right? This idea that you're adjusting based on feedback. There is implicit in that the idea that the system is somehow modified as a result of of the adjustment. And I'm wondering, just to bring this home to folks, if there are any mechanisms that you yourself use to either formalize that learning or to capture it or to integrate it into your life in a kind of a structured way? Jeff: I think it's a couple of things. One is I like to joke that I should offer a fixed fee consulting service where all I do is walk around your organization and say the same sentence over and over again, which is, “Make your work smaller.” Give yourself more opportunities to get feedback, to learn, to find out that you're wrong in smaller and safer ways. I think the other part of it — and this is one that I think that organizations that are trying to adopt agile and design thinking and DevOps and Lean Startup and so on and so forth really struggle with — is it requires a certain level of trust. Ranulph Glanville, who was a designer and a cyberneticist made a really fascinating comment when he said that the controller is controlled by the control. In other words, if you think you're in charge, if you think you're in control at whatever level, you're really not. And I think that the more that we can let go of thinking that we are and also thinking that we need to be, the more we can discover that we can actually get where we want to go in a way that feels sloppy but can be very efficient. I'll give you a straightforward example from my experience. The first time I worked with an offshore and group doing development, I was told by the US representative as I started the project, he said you have to give them a really good requirements. I said yeah, I'm good at that. I know I'm a good writer blah blah blah. And of course, I was way too busy, so I gave him really lousy requirements. Kind of poetic. And the initial version of the software they gave me was about 70 degrees off from what I wanted and I got really annoyed for about five minutes and then I realized you know, it's my own fault. You know, if you look at the requirements I gave them, you could imagine how they would get the result. So I sent them this long laundry list of everything that was wrong. And 48 hours, they came back with something that was 20 degrees off from what I wanted. So I sent another laundry list, 24 hours later it was about 3 degrees off. In other words, it was really good. And afterwards, I sat back and I thought, “Okay, well, how long did the process take? How much work did it take? And how good was the output?”” And I realized it was really good and it was really fast and it was really efficient. It felt very sloppy at the time but it actually was very precise. And I realized that this was a very powerful way of working and it was really at the heart of what agile was actually about: that you can get where you want to go if you have uncertainty about that in a way that feels very bumpy, but if you can relax into it, it can be extremely effective. I think the relaxing into it is really hard for all of us. Jorge: I agree … Jeff: So if you wanted to say it in a nutshell what cybernetics is about at its deepest heart. I think it's about working in smaller units and relaxing into it. Jorge: I love that Jeff. That's that's actually a great place to to wrap it up. We didn't get to your book, but I do want to call it out: you wrote a fantastic book for O'Reilly called Designing Delivery, which is about these subjects. And I am going to link it in the in the show notes. Where can folks follow up with you? What's the best place to send them to? Jeff: They can find me on Twitter at Jeff Sussna or they can find me on my company website at sussna-associates.com Jorge: Fantastic, so I'm going to include those in the show notes as well. I am thrilled that we had the opportunity to have this conversation. I think it's a very important subject and I hope it's not the last time that you and I get to catch up on this Jeff: Agreed, this has been great. It's been really enjoyable. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
Show Notes Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify the podcast corollary to EB Medicine's Emergency Medicine Practice. I'm Jeff Nusbaum and I'm back with Nachi Gupta for the 30th episode of EMplify and the first Post-Ponte Vedra Episode of 2019. I hope everybody enjoyed a fantastic conference. This month, we are sticking in the abdomen for another round of evidence-based medicine, focusing on Emergency Department Management of Patients With Complications of Bariatric Surgery. Nachi: As the obesity epidemic continues to worsen in America, bariatric procedures are becoming more and more common, and this population is one that you will need to be comfortable seeing. Jeff: Thankfully, this month's author, Dr. Ogunniyi, associate residency director at Harbor-UCLA, is here to help with this month's evidence-based article. Nachi: And don't forget Dr. Li of NYU and Dr. Luber of McGovern Medical School, who both played a roll by peer reviewing this article. So let's dive in, starting with some background. Starting off with some real basics, obesity is defined as a BMI of greater than 30. Jeff: Oh man, already starting with the personal assaults, I see how this is gonna go… Show More v Nachi: Nah! Just some definitions, nothing personal! Jeff: Whatever, back to the article… Obesity is associated with an increased risk of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes. Rising levels of obesity and associated co-morbidities also lead to an increase in bariatric procedures, and thereby ED visits! Nachi: One study found a 30-day ED utilization rate of 11% for those undergoing bariatric surgery with an admission rate of 5%. Another study found a 1-year post Roux-en-y ED visit rate of 31% and yet another found that 25% of these patients will require admission within 2 years of surgery. Jeff: Well that's kind worrisome. Nachi: It sure is, but maybe even more worrisome is the rising prevalence of obesity. While it was < 15% in 1990, by 2016 it reached 40%. That's almost half of the population. Additionally, back in 2010, it was estimated that 6.6% of the US population had a BMI> 40 – approximately 15.5 million adults!! Jeff: Admittedly, the US numbers look awful, and honestly are awful, but this is a global problem. From the 80's to 2008, the worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly doubled! Nachi: Luckily, bariatric surgical procedures were invented and honed to the point that they have really shown measurable achievements in sustained weight loss. Along with treating obesity, these procedures have also resulted in an improvement in associated comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes, NAFLD, and dyslipidemia. Jeff: A 2014 study even showed an up to 80% reduction in the likelihood of developing DM2 postoperatively at the 7-year mark. Nachi: Taken all together, the rising rates of obesity and the rising success and availability of bariatric procedures has led to an increased number of bariatric procedures, with 228,000 performed in the US in 2017. Jeff: And while it's not exactly core EM, we're going to briefly discuss indications for bariatric surgery, as this is something we don't often review even in academic training programs. Nachi: According to joint guidelines from the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and The Obesity Society, there are three groups that meet indications for bariatric surgery. The first is patients with a BMI greater than or equal to 40 without coexisting medical problems. The second is patients with a BMI greater than or equal to 35 with at least one obesity related comorbidity such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, or obstructive sleep apnea. And finally, the third is patient with a BMI of 30-35 with DM or metabolic syndrome though current evidence is limited for this group. Jeff: Based on the obesity numbers, we just cited – it seems like a TON of people should be eligible for these procedures.
Show Notes Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum and I’m back with Nachi Gupta for the 30th episode of EMplify and the first Post-Ponte Vedra Episode of 2019. I hope everybody enjoyed a fantastic conference. This month, we are sticking in the abdomen for another round of evidence-based medicine, focusing on Emergency Department Management of Patients With Complications of Bariatric Surgery. Nachi: As the obesity epidemic continues to worsen in America, bariatric procedures are becoming more and more common, and this population is one that you will need to be comfortable seeing. Jeff: Thankfully, this month’s author, Dr. Ogunniyi, associate residency director at Harbor-UCLA, is here to help with this month’s evidence-based article. Nachi: And don’t forget Dr. Li of NYU and Dr. Luber of McGovern Medical School, who both played a roll by peer reviewing this article. So let’s dive in, starting with some background. Starting off with some real basics, obesity is defined as a BMI of greater than 30. Jeff: Oh man, already starting with the personal assaults, I see how this is gonna go… Show More v Nachi: Nah! Just some definitions, nothing personal! Jeff: Whatever, back to the article… Obesity is associated with an increased risk of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes. Rising levels of obesity and associated co-morbidities also lead to an increase in bariatric procedures, and thereby ED visits! Nachi: One study found a 30-day ED utilization rate of 11% for those undergoing bariatric surgery with an admission rate of 5%. Another study found a 1-year post Roux-en-y ED visit rate of 31% and yet another found that 25% of these patients will require admission within 2 years of surgery. Jeff: Well that’s kind worrisome. Nachi: It sure is, but maybe even more worrisome is the rising prevalence of obesity. While it was < 15% in 1990, by 2016 it reached 40%. That’s almost half of the population. Additionally, back in 2010, it was estimated that 6.6% of the US population had a BMI> 40 – approximately 15.5 million adults!! Jeff: Admittedly, the US numbers look awful, and honestly are awful, but this is a global problem. From the 80’s to 2008, the worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly doubled! Nachi: Luckily, bariatric surgical procedures were invented and honed to the point that they have really shown measurable achievements in sustained weight loss. Along with treating obesity, these procedures have also resulted in an improvement in associated comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes, NAFLD, and dyslipidemia. Jeff: A 2014 study even showed an up to 80% reduction in the likelihood of developing DM2 postoperatively at the 7-year mark. Nachi: Taken all together, the rising rates of obesity and the rising success and availability of bariatric procedures has led to an increased number of bariatric procedures, with 228,000 performed in the US in 2017. Jeff: And while it’s not exactly core EM, we’re going to briefly discuss indications for bariatric surgery, as this is something we don’t often review even in academic training programs. Nachi: According to joint guidelines from the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and The Obesity Society, there are three groups that meet indications for bariatric surgery. The first is patients with a BMI greater than or equal to 40 without coexisting medical problems. The second is patients with a BMI greater than or equal to 35 with at least one obesity related comorbidity such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, or obstructive sleep apnea. And finally, the third is patient with a BMI of 30-35 with DM or metabolic syndrome though current evidence is limited for this group. Jeff: Based on the obesity numbers, we just cited – it seems like a TON of people should be eligible for these procedures. Which again reiterates why this is such an important topic for us as EM clinicians to be well-versed in. Nachi: As far as types of procedures go – while there are many, there are 3 major ones being done in the US and these are the lap sleeve gastrectomy, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, and lap adjustable gastric banding. In 2017, these were performed 60%, 18%, and 3% of the time. Jeff: And sadly, no two procedures were created alike and you must familiarize yourself with not only the procedure but also its associated complications. Nachi: So we have a lot to cover! overall, these surgeries are relatively safe with one 2014 review publishing a 10-17% overall complication rate and a perioperative 30 day mortality of less than 1%. Jeff: Before we get into the ED specific treatment guidelines, I think it’s worth discussing the procedures in more detail first. Understanding the surgeries will make understanding the workup, treatment, and disposition in the ED much easier. Nachi: Bariatric procedures can be classified as either restrictive or malabsorptive, with restrictive procedures essentially limiting intake and malabsorptive procedures limiting nutrient absorption. Not surprisingly, combined restrictive and malabsorptive procedures like the Roux-en-y gastric bypass tend to be the most effective. Jeff: Do note, however that 2013 guidelines do not recommend one procedure over another and leave that decision up to local surgical expertise, patient specific risk factors, and treatment goals. Nachi: That’s certainly an important point for the candidate patient. Let’s start by discussing the lap gastric sleeve. In this restrictive procedure, 80% of the greater curvature of the stomach is excised producing early satiety and weight loss from decreased caloric intake. This has been shown to have both low mortality and a low overall rate of complications. Jeff: Next we have the lap adjustable gastric band. This is also a restrictive procedure in which a plastic band is placed laparoscopically around the fundus leaving behind a small pouch that can change in size as the reservoir is inflated and deflated percutaneously. Nachi: Unfortunately this procedure is associated with a relatively high re-operation rate – one study found 20% of patients required removal or revision. Jeff: Even more shockingly, some series showed a 52% repeat operation rate. Nachi: 20-50% chance of removal, revision, or other cause for return to ER - those are some high numbers. Finally, there is the roux-en-y gastric bypass. As we mentioned previously this is both a restrictive and a malabsorptive procedure. In this procedure, the duodenum is separated from the proximal jejunum, and the jejunum is connected to a small gastric pouch. Food therefore transits from a small stomach to the small bowel. This leads to decreased caloric intake and decreased digestion and absorption. Jeff: Those are the main 3 procedures to know about. For the sake of completeness, just be aware that there is also the biliopancreatic diversion with or without a duodenal switch, as well as a vertical banded gastroplasty. The biliopancreatic diversion is used infrequently but is one of the most effective procedure in treating diabetes, though it does have an increased risk of complications. Expect to see this mostly in those with BMIs over 50. Nachi: Now that you have a sense of the procedures, let’s talk complications, both general and specific. Jeff: Of course, it should go without saying that this population is susceptive to all the typical post-operative complications such as venous thromboembolic disease, atelectasis, pneumonia, UTIs, and wound complications. Nachi: Because of their typical comorbidities, CAD and PE are still the leading causes of mortality, especially within the perioperative period. Jeff: Also, be on the lookout for self-harm emergencies as patients with known psychiatric disorders are at increased risk following bariatric surgery. Nachi: Surgical complications are wide ranging and can be grouped into early and late complications. More on this later… Jeff: Nutritional deficiencies are common enough to warrant pre and postoperative screening. Thiamine deficiency is one of the most common deficiencies. This can manifest within 1-3 months of surgery as beriberi or later as Wernicke encephalopathy. Symptoms of beriberi include peripheral neuropathy, ataxia, muscle weakness, high-output heart failure, LE edema, and respiratory distress. Nachi: All of that being said, each specific procedure has it’s own unique set of complications that we should discuss. Let’s start with the sleeve gastrectomy. Jeff: Early complications of sleeve gastrectomy include staple-line leaks, strictures, and hemorrhage. Leakage from the staple line typically presents within the first week, but can present up to 35 days, usually with fevers, tachycardia, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting sepsis, or peritonitis. This is one of the most serious and dreaded early complications and represents an important cause of morbidity with an incidence of 3-7%. Nachi: Strictures commonly occur at the incisura angularis of the remnant stomach and are usually due to ischemia, leaks, or twisting of the gastric pouch. Patients with strictures usually have n/v, reflux, and intolerance to oral intake. Jeff: Hemorrhage occurs due to erosions at the staple line, resulting in peritonitis, hematemesis, or melena. Nachi: Late complications of sleeve gastrectomies include reflux, which occurs in up to 25% of patients, and strictures, which lead to epigastric discomfort, nausea, and dysphagia. Jeff: I’m getting reflux and massive heartburn just thinking about all of these complications, or the tacos i just ate…. Next we have the Roux-en-Y bypass. Nachi: Early complications of the Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass include anastomotic or staple line leaks, hemorrhage, early postoperative obstruction, and dumping syndrome. Jeff: Leak incidence ranges from 1-6%, usually occurring at the gastro-jejunostomy site. Patients typically present within the first 10 days with abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and the feeling of impending doom. Some may present with isolated tachycardia while others may present with profound sepsis – tachycardia, hypotension, and fever. Nachi: Similar to the sleeve, hemorrhage can occur both intraperitoneally or intraluminally. This may lead to hematemesis or melena depending on the location of bleeding. Jeff: Early obstructions usually occur at either the gastro-jejunal or jejuno-jejunal junction. Depending on the location, patients typically present either within 2 days or in the first few weeks in the case of the gastro-jejunal site. Nachi: If the obstruction occurs in the jejuno-jejunostomy site, this can cause subsequent dilatation of the excluded stomach and lead to perforation, which portends a very poor prognosis. Jeff: Next, we have dumping syndrome. This has been seen in up to 50% of Roux-en-Y patients. Nachi: Early dumping occurs within 10-30 minutes after ingestion. As food rapidly empties from the stomach, this leads to distention and increased contractility, leading to nausea, abdominal pain, bloating, and diarrhea. This usually resolves within 7-12 weeks. Jeff: Moving on to late complications of the roux-en y - first we have marginal ulcers. Peptic ulcer disease and diabetes are risk factors and tobacco use and NSAIDs appear to increase your risk. In the worse case, they present with hematemesis or melena. Nachi: Internal hernias, intussusception, and SBOs are also seen after Roux-en-y gastric bypass. Patients with internal hernias usually present late in the postoperative period following significant weight loss. Jeff: Most studies cite a rate of 1-3% for internal hernias, with mortality up to 50% if there is strangulation. Nachi: And unfortunately for us on the front lines, diagnosis can be challenging. Presenting symptoms may be vague and CT imaging may be negative when patients are pain free, thus laparoscopy may be needed to definitively exclude an internal hernia. Jeff: Strictures may occur both during the early and late period. Most are minor, but significant strictures may result in obstruction. Nachi: Trocar site hernias and ventral hernias are also late complications, usually found after significant weight loss. Jeff: Cholelithiasis is another very common complication of bypass surgery, occurring in up to one third of patients, usually occurring during a peak incidence period between 6-18 months. Nachi: For this reason, the current recommendation is that patients undergoing bypass be placed on ursodeoxycholic acid for 6 months preventatively. Jeff: Some even go as far as to recommend prophylactic cholecystectomy to prevent complications, but as of 2013, the recommendation was only ‘to consider’ it. Nachi: Nutritional deficiencies are also common complications. Vitamin D, B12, Calcium, foate, iron, and thiamine deficiencies are all well documented complications. Patients typically take vitamins postoperatively to prevent such complications. Jeff: And next we have late dumping syndrome, which is far more rare than the last two complications. In late dumping syndrome, 1-3 hours after a meal, patients suffer hypoglycemia from excessive insulin release following the food bolus entering the GI tract. Symptoms are those typical of hypoglycemia. Nachi: Lastly, let’s talk about complications of lap adjustable gastric band surgery. In the early post op period, you can have esophageal and gastric perforations, which typically occur during balloon placement. Patients present with abd pain, n/v, and peritonitis. These patients often require emergent operative intervention. Jeff: The band can also be overtightened resulting in distention of the proximal gastric pouch. Presenting symptoms include abd pain with food and liquid intolerance and vomiting. Symptoms resolves once the balloon is deflated. The band can also slip, allowing the stomach to move upward and within the band. This occurs in up to 22% of patients and can cause strangulation. Presentation is similar to bowel ischemia. Nachi: Later complications include port site infections due to repeated port access. The infection can spread into connector tubing and the peritoneal cavity causing systemic symptoms. Definitely start antibiotics and touch base with the bariatric surgeon. Jeff: The connector can also dislodge or rupture with time. This can present as an arrest in weight loss. It’s diagnosed by contrast injection into the port. Of note, this complication is less common due to changes in the technique used. Nachi: Much like early band slippage and prolapse, patients can also experience late band slippage and prolapse after weeks or months. In extreme cases, the patients can again have strangulation and symptoms of bowel ischemia. More mild cases will present with arrest in weight loss, reflux, and n/v. Jeff: The band can also erode and migrate into the stomach cavity. If this occurs, it usually happens within 2 years of the initial procedure with an incidence of 4-11%. Presenting symptoms here include epigastric pain, bleeding, and infections. You’ll want to obtain emergent imaging if you are concerned. Nachi: And lastly there are two rare complications worth mentioning from any gastric bypass surgery. These are nephrolithiasis, possibly due to increased urinary oxalate excretion or hypocitraturia, and rhabdomyloysis. Jeff: That was a ton of information but certainly valuable as most EM clinicians, even ones in practice for decades, are unlikely to have that depth of knowledge on bariatric surgery. Nachi: And truthfully these patients are complicated. Aside from the pathologies we just discussed, you also have to still bear in mind other abdominal conditions unrelated to their surgery like appendicitis, diverticulitis, pyelo, colitis, hepatitis, pancreatitis, mesenteric ischemia, and GI bleeds. Jeff: Moving on to my favorite - prehospital care - as always, ABCs first. Consider IV access and early IV fluids in those at risk for dehydration and intra-abdominal infections. In terms of destination, if it’s feasible and the patient is stable consider transport directly to the nearest bariatric center - early efforts up front will really expedite patient care. Nachi: Once in the ED, you will want to continue initial stabilization. Special considerations for the airway include a concern for a difficult airway due to body habitus. Make sure to position appropriately and preoxygenate the patients if time allows. Keep the patient upright for as long as possible as they may desaturate quickly when flat. Jeff: We both routinely raise the head of the bed for all of our intubations. This is ever more important for your obese patients to help maximize your chance of first pass success without significant desaturation. Nachi: And though I’m sure we all remember this from residency, it’s worth repeating: tidal volume settings on the ventilator should be based on ideal body weight, not actual body weight. At 6 to 8 mL/kg. Jeff: Tachycardic patients should make you concerned for hypovolemia 2/2 dehydration, sepsis, leaks, and blood loss. Consider performing a RUSH exam (that is rapid ultrasound for shock and hypotension) to identify the cause. A HR > 120 with abdominal pain should make you concerned enough to discuss urgent ex-lap with the surgeon to evaluate for the post op complications we discussed earlier. Nachi: If possible, obtain a view of the IVC also while doing your ultrasound to assess for volume status. But bear in mind that ultrasound will undoubtedly be more difficult if the patient has a large body habitus, so don’t be disappointed if you’re not getting the best views. Jeff: Resuscitation should be aimed at early fluid replacement with IV crystalloids for hypovolemic patients and packed RBC transfusions for patients presumed to be unstable from hemorrhage. No real surprises there for our listeners. Nachi: Once stabilized, gather a thorough history. In addition to the usual questions, ask about po intolerance, early satiety, hematemesis, and hematochezia. Definitely also gather a thorough surgical history including name of procedure, date, known complications post op, and name of the surgeon. Jeff: You might also run into “medical tourism” or global bariatric care. Patients are traveling overseas to get their bariatric care more and more frequently. Accreditation and oversight is variable in different countries and there isn’t a worldwide standard of care. Just an important phenomenon to be aware of in this population. Nachi: On physical exam, be sure to look directly at the belly, making note of any infections especially near a port-site. Given the reorganized anatomy and extent of soft tissue in obese patients, don’t be reassured by a benign exam. Something awful may be happening deeper. Jeff: This naturally brings us into diagnostic testing. Not surprisingly, labs will be helpful in these patients. Make sure to check abdominal labs and a lipase. Abnormal LFTs or lipase may indicate obstruction of the biliopancreatic limb in bypass patients. Nachi: A lactic acid level will help in suspected cases of hypoperfusion from sepsis or bowel ischemia. Jeff: And as we mentioned earlier, these patients are often at risk for ACS given their comorbidities. Be sure to check a troponin if you suspect cardiac ischemia. Nachi: If concerned for sepsis, draw blood cultures, and if concerned for hemorrhage, be sure to send a type and screen. Urinalysis and urine culture should be considered especially for early post op patients, symptomatic patients, or those with GU complaints. Jeff: And don’t forget the urine pregnancy test for women of childbearing age, especially prior to imaging. Nachi: Check an EKG immediately after arrival for any patient that may be concerning for ACS. A normal ekg of course does not rule out a cardiac cause of their presentation. Jeff: As for imaging, plain radiographs certainly play a role here. For patients with respiratory complaints, check a CXR. In the early postoperative period, there is increased risk for pneumonia. Nachi: Unstable patients with abdominal pain will benefit from an emergent abdominal series, which may show free air under the diaphragm, pneumatosis, air-fluid levels, or even dilated loops of bowel. Jeff: Of course don’t forget that intra abd air may be seen after laparoscopic procedures depending on how recently the operation was performed. Nachi: Plain x-ray can also help diagnose malpositioned or slipped gastric bands. But a negative study doesn’t rule out any of these pathologies definitively, given the generally limited sensitivity and specificity of x-ray. Jeff: You might also consider an upper GI series. Emergent uses include diagnosis of slipped or prolapsed gastric bands as well as gastric or esophageal perforations. Urgent indications include diagnosis of strictures. These can also diagnose gastric band erosions and help identify staple-line or anastomotic leaks in stable patients. Nachi: However, upper GI series might not be easy to obtain in the ED, so it’s often not the first test performed. Jeff: This brings us to the workhorse for diagnostic evaluation. The CT. Depending on suspected pathology, oral and/or IV contrast will be helpful. Oral contrast can help identify gastric band erosions, staple-line leaks, and anastomotic leaks. Leaks can be identified in up 86% of cases with oral contrast. Nachi: CT will also help diagnose internal hernias. You might see the swirl sign on CT, which represents swirling of the mesenteric vessels. This is highly predictive of an internal hernia, with a sensitivity of 78-100% and specificity of 80-90% according to at least two studies. Jeff: While CT is extremely helpful in making this diagnosis, note that it may be falsely negative for internal hernias. A retrospective review showed a sensitivity of 76% and a specificity of 60%. It also showed that 22% of patients with an internal hernia on surgical exploration had a negative CT in the ED. Another study found a false negative rate of 32%. What does all this mean? It likely means that a negative study may still necessitate diagnostic laparoscopy to rule out an internal hernia. Nachi: While talking about CT, we should definitely mention CTA for concern of pulmonary embolism. In order to limit contrast exposure, you might consider doing a CTA chest and CT of the abdomen simultaneously. Jeff: Next up is ultrasound. Ultrasound is still the first-line imaging modality for assessing the gallbladder and for biliary tract disease. And as we mentioned previously, ultrasound should be considered for your RUSH exam and for assessing the IVC. Nachi: We also should discuss endoscopy, which is the test of choice for diagnosing gastric band erosions. Endoscopy is also useful for evaluating marginal ulcers, strictures, leaks, and GI bleeds. Endoscopy additionally can be therapeutic for patients. Jeff: When treating these patients, attempt to contact the bariatric surgeon for guidance as needed. This shouldn’t delay imaging however. Nachi: For septic patients, make sure your choice of antibiotics covers intra-abdominal gram-negative and anaerobic organisms. Port-site infections require gram-positive coverage to cover skin flora. Additionally, give IV fluids, blood products, and antiemetics as appropriate. Jeff: Alright, so this month, we also have 2 special populations to discuss. First up, the kids. Nachi: Recent estimates from 2015-2016 put the prevalence of obesity of those 2 years old to 19 years old at about 19%. As obese children are at higher risk for comorbidities later in life and bariatric surgery remains one of the best modalities for sustained weight loss, these surgical procedures are also being done in children. Jeff: Criteria for bariatric surgery in the adolescent population is similar to that of adults and includes a BMI of 35 and major comorbidities (like diabetes or moderate to severe sleep apnea) or patients with a BMI 40 with other comorbidities associated with long term risks like hypertension, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and impaired quality of life. Nachi: Despite many adolescents meeting criteria, they should be referred with caution as the long term effects are unclear and the adolescent experience is still in its infancy with few pediatric specific programs. Jeff: Still, the complication rate is low - about 2.3% with generally good clinical outcomes including improved quality of life and reducing or staving off comorbidities. Nachi: Women of childbearing age are the next special population. They are at particular risk because of the unique caloric and nutrient needs of a pregnant mother. Jeff: Pregnant women who have had bariatric surgery have an increased risk of perinatal complications including prematurity, small for gestational age status, NICU admission and low Apgar scores. However, these risks come with benefits as other studies have shown reduced incidence of pre-eclampsia, large for gestational age neonates, and gestational diabetes. Nachi: 2013 guidelines from various organizations recommend avoiding becoming pregnant for at least 12-18 months postoperatively, with ACOG recommending a minimum of 2 years. Bariatric surgery patients who do become pregnant require serial monitoring for fetal growth and higher doses of supplemental folate. Jeff: We also have 2 pretty cool cutting edge techniques to mention this month before getting to disposition. Nachi: Though these are certainly not going to be done in the ED, you should be aware of two new techniques. Recently, the FDA approved 3 new endoscopic gastric balloon procedures in which a balloon is inflated in the stomach as a means of simulating a restrictive procedure. Complications include perforation, ulceration, GI bleeding, and migration with obstruction. As of now, they are only approved as a temporary modality for up to 6 months. Jeff: And we also have the AspireAssist siphon, which was approved in 2016. With the siphon, a g tube is placed in the stomach, and then ⅓ of the stomach contents is drained 20 minutes after meals, thus limiting overall digested intake. Nachi: Pretty cool stuff... Jeff: Yup - In terms of disposition, decisions should often be made in conjunction with the bariatric surgical team. Urgent and occasionally emergent surgery is required for those with hemodynamic instability, anastomotic or staple line leaks, SBO, acute band slippage with dilatation of the gastric pouch, tight gastric bands, and infected port sites with concurrent intra abdominal infections. Nachi: And while general surgeons should be well-versed in these complications should the patient require an emergent surgery, it is often best to stabilize and consider transfer to your local bariatric specialty facility. Jeff: In addition to the need for admission for surgical procedures, admission should also be considered in those with dehydration and electrolyte disturbances, those with persistent vomiting, those with GI bleeding requiring transfusions, those with acute cholecystitis or choledococholithiasis, and those with malnutrition. Nachi: Finally, patients with chronic strictures, marginal ulcers, asymptomatic trocar or ventral hernias, and stable gastric band erosions can usually be safely discharged after an appropriate conversation with the patient’s bariatric surgeon. Jeff: Definitely a great time to do some joint decision making with the patient and their surgeon. Nachi: Exactly. Let’s close out with some Key points and clinical pearls. Jeff: Bariatric surgeries are being performed more frequently due to both their success in sustained weight loss and improvements in associated comorbidities. Nachi: There is an increased risk of postoperative myocardial infarction and pulmonary embolism after bariatric surgery. There is also an increased risk of self-harm emergencies after bariatric surgery, mostly in patients with known psychiatric co-morbidities. Jeff: Nutritional deficiencies can occur following bariatric surgery, with thiamine deficiency being one of the most common. Look for signs of beriberi or even Wernicke encephalopathy. Nachi: Staple-line leaks are an important cause of postoperative morbidity. Patients often present with abdominal pain, vomiting, sepsis, and peritonitis. Jeff: Strictures can also present postoperatively and cause reflux, epigastric discomfort, and vomiting. Nachi: Intraperitoneal or intraluminal hemorrhage is a known complication of bariatric surgery and may present as peritonitis or with hematemesis and melena. Jeff: After significant weight loss, internal hernias with our without features of strangulation are a late complication. Nachi: Late dumping syndrome is a rare complication following Roux-en-Y bypass occurring months to years postoperatively. It presents with hypoglycemia due to excessive insulin release. Jeff: Esophageal or gastric perforation are early complications of adjustable gastric band surgery. These patients require emergent surgical intervention. Nachi: Overtightening of the gastric band results in food and liquid intolerance. This resolves once the balloon is deflated. Jeff: Late complications of gastric band surgery include port-site infections, connector tubing dislodgement or rupture, band slippage or prolapse, and band erosion with intragastric migration. Nachi: Given the myriad of possible bariatric surgeries, emergency clinicians should be cognizant of procedure-specific complications. Jeff: Consider obtaining a lactic acid level for cases of suspected bowel ischemia or sepsis. Nachi: Endoscopy is the best method for diagnosing and treating gastric band erosions. Jeff: Septic patients should be treated with antibiotics that cover gram-negative and anaerobic organisms. Suspected port site or wound infections require gram positive coverage. Nachi: Pregnant patients who previously had bariatric surgery are at risk for complications from their prior surgery as well as pregnancy-related pathology. Jeff: A plain radiograph may be useful in unstable patients to evaluate for free air under the diaphragm, pneumatosis, air-fluid levels, or dilated loops of bowel. Nachi: CT of the abdomen and pelvis is the mainstay for evaluation. Oral and/or IV contrast should be considered depending on the suspected pathology. Jeff: Have a low threshold for emergent surgical consultation for ill-appearing, unstable, or peritonitic patients. Nachi: So that wraps up Episode 30! Jeff: As always, 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 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 any images and tables mentioned. PA’s and NP’s - make sure to use the code APP4 at checkout to save 50%. Nachi: And the address for this month’s cme credit is ebmedicine.net/E0719, so head over there to get your CME credit. As always, the [DING SOUND] 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! Most Important References Altieri MS, Wright B, Peredo A, et al. Common weight loss procedures and their complications. Am J Emerg Med. 2018;36(3):475-479. (Review article) Colquitt JL, Pickett K, Loveman E, et al. Surgery for weight loss in adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014(8):CD003641. (Cochrane review; 22 trials) Mechanick JI, Youdim A, Jones DB, et al. Clinical practice guidelines for the perioperative nutritional, metabolic, and nonsurgical support of the bariatric surgery patient—2013 update: cosponsored by American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, The Obesity Society, and American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2013;21 Suppl 1:S1-S27. (Society practice guidelines) Phillips BT, Shikora SA. The history of metabolic and bariatric surgery: development of standards for patient safety and efficacy. Metabolism. 2018;79:97-107. (Review article) Contival N, Menahem B, Gautier T, et al. Guiding the nonbariatric surgeon through complications of bariatric surgery. J Visc Surg. 2018;155(1):27-40. (Review article) Parrott J, Frank L, Rabena R, et al. American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery integrated health nutritional guidelines for the surgical weight loss patient, 2016 update: micronutrients. Surg Obes Relat Dis. 2017;13(5):727-741. (Society practice guidelines) Chousleb E, Chousleb A. Management of post-bariatric surgery emergencies. J Gastrointest Surg. 2017;21(11):1946-1953. (Review article) Goudsmedt F, Deylgat B, Coenegrachts K, et al. Internal hernia after laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass: a correlation between radiological and operative findings. Obes Surg. 2015;25(4):622-627. (Retrospective review; 7328 patients) Michalsky M, Reichard K, Inge T, et al. ASMBS pediatric committee best practice guidelines. Surg Obes Relat Dis. 2012;8(1):1-7. (Society practice guidelines)
The guys talk about the television they’ve been watching so far this summer, including American Ninja Warrior on NBC, FX’s Pose, American Masters: Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life on PBS, Grand Hotel on ABC, Good Trouble on Freeform and What/If on Netflix. Jeff reviews In Case You Forgot by Frederick Smith & Chaz Lamar. Jeff interviews Roan Parrish about Raze, the latest book in the Riven series. They talk about the research she did for the series, including going on tour with a band, as well as the eclectic music she enjoys. The origin of Roan’s collaboration with Avon Gale is also discussed along with what got Roan started with writing gay romance. Complete shownotes for episode 196 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript - Roan Parrish 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, Roan, to the podcast. It is so great to finally have you here. Roan: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Jeff: And it's a perfect opportunity because just last week, you released raise "Raze," just the third book in the "Riven" series. And for those who don't know, tell us about the series and, of course, this latest installment. Roan: Sure. So "Riven" starts out with the book, "Riven," also the series title. And it's kind of an anti-rock star romance. It's about Theo, who's the lead singer of the band, Riven. And they've suddenly hit it big and are super famous. And everyone in the band loves being famous and their success. And Theo hates it. He hates being famous. He hates being the center of attention. He hates, like, people knowing things about him or looking at him when he leaves the house. So he loves the music, but he finds fame, like, the worst thing ever. And so he's about to go off on a new leg of the tour and is sort of, like, wandering the streets of New York, feeling a little bit sorry for himself. When he hears this song coming from a bar, like, someone just strumming guitar, and it's one of the most beautiful things he's ever heard. So he goes in the bar to see who's playing this or what the song is. And he meets Caleb, who is the one playing the music. And Caleb, we learn later, has been a musician for a long time, a working musician, but has sort of gone away from the scene and hidden himself away in his uncle's house out of town because he's had some addiction issues, and he's trying to stay clean by staying away from everything that reminded him of the scene, including music. So they start to talk to each other and they bond over music. And then little by little, they fall in love. The problem being, of course, that for Theo being in the scene and being public is kind of part of his thing. And for Caleb, everything about that just brings back a lot of bad memories. So they have to sort of work together to figure out how that's gonna impact their relationship and if they can get through it. And then it kind of takes a hard left, I feel like this is the thing that I should say for people who haven't read the series, is that the series really does hang together. It has the same secondary characters. It deals with a lot of the same themes, like, the themes of ending up someplace that you never thought you would be. But then in book two, we met Reese, or we've met Reese in book one, but we have a book about Reese who was Caleb's best friend and Reese's husband, Matt. And Matt has nothing to do with the music scene. And the book is told from his perspective. So for people who go in expecting that the whole series is about music, it is in some ways, like, music as a through line. And certainly, this idea of fame and this idea of struggling with fame is a through line. But book one is sort of anti-rock star. And then book two is like working musician and person who's not involved with music at all. So I feel like that's the thing I should say. Jeff: Well, they it does hang together because you've got the working musician. Roan: Yeah, totally. And Reese, who is the working musician is someone who toured with Caleb when Caleb was still playing music. So the characters all hang together and the series hangs together, but it's not a kind of musician book, if that make sense. Jeff: Yeah, that makes sense. Roan: And then "Raze," which is book three, it also hangs together. "Raze," it's similarly about characters ending up someplace that they never thought they would be. And in this book we meet Huey, who was in the first two books, and has been a sort of a little bit of a shadowy figure who we never knew his backstory, we didn't know who he is, he just pops in and dispenses wisdom, and pops out again, he doesn't say much else. And so he was Caleb's sponsor in Narcotics Anonymous. And he's still been working as a sponsor. And he is so used to taking care of everyone else being a sponsor, helping people work through their own addiction issues, dealing with his own, that he doesn't really ever focus on his own life. He's built up this kind of wall of focusing on everyone else, so he never has to think about himself. And we meet Felix, who is doing the same thing, taking care of everyone else but him himself, but through his family instead of through NA. So he grew up and help take care of his younger brothers and sisters, and always helped his sister get whatever she wanted, and has now found himself as his sister goes off to do her music thing, found himself kind of like, "What the hell am I doing with my life? Who am I? I kind of forgot to ever notice what I wanted." And so the two of them come together. And two people who are so used to looking out for everyone except themselves, as you can imagine, when it comes down to trying to make a relationship, they kind of don't know how to do it. They don't know how to ask for what they want. They don't even know what they want from each other. And so feelings kinda bubble up and nobody knows what to do with them. And then it ends really happily. Jeff: As all romance must. Roan: That's a must. And there's even a kitten. So, yeah. Jeff: What attracted you to writing this series? Roan: I think that there's themes that go together. I love music. And I've always been a huge music fan. And one of the things that I've always thought was interesting is that music is so personal, to me, anyway. And I know for many other people, like, each of us, listens to music and feels something - has associations that are deeply personal. And something about the weirdness of something so personal, experienced on a large scale of fame has always struck me as really odd. So you can be at a concert with the band and have thousands and thousands of people there. And each person has been hit with his music in a really personal way. And yet, we're all there together in a super public space, having kind of a personal experience, like, smooshed up together with each other. And I've just always found that really strange. And I know for people who make music, the process of making music is really personal. And it's really different than the process of performing music. And so I think I was interested in what would it feel like to do something really personal in front of a lot of people and then watch as this thing that you've made gets loose on the world, and you no longer have any control over it or what people think of it. And to me being famous seems like absolutely the worst thing I can imagine outside of, like, actual torture. And I know that for some people, that's not the case. But, yeah. So I was interested in writing, like, the genre of rock star romance is a thing. And I was interested in looking at it from the perspective of what would a rock star romance look like, if instead of rock star being a desirable thing, it was a terrible thing or a thing that caused a lot of problems for the rock star. Jeff: What was the process around some of the research, because, like, you talk about this very personal thing. How do you research that? And then how do you try to read and put it in a book so everybody else gets it? Roan: You know, I mean, I don't know. I can't really claim that I did it correctly. I've never been a musician. I like singing karaoke to Paula Abdul once with five other people very drunk in college. And that's about my performance level. But my sister-in-law, my sister's wife is a musician. And she's very personal and writes very personal music and then performs it. And, you know, I've been to many of her shows, obviously. And I went on tour with her in Europe once, like, carrying her stuff and hanging on for the ride. And one thing that struck me was, like, people would come up to her after the show and tell her like, "Your music has meant so much to me. I was going through such a hard time and your music spoke to me in these really hard moments." And so I would see that and I know that people are having these personal responses and have personal relationships with the music. And I know that my sister-in-law does as well. And then, like, the moment that the two of them would be having together would be personal. But there was still this whole performance element that I kinda…yeah, just seems like a very strange crucible of the personal and the public smooshed together, and maybe the performativity of that, in some way, like, hides the personalness…or not hides necessarily, but, like, you need a little bit of distance, like, the lights and the smoke machine, and the darkness, and the space between the stage and the crowd to insulate you a little bit in order to take something that's so personal and project it out in public. Jeff: I love how you kinda had the personal research going on there that you actually went on this tour and got to see all of it kinda go down about as close to it as you could without being the actual performer. Roan: Yeah, yeah, which is awesome. And I mean, like, I've had many friends who do music. So I knew that if I had, like, specific questions, you know, I had some questions about, like, the studio stuff and how you laid out tracks that I was able to ask friends about. But I really do think it's, like, the feeling of performing that I was trying to capture and the sense of what it felt like to have something that was yours, like, the music, and then watch other people make it theirs. And although I've never been a performer in any way, I mean, that's a little bit, like, what happens with books is that I sit at home in my pajamas, like, with cat hair all over me, and I write these books. And then when they're published, it's not mine anymore, it belongs to the people who read it. And I don't really have any control over it. So that part was easy to kind of understand. Jeff: Of course, you mentioned your love of music. And your bio actually mentioned that you listen to torch songs and melodic death metal. Now, I get eccentricity because my playlists are, like, wildly, you know, strangely hooked together in some way. But these two seem very different. What attracts you to these two individual styles? Roan: I think I was trying to write my bio in a way that was, you know, like on dating sites, you wanna say the two things that seem most opposed. So you can be like, "Listen, this is what you're getting as a human being who is essentially at odds with himself," maybe that's just me. Anyway, yeah, I love both of those genres. I think they're both simultaneously really raw and really beautiful. Like, torch songs, I love because they are heartbroken, and tender, and they tell a story, and they're so vulnerable, and beautiful. And melodic death metal is like, doing the same thing, only it can't be vulnerable, or, like, it needs a really harsh bass riff, and loud guitar, and loud drums in order to do something that's that tender and that personal. And I find not like screamy death metal, but yeah, melodic death metal. I find it like one of those puppies that growls at you until you get a little bit closer, and then little by little it sorta lets you pet it. And then by the time you're petting it, it's like, "Oh, no, I really do love this. Please don't ever stop petting me," but then, like, someone else walks in the room and they're all growly again. Jeff: I love that analogy. So awesome. Jeff: Now, speaking of music, with the "Riven" series seems such an obvious thing to perhaps you write to music if you're a writer who does that. Was there a particular playlist that sort of pushed you along in the writing of the series? Roan: You know, I actually didn't listen to music at all writing the series, which is sort of strange when you say it like that. I go through phases of whether I like to write with music on or not. And there have been books that I've written where I listened to the same music over and over. Like, when I wrote...what book was it? Oh, "Out of Nowhere," which is the second book "In the Middle of Somewhere" series, I listened like obsessively to "The Civil Wars" just over, and over, and over. And for some reason, the mood of those albums was, like, exactly the mood that I needed to be in to write that book. But with the "Riven" series, I didn't listen to music at all. Jeff: Interesting. Okay. Roan: Yeah. And none of the music in the books is real. Like, I made up all the band names and all of the music. And I wonder if maybe part of it was like, I didn't want real music in my head because I was making it up. Jeff: That would make sense. Yeah. If you're having to write any kind of song lyrics or anything inside the book, I could see where you would wanna, like, accidentally just pick up something. Roan: Right. Well, it was super adorable actually because one of my best friends who reads all my stuff first is, like, she likes music a lot, but she's like a top 40 radio kind of tastes music person. And so she thought that all of the musical references in my books in the "Riven" series were real, because she knows that I like lots of different kinds of music, and she just didn't know that they were fake at all, which is totally adorable. Jeff: Oh, that's awesome. So you could have an extra career then as a songwriter if you're writing lyrics. Roan: Maybe a band-namer. I like the band names more. Jeff: So I have to ask for the audio book then that you've got song lyrics - does that mean your narrator is actually singing the lyrics? Did you make Iggy sing and Chris sing? Roan: No. And, you know, I don't think that I have a chunk of lyrics long enough to be sung. They're like a couple snippets. But I didn't even think about the fact that I could have written a song of it for the audio book. That would have been awesome. Too late. Jeff: Something to think about maybe for a future book or another installment in the series. Roan: Yeah, yeah. I could do it as like an extra or something, I guess. Jeff: And speaking of the series, is there more to come in this series? Roan: There's not. Like, The Good Place that we were talking about earlier, I have decided that book three is the end. Jeff: Okay. Time to wrap up that universe. Roan: Yeah. And, you know, I say that and obviously maybe I would go back in the future and write another one. But I think the fact that the last book is about a character whose story we've kinda been wondering about for the whole series, it felt like a good place to stop because it's sort of the wrap up of, like, solving the last interpersonal mystery. So that felt like the right place to stop. And there are definitely tendrils. Like, people who've read a bunch of my books will notice that Riven, the band, is mentioned in another book, and that some characters from the "Middle of Somewhere" series are briefly alluded to in "Riven." So there's, like, little Easter eggs for people who have read all the books because I sort of think of everything as being connected in that way. So it'll pop back up, I'm sure. Jeff: I love that. I love the broad interconnected universe thing. Roan: Yeah, yeah. Secretly in my head, all of the books are connected in lots of ways that I don't necessarily put on the page. But, like, I like to get a couple in there. Jeff: Nice. Now, you also co-write with Avon Gale. What got that collaboration going? Roan: You know, that collaboration happened completely by accident, or on a whim, I should say. And I'm so glad it did. So I was living in New Orleans a couple years ago. And Avon and I were friends on the internet. And she offered when I was moving back from New Orleans to Philadelphia, she was like, "I love a road trip. What if I fly to New Orleans and drive with you," because it's a many day drive and you have a cat. I had like my truck and then I had my car hitched to the back of the truck, and it was a whole big thing. So I was like, "Oh, great. This will be fun." So we started driving from Louisiana to Pennsylvania. And it was, like, a torrential downpour. And we couldn't hear the radio. We couldn't do anything. And so Avon was like, "Okay. Well, I'll just tell you about this book that I've been working on. And I am really stuck on it. I can't get the plot right." So I was like, "Okay." And I'm pretty introverted and Avon is very extroverted. And we going in... Jeff: And it's very true, she is. Roan: Yes. And, you know, I really just love a clear communicator, so I loved it. She was like, "Basically, I talk constantly. And if you want me to stop, you have to tell me to stop." And I was like, "Oh, that's amazing. I run out of steam socially in approximately two-and-a-half hours, and I'm still listening to you, but I won't respond." And she was like, "Okay, great." And thus, it was. And so she basically narrated to me the entire plot of this book that she was trying to write, and she was having trouble with it. And I kept doing this probably obnoxious thing where I was like, "Oh, what if you did this?" Or, "What if you did that?" Or, "Oh, my gosh, it's so funny, because if that were me, I would totally do this." And she, instead of being annoyed, was like, "Well, you should obviously write this book with me." And that book was what it turned into "Heart of the Steal," which is the first book we wrote together. And it was so fun because then as we were driving, we just plotted the whole book. And she had her little, like, computer that she was typing on while we drove. And I drove the truck the whole way. And so I would like yammer at her and she would take notes, and then in the hotel rooms at night, we would kinda hash it out. And so it happened on a total whim, and then turned out to be really fun. And so we planned it on that trip. And then I went and visited her months later, I guess. Yeah, some months later, and we actually wrote "Thrall," which was the second book that we co-wrote together, like, in the same place. So we wrote it, like, together, even though we don't live in the same place. So it was two very different writing experiences, but both equally awesome. Jeff: That's fantastic. And I have to imagine it's a nice way to kill the time in a road trip to just write a book. Roan: Oh, yeah, totally. And it's really fun because I don't know about you or about other writers in general, but, like, I find that traveling is one of the best, like, brain, what do you call it? Like, catalyzers, brain catalyzers, something about moving through space constantly, whether it's, like, on a train or just walking or whatever. It's, like, the rhythm of moving through space makes my brain also work in a forward rhythm. And I find myself, excuse me, getting so many ideas when I'm just, like, walking a long distance, or on a train, or on a bus, or something. And so something about driving and plotting the thing together was, like, super, some word… Jeff: Awesome. Roan: Yeah, awesome. Jeff: Probably better than awesome, but awesome was the first thing that popped into my head. Roan: Yeah, yeah. Jeff: And then I totally get what you're talking about there, too, because I've done a lot of plotting and some writing on planes. Because it's like, yeah, there's something about just that that just you've got the time, and, like, the brain is working, so use it. Roan: Yeah. And it's, like, looking out the window of something moving through that kinda space with everything passing so quickly, it almost feels like it changes the rhythm of thoughts or something. Jeff: Yeah. And kudos to Avon for being able to type in a moving vehicle because I don't know that I could do that. Roan: Oh, my God, she has, like, motion sickness proof. I swear to God. Jeff: That's just crazy. Roan: Oh, I know. Jeff: But we definitely got to talk a little bit about "Thrall." I reviewed it back in Episode 157. I was just blown away by it. For folks who don't know, tell us about what that book is and what in fact does make it so special? Roan: So "Thrall" is our modern "Dracula" retelling, basically. And for anyone who's read "Dracula," you'll remember that "Dracula," it's an epistolary novel, so it's told through letters, and diary entries, and, like, newspaper clippings, telegram, stuff like that. And so we did "Thrall" in the same way, we made it an epistolary novel. But since ours was modern, and that one was 19th century, instead of letters and journal entries, and stuff like that, we have emails, and g-chats, and tweets, and podcast descriptions, and stuff like that. So the whole thing is written in that way, this combination of different print media. So we have the main characters that people will recognize from "Dracula." And Mina, and Lucy, who are the two characters that people will know from "Dracula," in our version, have a podcast, a true crime podcast in New Orleans. And they get caught up in basically trying to solve the mystery of Lucy's brother who seems to have disappeared. And so in getting caught up in that mystery, they stumble upon this a role-playing game kind of thing, where they use an app, and they go to different places, and they try to solve clues, hoping that it will take them to Lucy's brother. And so in addition to it being an epistolary form in general for the whole book, then kind of within that epistolary form, there's this mystery that they're trying to solve on a computer, I mean, on a phone app. So it's like a game inside an epistolary novel that's an adaptation of another epistolary novel. Jeff: And epistolary just not something you see very much. At least I don't, especially in the romance genre that I tend to read in general. What was it like as a writer, and just plotting to take on such a different narrative format? Roan: Yeah, it was awesome. It was really, really cool. I love form, like, I'm super interested in what different things you can do with form. And one of the things that, like, when I'm reading other things I'm always interested in is what form did this author choose, whether it's something simple, like, short chapters, or long chapters, or, like, flashbacks versus telling everything in order, all of that stuff, I think, has such an impact on the way the story gets delivered. And so I was really excited to play with the form. And I think that with the genre of romance, one of the reasons why we don't see epistolary stuff so often is that it's, like, an additional level of remove between the two characters. And romance seems, to me, to be all about intimacy and connection. And sure, it can be really romantic or sexy to write a love letter or love email, I guess, in 2019. But there's still something where you're not in the moment. There's no, like, tracking a touch as it happens, or a kiss, or whatever it is. And so I think that going into "Thrall," we were like, "How the hell do we make a romance happen when the characters essentially are never in the same scene?" Like, in order to be texting each other, they probably aren't together. In order to be chatting each other, they're probably not together. And so any evidence of an encounter, which is all we could show, also demonstrated their distance. So that was a challenge. And we got around it in a couple of different ways, including characters literally writing out sex scenes that they wished would happen like fantasies, having chats that were more intimate. But yeah, the romance part, I think, was actually the hardest to portray via the epistolary form because it introduces that necessary distance, which is sort of the anti-romance. It was much easier, for example, for the mystery, or the suspense parts because those things can be portrayed that way no problem. But, yeah, the romance part was tricky. Jeff: Well, as I said the review, I think you guys pulled it off so amazingly. If people have not read "Thrall," they should really pick it up and give it a try. Roan: Oh, thanks. Jeff: Because maybe a little much to call it a breath of fresh air, but it's certainly gonna be something very different than what I think most people tend to read. Roan: Yeah, it definitely is different. And it's one of those books that Avon and I knew going in, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. It's an adaptation. It's an adaptation of "Dracula." It's an adaptation of "Dracula" without vampires. It's a romance where you don't ever see the characters touch necessarily. But like, I feel, like, for people who are interested in form for people who are interested in Dracula or interested in suspense, and all that stuff, we were really excited to just do something totally new for us. Jeff: Yeah. It was super cool. Please do more of that sometime. Roan: I would love too. Jeff: So laying a little bit of your origin story, how did you get involved in writing M/M romance? Roan: You know, at the risk of making, it sound completely accidental, it was kind of accidental. My good friend from graduate school, got a job in Phoenix, and didn't know very many people. She didn't have many friends. And she and I both started reading both young adult and M/M mysteries in grad school. And so I went to go visit her and she was having a hard time. Like, I said she didn't know very many people, didn't have any friends, and she just wanted like, escape reading. And we were, like, in the kitchen cooking dinner or something, and she was saying that she just wished that there was, like, a romance novel that she could read about someone who was in her situation. So someone who was a new professor in a new place, didn't know very many people and was kind of struggling to fit in. And because she's my friend and I wanted to make it all better, I was like, "Oh, no worries, I'll write you a story. Everything is gonna be okay." So on the plane home from Arizona, I wrote the first chapter of what would eventually be "In the Middle of Somewhere," my first book, thinking that, like, I would send it to my friend, and she would read it and be like, "You are such a nerd. I can't believe you actually wrote me this story. I was just complaining. You're weird." But instead, she read it and wrote back and was like, "Oh, a story. Oh, my gosh. What happens next?" And, of course, I didn't know what happened next because there was no next. I thought that it was going to be a little one-off thing. But then I wrote the next chapter and I emailed it to her, and she wrote back and was like, "What happens next?" And I actually wrote the whole first half of the book that way just chunking out a chapter, emailing it to my friend, and I was really writing it for her. I never thought I would show it to anyone. I never intended to send it to a publisher. I didn't even have a plot, I just was writing these little sections. And around halfway through the book, I suddenly realized that, like, it was getting kinda long, and I should probably figure out how it was gonna end. Otherwise, I would just end up writing this, like, email missive to my friend forever, which was really fun. But also, I thought she would get sick of it eventually. And then when I finished the book, I thought that was gonna be the end of it. And it was my friend who was like, "No, you should totally try to publish it." And I owe it all to her, I never occurred to me to send it to anyone. And I would never have done it if she hadn't made me. Jeff: Well, kudos to her for making that happen. And that's the best accident story ever. I mean, just amazing. Were you writing before that at all? Or was this just really like, "Hey, I could write. I'll write you something. No worries." Roan: Well, you know, I've always written different things. I was a poetry major in college of all the super useful things to pursue. And so I wrote poetry or some short fiction. And then I did my PhD in literature. So, you know, I wrote a dissertation, I wrote nonfiction for years, and years, and years. But I've always loved to write. And I love reading novels. And so sitting down to write a novel, I think it actually helps that I wasn't thinking of it as writing a novel. I just thought of it as writing the story for my friend. So I didn't have any of the self-consciousness or like that internal editorial voice that I'm sure if I had planned to send it out, would have like, killed me as I was trying to start. And in terms of, like, as we get back to your original question, which I don't know that I actually answered in terms of, like, why M/M romance specifically. I hate misogyny, and sexism, and can't deal with stories where I read female characters and feel intensely alienated from them. And I find often in romance, not all by any means, there are some amazing, amazing, like, revolutionary really amazing people writing romance with women, but I've often found that reading romance novels that are, like, heterosexual romance stories make me feel alienated, and angry, and the opposite of anything that I associate with romantic. And so, yeah. Jeff: Who are sort of your author influences? Roan: Oh, man. Well, you know, growing up, I read everything. I'm a real, like, moody reader. So I go through phases. And when I'm in that phase, that's all I read. So, like, when I was in elementary school, I was obsessed with S. E. Hinton Hinton, "The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish," those books. And she writes with this very kind of, like, spare style, but lots of sensory detail. And I think that that's definitely something that I've always really admired was the ability to evoke feeling even while being very spare. And then when I was in middle school, I was obsessed with Anne Rice, obviously, because middle school. And I read her books over, and over, and over. And I think that she is like the master of the kind of Baroque sentence structure that when you're deep in, reading one of her books, you don't notice that she's, like, in a strange Yoda way, like, flipping a subject and predicate to make things sound, more flourishy and purple prosy. You don't notice it because you're so deep in it that, like, of course, that character would talk that way. But if you go and you read another author or another book, you realize suddenly what she was doing. And so I think from her, I got just, like, I really respected this immersive detail-rich all the senses engaged kind of writing. Also, I really love long books, and the ability to sustain a story over 800 pages, and keep going with this level of detail. I mean, I know it's not everyone's bag, like, some people really like a short one and done, but I mean, I will read a series that goes on forever if I'm still engaged. And I just think that she does that incredibly well. Then, oh, gosh, I'm taking you on a tour. I don't know if this is actually answering your question, but I do think... Jeff: It is actually. Yeah. Roan: Oh, okay, good. The real answer is, like, I learned things from every single author I read. And sometimes, it's things that I don't ever wanna do. And sometimes, it's things that my mind is blown because I'm like, "Holy crap, I didn't even know you could do that." Sometimes it's like I feel like I'm weak in one area at a moment. And so I wanna go read someone who I think does something really well and try to learn it. Oh, Francesca Lia Block was a huge influence when I was a teenager. She writes this kind of magical realism that is, like, very urban set - in LA, deals with real world problems, but has this, like, pink fog over the entire thing. And I was really, really taken by that. That way of combining urbanity with fantasy, and so that's definitely something that I took from her. I went through a really deep, like, epic historical fiction kick, which maybe is that same kind of, like, very immersive detail, huge cast of characters, all that stuff. And, oh, gosh, I'm totally blanking on her. Oh, Sharon Kay Penman is her name. Okay. Sorry, this is maybe a tangent. But this story blows my mind and is, like, one of the more impressive things I've ever heard in my life, if you'll indulge me for a moment. Jeff: Of course. Roan: So Sharon Kay Penman writes these, like, hugely epic, 1,000-page long, British Isles historical fiction. And she wrote this book called "The Sunne in Splendour," in, like, I wanna say the early 80s, maybe mid-80s. And the book is epically long, and just detail, and hundreds and hundreds of characters, and like tons of things translated into Welsh. It's about Welsh civil wars, or wars with England. Anyway, she wrote the book and, like, on a typewriter, and had it in one of those, you know, the boxes that reams of paper come in…you would put your manuscript in this box. So she was going to drive her book to her publisher. And she stopped at the bank to, like, deposit a check or something. And when she came back out, her car had been stolen with the copy of the book inside, the only copy of the book, which I don't even know how that happens. So the car stolen, she's just sure she's never gonna get it back. And whereas, like, I don't know, I would probably immediately go home and, like, order seven pizzas, and you wouldn't see me for a month. She drove home and started writing the book again. Jeff: Wow. I would have done the seven-pizza thing and then walked away for, like, at least a week. Roan: Yeah. Like, I would have told every single person who would listen that my life's work had been ripped from me. And it was the worst thing that ever happened to me and which, you know, I think that's actually speaking pretty well of my life that that would be the worst thing. But, yeah, I just, like, that level of tenacity and dedication to a project, it just blows my mind. Anyway, she's amazing. Jeff: Yeah, that's awesome. And just, like, I can't even imagine, it speaks so well to these days where we're like, "Did you back that up on Dropbox?" Roan: Yeah, at least someone's like, "Oh, man, I just spent, like, 20 minutes writing that email and it got wiped." And I'm like, "Sharon Kay Penman." Jeff: So what's coming up next for you? What's yet to come this year? Roan: Well, do wanna be the first person to know because I actually just found out yesterday? Jeff: Oh, breaking news. Roan: Breaking News. Yeah, I just sold a new book, which I'm pretty excited about. Okay. The concept is, there is a guy who has a bunch of animals. He's like, kind of antisocial, kind of pissed off at the world for reasons that I will not divulge yet. And he likes animals better than people. So he has all these rescue dogs and a bunch of cats that hang around. And basically, all he wants to do is take his dogs on these long rambling walks and think about how fucked up his life has gotten. It's the only thing keeping him sane, it's just, like, rambling walks with these dogs. And one night he is walking with the dogs and one of them starts chasing something. And he starts chasing the dog and falls down a hill and breaks his ankle. So all of a sudden, he can't do the one thing that he's liked, which is walk his dogs. So he goes online, and he finds this app that, like, match makes pet owners with people who wanna hang out with animals, but can't have pets of their own, because he's looking for someone who could help him walk his dogs, since he can't do it anymore. Then you have this other character, who's super shy lives with his grandma is, like, husband saving up to try to, like, get a new apartment so that he could have a dog. And then his grandfather dies, he has to move in with his grandmother, and he can't have an animal because she's desperately allergic. So he goes on the matchmaker app, and gets matched with this dude who needs someone to walk his dogs. And so the Meet Cute is a dog walking app, and a grouchy meets a shy guy, and lots of animals, and love. Jeff: Well, this sounds awesome. When do we get to see this? I'm guessing 2020 sometime? Roan: I think so. I don't have a date on it. I'll start working on it soon. But, yeah, I think it's gonna be, like, cute-ish in tone. And I don't know, I keep, like, accidentally writing animals into every single one of my books. And I don't even mean too. And this time. I was like, "Well, I mean, I keep doing it by accident. Maybe this time, I'll just, like, actually do it on purpose." Jeff: And what's the best way people can keep up with you online and find out when this next thing comes out? Roan: Well, they can check out my website, roanparrish.com, where I post all things that exist. And then in terms of social media, I've been very active on Instagram stories lately. I just bought a house, my first house, like the first non-one-bedroom apartment that I've been living in. And I've been doing all these, like, garden planting, and baking, and projects, and stuff. So I've been really liking Instagram stories. So people should follow me there and tell me all the things that I'm doing wrong in my garden. Jeff: They may not think you're doing wrong. Roan: I mean, it's my first time and I feel, like, I'm doing everything wrong. But we'll see, it might grow. Jeff: I bet it does. And congratulations on the first house. That's such a huge thing. Roan: Oh, thank you. I really went, like, in the space of one month from a person who thought that they would always live in one-bedroom apartments to a person who bought a house. And so it was very shocking for me. I keep wandering to the extra room and being, like, "What's gonna go in here? I don't know." Jeff: It's part of the fun of home-ownership. Roan: Yeah. Mostly, it's like my cat goes in there. And that's what happened. So I mean, I'm on all the social media things. I'm everywhere as Roan Parrish and people can find me. But Instagram stories is totally the most fun. And for people who, like, wanna know about when books are coming out, but don't dig the social media vibe, BookBub is a great place to find me because they'll just get emails when I have books coming out or on sale. Jeff: Fantastic. Well, we will link up to everything we talked about in the show notes. We wish you the best of luck with the release of "Raze." And thanks so much for hanging out with us. Roan: Oh, thanks so much. It was a blast. Book Reviews Here's the text of this week's book reviews: In Case You Forgot by Frederick Smith and Chaz Lamar. Reviewed by Jeff Frederick Smith and Chaz Lamar are new to me authors and I loved reading their first collaboration, In Case You Forgot. Frederic and Chaz are two black gay men writing about two black gay men living in West Hollywood. This year in the life story left me wanting sequels because I want to read even more about these two interesting characters. Zaire James and Kenny Kane are in similar positions. Coming up on his 30th birthday, Zaire decided it was time to separate from his husband, even though a lot of his family and his friends thought Mario was perfect for him. Kenny, approaching 40, was dumped by Brandon-Malik via text as he was en route to his mother’s funeral. Both of these guys need a reboot. For Zaire that means moving into WeHo--it happens that he moves in across the street from Kenny. He’s got a new job at a social media firm and he’s looking for what comes next. He’s got a family that wants him to find it too--the James Gang siblings--brother Harlem and sisters Langston and Savannah--are always on him to get his life together and find his happy. Kenny, on the other hand, is working on getting his consulting business off the ground since he’s recently finished his doctorate. He’s trying to mostly focus on the business, but he also wants to find Mr. Right. Kenny also carries the weight of having watched his first boyfriend, Jeremy, die after a stabbing. He’s working on his life with some therapy. So what happens in this book? Life. Kenny and Zaire, at times together and at others separate, look for a good date that may lead to more, celebrate birthdays, experience success and failures. The last line of the book’s description captures this perfectly: “...they hope new opportunities, energy, mindsets, and connection will reinvigorate what is missing in their lives--drama and all.” That’s exactly what I liked about In Cast Your Forgot, the slice of life feel. It’s happy, sad, angry, messy and full of great triumph and really bad mistakes. It takes a lot to make this kind of loose plot work, especially since the two lead characters aren’t always together as the year progresses. Frederick and Chaz made it work though. One of the reasons it works is the cast of supporting characters from family, friends, roommates and co-workers. Among my favorite parts of the book was the use of social media to plan their lives and sometimes even to stalk their exes, at times to the chagrin of the friends trying to help them move on. There’s also a Labor Day trip to Palm Springs that was one of my favorite parts of the book because of the realness of how it unfolded and how it tweaked Kenny and Zaire’s relationships. The characters reminded me of Noah’s Arc, a show I loved that ran on Logo in 2005 and then was a movie in 2008. The show focused on queer men of color in various states of life and relationships. Kenny and Zaire would fit right in there. I do want to set some expectations around this book. As you may have figured out, it’s not a romance. It’s categorized that way on the Bold Strokes Books site as well as at retailers. I think that’s wrong. It doesn’t have any of the typical romantic story beats and, most importantly while Kenny and Zaire date for a bit in the middle of the book they don’t get an HEA or HFN as a couple….although the book does end with both characters in good places. If you want a great look at a year-in-the-life of some terrific characters who are trying to get their lives together, I highly recommend In Case You Forgot. And I’d love to see sequels to this book. Frederick, Chaz, please write romances for these guys...
Show Notes Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum and I’m back with Nachi Gupta for your regularly scheduled monthly dose of evidence based medicine. This month, we are tackling an incredibly important topic – Assessing abdominal pain in adults, a rational, cost effective, and evidence-based strategy. Nachi: This incredibly important topic was chosen to mark the 20th anniversary of Emergency Medicine Practice. It is actually a revision of the first issue of Emergency Medicine Practice in 1999, now with updated evidence and recommendations. Thanks Robert Williford and Dr. Colucciello for getting this all started 2 decades ago! Jeff: Wow – 20 years – that’s amazing considering Emergency Medicine as a specialty hadn’t even been around all that long at the time and as Dr. Jagoda writes in his intro “evidence based education was still finding its footing.” Nachi: As a tribute to the man who started it all, EB Medicine again turned to Dr. Colucciello, who is no longer wearing his editor in chief hat, but instead is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, to update his original article with the latest evidence. Jeff: Before we dive into the meat and potatoes of this month’s issue, let me also recognize Drs. Taylor and Shaukat of Emory and Coney Island Hospital respectively for their efforts in peer reviewing this huge topic. Show More v Nachi: For a number of reasons, this month is going to be a little different. You will notice that we will focus more on safe disposition instead of on diagnosis. Which is reasonable, as that is the crux of our job as emergency physicians. Jeff: Indeed. So for those of you who can’t wait, here’s a quick spoiler, The CBC isn’t all that useful. CT is good but you really should learn ultrasound, and lastly, sick patients need prompt consultation and resuscitation, not rapid trips to radiology. Nachi: All valid points, but let’s dive in too some actual detail. Jeff: Abdominal pain is the one of most frequent complaint in US emergency departments, representing 8% of all adult ED visits, with admission rates for all patients with abdominal pain ranging between 18-42% and reaching as high as 60% for the elderly. Nachi: With respect to the elderly, statistically speaking, 20% presenting with abdominal pain will undergo surgery, and 5% will die. Jeff: Often the etiology of the abdominal pain is never determined. This happens up to 40% of the time by the end of the ED visit. Nachi: I feel like that needs to be restated for emphasis – nearly half of patients who present to the ED with abdominal pain will have no determined etiology for their pain. Clearly, that doesn’t mean you are a bad ED physician – it’s just the way it goes. Jeff: Definitely still a win to be told you aren’t having an intra-abdominal catastrophe at the end of your visit! Nachi: Moving on to pathophysiology. Visceral pain results from distention or inflammation of the hollow organs or from ischemia from any internal organ, while the more localized, somatic pain is typically from irritation of the adjacent peritoneum. Jeff: And don’t forget about referred pain. Due to the movement of organs and stretching of nerve pathways during fetal development, pain may be referred to distant sites, like diaphragmatic irritation presenting as shoulder pain. Nachi: Let’s talk differential diagnosis. The differential for abdominal pain is tremendously broad and includes both intra-abdominal and extra abdominal pathologies. Check out table 2 for a very thorough list. Jeff: Table 1 is also worth reviewing while you’re on page 3 as it lists a few of the common dangerous mimics that often lead to misdiagnosis on initial presentation. To highlight a few – a AAA can masquerade as renal colic, diverticulitis, or a lumbar strain; an ectopic may present similar to PID, a UTI, or a corpus luteum cyst, and mesenteric ischemia may present shockingly similar to gastroenteritis, constipation, ileus, or an SBO. Nachi: Though misdiagnosis is certainly possible at any age, one must be particularly cautious with the elderly. Abdominal pain in the elderly is complicated by a number of factors, they often have no fever, no leukocytosis, or no localized tenderness despite surgical disease, surgical problems progress more rapidly, and lastly, they are at risk for vascular catastrophes, which don’t typically afflict the younger population Jeff: Dr. Colucciello closes the section on the elderly with a really thought-provoking point – we routinely admit 75 year old with chest pain and benign exams, yet we readily discharge a 75 year old with abdominal pain and a benign exam even though the morbidity and mortality of abdominal pain in this group exceeds that of the chest pain group. Nachi: That’s an interesting perspective, but we still have to think about this in the context of what an admission would offer in either of these cases. Most of the testing for abdominal pain can be done in the ED, CT being the workhorse. This point certainly merits more thought though. Jeff: Most clinicians have a low threshold to scan their elderly patients with abdominal pain, and the data behind this practice is quite compelling. In one study, CT altered the admission decision in 26%, need for surgery in 12%, the need for antibiotics in 21%, and changed the suspected diagnosis in 45%. Nachi: That latter figure, 45% change in suspected diagnosis, that was also confirmed in another study in which CT revealed a clinically unsuspected diagnosis in 43% of the elderly. Jeff: And it’s worth mentioning, that even though CT may be the go-to-tool - biliary tract disease, which we know is best visualized on ultrasound, is actually the most common cause of abdominal pain, especially sudden onset abdominal pain in the elderly. Nachi: The next higher risk group to discuss are patients with HIV. While anti retroviral therapy has certainly decreased the burden of opportunistic infections, don’t forget to keep a broader differential in this group including bacterial enterocolitis, drug-induced pancreatitis, or AIDS related cholangiopathy Jeff: Definitely make sure to check to see if the patient has a recent CD4 count to give you a sense of their disease and what they may be at risk for. At less than 200, cryptosporidium, isospora, cyclospora, and microsporidium all make their way onto the differential in addition to the standard players. Nachi: For more information on HIV and its management, check out the February 2016 issue of Emergency Medicine Practice, which covered this and more in depth. Jeff: The next high risk population we are going to discuss are women of childbearing age. Step one is always the same - diagnose pregnancy! Always get a pregnancy test for women between menarche and menopause. Nachi: The pregnancy test is important not only for diagnosing an intrauterine pregnancy, but it’s also a reminder, that we need to consider and rule out an ectopic. Jeff: Along similar lines, you also need to consider torsion, especially in your pregnant population, as 20% of cases of ovarian torsion occur during pregnancy. Nachi: Unfortunately, you cannot rely on the physical exam alone in this age group, as the pelvic exam may be misleading. Up to a quarter of women with appendicitis can exhibit cervical motion tenderness -- a finding typically associated with PID. Sadly, errors are common and ⅓ of women of childbearing age who ultimately were found to have appendicitis were initially misdiagnosed. Jeff: To help reduce your risk in the pregnant population, consider imaging, particularly with radiation reduction strategies, including using ultrasound and MRI, which is gaining favor in the diagnosis of appendicitis in pregnancy. Nachi: Diagnosis of appendicitis, in a pregnant patient, ultrasound vs. mri. Sounds familiar. Didn’t we just talk about this in Episode 24 back in January? Jeff: We sure did! Take another listen if that doesn’t ring a bell. Nachi: That was focused on first trimester only, but while we’re talking about appendicitis in pregnancy - keep in mind that during the second half of pregnancy, the appendix has moved out of the RLQ and is more likely to be found in the RUQ. Jeff: As yes, the classic RUQ appendix. As if our jobs weren’t hard enough, now anatomy is changing… Anyway, the last high risk group we are going to discuss here are those patients with prior abdominal surgery. Make sure to ALWAYS examine the patient's exposed skin to look for scars. Adhesions are the leading cause of SBOs in the industrialized world, followed by malignancy, IBS, and internal or external hernias. Nachi: Also keep a high index of suspicion for patients who have undergone bariatric surgery. They are especially prone to surgical causes of abdominal pain including skin infections and surgical leaks. Jeff: For this reason, CT imaging should be done with IV and oral contrast, with those having undergone a Roux-en-Y receiving oral contrast on the CT table. Nachi: Perfect. Let’s move on to evaluation once in the ED! Jeff: As we mentioned a few times already - diagnosis is difficult, a comparison of initial and final diagnosis only has about 50-65% accuracy. For this reason, Dr. C suggests taking a ‘worst first’ approach to forming your differential and guiding your workup. Nachi: And as a brief aside, before we continue… Missed appendicitis is one of the three most common causes of emergency medicine malpractice lawsuits - with MI and fractures being the other two. That being said, you, as a clinician, have either missed appendicitis or likely will in the future. In a study of cases of misdiagnosed appendicitis brought to litigation, several themes recurred. For example, patients with misdiagnosed disease has less RLQ pain and tenderness as well as diminished anorexia, nausea, and vomiting. Jeff: Well that’s scary - I know I’ve already missed a case, but luckily, he returned thanks to good return precautions, which we’ll get to in a few minutes. Also, note that in addition to imaging and the physical exam, history is often the key to uncovering the cause of abdominal pain. Nachi: Not to harp on litigation, but in malpractice cases brought up for failure to diagnose abdominal conditions, deficiencies in data gathering and charting were often to blame rather than misinterpretation of data. Jeff: As no shocker here, getting a complete history remains tremendously important in your practice as an emergency clinician. A recurring theme of EMplify for sure. Nachi: In order to really nail this down, consider using a standardized history form -- or memorizing one. An example is shown in Table 1. Standardized forms have been shown to improve patient satisfaction and diagnostic accuracy. Jeff: An interesting question for your abdominal pain patient is to ask about the ride to the hospital. Experiencing pain going over a speed bump has been shown to be about 97% sensitive and 30% specific for appendicitis. So fairly sensitive, but not too specific. Nachi: That’s interesting and may help guide you, but it’s certainly no replacement for CT. And remember that you can have stump appendicitis. This can occur in the appendiceal remnant after an appendectomy and is found in about 0.15% of all appendectomies. Jeff: Alright, so on to the physical exam. Like always, let’s start with vital signs. An elevated temp can be associated with intra abdominal infection, but sensitivity and specificity vary greatly here. Always consider a rectal temp, as these are generally more reliable. Nachi: And remember that hypothermic patients who are septic have worse outcomes than those who are hyperthermic and septic. Jeff: Elevated respiratory rate can be due to pain or subdiaphragmatic irritation. However, it can also be due to hypoxia, sepsis, anemia, PE, or metabolic acidosis, so consider all of those also in your differential. Nachi: Moving on to blood pressure: frank hypotension should make you immediately think of a ruptured AAA or septic shock 2/2 an intra abd infection. You can also use the shock index, which as a reminder is simply the HR/SBP. In one study, a SI > 0.7 was sensitive for 28-day mortality in sepsis. Jeff: Speaking of HR, tachycardia can be a response to pain, anxiety, fever, blood loss, or sepsis. An irregularly irregular rhythm -- or a fib -- is an important risk factor for mesenteric ischemia in elderly patients. This is important to consider in your differential early as it may guide your imaging modality. Nachi: With vitals done, we can move on to the abdominal exam - it is rare that a serious abdominal condition will present without tenderness in a young adult patient, but remember that the elderly patient may not present with much tenderness at all due decreased peritoneal sensitivity. Abdominal tenderness that is greatest when the abdominal muscles are contracted is likely due to abdominal wall pain. This can be elicited by having the patient lift their head or let their legs off the bed. This finding is known as Carnett sign and is about 95% accurate for distinguishing abdominal wall pain from visceral abdominal pain. Jeff: Though tenderness itself is helpful, the location of tenderness can be misleading. Note that while 80% of patients with appendicitis have RLQ tenderness, 20% don’t. The old 80-20 rule! So definitely don’t let RLQ tenderness be your sole guide! Nachi: Voluntary guarding is due to fear, anxiety, or even a reaction to a clinician’s cold hands. Involuntary guarding (also called rigidity) is more likely to occur with surgical disease. Remember that rigidity may be a less common finding in the elderly despite surgical disease. Jeff: Peritoneal signs are the true hallmark of surgical disease. These include rebound pain, pain with coughing, pain with shaking the stretcher or pain with striking the patient’s heel. Rebound historically has been thought to be pathognomonic for surgical disease, but recent literature hasn’t found it to be all that useful, with one study claiming it has no predictive value. Nachi: As an alternative, consider the “cough test”. Look for evidence of posttussive abd pain (like grimacing, flinching, or grabbing the belly). Studies have found the cough sign to be 80-95% sensitive for peritonitis. Jeff: In terms of other sings elicited during the abdominal exam: The murphy sign, ruq palpation that causes the patient to stop a deep inspiration -- in one study had a sensitivity of 97%, but a specificity of just under 50%. The psoas sign, pain elicited by extending the RLE towards the back while the patient lies on their left side -- in one study had a specificity of 95%, but only had a sensitivity of 16%. Nachi: Neither the obturator sign (pain with internal rotation of the flexed hip) nor the rosving sign (pain in the RLQ by palpating the LLQ) have been rigorously studied. Jeff: Moving a bit further south, from the abdomen to the pelvis - let’s talk about the pelvic exam. Most EM training programs certainly emphasize the importance of the the pelvic exam for women with lower abdominal pain, but some recent papers have questioned its role. A 2018 study involving 288 women 14-20 years old found that the pelvic didn’t increase sensitivity or specificity of diagnosis of chlamydia, gonorrhea, or trichomoniasis when compared with history alone. Another study questioned whether the pelvic exam can be omitted in these patients with an early intrauterine pregnancy confirmed on ultrasound, but it was unable to reach a conclusion, possibly due to insufficient power. Nachi: While Jeff and I do find it valuable to elicit as much as information from the history as possible and take value in the possibility of omitting the pelvic in certain cases in the future, given the current evidence based medicine, we both agree with the author here. Don’t abandon the pelvic for these patients just yet! Jeff: While on this topic, we should also briefly mention a reminder about fitz-hugh-curtis syndrome, perihepatic inflammation associated with PID. Nachi: As for the digital rectal exam, this can certainly be of use when considering and diagnosing prostatitis, perirectal disease, stool impactions, rectal foreign bodies, and gi bleeds. Jeff: And let’s not forget the often overlooked scrotal and testicular exam. In men with abdominal or flank pain, this should always be considered. Testicular torsion often presents with isolated abdominal or flank pain. The scrotal exam will help diagnose inguinal and scrotal hernias. Nachi: Getting back to malpractice case reviews for a minute --- in a 2018 review involving testicular torsion, almost ⅓ of the patients with missed torsion had presented with abdominal pain --- not scrotal pain! In ⅕ of the cases, no testicular exam was performed at all. Also, most cases of missed torsion occured in patients under 25 years old. Jeff: Speaking of torsion, about 6% occur over the age of 31, so have an increased concern for this in the young. Of course, if concerned for torsion, consult urology immediately and consider manual detorsion. Nachi: And if you, like me, were taught to manually detorse by rotating in the lateral or open book direction, keep in mind that in a study of 200 males with torsion, ⅓ had rotated laterally, not medially. Jeff: Great point. And one last quick point here. Especially if you are unsure about the diagnosis, make sure to perform serial exams both in the ED and also in the next few days at their PCP’s office. In one study, a 30 hour later repeat exam for patients discharged with nonspecific abdominal pain resulted in a clinically relevant change in diagnosis and therapy in almost 25% of patients. Nachi: So that wraps up the physical. Let’s get into diagnostic studies, starting with lab work and everybody’s favorite topic... the cbc. Jeff: Yup, just the other day I was asked by a consultant “what’s the white count.” in a patient with CT proven appendicitis. Man, a small part of my soul dies every time this happens. Nachi: It appears you must have an evidenced based soul then. According to a few studies, anywhere from 10-60% of patients with surgically proven appendicitis have an initially normal WBC. So in some studies, it’s even worse than a coin flip. Jeff: Even worse, in children the CBC is less helpful. In children, an elevated WBC detects a mere 53% of severe abdominal pathology - so again not all that helpful. Nachi: That being said, at the other end of the spectrum, in the elderly, an elevated WBC may imply serious disease. Jeff: So let’s make this perfectly clear. A normal WBC should not be reassuring, but an elevated WBC, especially in the elderly, should be very concerning. Nachi: The CRP is up next. Though not used frequently, it’s still worth mentioning, as there is a host of data on it in the setting of abdominal pain. In one meta analysis, CRP was approximately 62% sensitive and 66% specific for appendicitis. Jeff: And while lower levels of CRP do not rule out positive findings, increasing levels of CRP do predict, with increasing likelihood, the chances of positive findings. Nachi: Next we have lipase and amylase. The serum lipase is the best test for suspected pancreatitis. The amylase adds limited value and should not be routinely ordered. Jeff: As for the lactate. The greatest value of a lactate level is to detect occult shock and sepsis. It is also useful to screen for visceral ischemia. Nachi: And the last lab test we’ll discuss is the UA. The urinalysis is a potentially misleading test. In two studies, 20-30% of patients with appendicitis also had hematuria with leukocytes and bacteria on their UA. In a separate study of those with a AAA, there was an 87% incidence of hematuria. Jeff: That’s pretty troubling. Definitely not great to diagnosis someone with hematuria and a primary GU problem, when their aorta is actually exploding. Nachi: And that’s a great reminder to always avoid premature diagnostic closure. Jeff: Also worth mentioning is that not all ureteral stones present with hematuria. At least 6% have no hematuria on microscopy. Nachi: Alright, so that brings us to imaging. First up: plain films. I’m going to quote this directly from the article since I think it's so important, ‘never rely on plain films to exclude surgical disease.” Jeff: This statement is certainly evidence based as in one study 40% of x-ray findings were inconsistent with the final diagnosis. In another study, 43% of patients with major surgical disorders had either normal or misleading plain film results. So again, the take home here is that XR cannot rule out surgical disease, and should not be routinely ordered except for in specific settings. Nachi: And perhaps the most important of all those settings is in the setting of possible free air under the diaphragm. In this case, an upright chest visualizing the area under the diaphragm would be the test of choice. But again, even this doesn’t rule out surgical disease as free air may be absent on plain films in ⅓ to ½ of patients who have already perfed. Jeff: Next we have everybody’s favorite, the ultrasound. Because of it’s low cost and ease of use, bedside ultrasound is gaining traction. And we’ve cited this and other similar studies in other issues, this is a skill emergency medicine physicians must have in this day and age and it’s a skill they can learn quickly. Nachi: Ultrasound can visualize most solid organs, but it is best suited for the Right upper quadrant and pelvis. In the RUQ, we are looking for wall thickening, pericholecystic fluid, ductal dilatation, and sonographic murphys sign. Jeff: In the pelvis, there is a role for both transabdominal and transvaginal to rule out ectopic and potentially rule in intrauterine pregnancy. I know the thought of performing your own transvaginal ultrasound may sound crazy to some, but we both trained in places where ED TVUS was the norm and certainly wasn’t that hard to learn. Nachi: Ah, the good old days of residency. I’m certainly grateful for the US tech where I am now though! Next up we have CT. CT scans are ordered in just under 30% of patients with abdominal pain. Jeff: It’s worth noting, that while many used to scan with triple contrast - oral, rectal and IV, recent literature has shown that IV contrast alone is adequate for the diagnosis of most surgical conditions, including appendicitis. Nachi: If you’re still working in a shop that scans for RLQ pain with oral or rectal contrast, definitely check out the 2018 american college of radiology appropriateness criteria that states that IV contrast is generally appropriate for assessing the RL. Jeff: And while we are on the topic of contrast, let’s dive a bit deeper into the, perhaps myth, that contrast leads to contrast induced nephropathy. Nachi: This is another really important point. Current data show that being ill enough to be admitted to the hospital is a risk factor for acute kidney injury and that IV contrast for CT does not add to that risk. In 2015, the american college of radiology noted in their manual on contrast media that the concern for the development of contrast induced nephropathy is not an absolute contraindication for using IV contrast. IV contrast may be necessary regardless of the risk of nephrotoxicity in certain clinical situations. Jeff: Ok, so contrast induced nephropathy may be real, but more studies and a definitive statement are still needed. Regardless, if the patient is sick and they need the scan with contrast, don’t hold back. Nachi: I think that’s a fair take home. As another note about the elderly, CT should be almost routine in the elderly patient with acute abdominal pain as it improves accuracy, optimizes appropriate hospitalization, and boosts ED management decision making confidence for this patient group. Jeff: If they are over 65, make sure you chart very carefully why they don’t need a scan. Nachi: Speaking of not needing a scan, two quick caveats on CT before moving to MRI. Unstable patients do not belong in a radiology suite - they belong in the ED resus bay to be resuscitated first. Prompt surgical consultation and bedside ultrasound if indicated are both a must in unstable patients. Jeff: The second caveat is on the other end of the spectrum - not all CT scanning is created equally - the interpretation depends on the scanner, the quality of the scan, and the experience and training of the reading radiologist. In one study, nearly 13% of abdominal CT scans may initially be misread. Nachi: So if you’re concerned, consider consultation or an extended ED observation to monitor for any changes in the patient’s status. Jeff: Next up is MRI - MRI has an ever expanding role in the ED. The accuracy of MRI to diagnose appendicitis is very similar to CT, so consider it in all pregnant patients, though ultrasound is still considered first line. Nachi: And finally let’s touch upon the ekg and ACS. In patients over 40 with upper abdominal pain, an EKG and troponin should always be considered. Jeff: Don’t be reassured by a response to a GI cocktail either - this does not exclude myocardial ischemia. Nachi: Next, let’s talk the role of analgesia in treating the undifferentiated abdominal pain patient. Jeff: While there was formerly a concern of ‘masking the pain’ with opiates, the evidence says otherwise. Pain medicine may even aid in the diagnosis, so definitely don’t withhold it in the setting of acute abdominal pain. Nachi: Wait I get that masking the pain is no longer considered a concern, but how would it aid in the diagnosis? Jeff: Good question. Analgesics might facilitate the gathering of history and allow a more complete physical exam by relaxing the abdominal musculature. Nachi: Ahh that makes sense. So certainly treat pain! Both morphine at 0.1 mg/kg and fentanyl at 1 mic/kg are appropriate analgesics for acute abdominal pain. In those that are a difficult stick, a recent study showed that 2 micrograms/kg of fentanyl via a nebulizer was a safe alternative. Remember, fentanyl is quick on, quick off, which may make it desirable in certain situations. It actually has the shortest time of onset of any opioid. It’s also safer in patients with a “marginal” blood pressure. Jeff: And just like the GI cocktail - response to opiate analgesics does not exclude serious pathology. These patients need serial exams and likely labs and imaging if their pain is so severe. Nachi: Few things are more important prior to discharge of an abdominal pain patient than documenting repeat exams and a PO trial. Jeff: True. You should also consider haloperidol for patients with gastroparesis and cannabinoid hyperemesis as a growing body of literature supports its use in such settings. Check out the August 2018 EMP or EMplify for more details if you’re curious. Nachi: The last analgesic to discuss is our good friend ketamine. Low dose ketamine at 0.3 mg/kg over 15 minutes is gaining traction as the analgesic of choice in many ED’s. Jeff: The key there, is that it must be given over 15 minutes. Ketamine has a great safety profile, but you make it so much safer and a much better experience if you give it slowly. Nachi: Before we get to disposition, let’s talk controversies and cutting edge - and there is just one this month - and that’s the use of the Alvarado score. Jeff: In the Alvarado score, you get two points for RLQ tenderness and 2 points for a leukocytosis over 10,000. You get an additional point for all of the following; rebound, temp over 99.1, migration of pain to the RLQ, anorexia, n/v, and a left shift. The max score is therefore 10. A score of 3 or less make appendicitis unlikely, 4-6 warrants CT imaging, and 7 or more a surgical consultation. Nachi: A 2007 study suggests that using the Alvarado score along with bedside ultrasound might allow for rapid and inexpensive diagnosis of appendicitis. Jeff: I don’t think we should change practice based on this just yet, but more ultrasound diagnosis may be on the horizon. If you want to start using the Alvarado score in your practice, MDcalc has a great easy to use calculator. Nachi: Let’s get to the final section. Disposition! Jeff: As we mentioned at the beginning of this episode, the diagnosis is less important than proper disposition. For patients with suspected ruptured AAA, torsion, or mesenteric ischemia - the disposition is easy - they need immediate surgical consultation and likely operative intervention. Nachi: For others, use the tools we outlined above - ct, us, labs, etc, to help support your decision. Keep in mind, that serial exams are a great tool and of little expense - so make sure to lay your hands on the patient's abdomen frequently, especially when the diagnosis is unclear. Jeff: For those that look well after a work up, with no clear diagnosis, it may be reasonable to discharge them home with prompt follow up, assuming prompt follow up is plausible. The key here is that these patients need good discharge instructions. Check out figure 2 on page 20 for a sample discharge template. Nachi: But if the patient is still uncomfortable, even after a thorough workup, there may be a role for ED observation units. In one study of 220 patients admitted for to ED obs units for serial exams, 39% eventually underwent surgery with only 5% having negative laparotomies. Jeff: This month’s issue wraps up with some super important time and cost effective strategies, so let’s see if we can quickly breeze through some of the most important points before closing out this episode. Nachi: First - limit your abdominal x-rays as they offer limited value and are rarely helpful except in the setting of perforation, when an early upright chest film should be used liberally. Jeff: Next - limit electrolyte testing especially in young adults with nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. In those 18 to 60, clinically significant electrolyte abnormalities occur in only 1% of those with gastro. Nachi: With respect to urine testing, urine cultures are rarely indicated for uncomplicated cystitis in young women. Along similar lines, don’t anchor on the diagnosis of UTI as other lower abdominal conditions often lead to abnomal urine studies. Jeff: In your alcoholic patients, although all should be approached with an abundance of caution, limit testing to repeat abdominal exams in your non-toxic appearing patient who is already tolerating PO. Nachi: For those with suspected renal colic, especially those with a history of renal colic, limit CT use and instead consider ultrasound to look for hydro. This approach is endorsed by ACEPs choosing wisely campaign. Jeff: But as a reminder, this is for low risk patients only. Anyone with signs of infection should also undergo CT imaging. Nachi: And lastly - consider incorporating bedside US into your routine. The US is fast and accurate and compares similarly to radiology, especially in the context of detecting acute cholecystitis. Jeff: Alright, so that wraps up the new material for this episode, let’s close out with some key points and clinical pearls. The peritoneum becomes less sensitive with aging, and peritonitis can be a late or absent finding. Be wary of early diagnostic closure and misdiagnosis with a mimic of a more severe and dangerous pathology. The elderly, immunocompromised, women of childbearing age, and patients with prior abdominal surgeries are all at a higher risk for misdiagnosis. Elderly patients can present without fever, leukocytosis, or abdominal tenderness, but still have surgical abdominal pathology. Consider diagnostic imaging in all geriatric patients presenting with abdominal pain. Consider plain film if you suspect a viscus perforation or for certain foreign body ingestions. Do not forget the pelvic exam, testicular exam, and rectal exam as part of your physical, when appropriate. Testicular torsion can present with abdominal pain only. If suspected, consult urology and consider manual detorsion. A normal white blood cell count does not rule out appendicitis or other intra-abdominal pathology. Serum amylase should not be used in your assessment of the abdominal pain patient. Lack of microscopic hematuria does not rule out renal colic. CT of the abdomen with IV contrast alone is enough for most surgical conditions including appendicitis. Oral and rectal contrast does not need to be routinely administered. The 2018 American College of Radiology (ACR) Appropriateness Criteria discuss concern for delay in diagnosis associated with oral contrast use and an increased rate of perforation. There is recent literature to support that IV contrast does not cause nephropathy. The ACR 2015 Manual on Contrast Media states that concern for contrast induced nephropathy is not an absolute contraindication, and IV contrast may be necessary in many situations. Ultrasound can be used to evaluate the aorta, gallbladder, kidneys, appendix, bowel, spleen, pancreas, uterus, and ovaries. Consider bedside ultrasound and emergency surgical consult for all unstable patients with abdominal pain. For stable pregnant patients with concern for appendicitis, start with an ultrasound. If inconclusive, order an MRI. Epigastric pain in an elderly patient should raise concern for ACS. An EKG and troponin should be considered. For analgesia in patients with gastroparesis or cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, haloperidol is considered first-line. Low-dose ketamine (0.3mg/kg over 15 minutes) may be a better choice than opiate analgesia for abdominal pain. Nachi: So that wraps up Episode 29! Jeff: As always, 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 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 any images and tables mentioned. PA’s and NP’s - make sure to use the code APP4 at checkout to save 50%. Nachi: And last reminder here -The clinical Decision Making in Emergency Medicine Conference is just around the corner and spots are quickly filling up. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity and register today. Jeff: And the address for this month’s cme credit is ebmedicine.net/E0619, so head over there to get your CME credit. As always, the [DING SOUND] 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! Most Important References 18. Gardner CS, Jaffe TA, Nelson RC. Impact of CT in elderly patients presenting to the emergency department with acute abdominal pain. Abdom Imaging. 2015;40(7):2877-2882. (Retrospective study; 464 patients aged ≥ 80 years) 38. Kereshi B, Lee KS, Siewert B, et al. Clinical utility of magnetic resonance imaging in the evaluation of pregnant females with suspected acute appendicitis. Abdom Radiol (NY). 2018;43(6):1446-1455. (Retrospective study; 212 MRI examinations) 41. Lewis KD, Takenaka KY, Luber SD. Acute abdominal pain in the bariatric surgery patient. Emerg Med Clin North Am. 2016;34(2):387-407. (Review) 57. Wagner JM, McKinney WP, Carpenter JL. Does this patient have appendicitis? JAMA. 1996;276(19):1589-1594. (Review) 67. Magidson PD, Martinez JP. Abdominal pain in the geriatric patient. Emerg Med Clin North Am. 2016;34(3):559-574. (Review) 83. Macaluso CR, McNamara RM. Evaluation and management of acute abdominal pain in the emergency department. Int J Gen Med. 2012;5:789-797. (Review) 94. Bass JB, Couperus KS, Pfaff JL, et al. A pair of testicular torsion medicolegal cases with caveats: the ball’s in your court. Clin Pract Cases Emerg Med. 2018;2(4):283-285. (Case studies; 2 patients) 106. Kestler A, Kendall J. Emergency ultrasound in first-trimester pregnancy. In: Connolly J, Dean A, Hoffman B, et al, eds. Emergency Point-of-Care Ultrasound. 2nd edition. Oxford UK: John Wiley and Sons; 2017. (Textbook)
Happy Pride Month! Jeff discusses the awesome Pride Month video from the NHL. He also talks about all the things that happened during release week for Netminder. Members of the Queer Sacramento Authors Collective had a reading this past week at the Lavender Library and will be reading again this coming week at Time Tested Books. The live streams are available on the podcast’s Facebook page. We talk about the Coastal Magic Convention 2020 lineup of m/m romance featured authors. We review the Elton John biopic Rocketman. Jeff reviews Max Walker’s A Lover’s Game. Will recommends books for Pride month: Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders, Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution by Rob Sanders, The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets by Gayle E. Pitman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising That Changed America by Martin Duberman and The Stonewall Reader curated by The New York Public Library. Jeff interviews C.B. Lee about the latest book in her Sidekick Squad series, Not Your Backup. We also discuss the origin of the Sidekick Squad, what C.B. hears from readers and what’s coming up next. Complete shownotes for episode 191 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript – C.B. Lee 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 C.B. to the podcast. It’s great to have you here. C.B.: Hello, thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here. Jeff: Yeah, it’s very exciting. We got to see you last year at the LA Times Festival of Books for a little, teeny, tiny interview. But we’re thrilled to have you back as we start to talk about “Not Your Backup” which will come out on June 4th, just the day after this airs actually. C.B.: Oh my gosh, that will be really exciting. I actually got to touch the advanced copies for the first time last week at YALLWEST, which due to this fun time jumps of podcasting… Jeff: Well, actually a bit about a month ago. C.B.: Right, right. But, yeah, it was really interesting just to, like, hold it for the first time and see it in print. Granted, the advance copies have typos since, you know, I went through and did all the pass through the typos. But it’s fun, it’s fun. It’s great that, you know, it exists, it’s in physical form, hasn’t quite felt real till now, but now it’s a real book or will be very soon, or tomorrow for your listeners and readers. Jeff: There is something about holding that physical copy, even if you see it, you know, even if it’s on your tablet as an ebook. It’s like there’s nothing like that paperback when it gets there. C.B.: Yeah. Jeff: Now, “Not Your Backup” is book 3 in the “Sidekick Squad Series.” And, for those who haven’t experienced this series or heard of it, tell us what this series is all about. C.B.: Sure, it is about a group of queer teens that take on a corrupt government superhero agency. And they live in this sort of post-dystopian world where superheroes are kind of treated like celebrities. And there’s, you know, shadowy government organizations and mysterious heroes, league of heroes, that kind of dictates who gets to be a hero and who gets to be a villain. And our protagonists all kind of uncover this huge conspiracy, and then they work together to build a resistance and take it down. Jeff: It’s quite the world that you’ve built here. I mean, you hit so many things that are dystopian, U.S. future, superheroes, villains. What was your inspiration for all of this? C.B.: So I’ve always been fascinated by kind of the, like, post-apocalyptic or dystopian worlds. But a lot of the media that I’ve read mostly focuses on kind of the…when you’re in the middle of the disaster, when you’re in the middle of the catastrophe, when everything is going wrong, how are people struggling to survive. So I really wanted to see a world that was…you know, so this is more of like a solarpunk take where the world has started to move forward, where it’s 100 years after all of these disasters have happened – kind of the impetus for the superpowers. And my book is a really extremely intense solar flare that catalyzes latent gene in people. And then after the flare, which knocks out a bunch of nuclear power plants, also, it starts kind of a chain reaction of a bunch of environmental disasters. So 100 years later the governments of the world have kind of shifted and changed, there’s been wars, there’s been fights over resources, so the United States is now part of the North American collective, which is the entire continent of North America, which is now the habitable places. There’s, you know, 24 regions, which is, you know, kind of what’s left of the states. So there’s different areas all across North America, which are now the regions in which people live and, you know, continue to move forward with, like, their amazing technology, and hover tech, and all this amazing, clean technology. But, at the same time, you have all of these like high-tech cities, but outside of those regions, everything else is like the unmaintained lands. So, you know, the government is claiming there’s radiation danger and don’t venture out, but, of course, our heroes are like, you know, what the government tells us isn’t necessarily true. So a lot of…actually, the fun of writing “Not Your Backup” is one of my working titles was “Not Your Road Trip,” because there’s a lot of road tripping in this book. Jeff: Yeah, I noticed. There’s a bit of a road trip in the sneak peek that I got to read too, that they’re out on this road trip, essentially on a mission. C.B.: Right, right. Yeah, there’s the heist in the beginning of the very first chapter. But, yeah, there’s a lot of fun. We get to see a little bit more of the country outside of the cities in this book, so that’s exciting. Jeff: Now, each of the books deals with one of the main heroes, if you will, or the sidekicks, if you will, given the titles of the book, but they’re really the heroes. In “Not Your Backup”, we focus on Emma, who is really the only one of them without the powers. What’s happening to our heroes this time out? C.B.: So at the end of “Not Your Villain,” we have destroyed the registry, which…the big name of everyone who’s ever registered with powers that Captain Orion was planning to use to kidnap people and use for experiments. At that point, our heroes have been looking for the resistance the whole time. And they find a mysterious group that’s been leaving messages on encrypted channels. But then, at the end of the book, they realize that this is actually like a group of nerds that have been joining together to watch movies like “Star Wars,” and “Harry Potter,” and stuff. So they realize that they need to start the resistance. So that’s where we are at the beginning of “Not Your Backup,” where Emma and Bells are back in Nevada, and they are kind of in the midst of this fledgling resistance group – meanwhile, Jess and Abby are at the villain’s guild hideout in the Rockies and they’re trying to corral all the other meta-humans into taking action. So, the beginning of the book, you know, where kind of everyone has different goals, but then they all come together. It’s more about like building the resistance and finding… For Emma, it’s her journey in finding who she is. And, really, she’s a very natural leader, she loves coming up with plans, and she’s definitely a Gryffindor. She’s the first to jump in and try to take action. Her default is, like, fight me. But she also is, as you mentioned, she doesn’t have powers, and so when she’s trying to take a more active role in the resistance, she kind of butts heads with a few of the other members as they have different ideas about who is and who isn’t part of the resistance. Jeff: She just needs to remind them that Batman didn’t have powers either. He just had a really good utility belt and brains. So she could definitely fill that role. What’s been the driving force behind deciding the type of character that you have at the forefront of each book? Because the three books have very different, distinct character types and personalities, and just everything about them is just…they’re just very different from each other. C.B.: So, from the beginning, I wanted to tell this story about, you know, this fun adventure story with queer protagonists. So each book would center on another one of them in the main four. So there’s…and then after “Not Your Backup”, there’s one more book which will be Abby’s story, and so she will round out the quartet. But each of their…you know, they have very different personalities, but it’s been interesting writing their stories because each of them are on their own journey in what makes them a hero and finding how do they define success, and how do other people see them, and how do they see themselves. So, for each story, because we’re moving forward in time, as we get to see who is really, you know… It’s been interesting, because all four books will fit together as a series, but in each book, everyone gets to have their own journey. Jeff: Which I really like because we’ve been introduced to all of them all the way back, you know, back in the first book, but then they get to their own story, which could essentially be read as a stand-alone, if you wanted to, I guess, although reading all of them together is much better. What was the bigger challenge to come up with the trajectory of these four diverse characters or to build this alternate universe of the U.S., or were they kind of equal challenges? C.B.: I feel like the challenge for me is I’m not like a great outliner or I haven’t ever really been a planner. So I’ve always been more of the pantser in the writing style. So when writing a series, when I wrote “Not Your Sidekick,” I didn’t know, up until I think I was about 50,000 words in when I realized that I could not basically solve the problem in that one book, you know, because when I pitched it, it was one book. And then I was like, “Well, I really love all of these characters.” There’s a huge…there’s a bigger story here that I’ve introduced, and I will need more than one book to solve it. And so, from the get-go, I knew the next story after Jess would be Bells because you get into, like, the backstory of the meta-human training and the heroes, league of heroes. And so, I think, overall, just planning a series is really challenging. Some people are great at it, where, you know, they have very detailed outlines, they know, from the very beginning to the very end, what the key points are going to be. And so, as I was writing book 1, I kind of had a panic attack and I was like, “Oh, no, I have to figure out what’s going to happen in each of the books.” And then as I restructured things and then writing book 2 and then 3, it’s kind of come to a point where I’m working on book 4 and now, like, everything that I… One of the reasons why it took me a longer time between book… So “Not Your Villain” came in 2017 and “Not Your Backup” is coming out in 2019. So I didn’t have a book come out last year because I was still working on crafting the storyline because whatever I did or didn’t do in book 3 would determine what would happen in book 4. So everything had to fall into place, and I had to like figure out a lot of stuff. So it was challenging, but I think, you know, it’s still challenging, but that’s part of the joy of writing is to figure out how to tell the story you want to tell. Jeff: If you do a series again, do you think you’ll try to do outlines more in the upfront or now that you’ve had this experience, do you kind of know how to do it and keep your pantser ways going on? C.B.: I don’t know if I’ll ever… Like, I feel like with each book, I’m like, “Oh, do I know how to write a novel now?” But like every book is its own challenge. I do have a better sense of like, okay, you know, how do I plot as a pantser? And then plotting for pantsers, and like learning how to like… For me, I just tend to think of an outline like a road map where I have these destinations I wanna hit, but I’m not committed to – I don’t have to see everything and if I go off track or take a different route, that’s okay as well. So as long as I kind of get the same…like, it’s all in the journey of how I get there, and then the destinations that I pick along the way, if I get to them or not, that’s cool. I kind of have these benchmarks that I want to reach. But I really like thinking of the framework in which I think about my books as a roadmap. So I’ll try to plan out, you know, all the cities I want to visit, but I’m open to discovering places along the way and kind of building up on that. Jeff: How does the pantser sort of method work while you’re world building? Or do you try to, at least, before you start writing, “No. This is my world. This is what’s happened. This is what the U.S. looks like now, and how all that works?” Or does that come organically as you go as well? C.B.: I actually thought like, really early on established the world and what it looked like. I drew a map of which countries were left and which, how, who, what alliances were made in probably much more detail than you’ll ever see in the books because basically I plotted out what happened in that World War III, and what areas were no longer habitable, and all of these things, and all the different lines of, like… I probably spent way too much time figuring out the socio-economic holes, ramifications of which country is now aligned with what country and which countries refuse to join a union or…and they’re all new countries. So there is this whole political backstory of, like, which country fought….you know, which alliance was at war, which alliance and what’s still happening overseas. Some of which you’ll see, but it is the world itself. I’ve always enjoyed world building, and I think it’s really fun to come up with the…I think once I wrote book one where I established, like, how do the powers work. Every power level is different. For example, like the A class, B class, or C class, depending on how…basically, I wanted all the meta-humans in my world to…their powers basically are dependent on…like, they have a limited number of time per day that they can use their powers. So once they’ve used it, then they can’t use it for the next 24-hour period. So it’s a different sort of look at superpowers and abilities because you have to be more mindful about how you use your powers. And so that was an element that I established early on, but overall, I think for me, world building, there are some details I discovered along the way, but I pretty much plotted the world building which is a funny like…and it’s interesting to think about, even though I do consider myself a pantser, how much of this series I did very much envision out from an early stage. So like some of the confrontations and the fight scenes, and the stuff that… I’ve been planning one particular scene in book 3 since book 1, and I didn’t get to do it until… And, so that was like a fun way to be like, “Oh, yes, I’m finally going to like write the scene that I’ve been waiting for.” But I’d had a lot of these moments in my head, and just planning it out and getting the opportunity to like, “Okay, yes. Now, I’m getting to that chapter. I’m getting to the point in the whole series where we’re getting…you know, it’s coming full circle.” So that’s very satisfying. Jeff: It sounds like you’d have a lot of bonus material too if you ever wanted to release it, if all the stuff that you’ve got of the world itself, and the disaster, and how it’s split up. C.B.: Yeah, I mean, potentially, I have a whole timeline that I could release. And then I did these fun… For “Not Your Villain,” I did all the deleted scenes, well, deleted as far as they were cut for length. But I still consider it part of the story, the cannon. So those are an extra that are available on my website. I’ll probably do something similar for Backup, but I’m not at that stage yet. Jeff: Right. It’s good to know about the Villain extras. I’ll be going to check those out. C.B.: Yeah, yeah, they’re fun. They’re all in one PDF. And my book designer, C.B. Macera, was amazing. And she formatted them the same way as the book because we have a lot of extra art as well because she does these amazing, like, chapter headers for each chapter. She’s so talented and amazing designing the covers and the interior of the book, really, you know, capture that feel. And so, “Not Your Villain” actually, in the edits, went from…yeah, it was cut a lot. So, you know, it’s really sad as a writer to kind of see these scenes go, but, you know, as far as, yes, and my editors are great about, like, “This scene is great. But, you know, it kind of slows down the pacing,” or like, “This scene takes us in a different tone or direction, and, like, while they’re great, they don’t fit in the story at that moment and kind of take us away from the main action.” So I understand why they had to go. And, yes, the story is stronger overall, but I like them as an extra. Jeff: Yeah, we’ve all gotten used to those on DVDs over time, so there’s really no reason books can’t have them too. C.B.: Yeah, yeah, it’s a fun extra to have the deleted scenes. Jeff: So you mentioned one more book in the series, the fourth one, is that gonna be it for these heroes? C.B.: Yeah, I can’t say for sure that the door is completely closed. But for this arc, this storyline, that will be the series. It will be completed with Abby’s book. Jeff: We could treat it like the Marvel Universe. Now, if phase 1 is over, and there could be a phase 2 eventually, once you figure out what that is. What got you started in writing? C.B.: I love telling stories. And think I was very young when I tried, like, writing a story for myself. I had an old notebook that I would scribble this adventure story in when I was in sixth grade. And then I’d kind of start and then every recess, I’d pick it up or I’d work on it when I was supposed to be doing homework or stuff in class. And so I’ve always wanted to tell stories. I didn’t really think of it seriously as a career. And then, after college, I went to school for science. And so I was going to get a PhD and do all this stuff, and I, you know, ended up going a different route. And really writing has been a journey where it kind of comes…it ties back to, and I guess like the “Sidekick Squad Series” and the titles were all, you know, the titles are all about, like, hey, I’m not who you think I am, I’m not the person that you’re claiming that I should be or expect me to be. It comes back to where, as a queer woman of color, I didn’t really see a lot of myself in books growing up. And so what I really hoped to write was, like especially when I was writing Sidekick for the first time, I wanted to write a book for my 16-year-old self. So this is the book that I wanted to read. And I wanted it to exist. And so writing…and then I also just like telling stories. So I wanted the story to be fun, I wanted them to be happy and have, you know, there’s drama in them. But overall, I wanted to see kids like myself, and kids who looked like me, and other kids, that reflect the world that we live in because trans kids exist, asexual kids exist, mentally ill kids exist. And there aren’t enough stories where they get to be part of something that’s a superhero adventure, or something fun and fantastic like this. And so I wish that I hope…and I think there are definitely now, in the past, you know, 5, 10 years, there’ve been a lot more stories, and I think that’s great. So I’m just really excited that now people are writing more and more and reading more and more, and there’s a lot of great books to come. Jeff: And one of the things to not…I don’t want to knock the coming out story because those are very important and very needed. But in these books, that’s not really part of it. I mean, this is a much bigger adventure these teenagers are on that just doesn’t revolve around their sexuality so much, that just, there’s so much more going on, which I think is awesome and gives everybody something different to read. C.B.: Yeah, I love that…like, I want us to have the breadth of different types of genres and stories that there are for, like, able-bodied heterosexual people. Like, I want there to be so many stories to choose from. And so, you know…and I really love…I think there’s a lot of power in having joyful stories as well and stories where, yes, sexuality is a part of it, but, you know, who I am is not just my sexuality. Like, every person is multitudes where who you are is made up of so many things like your passions, your dreams, your hopes, your hobbies, your friends. Who you are as a person isn’t just one thing, and we’re all…I love being able to explore that and getting to see… I want people to see that people in the LGBTQ community are like fully nuanced people that get to be complicated and have flaws and go on adventures, or fall in love, or discover more about themselves in the way that all straight people can. Jeff: Well said. I like that for sure. Who were some of your author influences as you got started on your writing journey? C.B.: So I really love the “Harry Potter” series growing up. That’s a huge influence for me. That was one of the first ways I started writing was “Harry Potter” fan fiction because I loved that world so much. And just a lot of…I read so much fantasy like Ursula Le Guin, Diane Duane, Eoin Colfer, like tons of fantasy, Jane Yolen. I started to read a lot more widely. I think when I was a kid, there was a point when I would like go to the YA section and just read like everything in the library. So I would pretty much read everything, but I tended to love fantasy and sci-fi the most. Jeff: Nice, and now you get to write your own. C.B.: Yes. I’m really lucky. Jeff: Is there a genre you want to branch into as you close up the “Sidekick Series?” C.B.: I’m excited to write more fantasy. So the “Sidekick Squad” is more sci-fi, speculative. So I’m working on some fantasy stuff. I’m excited to share it. I have some contemporary stuff. I have a short story coming out next year in the next “All Out” anthology. So that’ll be fun. It’s like a very fluffy high school romance that’s just set in like… The only magic is the friendship and the romance so… Jeff: Aww, sometimes that’s all you need though. C.B.: Yeah, yeah, it’s fun because when I was writing it, I hadn’t written just contemporary in a long time. So that was really fun to try and explore that. Plus, I got to put a lot of puns in there, so it’s all good. Jeff: You seem to travel a lot. I feel like every time I see you on social media, it’s like, “I’m going to this event” or, “Here I am at this event, come see me over here.” What drives you to be out on the road so much? C.B.: So I like the opportunity to see, meet readers. I live in Los Angeles, and I’m really lucky to have the opportunity to go to a lot of events that are fairly local. I also think it’s really important to travel when I have the opportunity to, and I’m lucky that I’ve been able to, and sometimes I will just commit to doing it out of my own pocket because I want to meet readers in those areas. So I love…yeah, I already said it, I love meeting readers. But, especially in places where you don’t get a lot of, you know, LGBTQ resources, or teens don’t necessarily get to see a lot of authors or books with this content come their way and getting to meet teens in, you know, small towns or getting to meet people even though I do a lot of web chats. And so that’s fun chatting with libraries or classrooms through the power of the internet, which is amazing. But, part of being on panels and having these conversations is important to me just because, you know, I get to share with people that might not have heard of my books before or are just learning about it for the first time. And so that’s always a very special moment to me when someone’s like, “Oh my gosh,” like, “This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I didn’t know it exists, but now I do.” And so that’s very meaningful. And sometimes I get to meet people who have already read the books, and that’s very important to me. And that’s a part of the most rewarding things to me as a writer is knowing that your work has made an impact on someone, whether it’s just making them smile, or, you know, to the depth of having someone like… I’ve cried over several really long emails just because sometimes people are really sweet and talk about like, “Oh, this is my coming out experience”. I want people to see that they’re valid. And so knowing that someone else has read my work and recognize themselves, that’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I was in Seattle recently, earlier this year, and one of the events I did was with the Seattle Public Library where we went to the LGBTQ Youth Center. And that was really powerful just to, like, hang out with kids and chat with them and what are they looking forward to as far as like, “Hey, what’s powerful to me, what’s fun to me?” A lot of this is stuff that I totally resonate with when they connect with a character on TV or are upset that, you know, that character got killed off in one season or whatever, because of TV. But, you know, it’s always great to chat with people. Everyone’s always going through something. Jeff: Yeah, for sure. So we’ve hinted a little bit about some stuff that’s coming up for you. You’re working on Sidekick 4, you’ve got a short story coming out next year, anything else we should know about? C.B.: I’m also writing the new “BEN 10” original graphic novels with BOOM! Studios and Cartoon Network. So one is already out. It’s called “The Truth Is Out There.” It’s where “Ben 10” is part of the Cartoon Network show where Ben can turn into 10 different aliens. So it’s fun. It’s a fun, middle-grade romp. So I’m doing a number of those graphic novels with BOOM! So those will be available throughout…I can’t recall the dates off the top of my head, but another one is coming out in July, and then one more in October of this year and then the next year, there will be some more coming as well. Jeff: What’s it like writing for graphic novel because, I mean, that’s a different sort of animal, a novel that, you know, is 60,000 or 70,000 words long? C.B.: It was definitely a new experience. It was a lot of fun trying a different medium. Like, definitely writing a script goes differently as far as…and I catch myself like “Oh, I’m being too descriptive. This is literally…the only person who will see this is the artist.” And it’s also a great collaborative process. So it’s really fun to work with the artists and editors and bring together this story that exists in its own medium. It’s not just me, the writer, but what the artist is bringing, and collaborating with them, and getting to like…you know, I’ll write the dialogue and the action. And then they’ll imagine it in a certain way of like, “Oh, I didn’t think of that,” and that’s really fun. I really like the graphic novel format. I’m hoping to do more. I’m really excited to be working on these projects. And, yeah, hopefully, I’ll be able to share more upcoming projects. Jeff: Pretty cool. And speaking of, what is the best way for people to keep up with you online? C.B.: You can always find me on Twitter and Instagram at, C-B-L-E-E_C-B-L-E-E, because it’s double the trouble. My website is cb-lee.com, and then you can find more links to other ways you can connect with me. Usually Twitter and Instagram, where you can find me the most – that’s where you can connect with me. So in my website, it has like fun stuff. I try to update it with writing resources and my upcoming events. And I also have a newsletter, which will have some special tidbits probably like the deleted scenes, which is the very first place I offered the “Not Your Villain” extra scenes. Jeff: Pretty cool. Well, C.B., thank you so much for hanging out with us. We wish you all the success with “Not Your Backup” when it comes out on June 4th. C.B.: Thank you so much for having me. And I really appreciate it. I’m so excited. And I hope everyone enjoys the book. Book Reviews Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: A Lover’s Game by Max Walker, narrated by Greg Boudreaux. Reviewed by Jeff I was so happy that this fourth book in Max’s Stonewall Investigations series released in audio just a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the final installment of the series and I was not disappointed. The series has been working up to the final showdown between private investigator Zane Holden and the Unicorn Killer. The Unicorn has loomed large over the series–a serial killer that terrorizes the gay community in NYC. The killer’s gone after partnered gay men and Zane’s husband was aomng the victims. In the first book we find out the Unicorn’s returned and now in the fourth one Zane’s obsessed with bringing the reign of terror to an end. At the same time, Zane is preparing for his wedding to Enzo, the defense attorney who captured his heart in that first book. Unfortunately, Zane is so occupied with the case, he’s missing things, like cake testing and venue selection, and he hasn’t told Enzo that he’s even back on it. Zane thinks he’s protecting Enzo by keeping his activities a secret, but Enzo feels it puts him more in danger not knowing. And boy does everything hurtle towards a massive, satisfying conclusion. Max had me super stressed in this installment. He always does a great job of creating suspense. Here though I suspected everything. Is the Uber driver a killer? Is that bottle of wine spiked with something? What does it mean that someone looked at them on the street? Is the person providing information or misinformation? I suspected everything and also never figured out who the Unicorn was ahead of the reveal. I love that! While Zane and Enzo have been featured in the middle two books of the series, it was great to see them returning to the spotlight. Their dynamic as the move towards their wedding date was wonderful to watch. The quiet, sexy moments they share along with their wedding planning and time they spend with Enzo’s family shows their strong relationship and amazing friends. And, man, are there some super sexy times in this book. There’s always steamy scenes in this series, but these were the best yet. Max contrasts these happy times with how they handle the increasing threats–they want to be strong for each other and also do what’s necessary to keep the other safe. They find it’s hard to maintain the balance and that only increases the tension. I both hated and loved what Max put them through because it was so realistic. Is it weird to say that I liked the terrible choices were made? Despite being great at their jobs, Zane and Enzo sometimes do things that are terrible choices and what makes those so good in the story is that I could see myself doing the same thing. These two are flawed and make bad decisions like anyone can. It makes them human. It makes you scream at them to not do something. It makes you cheer when it all works out too. Kudos to Greg Boudreaux. He’s done a great job with this series overall but I have to shoutout his work voicing the Unicorn. It’s a creep, calm yet evil voice that made me shudder. The spin off for Stonewall Investigations Miami is set up here too. That first book, Bad Idea, just released last week and I can’t wait to pick it up as soon as there’s an audio version.
Jeff discusses a deleted scene he’s offering this week from his upcoming book Netminder (Codename: Winger #4). He also recommends The Queer Creative Podcast. Will and Jeff discuss the second season of Netflix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power as well as Pose, which has just arrived on Netflix ahead of the new season coming to FX in June. Jeff reviews Queer as a Five Dollar Bill by Lee Wind. Gail Carriger talks to Jeff about her new novel, The Fifth Gender and some of the interesting stories about its creation. They also talk about how Gail went from archeology to writing romance, her process for world building and her travel podcast called The 20 Minute Delay. Complete shownotes for episode 189 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. 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: Welcome, Gail, to the podcast. Gail: Hello. Thank you for having me. I’m super excited to be here. Jeff: I’m so glad we finally got you on the show because I’ve been, you know, reading since back with “The Sumage Solution” and it’s like, “We gotta get Gail on. We need to get Gail on.” Gail: I am delighted. I am a devoted listener and so I’m quite honored to finally get to be here. It’s great. Jeff: And you’ve got a book coming out or you’ve just had a book come out actually, “The 5th Gender” just released. Gail: I did. Yes, “The 5th Gender,” it’s my like crazy, ridiculous, silly, happy yet cozy murder mystery on a space station with an alien with five genders and tentacles and purple. Jeff: You don’t often get cozy mystery space station together in one package. Gail: It is…it’s great. It was totally one of those spontaneous, I had like a strange thought/dream/idea to do this. And a bunch of us were joking on Twitter about the craziest mashups of genres we could come up with and somebody was like, “Barbarian noir,” and so on and so forth. And I was like, “Well, I wanna do space station, cozy mystery.” And then I started thinking about it and then it happened. Then I was like, “Oh, okay, I’ll write it, I’ll write it.” I was supposed to be writing something else, of course. But sometimes I succumb to the lure of the ooh, shiny. Jeff: And it was a purple shiny too. So how could you resist that? Gail: I could not. And he’s adorable, the alien character. And I, you know, I have a background as an anthropologist. I have an archaeology…couple of archaeology degrees. And so I just love the way if you’re doing an alien character, you can comment on human social structures and culture and interactions. And so I might’ve had a little too much fun with that. Jeff: Well I was actually gonna get into that. I’ll hold that. Because we should at least tell folks, because I want to talk a little bit more about the origin story on this because you wrote about it. So just like, “I had this idea in the middle of the night, and then I tweeted it, and then it was a story,” which I love, but then there’s the fact that you went away to a retreat and worked on it and had to talk to other people about it while you were writing it. Gail: Yes. So for those…I should preface this by saying that for those who don’t know, I have two names I write under. So I write under Gail Carriger and I write under G. L. Carriger and the G. L. stuff has a much higher heat level. So it’s super sexy. And this book, “The 5th Gender” is a G. L. book. So warning for anybody who doesn’t like nooky because one of the things I realized through the course of that particular writing retreat was that if you’re writing about a species with five genders, human curiosity wants to follow them into the bedroom to see what it’s like down there. And so I thought about trying to kind of clean it up a little bit and it just…it didn’t work. So I was like, “Okay, we are going into that realm.” So I was supposed to go on this retreat and write something else entirely, and instead I just spent the entire week writing this book. And one of the funniest stories from that was me being like, “Oh shoot, what does alien jizz taste like?” Because we all know, at least we do if we’ve been reading my San Andreas Shifter series that wizard or mage jizz is fizzy and werewolf is spicy. And I was like, “Well, what do aliens taste like?” And this meant that I literally had to go and you’re never…on a retreat, you’re never supposed to disturb the cooks in the kitchen. But I was like, “If there was ever a question for cooks, this is it.” There is a crazy author running into the kitchen in the middle of them making shepherd’s pie and being like, “Oh, you guys, what does alien jizz taste like? Debate.” So we had a long debate about it and we finally decided, and you’ll have to read the book to find out. Jeff: Yeah, I wasn’t gonna ask you to spoil that, but I do have to know what exactly did the cooks make of this question? Gail: The cooks were quite game actually. I think they were pretty charmed because normally like they’re doing their art form and we’re doing our art form and never the twain shall meet until meal times. So it’s really rare for one of the authors to actually want the cooks’ help on something. So I think they were kind of pleased to be asked. Jeff: That’s very cool because some of them might have been like, “I’m sorry, what?” Gail: Oh, they know what I write. We’ve been going for a long time with the same cooks for a while, so. Jeff: So this group knew you so they weren’t necessarily surprised by… Gail: No. Well, it was a little out of the blue. I haven’t been writing the super sexy stuff for very long. Like normally my questions are like, “What’s the most ridiculously named, you know, Victorian dessert you can think of,” kind of thing. But yes, it was a little different from my usual questions. Jeff: And tell us what this book is about, this cozy mystery on a space station. Gail: Well, the tagline is an alien race with no word for murder has a murderer aboard their spaceship. And essentially the galoi are the aliens in question. And they are these purple…they’re these adorable sort of purple tentacled kind of, you know, High Elf, slightly looking alien creatures. And they are super isolationist. And the only thing that humans know about them is occasionally they will kick one of their genders. It’s always as one of the examples of the fourth or fifth genders and they’re kicked off and they’re in exile, and those galoi, which is the name of this alien race, go and live amongst humans. And humans actually adore them because they think they’re like sweet and cute and adorable. And they have no…they’re pure exiles. So they have no national allegiance, they have no planetary allegiance. And so they make really great attaches. They’re kind of really kind of comforting and lots of different alien races like to be around them. So they often become attaches to like ambassadors and stuff. So a lot of space stations….space stations consider it really lucky if they get one of these. And the main character, Tristol, he’s one of these aliens and he has a mad crush on the human security chief/detective that’s onboard the space station named Dre. But he doesn’t really get kind of like human flirtation and courting rituals. So he’s sort of…the book sort of starts with Tristol trying to figure out what cats are and why you would wanna keep them as a pet because he’s been asked by some human friends to cat sit. And then, of course, the cat escapes and hijinks ensue on the space station because what happens when the cat gets into zero gravity. Nobody wants to find that out. Anyway, and then the galoi are like super xenophobic, so they never reach out to humans. And then suddenly a galoi ship approaches his space station, which is crazy in many, many ways because they shouldn’t be approaching a space station that has an exile aboard it and they never talk to humans anyway. And they have this incredibly complicated non-pronoun language that kind of indicates status and has to do with all of these different genders. And so the humans are kind of panicking and freaking out. They don’t want a war. They don’t know what’s going on. And the spaceship basically says, you know, “We have a murdered galoi and we don’t know what to do. We don’t have security, we don’t have murder investigations. We don’t. So we came to you, violent humans, to figure this out for us.” And of course Dre, the human love interest is the detective. So he and Tristol have to team up because he needs Tristol’s help to explain how the galoi work. And so the two of them gonna figure out who done it and that’s basically it in a very large nutshell. Jeff: How did you go about creating the galoi? I mean, five genders, no term for murder. There’s like so many things that kind of click into this. Is there like…? Gail: I just, so like I said, I have an anthropology background. I mean, archaeology is blank, so obviously the biology and skeletal structures and things is what I mostly studied via anthropology, but you get a lot of like gender studies and cultural representations of gender and all that sort of thing as part of an education in the United States if you do an archaeology degree. And so it’s always been super, super fascinating to me. I have a minor in classical mythology with a focus on gender. It’s just something that has interested me. It’s really hard to tease out in the archaeological record. It’s prone to misinterpretation by archaeologists and historians and anthropologists. So there’s a sort of storied history with our own relationship from a scientific perspective with understanding gender. And so I just took a lot of that both kind of my education and, you know, how the world now is changing. I spent far too much time on Tumblr, so I have a lot of like non-binary and gender fluid and gender queer fans. And so I’ve just been kind of reaching out to friends and acquaintances. One of my best friends in the world is a bioethicist and a medical ethicist. And so she deals with training doctors in how to talk to people appropriately about gender. And so I’ve had all this sort of stuff messing about, and I was like, “Well, a way for me to explore this and have this kind of conversation with myself and the world is through an alien lens.” And so I just…I love thought experiments, and I was like, “So what if we have a race with five different genders and how would their language evolve? How would their culture evolve? How would they treat each other?” Like all of these, you know, archaeological things to think or anthropological things to think about. And then how would humans, even future humans, react when encountering that? And so that’s kind of where the conception started. And then I just made them purple because I like purple. Jeff: Why not? I’m a big purple fan too. Was there a lot of research kind of building this? Gail: Yeah. I actually have multiple blog posts that either I’m releasing them right now or I’ve just released them recently, speaking from the past into the future. But I have a bunch of blog posts about like a bunch of the research that I did and like some book recommendations and stuff like that, both from a fictional perspective and a nonfictional perspective and different blogs and stuff like that. But I like that. I like researching a lot. I try not to rabbit hole too much because the point is to write the actual book. So mostly what I did is I did that intensive week where I sort of just vomited forth this whole book. And then I went back and like teased it apart and looked into different…almost as…I almost treated it a little bit as if it were a nonfiction piece to go back and see what sources do I need to look up, what like different pronoun terms might be being used in hundreds of years, you know, by humans. That sort of thing. And it’s…since both the humans involved… I try to be complex in my races, whether they’re werewolves or aliens in that like…and to not either dystopian or utopianise either race, either humans or aliens. So both races still have issues. Both are still dealing with how the cultures have evolved and all of that sort of thing. So I’m not setting the galoi up as like the perfect model of a possible future. They have a different evolution, a different model. And they’re merely a vehicle for which we can examine perhaps some of our own biases and prejudices now. And that’s getting very, very serious because mostly what I want my books to do is make you happy and cheerful and be excited, delighted. And if it makes you think a little, that’s great. But really I just want to make everybody happy and hopefully Tristol will do that because he’s delightful. I love him. Jeff: What kind of, I guess, beta reading did you do to see how your various fans handle the gender discussion? Gail: Well, I have trans and gender queer and gender bending characters already, both in my main universe and in my traditionally-published books and in all of my…like my independent and my self-published works and in my novellas and stuff. Some of the main characters, some of them side characters. And so I know that they’re open to it, and I also know that the one that, you know, for lack of a better term, I have like a queer-centered, progressive kind of comfort food brand or business model or whatever, however you wanna explain it. And so I feel like most of my super fans are gonna be excited because what they want from me is that comfort, is that sort of upbeat, fun, slightly fluffy, slightly thoughtful, but ultimately, you know, everything’s gonna be all right. I’m never gonna depress you. There’s never gonna be like scenes of torture. It’s never gonna be angsty, you know, all of those things. It’s always gonna be delicious, I guess. Jeff: I like that as a term for a book. That’s just really fun. Gail: Yeah. It’s just gonna be tasty. Yeah. So they know that and that’s the part that they trust and generally I feel like they’re pretty open minded about how I’m gonna go there and explore that. I don’t think I would’ve done this book, you know, five or six years ago because I wasn’t sure. I had to kind of test the waters with the San Andreas books and some of the other stuff. But I think they’re pretty open to it. I don’t know. You never know. We’ll see how everybody reacts. Yeah, so I mean, and I have beta readers and some of them have read it. I was more careful with this book in making sure that like I had sensitivity, what I call delicacy readers. So people within kind of the gender nonconforming community, again, for lack of a better term. That was more important to me really. I don’t wanna offend, although, you know, everybody’s opinion is their own and everyone is entitled to it. So I’m sure if you come to any book with the idea of being offended, you’re probably going to be unfortunately. So, but I did put essentially a naked purple dude on the cover as a kind of like, “Be aware, there’s gonna be sex in this book. We’re gonna go there. We’re gonna go far out there.” Jeff: It’s cozy with sex and it’s funny and it’s sci-fi. It’s got a little bit of everything in it. Gail: Exactly. Jeff: Do you think you’ll revisit this later as like as a continuing series? Gail: I’d love to. Actually, I have another murder mystery and like I don’t consider myself like a mystery writer at all, but I have this thing as a writer where I don’t write a book until I’ve had what I call the epiphany, which is I need to actually see a scene with characters in dialogue. And it might not necessarily be the first scene or whatever, but until I see that I have that crystal moment, I don’t feel like I can write the book. So I have a lot of books that I’d like to write, but I’ve never had the epiphany with. So they’re just sort of sitting there. And I’ve had an epiphany for a second book in this series with Dre investigating another murder and Tristol still there and everything. But I don’t know how people will receive this one, so I don’t know if I will write that one, but it’s definitely there percolating already. So it’s a possibility. Jeff: It’s a possibility. Gail: Yeah. And the universe on the whole, because it is a science fiction universe, actually does have another, of all things, young adult series that’s set at it that’s kind of been on the back burner for a really long time which kind of has nothing really to do with this series except that the same conceits in terms of faster than light travel. And human…like colonization and planetary evolution are the same. And there’s like a couple of crossover alien races, but that’s about it. But it is the same sort of basic far future. Jeff: If you’ve got the universe, you might as well keep using it. So you don’t have to just keep reinventing the wheel. Gail: Precisely. Yes. That’s my feeling. Jeff: What do you hope readers take away from this romp? Gail: Well, like usual, I just want them to be like… My favorite thing is somebody writes to me and says, “You either humiliated me because I was laughing loudly on public transport,” and I’m like, “Yes.” “You kept me up all night.” “Yes.” Or, “You just left me with a big smile.” So that’s really what I genuinely want is a big smile on people’s faces. But it would be nice if people who read it thought a little bit about…a bit more about gender and how we intimately link biological sex with gender and that perhaps that’s not necessarily the…I don’t know, ethical thing to do – that perhaps gender is in fact a social construct. Or cultural construct. It’s something that anthropologists just accept. Like if you’re an anthropologist, you just accept that as a fact. Like we know, we have seen all of these different ancient and modern races or cultures with varying different interpretations of genders and it just…I don’t think it would ever occur to an anthropologist to like not be like, “Yes, gender is cultural,” but it seems that in the world today that isn’t an accepted principle. And so I guess, if anything, I want people to kind of get it, to maybe think a little bit about pronoun use and all that sort of stuff, I guess. Jeff: Now, as both Gail and G. L., you run across a lot of genres. You’ve got your urban fantasy, you’ve got some paranormal. Now you’ve got cozy mysteries in space. Comedy definitely cuts across all of them. Is there a genre you like most? Gail: I would say I have wheelhouses more than anything else. So there’s a podcast called “Reading Glasses” that talks about as readers we tend to have wheelhouses and if you read heavily in romance, you define those often as tropes. You know, like, “I like the enemies to lover,” or whatever. But a wheelhouse kind of has other things. So, and I would say that there are definitely wheelhouses I gravitate to. So I always write the heroine’s journey. I never write the hero’s journey regardless… Again, this is the gender thing, right? Regardless of the biological sex or stated gender of my main character, they’re always heroines’ journeys because a heroine’s journey, it doesn’t matter who’s undertaking it. So I would say that is one of my things. I always do ‘found family’, and I realized recently I had this big revelation that one of the reasons I strongly gravitate to reading gay romance in particular is because found family is a really popular trope within gay romance for obvious reasons because if you come to the queer community, it’s usually partly found family that brings you there because real family rejected you, at least often did when I was younger. So yeah, and I just love that as a trope, for lack of a better word. And so I have found family in my books all the time. I tend to have extremely strong female main characters except when I’m writing gay romance, of course. Yeah, and lots of queer. I was thinking recently that a slogan I really embrace would be queer comfort because I feel like that’s kind of in all of my books even the books that have heterosexual main couples. It’s really hard. At this juncture, I guess you could say that I trust my readers enough to relax and just write what moves me. I wouldn’t have written this book if I didn’t think at least some of them would enjoy it. I mean, what a privilege and kind of a blessing and a joy to get to do that. But it has been 10 years. So it did take a while. Jeff: And you mentioned that you’re not known for mystery, certainly. So you’ve taken this turn now to at least explore it once. Are there other things out there like, going after and trying to write a mystery, that are still things you want to do, things you’re looking at towards the future? Gail: Absolutely. There’s always… Like I adore high fantasy. Obviously, I’m really into world building. And so like I have a young adult high fantasy. It’s actually techno fantasy, kind of like the Pern books or “Darkover.” And so, you know, I’d like to do that. There’s a bunch of stuff that I kind of am excited and interested, and I’m a pretty voracious and pretty wide reader. So I think that makes you, generally speaking, a relatively wide writer. I think it’s unlikely I would ever break the trust contract that I have with my reader base and write anything dark. I certainly would never write anything gritty or gruesome. I don’t like to read that, so I’d never write it. And I think I’m out of my dark phase now that I have left high school. I don’t do the really kind of dark or angsty stuff. I was thinking about contemporary recently actually. And I don’t think I could write contemporary. The moment I start to think about writing something that’s just a contemporary romance or like women’s lit or even something, you know, Heaven forfend, like proper lit fic, it immediately just goes fantastical. I can’t, I have to inject. And if I were to describe myself as anything, it is, you know, science fiction and fantasy rooted, I like the world building a lot. And so I think it’s unlikely that I’ll ever write something that doesn’t have at least that as part of the component. Jeff: So how did you go from studying archaeology and getting these degrees to now becoming full-time author, writing all these books? What was that path? Gail: Oh my goodness. So I’ve two master’s degrees and I was working on my PhD and I always thought I would be an academic. I genuinely love archaeology. I’m one of those incredibly lucky people who left one career that she adored for another career that she adored. So, you know, tragedy of choice. And I was about to do my defense and I was about two years out which would have been my thesis years finishing my PhD. And I always wrote. I just grew up on what essentially amounted to kind of like a hippie commune kind of thing, and surrounded by artists. And the only thing I had learned really from that is that artists never make any money. And so being an author was really a bad idea. So I was like, “Okay, I’ll be an academic because, ooh, profitable.” At least it’s quasi reliable, right? But I always wrote, I just had that need. It’s kind of like breathing or something. And I figure if I write, I might as well submit. And so I was submitting, writing and submitting. And then I wrote “Soulless” as kind of a challenge to myself. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I have a propensity for rewriting things over and over and over a million times and never actually finishing anything. And so “Soulless” was like, “You will take six months, you will write this weird book.” This was during the paranormal romance and urban fantasy bubble of the late ’90s, early 2000s. And I was like, what I really want from…I want a bunch of things, right? I want women to write funny stuff in genre, commercial genre. And that’s pretty rare. Most of the writers I knew who wrote funny stuff were like Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, Jasper Fforde, like a bunch of dudes. And I was like, “Where are my ladies writing funny? Where’s my urban fantasy set in a historical time period?” You know, I wanted all of these things and nobody was writing it. And finally I was like, “Well, that means I have to.” Jeff: Take the challenge. Gail: Take the challenge. And I really did write it as a challenge. And “Soulless” is a mashup. It tends to be what I write, obviously. I mean, I’m here talking about, you know, space, cozy mystery romance. So I obviously like mashing up things. And so “Soulless” is steampunk, urban fantasy, comedy of manners, romance. It’s a bunch of these different things. And I was like, no one will buy this because I had been in and out of the publishing industry and submitting short stories and I was like, “This…it doesn’t have a place in the market. There’s no shelf it sits on, like, no one’s gonna buy this. But I wrote it so I might as well send it out.” And I had one of those slush pile telephone calls from New York where they like…within a month somebody wanted to buy my silly little bit of fluff. And I was like, “No, you’re joking.” And so “Soulless” was a slow burn. It hit the market and it was really word of mouth. The librarians and the independent bookstores were like behind me 110%. They just loved this crazy little book. And I think it was mostly the funny, but you know, super strong heroine and, you know, like gruff, overly emotional werewolves and queer characters from the get go. And it just appealed to, you know, a kind of segment of society. So I was right about to do my defense when “Changeless,” my second book, hit the hit The New York Times and that kind of seed changed everything. It changed marketing, it changed how much money New York was willing to offer me and my partner at the time was like, “I make enough money to support us. Why don’t you see if this…why don’t you take a break from academia and see if this writing thing works?” And I did and I haven’t been back. Jeff: Well done. Ten years on. Gail: Yeah, a lot of it’s serendipity. And a lot of it is good friends. And then a lot of it was also like, I am super…I’m an archaeologist. Archaeologists are like the organizers of anthropology departments. You know, we’re logistics, we get large groups of people into foreign lands and then make them shovel dirt around, you know. We feed them and house them and blah, blah, blah. You know, we’re big on spreadsheets and organizing. So I already had that kind of part of my personality that I think not a lot of authors have. And so when I was successful, I was ready to be like, “Okay, let’s figure out how many books I can write in a year. Let’s figure out, you know, like… I like trad, but maybe this independent publishing thing is interesting. Let me go research that and experiment with that. You know, let’s try this thing.” I’ve always been like that. Even with my traditional publishers, like they would be like, “You sell really good in eBooks.” And I was like, “That’s because I have romance readers.” And they were like, “How do you feel about maybe doing this strange BookBub thing?” And I was like, “I think that’s a great idea. Why don’t we do that?” You know, it’s like I am game. So I think that has also helped is I’ve always been willing to take a risk, partly because I have a safety net. It’s like I can always go back to being an archaeologist. That’s fun too. Jeff: What’s your overall process? I mean, it sounded like, if I understood from our “The 5th Gender” discussion, it almost sounded like you did the first draft of that book at the retreat. Gail: Yeah. I work really well, it turns out, in a competitive environment. I didn’t realize, but if…I really am one of those writers who I’m social in terms of I like to sit across from somebody at a cafe and just type and just the act of having another writer or a bunch of writers around me also typing is really helpful to me. And part of it is kind of looking over and being like, “How many words have you done? Oh shoot.” And then just typing some more, you know. But yeah, so I do this one retreat every year and I know I can do 40,000 words at that retreat, which is either one novella or most of one of the G. L. books. So I usually sort of get prepared ahead of time with that preparation is writing the first 10,000 or just get…I’m an outliner, so I’ll get all the outline ready. I’ll get all the world building ready. And once I hit the ground there, I can just turn out a bunch of words and that’s great. I try to do a couple of other kind of long weekend baby retreats. I’d love to find other week-long retreats. But the style that I like is pretty rare. And the style that I like is just a bunch of writers writing and no workshops or critiques or anything. So I do that and then most of the rest of the time I am not somebody who can handle multiple projects. I learned that about myself the hard way. So I have to be working on one book and then close that book out and then move to another one. And so if it’s an independent project, what I’ll often do, so if it’s something that I’m gonna be self-publishing, I’ll often write the whole thing on a retreat or over the course of a couple of months. And then just put it to bed and then focus on incoming copy edits or a proof pass or writing a completely different project, and let it sleep if I can. I find that that marination really helps. And then I’ll go back and do a reread. And I’m a multiple editor. I think a lot of comic writers have to be because I do passes for like different kinds of comedy. So I’ll do like a word play pass and then I’ll do a sort of a slap stick pass. And then I’ll do like rule of three descriptive passes to try and get as much different kinds of humor back into a book as possible. And so, and then I have an alpha reader or two and they read before it goes either into my New York editor or off to my beta readers. And then I actually hire and use a developmental editor for my independent stuff as well probably because that tends to lean more romantic. And when I first started writing it, I didn’t really think of myself as a romance author. So I wanted to make sure that I was getting kind of the beats right for romance. So I have an editor who specializes actually in gay romance, who reads all of my romances and gives me feedback. And then it goes to beta readers for the Parasol-verse in particular because they’re like, they’re 25 books in that universe and there’s lots of crossover characters. So most of my beta readers are actually just super fans who are obsessed with the universe and have written me like either critical letters about mistakes that I made in terms of like getting character names wrong or eye colors or something. And usually I’ll be like, “You, would you be interested in being a beta reader?” Jeff: Right. Put those people to work. Gail: Exactly. I was like, “If you’re going to do this anyway, how would you like to get everything ahead of time?” And I give them lots of extra perks as well, special editions and stuff. Yeah, so it’s quite a process at this point. But my beta readers are killer. I’ve got just a team of four now and they’re really fast and great. I love them. And then I have a couple of awesome copy editors that I use and then a proof. The Parasol-verse gets a woman named Shelley Adina, who’s a fantastic steampunk author in her own right and a regency and who’s really, really good on the Victorian era. So it gets a world – like historical proofing basically. And then I have a formatter. I’m a big fan of finding people who are really good at what they do and hiring them to do it for me. Like I could change my own oil, I’m sure, but I’d really rather find a good mechanic, you know. And that’s how I feel about the book world as well. So I have a fantastic cover art designer I love working with and I just got to put my team in place and then hope that no one gets sick. Jeff: Right. That’s the key. Nobody can get sick. Not right now. Gail: Nobody get sick. Nobody can leave me. Very floored when that happens. Jeff: So you mentioned that you read a pretty broad swath of stuff. What are you reading right now that you’re loving? Gail: So I just did a reread on Amy Lane’s “A Fool and His Manny,” which because it got nominated for the RITA award and it was one of the few that did that was queer. So I had read it before, I just did a reread on that and I still love it. It’s very cute, and I love Amy. Amy’s one of the nicest human beings in the world. So that was really fun to redo. And I’m a huge fan of Mary Calmes. I don’t know how to say her last name. Jeff: You actually got it right. Gail: Did I? Jeff: You did. Gail: Oh, good. Yes. I will read… Pretty much she’s an auto buy for me. I just find…I know that there are tropes in place that…but I just find her stuff really…she’s a comfort read for me and as somebody who writes what I hope is comforting for others, like I’m always hunting for authors that give me that same sensation. One of my like constant of all things, comfort, reread rotation is Alexis Hall’s “For Real,” which is a fantastic BDSM, but it’s just like, I don’t know what, the writing is so good. And I will reread R. Cooper until the cows come home, the “Being(s) in Love Series,” which I really, really adore. So, which is an urban fantasy basically. Jeff: So you’re a podcaster also on top of all this other stuff. Gail: I am. I know. That is like completely not connected to anything, side project. Jeff: Well, I’m looking at you, I’m reading the website, getting to know kind of what I wanna ask about. I’m like, “A podcast? Wow. Okay.” And it’s about travel hacks called “The 20 Minute Delay.” How did this come about? Gail: So one of the things that happened to me in the course of this career is I went from being an archaeologist, I traveled a lot as an archaeologist, to being an author where it turns out I travel like five times as much. When I was booked, where I’m regularly, I was doing two book tours a year at least. And that was not counting all of the conventions and stuff I was doing. And a book tour is like 10 cities in 10 days. I mean, it’s crazy traveling. So I turned into a frequent traveler and I’m an organizer and I like to hack things and figure out the most efficient way to do everything possible. And I realized I was doing that with travel. And there are two things that I can talk…well, there are three things that I could talk about, books that I love, like literally until the cows come home, food that I love to eat, and travel hacks. And then I met my friend Piper. And Piper has a day job that has her traveling 80% of the time. And she has, if possible, more travel hacks than I do. I was basically like, “Piper, let’s do a podcast. It’ll just be like 20 to 30 minutes and we will just get on and we will chat about a place that we’ve been recently, and some like delicate matter of etiquette when traveling, like whether you recline your seat or not and how you deal with that,” or recently we did a really good one actually on rental cars. I don’t rent a car that often, but Piper does all the time. And she had some awesome tips for like how to get the best rental car and, you know, what apps to use and all that sort of stuff. And then we do a little gadget where we’re just like, we test a gadget, like a new neck pillow or something and then we talk about, you know, what is that little gadget thing. And sometimes it’s just like, I like the snacky bags. Like you should always have at least two plastic snacky bags with you because they just always come in useful. So sometimes it’s a gadget like that, but we have a really, really good time. And I’m a voracious podcast listener. Like when we started, I’m a fan of this show. So I figured, generally speaking, you eventually become a podcaster if you are a big fan of listening to them. Jeff: That’s probably true. And I think for any of our listeners who are, you know, thinking about, you know, their trips to GRL come October, start listening to “The 20 Minute Delay” now to get all your travel situation put together. Gail: Because Piper and I are both authors, like we don’t…we try to couch our tips as much as possible in terms of anybody can use it. But we are both women. We are women who travel alone and we are both authors. So we will tackle things like how to travel with a bunch of books, like how to fly with 50 bucks or what have you. And we also talk about like safety when you’re staying in a hotel by yourself and that sort of thing. Jeff: So what’s coming up for you next this year with the writing? We’ve got “The 5th Gender” out, what’s coming next? Gail: Next, I have the final book in my Custard Protocol series coming out, which is “Reticence.” And that’s book four of the Custard Protocol that comes out at the beginning of August. And that’s actually rounding out the series in the Parasol-verse for a little while, my steampunk universe. I’m not ruling out doing another series in that universe, but I think I’m gonna take a little break. And I’m on proposal for a new Young Adult series. So who knows? It’s traditional, so it could take forever, could suddenly happen. You never know. And then in October I have a special collector’s edition coming out from Subterranean Press called “Fan Service,” which is for my super fans, which has my 2 supernatural society novellas bundled together with an exclusive short story that’s a hardcover fit, super fancy addition that there’s only gonna be 526 of those printed. And so that’s my October release. It’s so pretty. They can be very pretty covers, Subterranean. Jeff: That’s cool. And what’s the best way for folks to keep up with you online so they can keep track of all this? Gail: Well, in addition to everything else, so in case anybody’s in any doubt, I kind of have no life. I just did…this is like what I…like, I listen to podcasts, I read, and I play online, and occasionally I write, you know, because that’s my job. So I am on all the things online. I genuinely like social media. I know. I know, it’s crazy, but you can pretty much find me on any platform that you like. If you google Gail Carriger and then the name of the platform, I will probably pop up. And I try to use the platform in the way that it’s best suited. So, you know, there are pretty pictures on Instagram and there are lots of pinned gorgeous dresses on Pinterest and historical dresses and crazy aliens. And then I also have a newsletter. The newsletter is definitely for super fans. So it’s very chatty and it’s full of like sneak peeks as to what I’m actually writing and not talking about online yet. And I do freebies and giveaways and stuff there. Jeff: We’re going to link to all that good stuff in the show notes, of course, so people can find it easily. Gail, thanks so much for hanging out. It has been so much fun. Gail: Oh, it’s been a real pleasure. I can’t say how delighted I am to be on and I can’t wait to listen to this from the other side.
The guys talk about having more books than shelf space and also their upcoming 24th anniversary. Will reviews An Easter Promise by A E Ryecart. Jeff reviews Play It Again by Aidan Wayne. Jeff interviews Hank Edwards and Deanna Wadsworth about their collaboration, Murder Most Lovely, the first in the Lacetown Murder Mysteries series. They talk about how they came up with the book, their process for co-writing and what’s still to come in the series. We also find out what’s coming up for each of them in 2019. Complete shownotes for episode 186 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: An Easter Promise by AE Ryecart. Reviewed by Will. This is the continuing story of Rory and Jack, who we first met in the holiday story, A Kiss Before Christmas. In that story, Jack finds the homeless Rory huddled on his doorstep and offers him a place to stay. As they learn more about one another, Jack asks Rory to pose as his fake boyfriend when he goes home for the holidays. An unexpectedly severe winter storm prevents them from that trip, but in the few days they’ve been together they’ve fallen in love. I read A Kiss Before Christmas last year, and I still highly recommend it. In An Easter Promise, it’s now Spring and our two heroes are finally making the trip to visit Jack’s family in his ancestral manor house in the countryside. This is a particularly nerve-wracking experience for Rory, whose childhood couldn’t have been more different than Jack’s well-heeled upbringing. Things go relatively well as Jack shows Rory around the expansive estate, but they then get frosty when Jack’s mom makes it clear that she believes that Rory is after her son’s money. Gold-digging accusations aside, as a favor to her, Rory steps in as a last-minute contestant in the Best Bake competition at the village festival. Though his brownies were obviously the best, he doesn’t win. Afterward, Jack announces that he and his culinarily gifted boyfriend are going into business together and are opening a bakery. This once again raises the suspicion that Rory is only after Jack for his money, causing a major rift in family relations. Jack tells his mom where she can stick her suspicions, and is ready to return to London, but when Rory takes the family dog for a walk, he gets lost on the moors in a sudden storm. If reading fiction set in the U.K. has taught me anything, it’s that going for a walk on the moors is always a bad idea. The family organizes a search party and journeys into the dark night to find Rory. He is eventually found, and Jack makes amends with his parents. Flash forward a few months to the opening of the bakery and the beginning of a new chapter for our romantic heroes. I really like both of the stories featuring Rory and Jack and sincerely hope that this isn’t the last that we’ll see of them. The opening of the bakery certainly presents several new story possibilities. A.E. Ryecart, if you’re reading this, I’m a fan and a series set in this world would be greatly appreciated. Play It Again by Aidan Wayne. Reviewed by Jeff. I was completely delighted by new-to-me author Aidan Wayne’s Play It Again. Part of what drew me in initially is that part of it relates to what we do here on the podcast. Dovid is a YouTuber alongside his sister Rachel. They run a channel called Don’t Look Now. Among the things they do is review eateries in Seattle for how accessible they are because Dovid is blind. They also interact with their fans, go on trips, open mystery boxes–it’s the full YouTube gambit. Over in Ireland, Sam runs a Let’s Play channel where he plays a popular videogame. Rachel and Dovid become obsessed with Sam’s channel because of his easy-going, fun delivery. Dovid calls out Sam’s channel in an episode and sends Sam’s subscriber count through the roof and when Sam contacts Dovid to thank him they end up talking frequently. Dovid and Sam are single–but as I mentioned live on opposite sides of the globe. Neither of them, quite cutely, realizes how flirty they’re being as they message each other. Initially Dovid offers Sam advice on how to manage his new subscribers and ways to grow his channel but as they move beyond that and get to know each other the realization comes that perhaps there’s more there. This isn’t the first book I’ve read that relies heavily on text messages, instant messenger, email and so on. I loved how these wove into the story. There’s a good deal of, what I’ll call, regular storytelling too, coming from both points of view. Dovid and Sam have quite a lot internal dialogue about their growing predicament. Just getting time to talk on the phone is a challenge with the nine hour difference between them. It doesn’t stop them though from being ridiculously cute and challenging themselves to let this relationship go through its formative stages without being in the same physical location. Of course, the guys have to get together and that happens when Dovid and Rachel had the chance to do a European tour, which includes Ireland. As much as Dovid and Sam questioned themselves as they did the long distance thing, the jitters ratchet up as they meet. Aidan does a great job of showing the hesitancy–from Dovid wanting everything to be perfect to Sam wondering if he’s worthy of Dovid. Sam comes from a family where he was put down a lot and Dovid goes into protector mode when Sam talks about this, which is incredibly touching and sexy. For all the exploration they did via email, the time they spend together in Ireland really made me appreciate the romance that Aidan spun even more. They’d bonded so much before, they almost fall into old married couple mode with how they try to take care of each other. Dovid is particularly mindful of Sam’s asexuality and makes sure Sam isn’t doing anything he doesn’t want to do. It’s wonderful to see two such diverse characters finding their happy. Speaking if the HEA, I’d wondered how it would manifest in a book where the two characters spend probably eighty percent of the book on separate continents. I adored how Aidan brought Sam and Dovid together. I would love to see more in this universe to know how Dovid and Sam are getting on. Besides the wonderful romance, I loved the attention to detail that Aidan put into showing the work Dovid and Rachel do on their channel. From the talk of creating Patreon campaigns to managing social media and how to interact with the audience, I enjoyed it and I don’t think it’s too much for people who don’t do this kind of thing. Another excellent detail, Dovid and Rachel receive a package from a fan in Michigan–it contained Faygo Red Pop and Mackinac Island fudge, two childhood favorites that made me smile and gave me cravings! So, in case you haven’t figured it out, I totally recommend Play it Again by Aidan Wayne. I’m also looking forward to their upcoming book, Hitting the Mark, which comes out at the end of May. This interview transcript is sponsored by Dreamspinner PressDreamspinner Press is proud to publish this week’s guests Hank Edwards and Deanna Wadsworth and their 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: Welcome to the podcast, Hank Edwards and Deanna Wadsworth. Deanna: Hello. Jeff: Thanks for being here. Hank: Thanks for hosting us. Jeff: You guys have written a book together… Deanna: We did. Jeff: …which is super cool. April 30, which is the day after this comes out, you’re releasing the first book in the “Lacetown Murder Mysteries” called “Murder Most Lovely.” Tell us about this new series. What is the scoop? Deanna: Who wants to go first? Hank: Deanna? You go first. Deanna: Okay, I’ll go first. So like a year ago I went out to dinner with my husband, had some cocktails and at like 11:00 at night after having like wonderful conversations in my brain with myself because I think I’m clever, I messaged Hank, and I said, “Dude, we need to write a book together.” And he’s like, “We should.” And then we did. Hank: I might have had some cocktails that night too. I can’t remember. Deanna: You may have. Hank: Might have. Deanna: And it was, “Yeah, we should,” kind of moment. And we didn’t really know where it was going. Hank: We had no idea. Deanna: What’s that? Hank: We had no idea, like nothing. That was just the random start of things. “We should do a book.” We didn’t have an idea or anything. Deanna: It was a completely inane, “Dude, we should write a book together,” kind of moment. And then seriously, the next day, we had some conversations like, “What should it be? Superhero?” And then we just kind of like spitted ideas back and forth. And Hank was like, “We would write the fuck out of a rom-com.” Am I allowed to say fuck? Jeff: Yes, you are. We’ll put a little explicit logo on the episode and you can cuss as much as you want. Deanna: So he was like, “We would write the fuck out of a rom-com.” And I’m like, “We would.” And then we’re like, “What should it be?” And we just spitballed ideas back and forth. Like, I mean, literally, like there was probably like 30 or 40, like, things we shot back and forth at each other. And then Hank picked on two of them. And he’s like, “I love the idea of a mortician and a hairdresser.” Then we ran with it. Hank: Yeah, and we just ran with it. And it just started writing. I mean, we didn’t plan, like, “You take one chapter.” What we did was each of us wrote up a character bio and sent it to each other. And so I wrote up… Deanna: It was so great. Hank: You what? Deanna: It was so great, like blind dates for our character. Hank: It was. It was really fun. So you had Michael, right, and I had Jazz. Deanna: Yeah, you made Jazz. So tell us about Jazz. Hank: So Jazz is very sassy and very snarky. And he’s a talented hairstylist and he’s uprooted his life after separating from his husband, who is a best-selling novelist and mystery novelist. And so he’s moved to this small town on the coast of Lake Michigan in Michigan. And some Michigan love there, Jeff. Yes. Jeff: I love that. Hank: Yes, always. And so he’s starting over and he’s just trying to kind of like rebuild and he works at a fun little salon but he’s kind of, he’s 49 but he tells people he’s 41 and… Deanna: He tell’s people he’s 35, remember? Hank: And he tries that too. Deanna: He totally lies about his age. He says he’s 35. Hank: We had, our editor actually called us up and she was like, “Is this right?” Because he shouldn’t have been around back then. Jazz lies about his age. Deanna: He’s almost 50 but he says he’s 35. Hank: Right. So that’s how that started. And then she brought up Michael. Deanna: Yeah. Hank created Jazz, the hairdresser, which is funny because I actually legitimately am a hairdresser in real life. But when we were talking, Hank had said, “I’ve always wanted to write a hairdresser.” I’m like, “You take the hairdresser. Run with it.” And then I took the mortician, which sounded really great and exciting. And after dozens of Google search, Google decided that I obviously want to be a coroner and mortician and they send me casket ads, but yeah, whatever. So I created a…it was fun because Hank created Jazz, this sassy, almost-50 hairdresser who’s super sarcastic, he’s got long honey blonde hair and super stylish and wears eyeliner and he’s really sassy and he has a big potty mouth. Hank: Oh, yeah. Deanna: Oh, he does. And then I didn’t know who Hank was creating when we came upon this conversation. It was very much, “Hey, you pick your guy. I’ll pick my guy. We’ll see what happens. And I made Michael Fleishman who is a 42-year-old, very uptight, very socially awkward Jewish guy who runs the local funeral home and he’s also the county coroner to our fake county…is it Carver County? Hank: Carver County, yeah. Deanna: Carver County on Lake Michigan, which is sort of like in somewhere between, I don’t know… Hank: Like Saugatuck and… Deanna: Saugatuck and… Hank: Yeah, Muskegon. Deanna: Muskegon, somewhere, a fake county in between there and he’s the county coroner. He’s very uptight and super horny and has this like hilarious like sexual imagination but he’s really reserved and he is obsessed with mystery novels. And he goes to a bookstore in Lacetown, which is our fictional town on Lake Michigan, during a literary festival to meet his favorite also author, Russell Withingham, which happens to be Jazz’s husband. They’re separated but they’re not divorced yet. Hank: And that’s the meet-cute. Jeff: Wow. Hank: I know, right? Deanna: Total rom-com, meet and greet during the rain under an umbrella, cute scene. Until Jazz gets his little…I mean, he really worries Michael thinks he’s a bitchy queen and he kind of is. He’s totally the queen. Hank: He’s really fun to write. Deanna: It’s so fun. Jeff: So when you got these characters who are obviously really opposite to each other, you could just hear it in the bios, what was it like to mash them together? Hank: Oh, man. Jeff: Sparks had to have flown off the pages. Hank: Oh, yes, right away. It was really fun. The first chapter is their meet-cute. And we had…I mean, we do a lot of like editing, right? So we’ll write the first pass and we’ll talk about it. We message a lot during the day and stuff like that, talk about where we want to go with things. And then we use Google Docs to write together. Yeah, so that was a lot of fun to just see the whole creation of it and like set up that setting and understand how they were going to meet and how that was going to go and how Michael would be so taken with Jazz at first sight. It was really fun. Deanna: Totally. Like, “Oh, you’re so handsome. Why is he talking to me?” Hank: That’s really fun. Jeff: And of course you’ve got the mystery element in this too. So rom-com mystery, which trying to think, I haven’t necessarily seen that kind of combo a lot because there’s straight up romantic suspense, of course. And then there’s like cozy mystery and maybe this ekes a little towards that with the rom-com–iness. But did you know that this was going to be like something to go for? Or did you just like mash these two elements together and say, “This thing…” Deanna: We thought about doing like a film noir concept, like a 1940s film. But see, that’s the thing. Like when Hank and I started writing, we didn’t have a direction. We were very much open to anything. And it was sort of like he created Jazz, I created Michael. We knew we wanted a murder. We knew we wanted it to be like… Hank: We wanted a murder. The murder got pretty gruesome too. I was really shocked. Deanna: Yeah, we wanted some things but then as we began to write it, it began to have elements of a real murder. So like our sheriff is blustering and funny. And Michael has his kitty cat, the little Mr. Pickles. Hank: Mr. Pickles. Deanna: Mr. Pickles, the fat, black-and-white kitty, which my dog is growling at right now. Jeff: Which we should note, for the people who may not be watching the video, Deanna just held up this stuffed kitty. And you’re going to be giving these away at GRL in a few months. Deanna: Yes, we have a few couple. So like when we created the story, I guess maybe other people with their writing collaborations might be different than we were. But Hank and I were not in a competition with each other. We were not like…we just knew we were going to have fun because we like each other and we know each other personally. And we were just like, “Let’s have fun with this.” And there was no like obsessive competition with like, “I don’t like the storyline.” Or, “I like this.” It was just sort of like, “What do you want to do? Okay, that sounds fun.” And we both ran with it. And we ended up developing this city on Lake Michigan and this little town and these little side characters. Jeff: Let’s talk about the mystery side of it. Who is dead? Deanna: Oh, yes, the mystery side of it. That’s right. So I’ll talk and then I’ll let Hank talk because I’ve been blabbering too long. So we decided we wanted it to be, like, film noir idea. And then it became like a legitimate murder mystery where there is a dead body and it’s gruesome and it’s creepy and it’s sad. And there’s like some crazy shit happening. And there’s like cops that need to come in. And there’s like a real mystery. And there’s actually a couple side mysteries that are happening over the book arc of the next two novels, novel two of which we will be submitting in the morning. We would have submitted it today but I’m being a typo psycho. I am. I’m a typo psycho. Hank: She’s finding a lot of good stuff, though. I like the changes. So, yeah. So the murder actually got more gruesome than I was anticipating. We were like, “Let’s go.” “Wait, do we want to go?” “Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it.” So it’s…do we want to say who it is? I mean, it happens early on. So I don’t think it’s a spoiler, right? Deanna: Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t we just talk about how creepy the murder is. Hank: Okay, we’ll just leave it just like that. Deanna: Not who is murdered. Hank: Someone’s murdered and maybe their hands are missing. Deanna: Or chopped off. Jeff: Oh, wow. Hank: So, yeah, that’s kind of… Jeff: That’s more gruesome than I expect in a rom-com. Hank: I know. Jeff: I’ll say that. Deanna: Oh, wait ’till you hear about the serial killer. Wait, that was a spoiler. I didn’t say it. Hank: But in the first book… Jeff: Is that a spoiler that we’re leaving in or a spoiler that we’re taking out? Deanna: We’re leaving it in but we’re not gonna respond about it. Jeff: Fair enough. Hank: That’s right. Jeff: A little breaking news there for the podcast that we will not do follow-up questions on. You were saying, Hank, on this murder. Hank: So yeah, so it was gruesome. And then there’s the discovery. But Michael is kind of, you know, he can’t help but be a little excited about it because it’s his first murder because he’s a small town, county coroner. And the only… Deanna: He’s not only a mortician. He’s the county coroner too. Hank: Right. So it’s up to him now to, like, investigate it. He’s never had a murder like this. He’s had a murder but they knew the victim and the attacker. So this is completely new for him. And he reads murder like mystery novels, so he’s really excited about it. So he’s, like, starting to play, like, detective. And then the sheriff is kind of, you know, like all blustering and yelling at him like, “Fleishman. Dilworth.” You know, that’s Jazz’s last name, Jazz Dilworth and he like calls everybody their last name and yells at them. And they’re always a suspect, so, “Don’t leave town.” Deanna: Everyone is a suspect until Musgrave says they’re not a suspect. Hank: “Don’t leave town.” Yeah. Sheriff Musgrave. Jeff: So if I understood correctly, you kind of just created this on the fly. Hank: Yep. Deanna: Totally. Jeff: For both the romance and the mystery? Deanna: Totally. Jeff: How did that play out in like the day-to-day writing? Because I can’t even like imagine having co-written something that there wasn’t more of a plan to it. Hank [softly]: I know! Deanna: How did it go? Hank: Actually it went smoother than I expected. Deanna: It was so much fun. Hank: Yeah. And it was a lot of fun because we chatted a lot on Facebook Messenger. And we’d text and we call each other now and then. We’d have conversations, phone conversations, and we’d plan out where we wanted things to go. And then one of us would say, “Okay, I’ll do this and then you can write that.” And then we just kind of took it. And then it was really fun because like you’d go through and you’d read…you know, how you like read through what you’ve written and it’s somebody else has written something new and you’re like, “Wow, this is like a whole new story.” Like you don’t know what you’re reading, you don’t know anything of what to expect. So it was really fun. Deanna: So awesome because, like, first, I gotta say, writing with Hank Edwards has been a pleasure. Because not only is he a great writer and like stupid funny, like so funny, I can’t even tell you how many times he writes something and I’m just like…laughing. But he and I are not…we’re not competitive individuals. We’re not like jumping into this, like, “Well, this is what I want. This is what I want.” It was so easy, where it was just like we just…Hank created Jazz and then Jazz has this profile that we went with. I created Michael and we had this profile we went with. He and I created an exterior mystery that happened to them. But because he created such a good profile and I just created such a strong profile, both of us knew who Michael and who Jazz were. And then it was like, “Well, Michael wouldn’t do that,” or, “Jazz wouldn’t say that.” And we didn’t like try to, like, undermine the other person. I don’t know. I just feel really blessed. I love you. I just feel blessed to be able to write a story with someone who is so easy and so fun and our sense of humor is both very similar and darkly twisted and inappropriate, like we both knew when our editor was gonna go, “Mm-mm. No.” Hank: I told her several times, I’m like, “This is gonna get cut out and you put it in and it’s gonna get cut out. I’m telling you right now.” And she’s like, “I want to leave it in.” I’m like, “Okay, but it’s gonna get cut.” And it did. Deanna: And I’m like, “They’re not gonna let us use the C-word.” And he’s like, “Maybe they will.” No, they didn’t. But it was so much…I don’t know. It was just one of those things that were really easy because Hank is so fun to work with. It was just easy. I mean, not that writing and editing is easy. But even as we went through the process, there would be scenes…we each knew where the scene was going to go. We knew what scene was going to happen next. And if it was…because our work…he’s very typical 9:00 to 5:00 work schedule, Monday through Friday, and I am Wednesday through Saturday, noon to 8:00, those four days. So like he would do all the stuff Wednesday through Saturday and then I’d open it up on Sunday, and then I’d do all the stuff Sunday to Tuesday. And then it wasn’t like we were fixing or changing each other’s work. It was like, “Oh, that’s a great scene.” And then I would add to it. And then he would take my scene and add to it. And it was just like layering and layering cool stuff with what was already funny. So it was like I knew what I was writing on Tuesday. I wrote this whole scene. And then Hank would write the next scene. And when I would get a chance to read on Thursday, he was like, “Oh, what am I going to read? I know what’s gonna happen but how is it gonna happen?” And he is so funny. So funny. And, I mean, it was just so great writing together. Jeff: So, Hank, for you, what’s kind of your side of that story as you’re like going through and doing your part on the book on your days? Hank: So it was a lot of fun. Like Deanna said, because I’ve been writing during my lunch hours at work, so like Monday through Friday I’d have like an hour and I usually go and I hide somewhere at the building and I’ll, like, be able to focus and write. And it was really fun to go through Google Docs and be able to accept all those changes because we always do the suggestions, right, so like the track changes so we can see what each other has done. And it’s always so much fun to see. It looks like, you know, like Deanna said, it’s like, “Oh,” it’s like a little present. You know, like, “There’s something new.” And I go through. But then seeing how she did the layering, I was talking to my husband, Fred, and I was like, you know, it’s like I’m picking up such good ideas about how to layer emotion in. Deanna is awesome at doing that and like pulling out the emotions in a scene and like digging in deeper where it needs to be. You know, that’s something that I’ve always kind of like, you know, I’m always like, “Write the action. Write the action. Write the action.” Deanna: But that’s what I love about his writing because he will write action that conveys emotion, whereas I would have written a long, drawn-out emotional monologue. And somehow the two just worked so great. I think. Hank: We are a good blend together like that. So, yeah, it’s really funny and she’s funny and really darkly funny. So it’s been a lot of fun because there’s some stuff where I like write something dark and funny and then, you know, you get the comment. It’s always fun to get that comment like, “LOL. Oh, my God.” And so then like all of a sudden like further down the page, she’s added somebody I’m like, “Oh, my God, you did not just write that.” So it’s really funny. Deanna: We’re so wrong. We’re so wrong, we’re so right, Hank. Hank: Yes. Jeff: Well, I really like the organic method it sounds like you guys had. Because like my brain can’t even begin to process trying to co-write without a plan. But I’ve heard other people do that and it works out great. What, as you got the draft done, what was the revision and also, I guess, making the book seem like it had one voice? What was that like? So was it like two different people at work? Deanna: Can I respond to this? Hank: Of course. Deanna: Okay, so, Hank would send me…well, it was in Google Docs. So we would get scenes together. So I feel like the way it went before anyone else read anything or we got any feedback from editors, from beta readers, or whatever, it was like we had our strong characters decided who they were and what they were and what the mystery was. And he would write a scene and then I would get it and I’m like, “Oh, it’s a good scene. I love where it’s going. Maybe…” Okay, so like I’m not going to give a spoiler, but there’s a scene at the end of Book 1 where the murderer is caught and our two heroes are like in this epic battle fighting them, like the murderer, right? Okay. So Hank writes that scene and I’m like, “Ah,” and then I go in and I add some fighting, some struggling, and maybe a little dialogue. Hank comes back in, he adds a little more dialogue. He remembers that the gun is on the other side of the room. Whatever the detail is, we both keep adding layers. And I think it comes back to the point that we’re both so invested in our characters and we weren’t, like, competing to try to be the better person. And I think that’s a lot of it. I mean, I think you can’t co-write a book together if you’re competitive or need center of attention. Hank and I just had so much fun. It would be like, “Oh, yeah. Add that, add that.” And he’s just like “Oh, my God. We’re great. That’s great. You shot him. Oh, I didn’t expect to shoot him. Let’s do that.” Whatever it was and we kept adding these layers and it became so much fun. But in the end, when we would get a scene and it was completed, we would…each of us would go back and read through the whole manuscript and be like, “Oh, we missed that detail.” And Hank would send that to me. And I’d be like, “Oh, yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that.” And he would add it. Or I would like, even today, we’re actually like one day off submitting Book 2. We were going to submit it today but I am like typo crazy. So I sent the manuscript to my Kindle so I could find any misspellings and typos. And I was like, “Oh, my God. We have a scene where Michael and Jazz are sitting in Michael’s living room with the TV. And in Book 1, he only has a TV in his bedroom. What are we going to do?” And Hank is like, “That’s cool. Good for catching that.” And I feel like that’s kind of how we’ve been like we’ll catch something and go. “Oh, I’m glad you caught that.” Hank: Yeah. But to your point, Jeff, you said like about planning and writing off the cuff, so the first book, I think, Deanna, you can tell me if I’m wrong. But the first book was really, I mean, it wasn’t easy because writing is hard but it was easier. Book 2, it was more of a struggle I think with writing it. Deanna: Book 2 was more of a struggle. Hank: And we had a lot going on. So we have like an overarching mystery, we have another, like, contained mystery. Deanna: Yes. Hank: So we’ve talked about it and we’re like Book 3, we really need to plan it out more. We’re gonna… Like once we let this book to get out a little bit, we’re going to like start planning Book 3 and then really like… Deanna: We need a serious luncheon with some planning. Hank: Yeah, so, absolutely. Deanna: Book 1 was very organic and natural. And Book 2, I mean, you’ll probably agree, Hank, I think we fell in love with our side characters so much we got distracted with all these sides stories. Even our editor was like, “Why are you talking about that and that?” We’re like… Hank: “Because we like them.” Deanna: So we had to cut a lot of scenes and really focus back on the romance, on book 2. Jeff: DVD extras, deleted scenes. Hank: DVD extras, exactly. Jeff: But let’s talk about those side characters a little bit because there’s a whole paragraph of the blurb for Book 1 that details the side characters. Michael’s sassy assistant, Kitty, the grumpy Sheriff Musgrave, Russell’s creepy PR rep, Norbert, Michael’s grandfather who likes his Manhattans strong and his women saucy. And of course, who we’ve already met, Mr. Pickles Furryton the Third. Hank: Yes. Mm-hmm. Jeff: So did you guys split those up in the same way that you took Jazz, Hank, and Deanna took Michael? Or did these get created on the fly as you needed them? Deanna: They were on the fly. Hank: Yeah. Deanna: We just like… Hank: We just do, kind of. Yeah. Deanna: I think I came up with Mr. Pickles Furryton the Third and Hank created Sheriff Musgrave. Because I think when we were talking, Sheriff Musgrave was actually like an old man and Hank made him this whole, like, Ron Perlman kind of character. Hank: Yes. Very Ron Perlman. Deanna: He has a lot of attitude. And Kitty, I don’t know where she came from. Hank: You created Kitty. Deanna: Did I? Okay, because I imagine her. Do you watch “Blue Blood” with Tom Selleck? Jeff: I have not. Deanna: Oh, anyways. His secretary is this voluptuous like blonde chick and I pictured her. And I don’t know who created Grandpa. Hank: I think we both did. Deanna: You had Steve. Hank: Oh, yeah, the handyman. Deanna: We both made Ezra. Hank: The apprentice. Deanna: I don’t know anything about them. That’s not a spoiler at all. Jeff: That’s very impressive to just kind of create on the fly like that. Two people pantsing would make my head explode, but. Hank: It was insane. I don’t know how we managed to do it but… Jeff: I think you had fun with it all the more. Hank: …we had really good feedback from the editor. Deanna: We did have so much fun, Jeff. Hank: Yeah. Deanna: I don’t know how lucky I am. Like a year ago, I sent him a drunk text message that we should write a book together. And we have had the best year. Jeff: Had it even crossed your minds before the drunk text to do this in some, like, other random moment? Deanna: No. Hank: Never ever really even talked about it? I mean, we see each other GRL. She comes up for Ferndale Pride because she lives about an hour and a half away from me. Deanna: I’m northwest Ohio, he’s southwest Michigan, so we’ve done some pride festivals together. But in all freaking honesty, the whiskey made me do it, Jeff. I literally texted him, “Hey, full disclosure, I’ve been drinking. We should write a book together.” I do believe, Hank, that was the quote. Hank: Pretty much. Yeah. Deanna: And he was like, “We would write the fuck out of a rom-com.” And I was like, “We would.” And then we ran with it. And then that’s that. It was just, like, all fun. Jeff: And it’s interesting that you’re evolving in Book 2 and probably in Book 3 too. You had the fun moment. Now you kind of have to make everything keep tying together in the next two books. Hank: Yes. It’s all got to come together now for the third book. Yeah. Jeff: Because that’s like, yeah, when you have all that tied together stuff, because I’ve been reading a lot of romantic suspense lately where it’s like something that arcs across a trilogy or whatever, and it’s like…it’s exciting. Hank: Right. Deanna: Yeah. Book 2 is tentatively called “Murder Most Deserving,” and it was a lot harder to write than the first book. Hank: Yeah. Jeff: As fun though, I hope? Hank: Oh, yeah. Deanna: Oh yeah, just as fun, but there were moments I feel like we both checked out. And we’ve had this conversation. We know that we checked out because we had decided on a storyline for Michael and Jazz. And then we were like, “This doesn’t feel right.” Because it’s not your book, it also belongs to someone else, you don’t just say, “Oh, that storyline can’t happen,” because two of you decided together so you keep going with it. And then there’s moments where we had to talk and we’re like…where I was like, “I don’t like this.” And he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t like it either.” And I thought I said I didn’t like it. I’m like, “Maybe you said you didn’t like it. But I didn’t really expect you didn’t like it and I don’t know why we didn’t like it. And I don’t even know why we’re doing it.” And it was like we had…I mean, there was like, there was a couple of moments like that on the story. And there was also like we said in the beginning, we love our side characters too much. And we gave them a lot of screen time they did not deserve, even though we love them. So we had to distract and take a lot of stuff out. Not that we wanted to take it out but it was like why is this thing here? No one cares… Hank: Right. Deanna: …except us. So it was a little different. Like we created this wonderful world and in Book 2 we kind of just went crazy. We, like, went crazy with the Cheez Whiz. It’s like, “I love Sheriff Musgrave. I love Missy.” And we just wrote all these scenes and we’re like… And part of that I will say is my fault because I sent a lot of scenes to Hank before we even plotted the book. I was like, “I wrote this funny scene I’m going to send you.” And he’s like, “I love it.” And we wrote it. Hank: And I was like opening emails from Oprah. “And you get a storyline, and you get a storyline.” Deanna: Totally. Jeff: Maybe these could become short stories for these characters if you can’t get them into the book. Hank: That’s great. Jeff: So take a moment to brag on each other. And outside of working on this book, what do you like about each other’s work? Hank: I’ll go. Jeff: Hank first. Hank: All right. I love Deanna’s depth of characters. So her books, I think the first one I read of yours was “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” And I was like, “Oh, Ichabod. Oh, you naughty boy.” But then I can’t remember in what order then I read them but like “Easy Ryder,” I love that book. That is an awesome book. And I love the time period and I love the characters and I just love all of it and the discovery. That’s a road trip, another…you love the road trip books. Deanna: Apparently. Hank: Apparently. And then “Wrecked” is awesome. It’s really good. But she has a way of just like, you know, pulling up those emotions and really getting into the romance of it and doing an awesome job with it and having the characters. And then the conflict is organic, it’s not, like, fabricated. And it all blends together. She’s got a really good sense of story. Jeff: Nice. Deanna: That’s so sweet. I feel like, Hank, your dialogue sells your story. You could write a whole book on just dialogue with nothing else and people would buy it and laugh. You’re hilarious and your dialogue is great. And I feel like our styles mesh well because I do write more… I like to write a lot of the internal monologue and the emotion. But I’ll tell you an example, and this is a semi-spoiler in Book 2. But this is what I love about Hank’s writing. Okay. I’m not gonna tell too much of the story but there is a scene where something really shocking happens for our character, Jazz, the hairdresser. And the scene is in Jazz’s point of view. You’ll know what I’m talking about in a second. So the scene is in Jazz’s point of view and then Michael, our mortician, bursts through the door. And everyone is like, “How did you get here?” And he’s like, “I ran here.” And that sounds like simplistic but the emotional intensity of why Michael would run five blocks to the salon where Jazz works on a mere phone call just conveys so much intensity with three words, “I ran here.” And that’s what I love about Hank’s writing. I mean, I write the long emotional, internal monologue. And Hank writes that same intense emotional monologue in three words, “I ran here.” And I think, I mean, I’ve always…that’s what I love about his books. But I feel like those two things complement each other in our writing. Like I like to write the long drawn out emotional and he writes that same scene in three words, “I ran here.” And that’s why I love writing with him. Jeff: Cool. They’re hearting each other for those people not watching the video right now. Jeff: So you mentioned three towns…three towns, no, three books in the “Lacetown” series are planned. Do you foresee life in the universe beyond those three since you’re having such a good time? Deanna: Yeah. Hank: We talked about it. We’ve discussed it, yeah. We’ve got the trilogy planned and then we’ll see what happens with it. Deanna: We have at least two in our head. Jeff: That’s cool. Deanna: Beyond the three. Jeff: Now what about separately? What’s coming up next outside of the “Lacetown” series for you both? Hank: You have something coming up soon, Deanna. Deanna: Well, I have one thing coming up for sure and hopefully two. I also write young adult fiction just like Hank does under his…is it RG or RD? Hank: R.G. Deanna: R.G. Thomas. Hank has a young adult series under RG Thomas. And I have a young adult series, K.D. Worth, which is very different from my Deanna Wadsworth writing. It’s young adults/new adults because my characters are 19 and there are some, I don’t know, level-three sexy moments. So you can’t really…like you know people get funny about young adult that has sexy stuff in it. There’s a strong spiritual element with the main character who was trying to kill himself because of his family sending him to like one of those creepy pray-the-gay away camps. And the moment he kills himself he’s saved by a young teenage Grim Reaper, who decides that he wants to give him a second chance in life. And there’s a sassy foul-mouthed, because no one understands why Deanna would write a character like that, a sassy foul-mouthed angel who helps these boys on their journey. And that story is called “The Grim Life.” And Book 3, the final series, the final saga in that trilogy “The Lost Souls” is coming out this fall. And I’m really, really excited about that. I mean, a lot of M/M or gay romance, whatever you want to call it, authors know that young adult isn’t where the sales and money are at, sadly, but this is like a really intense…I don’t want to say pet project because that trivializes it, but it’s really a series that means more to me than almost anything I’ve ever written. Hank: Yeah. You’ve been working on these for what? Like two years now? Deanna: Yeah, four. It took me two years to write Book 3 because I just emotionally invested in it. There’s a lot of death and questioning of what goes on on the other side and where God sees your soul and all these like intensely hard questions. And to make things harder on myself, I put a school shooting in Book 3 because why not? Hank: No, why? Deanna: It’s so emotionally intense that you can’t write it. So that comes out this fall. But I’m hoping my second book in my Pride of the Caribbean Cruise series comes out which is a merman. Hank: Nice. Deanna: A merman… Hank: On a cruise. Deanna: …on a Caribbean cruise. It’s like I like to be intense or I like to be funny. I can’t be… Hank: There’s no in between, right. Jeff: Either end of the spectrum. Hank: That’s right. Deanna: That’s what I do. So that’s what’s coming out for me. Jeff: Cool. Hank: I will be working on the final book of the “Critter Catcher” series, final book for now. It’s tentatively titled “Dread of Night.” So and I’ve got about six chapters written. I’m working on a big pivotal scene also, so I need to just like…now that Book 2 has been sent off for consideration I can like, you know, kind of focus on that because I’m really bad at like jumping between projects too. Like my mind gets stuck in the other characters because while I’m working on this other I’m like, “But wait, what about…?” So, yeah. Jeff: Cool. All right. What is the… Hank: There’s other stuff to work on too but that’s the big thing coming up. Deanna: I love the “Critter Catcher” books. They’re so good. I manipulated Hank into giving me the last book when I was sick last summer. I was like, “Shouldn’t you send it to me? I know that you’re going to submit it for publishing in a month, but I’m really sick.” Hank: “I need to beta it. I’m sick.” Yeah. Deanna: Yes. I did do that. Jeff: And it worked too, right? Deanna: It worked. Hank: I did. I sent it. I was good. Deanna: And it was worth it. Jeff: So what’s the best way for readers to keep up with you guys online? Let’s start with Hank. Hank: I have a website. It’s hankedwardsbooks.com. You can also find my young adult fiction at townofsuperstition.com. And I do have those books listed on my Hank Edwards’ website just to make it easier. And then I’m on Facebook. I have a Facebook page. It’s facebook.com/hankedwardsbooks. And I really don’t use…Twitter confuses me. I get really…it’s just this noise. It’s like people yelling at each other. And so I have a Twitter account but I’m not out there much. But I am on Instagram. I usually post pictures of my cats. You know, and that’s @hankedwardsbooks as well. Jeff: Cool. And Deanna? Deanna: I’m on Facebook, deannawadsworthauthor. And Instagram, I go by @deannawads. I don’t know why I didn’t finish my last name but I don’t know. Everybody called my grandpa Wadsy. So I should have done Deanna Wadsy but I screwed that up. But I’m on those two. A little on Twitter and a little on Pinterest, all under Deanna Wadsworth. Mostly my most activity is on Instagram or my website, deannawadsworth.com. And that’s it. And you should totally read Hank’s R.G. Thomas books. It’s like Harry Potter but gay with, like, dragons. And little garden gnomes. I fricking love those books. You better write another one after we write our book. After we write our book. You’ve got to. Hank: Got it. Jeff: You’ve got your marching orders now, Hank. Hank: I do. I get them a lot. Deanna: He doesn’t have a wife, but… Hank: It’s all right. Deanna: …I’ll jump in that role. Hank: She’s my work wife. Jeff: All right. Well, this has been a blast. We will definitely link up to everything in the show notes that we’ve talked about here. And we wish you the best of success on the “Lacetown Murder Mysteries.” Hank: Thanks very much, Jeff. It’s been fun. Deanna: Thank you, Jeff.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: OK, now Jeff, I've known you for a long time. You are a very resourceful person. You always have these crazy jobs, and recently you had a job at a hospital, but you weren't a doctor. Could you please describe your job?Jeff: Todd, it was a pharmaceutical company clinic that I was working at and it was, I was a guinea pig, a medical guinea pig which means that a new drug that is being introduced into a foreign country must be tested on an individual before it can be sold on the open market so I'm a guinea pig. It's tested on me, and once the results come back and everything is OK then it is sold to the public.Todd: So when you say you were a guinea pig, like what did they do to you every day, or what was your routine?Jeff: Well let me qualify that it's not a good job. You can't really make a living at it and bring up children but it pays very well,..., very very well. It's very lucrative so that's one of the enticements for doing this kind of work but it's just, your day is you get up are administered the drug, for example, a flu medicine and then you remain in the clinic all day long and you read and write. You have the freedom to do whatever you like, but it's very monitored so you can't leave the clinic but you can do whatever you like to do in the clinic.Todd: OK, so you're in the clinic and what would a daily routine be? What do you do? Do you get up and exercise or what?Jeff: A daily routine varies between individuals, so with me, there were twelve on the study, twelve young men and some of the guys would get up late and sleep until noon. Well, they would get up for breakfast. You have to have breakfast at seven a.m. and what you eat is monitored and then you eat lunch at noon and you eat your dinner at six. In between a lot of the guys read or watched movies or played video games. I used my time by doing yoga or reading, doing work, studying Japanese. I tried to use my time a little bit constructively, whereas some of the other guys sort of just used it as a vacation.Todd: OK, so you're in this clinic for a week or whatever. So when you get out from being sequestered in there, what is the first thing you do?Jeff: The first thing that I did when I got out was..no, OK, no...I can't say that. The second thing I did when I got out of the clinic was have a nice meal because the food in the clinic wasn't very good so, the second thing was that I had a really good meal, a nice meal of food.Todd: Alright, Jeff. Thank you for sharing that.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: OK, now Jeff, you've been talking about your documentary. Can you talk about how do you actually pitch your documentary? How do you get it out there so people can see it on television?Jeff: Because like I said before, it's independent so we have no one distributing this for us or we didn't sell this first before we shot the documentary which is usually the regular process so it just requires straight salesmanship, going door-to-door, talking to different channels and stations and seeing if they're interested, really trying to be convincing and making them think that this is something that the audience really wants. Just door-to-door.Todd: OK, so let's say you go into a television studio and you have your documentary on hand, what do you say? Like, how do you get someone to even look at it?Jeff: Yeah, that's very difficult. Usually in this world a good saying is everything is who you know and without having a foot in the door somehow, you're usually rejected, so and the good thing is that I do know a few in a few different countries so I can usually get a connection somehow who works in a studio or in the television station somewhere and they're recommended, we're recommended to them by our friend, so usually it's a foot in the door or someone else.Todd: OK, and actually, let's talk about money. Like how did you actually pay for this documentary? I mean, did you put it on a credit card or what?Jeff: Well, doing a documentary is very expensive, very very expensive, and luckily there's three of us, three brothers who did this so we split the costs and one of the reasons we chose India is because it's one of the cheapest places in the world, which allowed us a little bit of mobility to stay as long as we did, and film as long as we did because everything is so cheap there so. And then yeah, we just put it on credit cards. All our savings. Spent all our savings on this documentary.Todd: So for a filmmaker or documentary personnel, how do you get your money back?Jeff: Getting your money back in not easy. Getting a portion of your money back in not easy. If you're lucky if it's a good documentary and it's a good idea and it's something and audience wants, then you can sell it. You can manage to sell it, but it's a gamble. It's a gamble. It's like anything else. You might sell it or you might not sell it, so if you do sell it you get your money back. If you don't, it's a loss you've to be prepared for that.Todd: Well, I hope you strike it rich, good luck.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号：VOA英语每日一听Todd: OK, now Jeff, you were saying that you made a movie. Could you talk about what was the best thing, or the highlight of making a movie?Jeff: Todd, documentary. We made a documentary, television documentary. The best thing about making the television documentary, it was independent, so we had total control. We shot what we wanted when we liked and I think that was the best thing. We were our own bosses so I think when you're working for someone else you lose creativity so we could do anything we liked so that was the best thing.Todd: Sorry, documentary. So, then what was the worst thing. Like what are some troubles that you had that really drove you nuts?Jeff: Well, because it was independent, we had nobody helping us, which meant all the technical, the artistic decisions were made by us and we had no idea what we're doing, so when you have no idea what you are doing and you're working by yourself it can be very, very difficult, very frustrating, just the lack of knowledge, not knowing what you're doing so yeah, that was the hardest thing.Todd: So if you were to make a documentary again, now that you've made one, what do you know now that you would do differently?Jeff: We'd hire some professional help because it's too difficult to do it on your own. We picked up a camera. We bought a camera and we started filming this and we had no idea of what we were doing so it was too difficult. Next time, which we think we will do another one we will hire some professional help, professional cameraman, and maybe someone that has graduated from art school.Todd: So you say you would like to do another documentary. What would you like to do a documentary on?Jeff: Well, we have a couple of ideas. We have two main ideas now. One is to canoe from, canoe down the Dawson River which is in the artic in Northern Canada, which would be very interesting: rugged nature and animals and like the pioneers from years ago, and the other one is to drive an alternative fuel vehicle, from the top to the tip of South America and that would be fueled by human poop, so those are two next ideas. Both are difficult so those are the ideas we have.Todd: OK, Jeff, we'll be checking our TV guide waiting for those great documentaries. Thanks.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: OK, now Jeff, you made a movie recently. Can you talk a little about what your movie is about?Jeff: OK, Todd, I want to qualify that it is not a movie. It's a television documentary. Very big difference, but actually a movie and a documentary, there's not a lot of difference. I think the main difference is probably time. There are a beginning and a middle and an ending to both, but television documentary must be done in 46 minutes plus commercials and a movie is two hours or three hours.Todd: OK, well thanks for that. OK, so it's a documentary. What is the documentary about?Jeff: Our documentary is about Indian life, and about our lives interacting with the Indians. We're driving a small auto-rickshaw, which is a three-wheeler. It's a three-wheeled car, a mini-three-wheeled car without doors and it doesn't go very fast and it's very uncomfortable and we drive that from the eastern border at Bangladesh to the western border of Pakistan, and we drive it straight across to Northern India.Todd: Wow, that's some idea. Where did you get this idea? Why did you decide "Hey, I'm going to go film you know, going across India?Jeff: Well, we'd been to India numerous times and it's an amazing country and we wanted to go back and we wanted to do something, we wanted to do some sort of video or documentary there and we wanted to do something unique that hasn't been done before there and this sort of just popped up in our heads through discussion and kicking around certain ideas, so it was just sort of an inspirational, spur of the moment thing. They're everywhere in India and we saw one and said: "Let's drive one across India so it was sort of just came to mind."Todd: Wow! Well if you had to describe your trip or sum up what the whole experience was like, how would you describe it?Jeff: I think the best word to use to describe the trip was stupid! I don't think anyone would recommend doing it to anyone. I wouldn't do it again and it was very dangerous. It was very uncomfortable. It was very hot, very noisy. It did nothing. I think the main thing it did was take a few years off my life but it was an experience. It wasn't fun but it was a good experience.Todd: Alright. Thanks, Jeff.
Jeff & Will talk about their upcoming trip to the 2019 LA Times Festival of Books. They also discuss two series they’ve been watching: Comedy Central’s The Other Two and Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists. Books reviewed this week include Kim Fielding’s The Spy’s Love Song, Ari McKay’s Take Two and Erin McLellan’s Clean Break. Jeff interviews Erin McLellan about Clean Break, the second book in her Farm College series, and about why it’s important for her to tell stories based in her home state of Oklahoma. They also talk about her Love Life series, what got her started writing, her author influences and the TV she likes to binge watch. Complete shownotes for episode 182 are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. -------- Here’s the text of Jeff’s book reviews: The Spy’s Love Song by Kim FieldingRock star and secret agent on a mission to a foreign country to topple a dictator all wrapped up in a Dreamspun Desires package. That combination pushed all of my romantic suspense buttons and I had no choice but to pick up this book. And I loved it every bit as much as I thought I would. I was in tropey goodness heaven with the rock star thing, a bodyguard vibe plus lovers on the run and some occasional forced proximity. Jaxon Powers is a jaded rock star who’s at the end of a long tour. After waking up in a hotel room barely remembering what happened the night before, he might also be ready for a change in lifestyle. He gets a lot more than he bargained for when his manager brings him to a meeting with the State Department. It seems the dictator that runs the small country of Vasnytsia is a fan and wants Jaxon to perform a private concert as well as a large outdoor one for a worker’s festival. The U.S. wants Jaxon to do this because it’s a chance to improve US relations with the Russia-supported dictator. The only person going with Jaxon on the trip is secret agent Reid Stanfill. Besides keeping Jaxon safe, Reid’s got an agenda that has global ramifications. I fell in love with this book right from the beginning. Kim plays with expectations from the beginning. While Jaxon appears to be the spoiled rock star we quickly find that’s not what he wants to be. He’s a small town boy, doing what he loves to do but he wants more substance to the way he’s living. The trip to Vasnytsia does exactly that as his world view gets a complete makeover. Not only does Jaxon end up traveling without the entourage he’s used to, as Reid’s mission goes sideways the two end up on the run. Reid’s mission is to try to destabilize the country and force elections and that makes him an enemy of the state. Despite his fear, Jaxon won’t leave Reid to fend for himself. Jaxon knows his celebrity can protect both of them and he sticks by Reid even as Reid tries to force the star to safety. Through all of the crazy events that could result in either of them dying, Jaxon and Reid manage to start a romance. Reid tries to keep it from beginning since they’re in a country where homosexuality is illegal but they give in to their passions. That’s just the beginning as they share stories about their pasts, which only endears them more to each other. The mix between the romance and suspense is perfect, giving our guys time to fall in love even while things around them go crazy. I liked that Kim avoided the usual Dreamspun scenario of having alternating points of view. Everything in the story is Jaxon, which works perfectly so we don’t know Reid’s mission or anything else too early. It makes for a very snappy read going on the roller coaster that Jaxon experiences. Kim brings Vasnytsia to life through its people. It starts with the guides taking Jaxon around the country, giving him peek behind the propaganda. As he meets fans who must covertly speak to him as it wouldn’t be proper for anyone to talk with the American he begins to understand why Reid’s mission is so important. Ultimately it’s these people who shelter Reid and Jaxon and help complete his mission–with a particularly awesome assist from Jaxon. Drew Bacca does a great job on the audiobook, including having to sing a couple of Jaxon’s songs. This is the first book in the “Stars From Peril” series that Kim has in the Dreamspun line. The second book, Redesigning Landry Bishop, comes out in May and I’m already looking forward to it. -------- Clean Break by Erin McLellanI almost didn’t pick this book up because I couldn’t imagine reading a book that included the characters taking care of Madagascar hissing cockroaches. I’m not a fan of bugs and the trigger warning page discusses more about the bugs than anything else. However, I’m glad I listened to the re-assurances I wouldn’t be creeped out because this is a terrific book–and the bugs really are a non-thing. This book, the second in Erin’s “Farm College” series, throws together Connor Blume and Travis Bedford–two guys who very much don’t like each other in the aftermath of an awkward, failed hookup. As their final college term begins, Connor and Travis are taking Entomology 101 and because the professor likes students to sit alphabetically, they’re next to each other and end up becoming class partners. Their dislike for each other radiates from them during that first class. Connor’s OCD and anxiety flare up just being near the guy, who he’s still wildly attracted to and wants to have a real discussion with. Travis has the attraction too but carries the anger from their previous hookup. It only gets worse as they get the assignment that they’ll be caring for Madagascar hissing cockroaches for the semester or that they’ll have to answer discussion questions together. It doesn’t take long for the sparks of dislike to turn into sparks of desire and they end up spending time after class in a storage closet making out. Neither of them is particularly happy that they’re giving in to their desires, which makes the scenes cuter and hotter. Travis wants the fussy farmer and Connor very much wants the stand-offish English major. Even as their make out sessions start to cool their hatred, they realize they’re constrained by time. At graduation, Connor is set to take over management of his parent’s farm, even though he doesn’t necessarily want that. Meanwhile, Travis can’t wait to get out of the small town for his legal aid internship and then on to law school. The guys have their futures mapped out and there’s no space for the other. That doesn’t stop them from getting emotionally entangled. Erin does a terrific job of bringing these two together. As they move their hookups to the bedroom, Travis discovers he likes Connor’s controlling side and gives himself over to it. Connor though never takes advantage, making sure that he’s always got Travis’s consent and that Travis enjoys himself. That continues as Travis reveals he’d like to be spanked. Both guys discover this is exactly what they need. Beyond the sex though, their efforts to not get too attached aren’t helped by their post-sex talks. Travis usually wants Connor to tell him a story and it’s here that he opens up bit by bit about his anxiety, his OCD and his pre-determined future. There’s so much going on for him, as a reader I wanted to wrap him in a hug and do whatever I could to ease the load he carried. Travis talks a lot too and over time we learn what makes him so driven–it turns out he lost one of his dreams due to an accident and he doesn’t want to let anything or anyone cost him this one. Just a she was great at bringing them together, Erin tears the guys apart just as expertly. It’s a tough go as Connor and Travis force themselves apart as graduation nears. Erin does a number on the characters as they emotionally hurt themselves and each other as they keep to their plans. Both guys want to talk to the other so badly and yet they’ve promised not too. For Connor, this is particularly bad for his OCD. Of course, this is a romance, so all must end happy. Thankfully how Erin gets the guys back together his as satisfying as everything she did earlier in the book. There is a way for them to be together–it just takes time for them to get there. -------- Interview Transcript - Erin McLellan Jeff: Welcome, Erin, to the podcast. Erin: Hi. Thanks for having me. Jeff: Very excited to have you here. You’re a new-to-me author and I just finished reading “Clean Break,” which I have to tell you, I adored so much. I’m reviewing it right before we get into the interview segment I’ll have reviewed it to kinda tell everybody about it. Erin: Yay, thank you. Jeff: It is the second book in your “Farm College” Series. So before we dive into “Clean Break,” tell us more about what the “Farm College” Series is about. Erin: Okay. So it’s just two books so far like you said and they are set in a fictional college in Western Oklahoma. And I would say kind of the overarching themes are… Since they’re college stories, they’re new adult that’s kind of coming of age and self-discovery, finding your authentic self, finding a home is kind of a big one. I think that’s kind of important at that age. You’ve moved out of your parent’s house or wherever you grew up for a lot of people and kinda figuring out what is home, what is family, that kind of thing. So those types of themes are kind of follow both books. They’re both kind of angsty to be honest though “Controlled Burn,” more so than “Clean Break” actually. Jeff: Oh, my goodness. Erin: So be prepared. But, yeah, and I think in terms of… The setting is really important to me at least as the author and those books is important to me. I’m from Oklahoma. I live in Alaska now, but I’m from Oklahoma. And it’s important to me to write stories that are set in Oklahoma that have, you know, LGBTQIA+ characters in Oklahoma. And I know as somebody that reads a lot of romance, I don’t see that very often. I don’t see romance set there or it might be… I have seen it where it’s, you know, characters that are like, escaping Oklahoma which certainly is the case for a lot of people, but it’s also the case that people live and love, and make their lives there. And I kinda wanna show that. Jeff: Does a farm college like this exist in Oklahoma? Is it based on a real place? Erin: No. Kind of I guess. A lot of the kind of small details mirror Oklahoma State which was my alma mater for undergrad, but Oklahoma State is so much bigger than the college that I created. So Farm College is kind of a smaller college in Western Oklahoma that I’ve created, but in terms of being, you know, having a strong agriculture program, but also kind of having this liberal arts situation that’s going on and a pretty vibrant LGBTQIA community, I’ve kind of made most of that up. So… Jeff: And I agree that we don’t see, I mean, besides books set in Oklahoma, really the more rural settings kinda, it’s always escaping from those places. And I like that you kind of built a place as if this is what you’d like to see even if it doesn’t quite exist there now. Erin: Right. And I think it’s kind of funny when I started writing “Controlled Burn.” It was pre-2016, right? And I kind of had this, you know, I kind of had this idea that it’s getting better, right? It’s looking up for lots of communities and I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the case anymore. I hope it will be and I hope it is eventually. But, you know, there’s good and bad, I think, about places like Oklahoma and Kansas, and Texas. And, you know, Oklahoma is really special to me. It’s really important to me. Kansas is the same, but there’s also problems and, you know, I wanna kinda write those stories. And I also, thinking about Oklahoma or Texas probably more so, a lot of the romances that I’ve read that are set there are like, ranch, you know, the cowboys, the farmers which there is kind of a farmer in “Clean Break.” But there’s a lot of people that live in Oklahoma and in Texas, in Kansas that aren’t cowboys. So I wanted to tell that story too. Jeff: Right. And you really hinted that a little bit with some of the dialogue between Travis and Connor in “Clean Break” too as they kind of talk about the difference between cowboy and more the farmer type that Connor and his family are. Erin: Right. Jeff: And so, as we kinda move this direction, tell us what “Clean break” is about and kind of who Travis and Connor are. Erin: Right. So “Clean Break” is about Travis and Connor. Travis is…he’s the best friend in “Controlled Burn.” So if you read “Controlled Burn,” you see quite a bit of him. He’s an English major. He’s from Houston, Texas, very ambitious. He’s got these kind of life plans and nothing’s gonna slow him down, right? He wants to go to law school. He’s got an internship after for the summer. He’s planning to move to Saint Louis eventually to work at this legal aid charity. He has this very, you know, set goals and he’s also kind of a unique, quirky, funny character to me. And then you have Connor who comes in and I don’t know if I would say at the beginning of the book, it’s more like pre-book before the book happens, they have a little bit of a failed hookup in a lot of ways. Some misunderstandings and so, they don’t like each other very much. And then in the first chapter, they get paired together as class partners in a class. And Connor is a farm boy. He’s kind of a townie, right? He’s from Elkville which is the city that’s it’s set in. He’s expected to take over the family farm and so, he’s got this, you know, he kind of his future plans are set, right? He doesn’t have a say over them and he’s… I have a big soft spot in my heart for him. He’s got anxiety, he has OCD. I really wanted to kind of write against the archetype of the like, lackadaisical cowboy or even like, the kind of the hard cowboy or, you know, that kind of archetype that I had in my head. I wanted to write a sensitive farm boy who’s in therapy and, you know, it doesn’t really match some of the people or the characters that I have seen written that way. And kind of the main issue between them, first is that they don’t like each other, but they’re attracted to each other, right? But the kind of the main two things that I wanted to do with the book is I wanted to write a complex authentic characters that are really well-rounded and hopefully, I accomplish that. And then the other thing that I really wanted to do was kind of write to people that are heading towards their future which is graduation and then, you know, the future beyond. And then their futures don’t mesh. There’s not really a way to come together at the end of graduation. They’re moving in different directions and I think that’s a really universal thing for people in college that are dating and dating seriously… do you compromise your future for somebody else? Do you change it? How do you make it work? So those are kind of the two things that I really wanted to hit on and of course, there’s, you know, there’s some kink that happens in the book and kind of self-discovery with that especially on Connors’ part. So there’s a lot going on, but those two things. The characterization and the conflict there with their futures not meshing are the two things I really wanted to hit. Jeff: And I think you did them both, I mean, really well. This book has so much going on in it and yet it never…the story also never gets way down either with the weight of everything that’s kind of moving around here. Erin: Thank you. Jeff: And really, you started them off as enemies who sort of move to friends to sort of get to lovers. Erin: Right. Jeff: Just that progression was so fun to watch unfold as they both pick at each other and then also help each other grow at the same time. It’s like, they lift each other up and kinda tear each other down at the same time. Erin: Right. And I hope that that is realistic. I think people… Because in a lot of ways they are kind of mean to each other at certain points and people can be mean to each other in real life. Especially, they’re not very old, you know, they’re 21, 22. So they kinda make stupid mistakes sometimes and say things that can be hurtful and then have to figure out how to make it better. Jeff: And I think with Connor too, you talked about writing against the archetypes and just having kinda the anxiety plus the OCD. And being, you know, a young gay man in that setting really just sets up so much for him in that situation. Erin: Right. Yeah. He has a lot going on. He’s bi actually and… Jeff: Right. I’m sorry. You’re right. Yes. Erin: And so, kind of a lot. I mean, it’s just a lot and I think it’s a lot for him to kind of deal with all at the same time. Jeff: What was your research on the mental health side of it to kind of figure out what traits to weave into his personality? Erin: So I did a lot of research and I had some readers too that read it for me. One of the main things that I really looked at was kind of the myths especially with OCD, kind of the myths surrounding OCD. I think a lot of people think it’s just, you know, a cleanliness thing or even an organizational thing where they, you know, people with OCD have an impulse to organize or clean. And that’s not really how it presents for a lot of people. A lot people have intrusive thoughts which he has or, you know, they have checking where he checks the expiration dates on food and he can’t kind of stop doing that even though he knows he shouldn’t be doing it, and it’s not healthy for him to do. And so, I did a lot of research about the myths and the different ways that it presents for people and kind of the hardships that it causes them. And I also really wanted to make sure that I kind of made it clear. It’s something that he’ll always deal with, right? It’s not going away and so, it’s really… I did a lot of research on how to manage it, how, you know, how to kind of continue life dealing with a mental health problem like that. Jeff: Yeah. I just… So often I wanted to just give him a hug when he was starting to lapse into it. It’s like, “Oh, I’m so sorry this is happening.” What you did through the black moments and I don’t wanna give spoilers for folks who, you know, need to read the book. But what you did to the black moments for both Connor and Travis as they dealt with their emotions and for Connor how those emotions kinda manifest themselves in his OCD was really just, I really liked seeing two young adults kinda come to grapple with all of that. Erin: Yeah. And I think it’s pretty normal when you’re more stressed, right? Or when there’s more and more stress for, you know, the OCD to kind of build on itself. The same with anxiety like, whenever I am really stressed about my anxiety, it’s gonna be worse about small things, you know, you can kind of blow them out of proportion. I know I do that and so, I was kind of trying to show that how it’s like as things got more stressful for him with graduation moving and with kind of this relationship with Travis, that’s not going away he wants it to go. It does kind of snowball for him and it kinda snowballs for Travis too just in different ways because he doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t have anxiety or OCD of course, but, you know, he struggles just kind of the same way. Jeff: Yeah. When you were talking about with this books about you left out one of its major points. Erin: The bugs? Jeff: That is the inclusion of the the hissing cockroaches. Where did that idea even come from? Erin: So I knew I wanted to put them in a class together and I wanted them to be class partners. But Travis is an English major and Connor is agriculture sciences, agribusiness major. And so, I knew it had to be like a gen ed class for at least one of them. And so, I really started thinking about the gen ed class that I had taken as an English major whenever I was an undergrad trying to figure out what class would make sense. And then I realized that I actually had taken an ag class that was Entomology 101. And I loved it, I, you know, I held like, tarantulas and I held millipedes. And I could see myself being that like, weird bug girl a little bit. I just loved it. And so, that’s kinda how I decided to put them in an entomology class. And it’s funny because, I mean, I do think that college is one of those times to take the weird class and do the weird thing. And so, I think it kind of made sense there and I also felt like, I gave a degree of what kind of humor and lightness I thought it would to the story. But I realize now that a lot of readers maybe don’t like bugs. So it’s something that’s like a little distracting to some people. When I had took the entomology class, we had an assignment where we had that exact assignment with the Madagascar hissing cockroaches where we had to take them home and observe them. And so, you know, for an entire semester, I had a Madagascar hissing cockroach in my dorm room with me. I never took it out of its box. I like, you know, I fed it, like, carrots through the little hole that it couldn’t get out and so, that would be fun to put that in the story. And I can tell you for the readers, the cockroaches do not escape ever. They never… There’s no, like, unexpected cockroach scenes. I promise. Jeff: Yeah. And I can vouch for that. There are no unexpected scenes and in fact, I had to check… I had to ask about that before I took the book to read and I’m like, “Bugs, I don’t know about that.” Erin: I know. I have put it in the trigger warnings for the book and on my website, it really does lay out kinda scene by scene where they’re at and kind of the degree that they’re on the page. And they’re not on the page that much. Jeff: No, they’re not and I never got squirmy reading it either because I really don’t like bugs. But I was totally fine with how this turned out. So… Erin: Yeah. I know. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that it would gross people out. At that point it was too late when it, like, finally hit me. I was like, “Well, I can’t do anything about it.” But I kind of thought that they were funny. Jeff: Well, I think it really fits with the whole ag culture of the college that of course, they’re gonna end up with bugs or whatever and have to learn about them. So it all meshed in together and like you said, there’s no point where they’re escaping or, you know, being gross. They’re just kind of there. Erin: Right. And students… Jeff: I like to, you know, those classes sometimes you take in high school where you’re having to take care of the doll for a week or whatever. And in this case you’re hanging out with a cockroach. So… Erin: Right. It’s kinda like a little pet for them for this semester. Jeff: So is there more plan for the Farm College Series? Erin: I have not kind of set plans. I do want to write a story for Alex. He’s in both books. He’s not in “Controlled Burn” for very much though his part is kind of important in “Controlled Burn.” He’s a friend of Connor’s really in “Clean Break” and I do wanna give him a story and I will. I’ll probably start writing that soon. Kind of be on that. I don’t know how much more I’ll write in the Farm College Series though I do wanna do a spin off that’s kind of several years in the future. So they’re not really in college anymore and I want to do an F/F romance for Desie and Lena. So I would start there for them. Jeff: Yay. Yeah. I would totally read that book because one of the things you did in “Clean Break” and I’m sure you established it back in “Controlled Burn” too, was just the tight community of friends that Travis and Connor both have, and even, like, the strong family presence of Connor’s family and how they support him. So it would be great to see more of all of that. Erin: Yeah. So… Yeah. And I definitely… I think I did a little bit more successfully in “Clean Break” for sure where they have very supportive families and they do have kind of a big wide friend group. And so, yeah, I’m glad that you like that, but I do want to do the F/F romance for Lena and Desie kind of. But Lena is quite young in this book. She’s 20 and so, I wanna give her a little bit of time to grow up, I guess. Jeff: Yeah. That’s cool. Now, you’ve got another series out there called “Love Life.” And tell us a little bit about what goes on in that series? Erin: Sure. So that’s also, they’re both male/male romances. Set in Oklahoma, Eastern Oklahoma for the first book, “Life on Pause.” They’re kind of small town romances there. The first one is about a guy that works at a homestead kind of prairie museum. They’re kind of common in Oklahoma where the people that work there have to dress in like, historical costumes of the time. So he works at that type of museum and then he is paired with a high school choir teacher. And it’s kind of them trying to fall in love and figure out how their relationship will work. It’s definitely kind of lighter in tone than the farm college series, but it’s still a little angsty. The second book in the series, “Life of Bliss,” is more novella link that’s a little short and it’s very tropey. It’s kind of two people that don’t like each other very much, but are fooling around kind of behind their friends’ backs. They agree to be fake boyfriends for a family wedding in Arkansas and Arkansas kind of, well, it has this… Historically in the area, it was the only state that didn’t have a waiting period for marriage licenses. Now, most of the states don’t, but back in the day, you know, they made you like, test for syphilis and all kind of stuffs. But extended the marriage license period. So Arkansas is kind of the place where people go for their shotgun weddings historically. So this is going back quite away, but in this book they go to a wedding in Arkansas, they get drunk at the wedding and basically, end up getting married themselves. It’s set in Eureka Springs, Arkansas for the wedding part and I don’t know if anybody would be familiar with that. But you can get married practically anywhere in Eureka Springs. It’s kind of an economy there. So it’s quite easy to get married and that’s what happens. So it’s kind of fake dating to accidental marriage. Jeff: Fake dating to accidental marriage. I like… Those are favorite tropes right there. Erin: Yeah. It’s a fun one, I think. Jeff: So what is your writing origin story? You’ve got these four books out. How did all this start? Erin: Well, I was a creative writing English major in undergrad, but then I ended up going to grad school for library and information studies. And I was a public librarian. And I had… I kind of had a lot of big changes in my life. I just graduated grad school. I just got married, I just moved away from home like, all of these big changes. I had a full time job for the first time and I had… I was living in Houston, Texas and I had this horrible commute. It was like, an hour and a half each way and… Jeff: Yeah. that’s pretty horrible. Erin: I think most people that have been in Houston know what I’m talking about. And I had all this time to kind of think and I basically on my commute started plotting a book. And some of it came from, I missed kind of the creative outlet writing research papers and stuff like that from school. And so, yeah, that’s kind of how I started writing as I plotted this book on my commute and then finally, I decided that I was gonna sit down and write it. And that book was “Controlled Burn.” Jeff: That’s an awesome story. Erin: Thank you. Jeff: What led you into putting this creativity towards M/M romance amongst all of the genres that were possible? Erin: Yeah. Some of it I think is that I was reading a lot of it at that time, I kind of got into M/M romance I guess if we’re going further back by reading Suzanne Brockmann, right? So she has the “Troubleshooters” series and that has Jules Cassidy who’s the gay FBI agent, right? He’s got that kind of the secondary romance through several books and then the primary thorugh a novella. And then whenever I was in grad school, I kind of didn’t have time to read for pleasure very much. So I wasn’t reading very much and then I took a class about reader’s advisory that we had to read like, the books from the best books of the year for “Publishers Weekly” and “Kirkus,” and stuff. And I just kind of… I can’t remember what year it was, but I grabbed kind of a random book off the romance list and it ended up being “Brothers of the Wild North Sea” by Harper Fox and I didn’t really realize that it was a male/male romance. So I just kinda grabbed it and started reading, and then it became quite clear, you know, very early on what it was. And it’s a beautiful book. Harper Fox is, you know, is a beautiful writer. Everything that she writes is really awesome and so, I kind of gobbled up everything that she had written and then it kind of hit me at that time. There has to be other writers that are doing this and, you know, they weren’t the books that were in the libraries. They weren’t in my libraries. So I kind of started searching them out and, you know, read a lot of K.A. Mitchell and Z.A. Maxfield, and some of those authors at that time that were the most prolific. And I was just very excited because I felt like there are all these authors that I had never heard of that I didn’t know about and they were all really, really good. And they were writing, you know, stories that kind of the themes were very important to me. And so, then when I write finally, eventually, decided to sit down and write a book. I think probably the main thing for me is that I wanted to write characters who are LGBTQIA in Oklahoma and it just happened to be that the first book that kind of came to mind, and that I plotted fully was an M/M romance in “Controlled Burn.” So that’s definitely how I got started. Jeff: That’s very cool and some great authors there to get you introduced to the genre as well. Who do you count as your author influences? Erin: Well, definitely, you know, my gateways were Suzanne Brockmann into romance in general and then Harper Fox. Kind of on a wider scale, I really like Alisha Rai. She kind of, she writes the heroines that are the type of parents that I just love. They are raunchy and rowdy, and wonderful. I would say also Annabeth Albert in terms of contemporary romance. Alexis Hall, I think kind of teaches or his books are like a master class on first person point of view if you look at “For Real” or “Glitterland.” And so, I really, really like his books too. Jeff: Now, your bio mentions that you like binge worthy TV shows. So of course, we have to know what are you binging these days or have binged recently that you would recommend? Erin: So my husband and I have been rewatching “Game of Thrones” of course, because the last season was about to come out. So when you binge that show, you just kind of realize how many awful things happened back to back to back because the first time we watched it, we didn’t binge it. We are watching it week to week, but when you’re binge watching that it’s like, “Oh, my God. That’s so awful, these things that keep happening.” Other than that, I really like… I like true crime, but I’m not watching any kind of true crime right now. And I like comedies. So I’ve watched “Schitt’s Creek” recently which I love, “The Good Place,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “One Day at a Time,” all these sitcoms that I think are really good, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” because I love musicals is really good. And then I also watch a lot of like, reality TV. So I like, like, “Tiny House Hunters,” and “Instant Hotel,” and “Project Runway,” shows kind of like that. Jeff: Very cool. Yeah. Some good stuff on there. Erin: You can tell me I watch a lot of TV. Jeff: “The Good Place” is a particular favorite. Erin: Yeah. It’s so smart. It’s so different than like, yeah, it’s very, very unique. So this is a great list for everybody who’s looking for something to binge the spring right here. So what’s coming up next for you in your release plans? Jeff: So I don’t have anything kind of set in stone. I’m not very good at planning. [I”m working on one about] tornado chasers or storm chasers. That’s a male/male romance that I have on submission right now to a publisher that I’m hoping will pick it up. If they don’t, then, you know, it’ll keep going out and hopefully somebody else will want it. I’m currently writing a book about a rec league softball team and I want this to be really, really tropey and kind of fun and light. The first one is using kind of the one bed trope. So I hope that that would be a lot of fun. I’ll write Alex’s story pretty soon and then I have a book that I wrote. But I’m hoping to put out at Christmas, it’s called “Stocking Stuffers.” And it’s a M/F romance with a bi heroine who sell sex toys. You know, like the Tupperware parties, but it’s like the, you know, the sex toy Tupperware parties kind of. And so, she works for a company kinda is the marketing person for a company like that and she’s hosting one of those parties, get snowed in, you know, with a big red bag of toys basically. Jeff: Yeah. That’s like an interesting forced proximity story. Erin: yeah. So it was a lot of fun to write. Jeff: And I’m very interested in the storm chasers one too because I’m kind of a weather geek at heart. So you kind of got me on that one. Erin: It was a lot of fun to write. Growing up in Oklahoma, you know, tornadoes are such a kind of a constant really. I mean, my parents have lost a house in tornado. I know lots of people that have lost houses in tornado. It’s so common. It’s just kind of a part of your life especially if you’re from Central Oklahoma like me and so, it’s… Yeah. It was a really fun one to write because you are just kind of entrenched in bad weather in Oklahoma in the spring all the time. So… Jeff: Very cool. And how can readers keep up with you online to keep track of all these projects? Erin: So I have a Facebook group called Erin McLellan’s Meet Cute. That’s a good one if you kind of… I do giveaways and book recs, and stuff. On Twitter my handle is @emclellanwrites and I’m on Twitter pretty often. On Instagram it’s @erinmclellanwrites and on Instagram, I would say it’s about 70% Alaska stuff like, every moves that I’ve ever seen and then 30% books. Unless there’s a book released and then it flips. But it’s a lot of Alaska if you follow me on Instagram. And then my newsletter which you can get too on my website or through any of the social media too. You would be able to kind of find the link to my newsletter and that’s probably the best way if you just want like, to know about new releases or sales, or things like that without having to kind of trudge through Twitter. Jeff: Well, fantastic. Well, I thank you so much for coming to talk to us about “Clean Break” and wish you all the success on that one and the upcoming releases as well. Erin: Thank you so much. It was so fun.
The show opens with Jeff talking about turning in the manuscript for new/revised edition of Hat Trick. The guys also talk about Captain Marvel. Will reviews Wanted-Bad Boyfriend by TA Moore and IRL: In Real Life by Lucy Lennox and Molly Maddox. Jeff reviews Diversion by Eden Winters. Jason T. Gaffney and Kevin Held join Jeff & Will to discuss their new movie project, the romantic comedy/paranormal themed Out of Body. They recorded the audiobook of the novelization, which was written by Suzanne Brockmann. We also find out about their history-based podcast, The Bright Side with Kevin and Jason. Complete shownotes for episode 180 are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Book Reviews Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: Diversion by Eden Winters, narrated by Darcy Stark. Reviewed by Jeff Eden Winters Diversion series has been recommended to me for some time now and I finally took the leap. This first book was first published in 2012 but just came out in audio in October 2018 with narration from new to me voice artist Darcy Stark, who does a great job with both the suspense and romance. This enemies-to-lovers, workplace romantic suspense story centers on agents for the Southeastern Narcotics Bureau, Richmond “Lucky” Lucklighter and Bo Schollenberger. Lucky’s nearing the end of his forced stint on the job–forced as it was his way out of jail. Bo is new and eager, but is also at the job because of incidents in his past. They end up working together to bring down a ring of drug diversion and insurance fraud that involves a doctor, a drug manufacturer and a drug destruction company. I fell in love with gruff, no nonsense Lucky right away. He’s extremely good at his job, mostly because he used to be on the other side of the law. He exudes frustration and irritation at what he has to do and why and yet there’s a teddy bear in there too because he cares about getting the job done right. The friction that’s stirred up when Lucky’s saddled with mentoring Bo is sublime. Lucky’s looking to ride a desk during his last few weeks at the bureau, but his boss has other ideas. Bo’s very green in terms of what he has to do here–but he is ex-military so he’s no pushover either. He can take what Lucky dishes out and it pisses the senior agent off… and eventually Bo gives back as good as he gets. The friction gets explosive as Lucky battles with himself about the feelings he develops for Bo. The other thing the friction brings is a ton of humor. Lucky and Bo know how to push each other’s buttons–whether it’s blasting Billy Ray Cyrus, forcing healthy eating habits or being messy. It’s a wonderful odd couple pairing that morphs in a beautiful way as it becomes less about antagonizing and more about a sweet nudging of one another to just maybe move things to another level in their relationships. Both men have complicated backstories that make you feel for even more for them. Lucky ended up at the bureau after going to prison for the part he played in a large scale drug operation. He’d been in love with the guy behind that operation and when it all came crashing down Lucky was sure he wanted no part of loving anyone again. The pain Eden created for Lucky is devastating, which makes him all the more loveable when he’s able to come out of his shell. Bo did illegal things to help an ex and ended up taking illegal substances to the point that it’s very difficult for him to be around the drugs in a Pharmacy, which his job requires. There’s also abuse in his past and Lucky’s careful to keep Bo away from triggers as much as he can. The lengths he goes to keep Bo feeling safe are extremely sweet. Eden takes great care in how backstory is presented. Once the men get past their posturing and disdain for each other, they peel back they reveal themselves in a very natural way–as friends, coworkers and eventually lovers do. The good and bad are offered in equal measure and it’s perfect relationship development. The only thing I wanted in this story that I didn’t get was Bo’s point of view. I would’ve loved to know what was rattling around in his head. Not to take away from Lucky though as he was quite the good narrator and this one point doesn’t take away from my love of the book. The Diversion series is up to book seven as of January 2019–with the third book released in audio in February 2019–so I’ve got some catching up to do. I’m looking very forward to that. IRL: In Real Life by Lucy Lennox & Molly Maddox. Reviewed by Will In Real Life combines the classic alpha billionaire character trope with the time-honored scenario of two characters who are combative in real life, but are secretly corresponding with one another and falling in love. Which is the long-winded way of saying it’s a similar set up as the classic movies Shop Around the Corner, You’ve Got Mail, In the Good Old Summertime, and the musical She Loves Me. The way that the characters write to each other has changed and evolved, but the premise remains the same. There’s also hints of enemies to lovers and opposites attract. This book is ripe with tropey goodness. So what’s it all about you might ask? Nice guy geek Conor is in New York to sell his mother’s bio-med technology to a ruthless CEO. The evening before his big presentation he decides to live a little and begins sexting with who he thinks is the sexy hotel bartender. It’s not. The text exchange he ends up having with a stranger, who he calls Trace, is amazing, and through several flirtatious and super-hot online conversations, they begin a fling. At the meeting the next morning, Wells Grange recognizes Conor thanks to the Dalek tie he is wearing. Conor is the hot and horny guy he sexted with the night before. His first inclination is to use this information as leverage in their business negotiations. But Wells quickly begins to fall for Conor, both the sexy online version and the awkward real-life version. As they work through the contracts for the sale, Wells continues his deception. They spend several days together and get to know one another, Conor unaware that Wells and Trace are the same person. We follow our heroes, almost in real time, as they fall in love while working together, going out to dinner, and taking carriage rides in Central Park. Once the business deal is finalized, Wells and Conor finally give in to their attraction and sleep with each other. Needless to say, it’s amazing and life altering for both of them. But, as is the case in stories like these, Conor finally puts two and two together before Wells can come clean about his sexting alter ego. Conor is humiliated and justifiably furious. He packs his bags and returns to North Carolina, with zero intention of ever speaking to Wells again. And rightly so. I’m going to be super upfront with you guys, there are certain aspects of the billionaire trope that I personally find problematic. I was on board with Wells and Conor for most of the story, but there were moments when I had a hard time dealing with certain aspects of Wells’ alphahole personality. In my view, if the ending of this book was going to be believable, Wells was going to have to move mountains and pull off one of the biggest mea culpas in romance history. It may not have been the biggest, but Lucy Lennox and Molly Maddox crafted a finale that was truly heartfelt and genuinely appropriate for our two heroes. To make amends, Wells makes sure Conor’s sick mom is well taken care of and part of an experimental treatment program (her illness was the reason they needed the money from the business deal). Later, when Conor is unable to attend a Comic convention to unveil an important new development in his gaming business, Wells steps in, and personally gives a rousing presentation on Conor’s behalf. Wells proves he isn’t the billionaire alphahole he seems. Yea for true love and happily-ever-afters! Interview Transcript Jeff: Welcome back to the show, Jason and Kevin. Kevin: Thank you. Jason: Hello. Thank you. Kevin: Nice to be back. How you been? Jeff: Awesome. Jeff: Well, we had you on before, we were talking all about “Analysis Paralysis.” But you guys have a lot more going on besides that movie. You’re actually in pre-production right now on a film called “Out of Body.” Jason: Yeah. Jeff: Tell us what that one’s about. Jason: So “Out of Body” is basically a story where it’s a friends-to-lover rom-com. And basically, Malcolm, who’s Kevin’s character, has his body stolen from him and he kind of ends up as a spirit for a while. And he has to prove that he exists to me, Henry, and then when that finally happens, we do some magic, we fight some demons, we might get the body back, there’s definitely a happily ever after because it’s a rom-com. Kevin: You and your end happily-ever-afters. Jason: Yeah. Jeff: It’s important. Kevin: I know, I know. But I just want to the rom…just one time I want a rom-com to be…it’s mostly romantic and funny but everyone does die. Jason: Or they die hilariously. Kevin: It’s a rom-com drama. Jason: Death by rubber chicken. Jeff: And what was kind of the inspiration behind this movie this time? Jason: I don’t even know how this idea came in my head. But I was sleeping one day and I woke up and I was like, “Oh, that’d be really cool. A movie where someone’s dead but they wanted to be together but then they didn’t get to be together. And then they have to fight to get their body back and come back to life.” And so I wrote a kind of a similar but different kind of script. And we did a table read, and my mom was a part of the table read. And she was like, “I love the story you have here. Can I take it and can I change a lot of it and make it like super romance with the comedy?” And so this particular movie and book and audiobook is definitely heavier on the romance than the comedy, as opposed to “Analysis Paralysis.” But it’s, in my opinion, really, really good because the romance really makes…it’s gripping, it really gets you right in the heartstrings. And she basically saw what I was going for and was able to finesse it and really kind of mold it into what my kind of original vision was and then some. So I’m really psyched about it. It’s got a little bit of everything. Will: Yeah, not too long ago, I talked about the novelization of “Out of Body” here on the show. Jason, your mom, Suzanne Brockmann, of course, wrote that novelization, it was rather amusing. Like, I think in the forward she kind of does like a behind the scenes thing where she kind of tells that story where she says, “Jason, this is great. But do you mind if I take it and make it better?” Kevin: Yeah. Jason: Yeah. And here’s the thing, I am all about that. Like the filmmaking, it’s such a collaborative process and storytelling can be a really collaborative process. And I want to make good movies. And so I was really happy with the script that I had written, but when someone who’s as great of a writer as my mom is comes and says, “I want to have fun with this and let me just see what I can do with it,” I’m like, “Hell yeah. Take it. Have at it.” Yeah. Kevin: And the end result is really a script, a novel, and a script that really looks like if brilliant improviser and plot maker and gay comedy guy let his script be taken over by a bestselling romance novelist, what would happen, it would be this. You know. And so it’s really got great, great aspects of all of those elements. Will: Yeah, I really enjoyed the book and the audiobook as well. And I think it’s a really unique opportunity for people who are interested in “Out of Body,” the movie, to check out the audiobook and sort of, it’s essentially like a preview of what they’re going to be getting when the film comes out to the public. Can you give us a little bit of an idea about what it was like to kind of get into the material early before you even like were thinking about shooting by recording the audiobook? Kevin: I can tell you for my part, like, since I’m not one of the writers on this, which is, you know, traditional for me because I’m not usually the writer on a project that I’m acting in. But it’s completely unprecedented to have a novel that you get to perform about the thing before you even film the script. You know, so we get…like as an actor, it’s a freaking dream because I have…so you know how actors have to create subtext and everything, I just have to go to the book, you know, it’s like, “Don’t worry. I don’t have to make it.” It’s already been written down for me. So if I’m wondering, like, what’s happening for Malcolm now, what’s going on there? What’s the deep, deep part of it? It’s already written out for me now. So I would say, so the book is available. It’s on, it’s called “Out of Body.” It’s on Audible.com. And I would say, don’t deprive yourself of the opportunity to say the book was better. Jason: Yeah. And, you know, it was really cool to do the audiobook in general because it was our first audiobook for both of us as narrators. And when we were talking about doing it, we were talking with my mom about it and I was interested in the idea of recording it in a way where it was more like a radio show where we are our characters’ dialogue voices all the time, even if it’s in the other person’s point of view. Whoever’s point of view reads the descriptive stuff in the chapters. But if Malcolm’s speaking, even though I’m the narrator of that chapter, he still says his line, and he still says the lines of the other characters that he had been assigned and vice versa for me. And that was really kind of fun to do because, you know, how often do you get to do kind of a radio show acting gig? And it was also really fun for me as a director to get to do this with Kevin in advance, because, like, he now really knows the story and I know he knows the story. So I know that when he comes to set, that’s going to be really easy. And I got into the head of the other characters as well reading them, and that’ll help me be able to hold my other actors hands and kind of with them through their parts, and still allow them to bring what they want to bring to the role and have it blossom into how great it can be. Kevin: Yeah, and that’s like all separate and apart from the experience of actually recording the audiobook, which you might think was done him some and then me some on consecutive days or anything, but it was actually live together. So we actually recorded in a space that had two recording booths in it. We could both hear each other so that when I am narrating a section and it’s his line, I can hear him do it. And then I jump back in. So it was live editing, like, to take out any breaths or anything, or mess-ups or anything, so, but we got to…you know, it was amazing because I had him in my head the whole time doing it, too. So that was wonderful. It’s a great experience. Jeff: That’s amazing, especially how it connected to your even now pre-production process that you’re involved in because you’re getting ready to shoot in about a month from when we’re recording. In pre-production, give everybody kind of an idea of what that means. What’s going on as you get ready for your 12 days of shooting? Jason: So basically, what I just did was go through each of the scenes and break them up on a piece of paper so that now I have the page count number, like how many pages each scene is. Kevin: These are them. Jason: Oh, yeah. Little strip paper… Kevin: Each one of these is a scene. Jason: And basically, the page count, when it starts, who is in the scene, all that stuff. Because I need to…you know I don’t have every actor every day. I’m going to have Kevin every day because he’s one of the leads. But there’s other parts in it where they’re only going to film for one day…anywhere from one to three days. And so you have to plan their scenes on the same day. And this time, we’re going to actually be filming in two different locations because our neighbors next door sold their house to flippers and they’re doing construction and it’s been kind of never-ending. So we can’t film when there’s kind of heavy construction going on in this house. So we’re going to do a lot of stuff at my father in law’s house and then will come get the rest of it after they’re done here. And so I’ve been doing that with my dad and breaking it into those days while simultaneously working with my cinematographer Nacia to map out which shots are needed for each scene and what angles are we doing. So I put little maps on the other side of the table here. Basically, me drawing out the room layout and doing little circles with an M for Malcolm and an H or Henry, and the arrows pointing they go here and then they go here… Kevin: Oh my god. And this isn’t even talking about how to deal with SAG paperwork or any of the art direction that he’s doing, or any of the clearances that he’s getting for this or that kind of thing. Jason: We’ve got a, we’re going to have a… Kevin: He’s a bit of a doer. Jason: We got Andrew Christian giving us underwear… Kevin: Oh, yeah, we have Andrew Christian underwear over here. Jason: And I’m working with some other companies too. So Outfit is a gay like sports good wear, they’ve given me a patent to us for the movie. Kevin: He’s been stenciling t-shirts and… Jason: Hand design t-shirts specific to the characters. I’m going to be making him a specific shirt three times because he wears the same outfit the whole movie and so if anything spills on it, it’s got to be good and not spilled upon because he magically can’t get stains. And so it’s intense, there’s a lot going on. Like Pinterest is my best friend. I’ve been learning all about how to make DIY Halloween decorations. Because again, when you’re low budget, you can’t spend, you know, $3,000 on set design. You can spend like $200, and so you have to get a little crafty. You have to start thinking like, “Okay, I’ve got five pages of construction paper and a pair of scissors and some tape, how going to make this look like I spent a lot of money on it?” Kevin: He’s like MacGyver. So that’s his experience with pre-production, mine’s a little bit different because I’m not all the hyphenates. So I’m busy making no changes at all to my daily routine. Jeff: You do have a script to learn. Kevin: Sure, when I get it. Jason: It’s in the mail. Kevin: We’re at your house. Jeff: Oh my goodness. Jason: The creating part, like creating the artwork, it actually makes me feel calm. The paperwork stresses me out. And so Matt, thankfully, jumps on that grenade and deals with SAG-AFTRA and making sure that all the paperwork’s there and all the money is in the right place and all that stuff. So thank you, Matt. Jeff: Now, we should say Matt is your husband, so he’s in the production family. Jason: Yes. Kevin: Yeah. Will: So now that our listeners know how completely awesome and funny this project is going to be, can you give us a little bit of info about the Indiegogo campaign? Jason: We have an Indiegogo campaign, basically we crowd-funded “Out of Body” on Kickstarter first, a successful crowdfunding campaign last year. and Indiegogo came to us and said, “We’d like to do an in-demand campaign for you.” So we have an open-ended campaign on Indiegogo right now, where you can help sponsor the film help and get some fabulous rewards, such as DVDs of “Out of Body” when it finally is all finished, you can get DVDs of “Analysis Paralysis,” our last feature film. Kevin: I’m going to get these down from the thingy here. Jason: So you can show people. Kevin: You can actually, because now we’re in the second feature film that stars the two of us. Like we got other projects that I have to do with like if you’re your fans of “Analysis Paralysis,” or perhaps the audiobook of “Out of Body,” you can get these copies, you can get copies of all that stuff. And so as we are on the way to becoming things of all media. Jason: Yeah, exactly. And yeah, so if you go to indiegogo.com and you go, indiegogo.com/projects/out-of-body-a-feature-length-lgbtq-rom-com-movie/, it’s a very long title. Kevin: Really, why don’t you go to indiegogo.com and search “Out of Body.” Yes. Jeff: Or just come to our show notes, it’ll be much easier. Will: Yes, do that. Kevin: Exactly. Go to “Big Gay Podcast” website and it’s going to be in the show notes. Jason: Another place you can find out information about “Out of Body” in the future and any sort of campaigns we’re having, etc., is if you go to tinyletter.com/mypethippo and join our newsletter, you’ll be able to find out things about “Analysis Paralysis” or “Out of Body,” or our podcast, “The Bright Side with Kevin and Jason,” all sorts of fun stuff. And yeah, so and basically indie film, it’s low budget. So every dollar really does make a difference. Like if we get enough money to buy a better meal for the cast and crew, everybody’s spirits raised, it gets raised up a little higher, you know, or we can afford an extra day of filming, or we can afford…it really does matter. So thank you to everyone who has supported us so far. And thank you to everyone who comes and supports us after this. Kevin: Yes, indeed. Jeff: Now, Kevin had this wonderful term about you guys, you know, essentially taking over media. You mentioned the podcast, “The Bright Side with Kevin and Jason.” It’s a comedy podcast about history. How did this idea spark? Because this just adds to you, I imagine, having to research these historical things. Kevin: Now, Jason does all the research for this, you know, and that’s huge. Like, because basically, he doesn’t have enough to do. But the impetus for the podcast, which is “The Bright Side with Kevin and Jason” is, you know, there’s so much bad news all the time. And my mom taught me how to look on the bright side of stuff, you know. If I got one thing from my mom, it was to…I would always complain about this or that and she would constantly remind me of there’s something good here, you know, and you have to find that. And so that’s really the gem of this, it’s really the heart of that show is that, especially when you look around at the news right now, there’s so much bad stuff that is going on. But you have to also recognize that bad stuff creates the opposite reaction. And so who is making the good out of that? You know, who is looking at that and reacting to it in a way of love, or in a way of furthering acceptance, or you know, who’s looking at the transgender ban, for example, that was finally instituted by the Supreme Court? And who is saying, you know, I want to reach out and tell my trans brothers and sisters that you are people and you are valuable and your service is useful and we love you? You know, so who’s doing that? You know, and so that’s what the podcast really kind of focuses on. We do wallow in some tragedy on the podcast because every week we take a historical episode of some varying degree of tragic-ness and talk about it. But then we also, every episode, find out what good that led to. Jason: And it kind of came about a long time ago after “Analysis Paralysis,” like Kevin mentioned in the last episode, we talked a little bit about how we met on a student film and basically got along really well, really quickly, and then we started hanging out together with our husbands and going on double dates, and so it kind of formed this bond. And after “Analysis Paralysis,” which was so much fun, it was 10 days of basically seeing Kevin and laughing and having a good time, I was like, “I don’t want to wait a year-and-a-half for the next project. I want to do something now with you.” Kevin: The experience of just chatting about a topic on a set or something was so much fun and we thought, “We should bottle this.” And then we thought, “You can.” There’s a method for this that’s called a podcast, and that’s what started. Yeah, you know, so now I get to come over here every damn week. Jason: Yeah, come to the Valley. You’re welcome. Kevin: Yeah, when I moved to Westwood I was hoping that my second bedroom would be a good place to record. But it’s not, it’s not good. Too much noise there. The valley’s a lot of things, but it is quiet. Jason: It is quiet. Unless they’re doing construction next door. Kevin: Right. Jeff: You could just turn that second bedroom into a soundproof area. Kevin: No, actually, currently, we didn’t have any…we moved from a house that had a lot of storage into a house that had another bedroom, but no storage. So that second bedroom has just become basically the id of our house. You know, everything’s like ahhhhh, you know? Jason: It’s like in “Harry Potter,” what’s that closet? Kevin: The room of requirements? Jason: Yes. Kevin: It’s the room of please don’t go in there actually. Will: Now, guys, I’m curious. How do you choose which historical events to feature and how much research goes into each episode? Kevin: That’s 100% question for Jason because though I feel that the podcast is a 50/50 pursuit, because Jason does all of the research for the topics that we do, and I don’t ever know what we’re going to talk about until I get here, but then I do all the web mastering and editing and I put up the shownotes and I do all of that stuff. So I feel like we end up spending around the same amount of time on things. Jason: Yeah. So basically, generally about a day of work I kind of surf the web, I find a topic that…like I kind of search, you know, the rabbit hole as to like what kind of weird historical thing is this? And I’ll like Google really weird stuff so my search history… Kevin: Yeah, they’re coming for you. Jason: …completely messed at this point. But like, you know, I’ll look up like “wild strikes historical funny” to see what I get from it. But honestly, there’s been a ton of them I’ve gotten through recommendations of friends and family and listeners of the podcast, and we really encourage listeners to throw ideas at us because there’s some really obscure events in history that I don’t know about that I would love to know about and I could easily find it if I knew to search for it. And so if anyone out there listening has weird events, definitely tweet me or email me. Kevin: You can find him @jasontgaffney on Twitter, and tell him and I don’t want to know about it. Jeff: That’s right. Kevin has to stay in the dark. Kevin: Right. Jason: So what I look for also, I try to look for topics where there’s a lot of tragedy, but you can still make fun of it. Like, if it’s a natural disaster, I try to find one where people made bad decisions with the natural disaster, not that it’s just, like, everyone got screwed and they tried to do the right thing, but they still got screwed because you can’t really make fun of those people. That’s just sad. Kevin: And mean. And it’s really not. I mean, I know we’re talking about a lot of tragedy, and that’s kind of what we focus on. But it’s not a cruel show. It’s not a Schadenfreude, really, because the ultimate goal is to find out what the hopeful aspect of it, who turned that situation into something good, you know. Jason: And you’d be surprised, like, we generally can find it. I don’t think we found one yet where there’s really nothing, no bright side to it. Kevin: No. Because the arc of history is long and you never know what the end result of a pebble, you know, when a pebble goes into a puddle, you don’t know how farther in they’re going to go, you know, and so, like, we talked about that event but that could lead to something incredible later, you know. Jeff: For you, Kevin, since you come in cold to these, what’s been of the episode so far that you’re like, “What? What did I just hear?” Kevin: Oh, my God. Well, the “Empire” panic, for example, has been insane. Like, I have a feeling when I post the episodes, I have a feeling like I hope…My mom and I listened to the Christmas episode over Christmas. And at the end of it, she said, “That was funny and I learned some stuff.” So that’s what…it was like I was, “Oh, good. There we go.” That’s what I would like people to have from it. Is like, “Oh, I enjoyed that, you know, conversation. That was fun and stuff.” But also, “God, who knew?” Yeah, that’s amazing. Because he’s pretty good at this, every episode there’s gonna be some point where I’m like, “Are you kidding? Human beings did this,” you know? It’s always, “Yes, they did,” good Lord. Jason: It’s also it’s gotten way more fun to do the research than it initially was because I was really nervous the first couple episodes to like, “Oh, my God, is this going to be funny? How can I make this funny?” And I was trying a little like…we actually have a couple of episodes that just never aired because I was trying too hard as opposed to just seeing that, yeah, that was absurd. I don’t need to say anything except what they said. And now that I’ve kind of mastered that to a degree. I mean, I’ll keep getting better as time goes on. But now I can really see like as I’m reading stuff, I’ll be like, “Oh, I know that Kevin’s gonna hear that and go, ‘Stop it.'” And then he’s gonna call it out, call the absurdity of it. I don’t need to do anything except, say, like, you know, “And then she picked up the knife and stabbed her own foot.” And it’s like, “Why?” Kevin: Spoiler alert. Jeff: Did you have a knack for history before this, Jason? Or did this just kind of happen? Jason: So I’ve always loved history. I always love the idea of history. When I was actually a little kid, I used to play with blocks a lot. And it’s probably why I like being a producer and a storyteller. I used to have like this giant castle and a giant village and an army of bad guys and I acted out this soap opera for years with the royal family and all that. And I was fascinated with the Romanovs and stuff so I kind of like did a little spoof on them. And so I kind of created like my own worlds, and history and stuff. And so when I can find sites that tell historical stories like a story, which is what history should be told as because it essentially is our story, it’s really fun. It’s really exciting to read it and be like, “No, oh, my goodness, that person’s totally the villain.” And then you read a couple more paragraphs, and you’re like, “Oh, no, they’re misguided. They have a heart of gold. They didn’t know.” And then five pages later, you’re like, “No, they’re just a dick.” And it’s exciting, it’s riveting, it gets you on the of the edge of your seat constantly with how people just constantly mess up. And then occasionally, you have a hero who’s just like, actually a good person, you’re like, “What’s the catch?” So, yeah, you know, history is really fun, especially when it’s told with a fun storytelling lens because… Kevin: And I think that’s like the thrust of the podcast is also it’s about the topic, sure, but it’s also just about how Jason and I interact with each other. And we just have such a fun friendship. And I don’t mean that it’s fun from the inside. I hope it is, but it’s fun from the inside of it. So I have such a good time with him that whatever we’re talking about is going to be fun for me. Jeff: That’s awesome. So besides “Out of Body” and more podcast episodes, what else is coming up for you both? Kevin: I may never work again. Who knows? Jason: We’ve actually started writing the sequel to “Analysis Paralysis” with the hope of filming it at the end of the year, with the additional hope of trying to film it in Palm Springs. Kevin: First time hearing of that. Really? Jeff: Breaking news. Kevin: I love Palm Springs. Jason: We’re gonna do what we can to make it work. And it would require assistance from the Palm Springs community, sure, help house us and give us locations and stuff. Kevin: It’s gonna be all on the gondola. Only there. Jason: What gondola? Kevin: The gondola up to the mountain thing. Jason: Oh, yeah, that gondola. Kevin: The whole thing is set on the gondola. Jason: I was thinking like the gondola with a little stick… Kevin: Yeah, the canals in Palm Springs. Jason: But another thing that I’m actually working on is my dad and I wrote a couple of novellas that you can get on Amazon. Kevin: What are they called? Jeff: “California Comedy Series.” Jason: The “California Comedy Series.” Yes. And I wrote a version of “Fixing Frank” with the hopes to get that kind of ball rolling. And it’s definitely a film that requires a bigger budget than what we have right now. But I’m starting to get those wheels in motion for you know, movie four, five, six sometime in the near future. And so yeah, that’s kind of what I’m working on. Kevin: We keep cranking them out. If people will keep putting them on screens and things, we’ll keep making them. Jason: The goal is to make people laugh. I feel like that’s why I was put on Earth and I feel like that’s why you were put on Earth. Kevin: Well, yeah. I know am laughing whenever I see you so that’s probably true. Jeff: Do we get new “California Comedy” anytime soon? Jason: I have been talking about that with my dad, we actually have a couple that are in the works, it’s just trying to figure out when we have a good time to sit down and edit it. I think after “Out of Body,” I’ll be able to take a look back at one of them that we wrote a while ago and kind of tweak it because there were a couple of things that just never felt right. And so it’s just figuring out how to fix those kinds of plot holes. And then hopefully that’ll be on the market before the end of 2019. Jeff: Excellent. And Kevin, what about you, anything you want to throw out for people to keep an eye out for? Kevin: Super excited about the podcast, actually. You know, going into production on “Out of Body” is really, really exciting. I don’t have a lot of acting projects coming up after that, that I can think of right now. But that’s kind of the nature of acting projects. Jeff: Sure. Kevin: You know, and so the podcast is where you can find us weekly up until the end…and actually, we make announcements there about projects that do come up for us, you know, in the interim. So, you know, to be a loyal listener to the show would be the best way to find out about what’s new with us. You know. Jason: Oh, and I almost forgot. We’re going to try in some way whether it’s self-published or with some other company helping us, the goal is to turn the “California Comedy Series” into audiobooks as well, similar to “Out of Body.” Jeff: Oh, fantastic. So both of you voicing? Jason: Yeah, for two of them. One of them, the plan is to have my good friend David Singletary come in as the role of Mike since that role is African American. And my friend David Singletary is African American and I’m all about… Kevin: Kevin Held is very much not. Jason: I’m all about own voices reading parts and stuff like that. And he’s great. You’re going to love him. Kevin: He is great. I’m a little jealous, but I’m okay. Jeff: Well, guys, thank you so much for telling us about “Out of Body” and the podcast. We wish you much success with those. Jason: Well, thank you. Kevin: Well, much success with your own podcast, gentlemen. Jason: Thank you, yes.
更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听Todd: Hey, Jeff this is a very nice apartment.Jeff: Hmm. It's comfortable. It's cozy. Japanese style.Todd: I like it. It's got the tatami mat, small kitchen. Do you live alone?Jeff: I live alone but right now I have a friend of mine staying with me.Todd: Oh, really, a roommate.Jeff: Sort of like a roommate, yes. A short term, he's staying with me short-term, so yes a roommate.Todd: OK, how's that going?Jeff: Ah, I don't like it.Todd: Why?Jeff: He's lazy. He's messy. He drinks too much. He doesn't exercise and he doesn't contribute any money to the rent.Todd: Ooh, so he lives here and he doesn't give you any money?Jeff: Well, yeah, he doesn't give me any money. The money's not so bad, though, it's just that he's lazy and he doesn't do much all day.Todd: That's got to be pretty annoying.Jeff: He's a great fellow. He's a good friend of mine, but, yeah, he's, I try to motivate him to do a few things but he's a tough one.Todd: Are you going to tell him he has to move out?Jeff: Ah, no, he's a smart man. He knows. He knows. He knows the deal. He knows what's going on and I think he's, yeah, I would never ask him to move out because I don't mind having him here but I'm just going to try to whip him into shape.Todd: Oh, so you're just going to try to change him so he becomes a better roommate?Jeff: I'm going to be like a woman and try to, yeah, try to get him a better schedule, a better schedule (yeah) like exercise and eating right and less smoking and less drinking.Todd: Well, what is his schedule?Jeff: Ah, his schedule is, he's like a night owl, he stays up most of the night drinking, and then he sleeps most of the day recovering, and then when he gets up he has a hangover. He's a bit sluggish and slow, so it's not a healthy lifestyle.Todd: Yeah, it doesn't sound like it. Good luck.Jeff: No problem.
Show Notes 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, after a few months of primarily medical topics, we’re talking trauma, specifically Blunt Cardiac Injury: Emergency Department Diagnosis and Management. Nachi: With no gold standard diagnostic test and with complications ranging from simple ectopic beats to fulminant cardiac failure and death, this isn’t an episode you’ll want to miss. Jeff: Before we begin, let me give a quick shout out to our incredible group of authors from New York -- Dr. Eric Morley, Dr. Bryan English, and Dr. David Cohen of Stony Brook Medicine and Dr. William Paolo, residency program director at SUNY Upstate. I should also mention their peer reviewers Drs. Jennifer Maccagnano and Ashley Norse of the NY institute of technology college of osteopathic medicine and UF Health Jacksonville, respectively. Nachi: This month’s team parsed through roughly 1200 articles as well as guidelines from the eastern association for surgery in trauma also known as EAST. Jeff: Clearly a large undertaking for a difficult topic to come up with solid evidence based recommendations. Nachi: For sure. Let’s begin with some epidemiology, which is admittedly quite difficult without universally accepted diagnostic criteria. Jeff: As you likely know, despite advances in motor vehicle safety, trauma remains a leading cause of death for young adults. In the US alone, each year, there are about 900,000 cases of cardiac injury secondary to trauma. Most of these occur in the setting of vehicular trauma. Nachi: And keep in mind, that those injuries don’t occur in isolation as 70-80% of patients with blunt cardiac injury sustain other injuries. This idea of concomitant trauma will be a major theme in today’s episode. Jeff: It certainly will. But before we get there, we have some more definitions to review - cardiac concussion and contusion, both of which were defined in a 1989 study. In this study, cardiac concussion was defined as an elevated CKMB with a normal echo, while a cardiac contusion was defined as an elevated CKMB and abnormal echo. Nachi: Much to my surprise, though, abnormal echo and elevated ck-mb have not been shown to be predictive of adverse outcomes, but conduction abnormalities on ekgs have been predictive of development of serious dysrhythmia Jeff: More on complications in a bit, but first, returning to the idea of concomitant injuries, in one autopsy study of nearly 1600 patients with blunt trauma - cardiac injuries were reported in 11.9% of cases and contributed to the death of 45.2% of those patients. Nachi: Looking more broadly at the data, according to one retrospective review, blunt cardiac injury may carry a mortality of up to 44%. Jeff: That’s scary high, though I guess not terribly surprising, given that we are discussing heart injuries due to major trauma... Nachi: The force may be direct or indirect, involve rapid deceleration, be bidirectional, compressive, concussive, or even involve a combination of these. In general, the right ventricle is the most frequently injured area due to the proximity to the chest wall. Jeff: Perfect, so that's enough background, let’s talk differential. As you likely expected, the differential is broad and includes cardiovascular injuries, pulmonary injuries, and other mediastinal injuries like pneumomediastinum and esophageal injuries. Nachi: Among the most devastating injuries on the differential is cardiac wall rupture, which not surprisingly has an extremely high mortality rate. In terms of location of rupture, both ventricles are far more likely to rupture than the atria with the right atria being more likely to rupture than the left atria. Atrial ruptures are more survivable, whereas complete free wall rupture is nearly universally fatal. Jeff: Septal injuries are also on the ddx. Septal injuries occur immediately, either from direct impact or when the heart becomes compressed between the sternum and the spine. Delayed rupture can occur secondary to an inflammatory reaction. This is more likely in patients with a prior healed or repaired septal defects. Nachi: Valvular injuries, like septal injuries, are rare. Left sided valvular damage is more common and carries a higher mortality risk. In order, the aortic valve is more commonly injured followed by the mitral valve then tricuspid valve, and finally the pulmonic valve. Remember that valvular damage can be due to papillary muscle rupture or damage to the chordae tendineae. Consider valvular injury in any patient who appears to be in cardiogenic shock, has hypotension without obvious hemorrhage, or has pulmonary edema. Jeff: Next on the ddx are coronary artery injuries, which include lacerations, dissections, aneurysms, thrombosis, and even MI secondary to increased sympathetic activity and platelet activity after trauma. In one review, dissection was the most commonly uncovered pathology, occurring 71% of the time, followed by thrombosis, which occured only 7% of the time. The LAD is the most commonly injured artery followed by the RCA. Nachi: Pericardial injury, including pericarditis, effusion, tamponade, and rarely rupture, is also certainly on the differential. Jeff: In terms of dysrhythmias, sinus tachycardia is the most common dysrhythmia, with other rhythms, including PVC / PAC / and afib being found only 1-6% of the time. Nachi: And while conduction blocks are rare, a RBBB is the most commonly noted, followed by a 1st degree AVB. Jeff: Though also rare, commotio cordis deserves it’s own section as its the second most common cause of death in athletes < 18 who are victims of blunt trauma. Though only studied in swine models, it’s hypothesized that the impact to the chest wall during T-wave upstroke can precipitate v-fib. Nachi: Aortic root injuries usually occur at the insertion of the ligamentum arteriosum and isthmus. Such injuries typically result in aortic insufficiency. Jeff: And the last pathology on the differential requiring special attention is a myocardial contusion. Again, no standard definition exists, with some diagnostic criteria including simply chest pain and increasing cardiac enzymes, and others including cardiac dysfunction, ecg abnormalities, wall motion abnormalities, and an elevation of cardiac enzymes. Nachi: Certainly a pretty broad differential… before moving on to the work up, Jeff why don’t you get us started with prehospital care? Jeff: Prehospital management should focus on rapid identification and stabilization of life threatening injuries with expeditious transport as longer prehospital times have been associated with increased mortality in trauma. Immediate transport to a Level I trauma center should be the highest priority for those with suspected blunt cardiac injury. Nachi: In terms of who specifically should be transporting the patient, a Cochrane review evaluated the utility of ALS vs BLS transport in trauma. There is reasonably good data to support BLS over ALS, even when controlling for trauma severity. Moreover, when airway management is needed, advanced airway techniques by ALS crews were associated with decreased odds of survival. Regardless of who is there, the message is the same: focus not on interventions, but instead on rapid transport. Jeff: And if it does happen to be an ALS transport crew, without delaying transport, pain management with fentanyl is both safe and reasonable and preferred over morphine. Post opiate hypotension in prehospital trauma patients is a rare but documented complication. Nachi: And if the prehospital team is lucky enough, or maybe unlucky enough, i don’t know, to have a credentialed provider who can perform ultrasound for those suspected of having a blunt cardiac injury, the general prehospital data on ultrasound is sparse. As of now, it’s difficult to conclude if prehospital US improves care for trauma patients. Jeff: Interestingly, the system I work in has prehospital physicians, who do carry US, but I can’t think of a major trauma where ultrasound changed any of the decisions we made. Nachi: Right, and I think that just reinforces the main point here: there may be a role, we just don’t have the data to support it at this time. Jeff: Great, let’s move onto ED care, beginning with the H&P. Nachi: On history, make sure to elucidate if there is any chest pain, and if it’s onset was before or after the traumatic event. In addition, make sure to ask about dyspnea, fatigue, palpitations, and lightheadedness. Jeff: And don’t forget to get the crash details from the EMS crew before they depart! As a side note, for anyone taking oral boards in a few months, don’t forget to ask the EMS crew for the details!!! Nachi: A definite must for oral boards and for your clinical practice. Jeff: In terms of the physical, tachycardia is the most common abnormality in blunt cardiac injury. In those with severe injury, you may note refractory hypotension secondary to cardiogenic shock. But don’t be reassured by normal vitals, especially in the young, who may be compensating well despite being quite ill. Nachi: Fully undress the patient to appropriately inspect and percuss the chest wall - looking for signs of previous cardiac surgeries or pacemaker placement, as well as to auscultate for new murmurs which may be a sign of valvular injury. Jeff: Similarly, as concomitant injuries are common, inspect the abdomen, looking for ecchymosis patterns, which often accompany blunt cardiac injury. Nachi: Pretty standard stuff. Let’s move on to diagnostic testing. Jeff: Lab testing should include a CBC, BMP, coags, troponin, lactate, and T&S. In one retrospective analysis, an elevated troponin and a lactate over 2.5 were predictors of mortality. Nachi: Additionally, in patients with chest trauma, a troponin > 1.05 was associated with a greater risk for dysrhythmias and LV dysfunction. Jeff: And it likely goes without saying, but an EKG is a must on all trauma patients with suspicion for blunt cardiac injury in accordance with the EAST guidelines. New EKG findings requires admission for monitoring. Unfortunately, on the flip side, an ECG cannot be used to rule out blunt cardiac injury. Nachi: Diving a bit deeper into the data, in a prospective study of 333 patients with blunt thoracic trauma, serial EKG and troponins at 0, 4, and 8 hours post injury had a sensitivity and specificity of 100% and 71%, respectively. However, of those with abnormal findings, all but one had them on initial testing, leading to a negative predictive value of 98%. Jeff: Well that’s an impressive NPV and has huge implications, especially in the era of heavily monitored lengths of stay... Nachi: Definitely. In terms of radiography, a chest x-ray should be obtained as rib fractures, hemopneumothorax, and mediastinal free air are all things you wouldn't want to miss and are also associated with blunt cardiac injury. Jeff: Keep in mind, however, that the chest x-ray should not be seen as a test for pericardial fluid as up to 200 mL of fluid can be contained in the pericardial space and remain undetectable by chest radiograph. Nachi: Which is why you’ll have to turn to our good friend the ultrasound, for more useful data. The data is strong that in the hands of trained Emergency Clinicians, when parasternal, apical, and subcostal views are obtained, US has an accuracy of 97.5% for pericardial effusion. Jeff: Not only is US accurate, it’s also quick. In one RCT, the FAST exam reduced the time from arrival in the ED to operative care by 64% in the setting of trauma. Nachi: That’s impressive -- for expediting patient care and for managing ED flow. Jeff: Exactly. The authors do note however that hemopericardium is a rare finding, so, while not the focus of this article, the real utility of the FAST exam may be in its expanded form, the eFAST, in which a rapid bedside ultrasonographic lung exam for pneumothorax is included, as this can lead to immediate changes in management. Nachi: And assuming you do your FAST or eFAST and have no management changing findings, CT will often be your next test. Jeff: Yeah, EKG-gated multidetector CT can easily diagnose myocardial rupture, pneumopericardium, pericardial rupture, hemopericardium, coronary artery insult, ventricular septal defects and even valvular dysfunction. Unfortunately, CT does not perform well for the evaluation of myocardial contusions. Nachi: This is all well and good, and certainly accurate, but let’s not forget that hemodynamically unstable trauma patients, like those with myocardial rupture, need to be in the operating room, not the CT scanner. Jeff: An important point that should not be understated. Nachi: And the last major testing modality to discuss is the echocardiogram. Jeff: The echo is a fantastic test for detecting focal cardiac dysfunction often see with cardiac contusions, hemopericardium, and valve disruption. Nachi: And it’s worth noting that transthoracic is enough, as transesophageal, despite the better images, hasn’t been shown to change management. TEE should be saved for those in whom a optimal TTE study isn’t feasible. Jeff: Great point. And one last quick note on echo: in terms of guidelines, the EAST guidelines from 2012 specifically recommend an echo in hemodynamically unstable patients or those with a persistent new dysrhythmia without other sources of ongoing hemorrhage or neurologic etiology of instability. Nachi: Perfect, so that wraps up testing and imaging for our blunt cardiac injury patient. Let’s move on to treatment. Jeff: In terms of initial resuscitation, there is an ever increasing body of literature to support blood transfusion over crystalloid in patients requiring volume expansion in trauma. There are no specific guidelines for transfusion in the setting of blunt cardiac injury, so stick to your standard trauma protocols. Nachi: It is worth noting, though, that there is literature outside of trauma for those with pericardial effusions, suggesting that those with a SBP < 100 have substantial benefit from volume expansion. So keep this in mind if your clinical suspicion is high and your trauma patient has a soft but not truly shocky blood pressure. Jeff: Operative management, specifically ED thoracotomy is a heavily debated topic, and it’s next on our list to discuss. Nachi: The 2015 EAST guidelines conditionally recommend ED thoracotomy for moribund patients with signs of life. The Western Trauma Association broadens the ED thoracotomy window a bit to include anyone with no signs of life but less than 10 minutes of CPR. The latter also recommend ED thoracotomy in those with refractory shock. Jeff: Though few studies exist on the topic, in one study of 187 patients, cardiac motion on US was 100% sensitive for predicting survivors. Nachi: Not great data, but it does support one's decision to stop any further work up should there be no cardiac activity, which is important, because the decision to pursue an ED thoracotomy is not an easy one. Jeff: And lastly, emergent pericardiocentesis may be another option in an unstable patient when definitive operative management is not possible. But do note that pericardiocentesis is only a temporizing measure, and not definitive for cardiac tamponade. Nachi: Treatment for dysrhythmias is standard, treat in accordance with standard ACLS protocols, as formal randomized trials on prophylaxis and treatment in the setting of blunt cardiac injury do not exist. Jeff: Seems reasonable enough. And in the very rare setting of an MI after blunt cardiac injury, you should involve cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, and trauma to help make important management decisions. Data is, again, lacking, but the patient likely needs percutaneous angiography for appropriate diagnosis and potentially further intervention. Definitely hold off on ASA and likely nitroglycerin, at least until significant bleeding has been ruled out. Nachi: Yup, no style points for giving aspirin to a bleeding trauma patient. Speaking of medications, the last treatment modality to discuss here is pain control. Pain management is essential with chest injuries, as appropriate pain management has been shown to reduce mortality in pulmonary related complications. Jeff: And in line with every acute pain consult note I’ve ever come across, a multimodal approach utilizing opioids and nonopioids is recommended. Nachi: Perfect, so that sums up treatment, next we have one special circumstance to discuss: sternal fractures. Cardiac contusions are found in 1.8-2.4% of patients with sternal fractures, almost all of which were seen on CT and not XR according to the NEXUS chest CT study. Of these patients, only 2 deaths occured, both due to cardiac causes. Thus, in patients with isolated sternal fractures, negative trops, ekg, and negative cxr - the patient can likely be discharged from the ED, as long as their pain is well-controlled. Jeff: And let’s talk controversies for this issue. We only have one to discuss: MRI. Nachi: The fact that MRI produces awesome images is not controversial, see figure 3. It’s role, however, is. In accordance with EAST guidelines, MRI may be most useful in differentiating acute ischemia from blunt cardiac injury in those with abnormal ECGs, elevated enzymes, or abnormal echos. It’s use in the hyperacute evaluation, however, is limited, in large part owing to the length of time required to complete an MRI Jeff: What a time to be alive that we even have to say that MRIs may not have a hyperacute role in trauma - absolutely crazy... Nachi: Moving on to disposition: any patient with aortic, pericardial, or myocardial injury and hemodynamic instability needs operative evaluation and likely intervention, so do not hesitate to get the consults coming or the helicopter in the air should such a patient arrive at your non-trauma center. Jeff: And in those that are hemodynamically stable, with either a positive ECG or a positive trop, they should be monitored on telemetry. There is no clear answer as to how long, but numerous studies suggest a 24 hour period of observation is sufficient. For those with persistent ekg abnormalities or rising trops - this is precisely when you will want to pursue echocardiography. Nachi: And if there are positive EKG findings AND a rising trop, they should be admitted to a step down unit or ICU as well -- as ⅔ of them will develop myocardial dysfunction. Similarly, those with hemodynamic instability but no active traumatic bleeding source - they too should be admitted to the ICU for a STAT echo and serial enzymes. Jeff: But in the vast majority of patients, those that are hemodynamically stable with negative serial EKGs and serial tropinins, they can effectively be ruled out for significant BCI after an 8 hour ED observation period, as we mentioned earlier with a sensitivity approaching 100%! Nachi: Though there are, of course, exceptions to this rule, like those with low physiologic reserve, mobility or functional issues, or complex social situations, which may need to be assessed on a more case-by-case basis. Jeff: Let’s wrap up this episode with some key points and clinical pearls. Cardiac wall rupture is the most devastating form of Blunt Cardiac Injury. The sealing of a ruptured wall may lead to a pseudoaneurysm and delayed tamponade. Trauma to the coronary arteries may lead to a myocardial infarction. The left anterior descending artery is most commonly affected. The most common arrhythmia associated with blunt cardiac injury is sinus tachycardia. RBBB is the most commonly associated conduction block. Commotio cordis is the second most common cause of death in athletes under the age of 18. Early defibrillation is linked to better outcomes. Antiplatelet agents like aspirin should be avoided in blunt cardiac injury until significant hemorrhage has been ruled out. An EKG should be obtained in all patients with suspected blunt cardiac injury. However, an EKG alone does not rule out blunt cardiac injury. Serial EKG and serial troponin testing at hours 0, 4, and 8 have a sensitivity approaching 100% for blunt cardiac injury. An elevated lactate level or troponin is associated with increased mortality in blunt cardiac injury. Perform a FAST exam to assess for pericardial effusions. FAST exams are associated with a significant reduction in transfer time to an operating room. Obtain a chest X-ray in all patients in whom you have concern for blunt cardiac injury. Note that the pericardium is poorly compliant and pericardial fluid might not be detected on chest X-ray. Transesophageal echocardiogram should be considered when an optimal transthoracic study cannot be achieved. CT is used routinely in evaluating blunt chest trauma but know that it does not evaluate cardiac contusions well. In acute evaluation, MRI is generally a less useful imaging modality given the long imaging time. There is evidence to suggest that a patient with an isolated sternal fracture and negative biomarkers and negative EKG findings can be safely discharged from the ED if pain is well-controlled. Trauma to the aorta, pericardium, or myocardium is associated with severe hemodynamic instability. These patients need surgical evaluation emergently. Hemodynamically stable patients with a positive troponin test or with new EKG abnormalities should be observed for cardiac monitoring. Nachi: So that wraps up Episode 26 on Blunt Cardiac Injury! Jeff: 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 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 any images and tables mentioned. You can find everything you need to know at ebmedicine.net/subscribe. Nachi: It’s also worth mentioning for current subscribers that the website has recently undergone a major rehaul and update. The new site is easier to use on mobile browsers, has better search functionality, mobile-friendly CME testing, and quick access to the digest and podcast. Jeff: And as those of us in the north east say goodbye to the snow for the year, it’s time to start thinking about the summer and maybe start planning for the Clinical Decision Making conference in sunny Ponta Vedra Beach, Fl. The conference will run from June 27th to June 30th this year with a pre-conference workshop on June 26th. Nachi: And the address for this month’s credit is ebmedicine.net/E0319, so head over there to get your CME credit. As always, the [DING SOUND] 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! Most Important References 7.* Clancy K, Velopulos C, Bilaniuk JW, et al. Screening for blunt cardiac injury: an Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma practice management guideline. J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2012;73(5 Suppl 4):S301-S306. (Guideline) 22.* Schultz JM, Trunkey DD. Blunt cardiac injury. Crit Care Clin. 2004;20(1):57-70. (Review article) 23.* El-Chami MF, Nicholson W, Helmy T. Blunt cardiac trauma. J Emerg Med. 2008;35(2):127-133. (Review article) 27.* Bock JS, Benitez RM. Blunt cardiac injury. Cardiol Clin. 2012;30(4):545-555. (Review article) 34.* Berk WA. ECG findings in nonpenetrating chest trauma: a review. J Emerg Med. 1987;5(3):209-215. (Review article) 64.* Velmahos GC, Karaiskakis M, Salim A, et al. Normal electrocardiography and serum troponin I levels preclude the presence of clinically significant blunt cardiac injury. J Trauma. 2003;54(1):45-50. (Prospective; 333 patients) 73.* Melniker LA, Leibner E, McKenney MG, et al. Randomized controlled clinical trial of point-of-care, limited ultrasonography for trauma in the emergency department: the first sonography outcomes assessment program trial. Ann Emerg Med. 2006;48(3):227-235. (Randomized controlled trial; 262 patients)
He's a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist. He hosts the biggest conference, Anarchapulco, for anarcho-capitalism. He's The Dollar Vigilante. Originally from Canada, hailing from Mexico. Jeff Berwick Stefan: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show, Respect The Grind, with Stefan Aarnio. This is the show where we interview people who achieve mastery and freedom through discipline. We interview entrepreneurs, athletes, authors, artists, real estate investors, anyone who has achieved mastery and examined what it took to get there. Today on the show, I have a very special guest out of the norm, Jeff Berwick. He's a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist. He hosts the biggest conference, Anarchapulco, for anarcho-capitalism. He's The Dollar Vigilante. Originally from Canada, hailing from Mexico. Jeff, good to have you on the show today. Respect The Grind, my friend. Jeff: It's a pleasure. Thank you. Stefan: Yeah. I really appreciate having a guest like you on the show, because we normally talk about like business and making money, and real estate. A lot of people listening to this show, they want financial freedom for themselves, and they're trying to make money. They're trying to invest, whatever that means. It's cool to have a guy like you on the show. We had a mutual friend of ours, John Sneisen, on the show a little while ago, and I love talking to guys like you, because we end up talking about the money system. We talk about freedom in the free world, free speech, all this kind of stuff. For the people at home who don't know you, Jeff, can you introduce yourself in your own words? Who are you, and why is this a relevant conversation for us to be speaking? Jeff: Sure. Yeah. Actually, it's a totally relevant conversation that's everything that I talk about. I've been doing that for about nine years now, since 2010, with The Dollar Vigilante, which is a anarcho-capitalist financial newsletter talking about how to free yourself. Not just financially, but in every way possible. Of course, for people that don't understand the word, "anarcho" means anarchy, of course, and that's a Greek word which means "an," without, "archy," ruler. I just believe that no one should have a ruler and no one should be a slave. I don't know why that's controversial at all, but that's the government indoctrination camps that people have had for about 12 years that most people have been forced into. Jeff: Then the capitalist part, a lot of people actually misunderstand that word, too. They think that what you have in the U.S. today is capitalism. There is a small part of capitalism still remaining, and that's why the U.S. is still standing, but it's mostly fascism, and crony capitalism, and what I call crapitalism. Really, when I say "capitalism," I just mean free market. I've been, and completely free market, so no government involvement whatsoever, no taxation, no regulation, no central banks, and no fiat currencies and things like that. I've been doing that for about nine years. Jeff: I also do a podcast called Anarchast. I've been doing that for about seven years, and it's grown quite a bit. It's nothing too huge, but it's actually spawned an entire conference now called Anarchapulco, as you mentioned. It's now the world's premier liberty and freedom event held in Acapulco, Mexico, every year. It's coming up in February 14th to 17th. We're expecting about 3,000 people, because the freedom, the idea of it is actually growing, believe it or not. I've been doing all that stuff for about, as I said, about eight or nine years now. Stefan: That's tremendous, Jeff. People like you, I really got to salute a guy like you, because it's not easy. It's not easy going against the grain. It's not easy speaking out about this stuff. It's not a popular table topic at the Thanksgiving table or the Christmas table. I remember when I was telling my family years ago about the money system at like at Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody got up and left. The average person doesn't want to hear about how they are enslaved. They don't want to hear about the money system. I remember years ago when I was 21, 22, I read a book called Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and that's the capitalist bible. The communists have Karl Marx, Das Kapital, and then the capitalists have Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It's number two most influential book in the United States. Stefan: Can you explain to the people at home, that's where I've first heard the word "libertarian." What's a libertarian? Because people, we're from Canada, or I'm from Canada, in Winnipeg, today, and people hear "libertarian," and they think libertarian is liberal, because it's L-I-B. They don't know the difference between the two words. What's a libertarian? Jeff: That's interesting you're up there in Winterpeg. I'm originally from what I call Deadmonton, so up in Canada. Stefan: Dude, that's the other Winnipeg. I'm giving that a gong. Bang. Just gonged it up. Deadmonton and Winterpeg. Jeff: Yeah, so the word "libertarian," I actually didn't even really know the word until about 15 years ago. It's become quite popular. It's become fairly popular since Ron Paul ran for president in 2008. Really, what the word means is, well, it's pretty simple word, "libertarianism." What it means is that if you're a libertarian, then you hold as one of your highest principles liberty or freedom. If you truly hold that as one of your highest principles, then you should actually be a anarchist, because an anarchist believes in complete freedom. It believes in the freedom of the individual that no one has the right to enslave and say they own another person. Of course, whenever you have a government, you're just born somewhere, and they go, "Well, you're ours now," especially in the U.S., where every baby born today in the U.S. has a quarter of a million U.S. dollars worth of debt and liabilities overhanging it from the government that it's supposed to pay off. Stefan: My God. Jeff: That's absolutely criminal and absolute tyranny and slavery. That's what we have in every country today, as well as Canada and every other country. A true libertarian truly believes that no one should be ruled or owned by anyone without their permission. Of course, there's a lot of people who don't mind being owned or being slaves. They're called statists, and if they want to do that, that's fine. I have no problem. As a libertarian or as an anarchist, do whatever you want. Just don't aggress against me. The only problem is, when they get these governments going, they always seem to include us and seem to think that, "Well, you are now owned by whichever government in whatever area you're in." I just completely disagree with that. Stefan: Yeah. I saw Jordan Peterson. You're probably familiar with Jordan Peterson, right? Jeff: Yeah. Stefan: I saw Jordan Peterson speak in the summer. He was speaking here in Winnipeg, Winterpeg, at the Burton Cummings Theatre, and he said something interesting that I thought something that I think people need to hear more often. He said, "The human race for most of history has lived under tyranny. We used to have monarchies. We used to have feudalism. For most, most of the human race, we've had tyranny, and for very brief times, we've had democracies or republics, but democracy lasts for about 250 years. Then it turns into a tyranny, usually, and then after that, turns back into a monarchy." Why do you think monarchies and tyrannies have existed throughout history, and why does it always seem to consolidate power like that? Why can't we just stay as a democracy or republic all the time? Jeff: Well, first of all, I'm not so sure about human history. I think most things we're told about history are lies, and so really, anything beyond a couple of hundred years ago, I really have doubts about what really happened. I really don't know what happened, but I don't trust anything that we're told by the media, or the governments, or the schools, which are all sort of the same sort of people running those sort of things, but what I understand happened is, a few hundred years ago, there was things like kings and queens, and they were doing that quite a bit. They were going around doing similar things that governments do today and say, "Hey, you were born here, so now you have to pay us a certain percentage of whatever you make," and that sort of a thing. Jeff: Really, a few hundred years ago, and it sort of seems to have happened in France, which is kind of interesting, because there's a bit of an uprising happening there again right now, is a lot of people said, "This is crazy. Just because you're born, this whole idea of kings and queens is so insane." I love the Monty Python, I think it was in the Holy Grail one, where the king's walking around, and he's like, "I'm your king." They're like, "You're who?" He's like, "I was born of this mother," and everyone's like, "What?" He's like, "I found a sword in the lake, and therefore I'm your king." They're like, "You're crazy," but for whatever reason, people kind of fell in line with that. Jeff: Of course, a lot of these monarchies were really tyrannical, and they would really, if you didn't pay them, they would kill you, that sort of a thing. That's very similar to governments. A few hundred years ago, people kind of woke up from it, and they said, "Well, this is stupid." The people who were in control at the time really realized they're going to lose a lot of power, and so they came up with an absolutely ingenious idea. That ingenious idea was democracy, which is a totally heinous, evil system of mob rule. If you have 51% of people decide that legally they can kill the other 49%, then everything's fine. Jeff: It's absolutely insane and just keeps people battling each other, but it's absolutely ingenious, because they've managed, through the government indoctrination camps, and through the media, the mainstream media, television, propaganda programming, to tell people that, "Oh, when you have a democracy, then you are the one who rules yourself, and you get to rule yourself by voting once every four or five years. You get to tick a box," and then some guy goes somewhere, and he makes decisions about what you're going to have to give up and how much they're going to extort you and things like that, but it's absolutely an ingenious idea. It's worked now for a few hundred years, and people have really fallen for it, but they're starting to wake up to it. That's what we're starting to see across the world, really. Jeff: We're starting to see that in France right now. Again, they're starting to realize, "This is absolutely insane that we have people ruling us without our permission, and taking our money, and things like that." Even Donald Trump, in the U.S., was to an extent an awakening of people going, "This system is horrible. We've got this total political class that is totally ruling us and just totally enslaving us." Jeff: What they thought was, "Well, we have democracy, thank God. We have democracy, so we can elect someone else," so they elected a kind of a bit of an outsider, Donald Trump, who's best friends with the Clintons and has been involved with central banks and with the Bush family for decades. His family's been very involved with the Bush family, so he's been very involved in the political class, but he came in as sort of an outsider, and you kind of see a lot of people saying, "Oh, he's an outsider, so he can fix things." He's not an outsider whatsoever. It's another sort of ruse in the whole democracy game, but really, that's what we've got today. Jeff: Now, what we've got at The Dollar Vigilante, I cover how bankrupt all these nation states are, how the central banks are printing money until we're going to be, hit hyperinflation very soon, so we're very near the end of this sort of system of these big nation states, of these big welfare states, warfare states, Big Brother nanny states, where everything is controlled, and regulated, and extorted, and taxed, and that sort of a thing. It's all going bankrupt right now, so even if people didn't wake up to what I'm talking about, we're still going to go through a massive amount of change in the next few years as all these systems all go down because they're all bankrupt. Stefan: Yeah. Well, there's a ... Man, Jeff, you said a mouthful there, man. I don't even know where to start, but I'm going to try to weigh in on what you said there at the end. Now, I wrote a book here called Hard Times Create Strong Men. I'm holding it up here for the camera for the people at home, and the cycles of history, as I understand it, goes like this. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. That whole cycle takes about 80 years, and every 80 years, there's a major war, a major crisis, a major reset. 80 years ago was World War II. 80 years before that was American Civil War, and you can trace this back in history. 80 to 100 years, every 80 to 100 years, is a major reset. Now, if you trace that out to the future right now from World War II to now, 2020 is the next "hard times create strong men." Stefan: That's what the book's about is, the men are becoming weak. When men become weak, the backbone of society falls apart. The family falls apart. The churches and the freedom of that falls apart, and what we end up with is some sort of major crisis. Would you say something like that's coming up? Jeff: Oh, absolutely, and I think those cycles are very true. If you just look at anyone who's like a rich kid, so his father most likely worked really hard his entire life and amassed a fairly large fortune, and then the kid comes along, and he's just pampered, and he never does anything. He never learns how to do anything. He never has to learn anything about life, and they usually become idiots, and they actually end up usually wasting or losing most of their money. This is a very natural sort of a cycle that can happen if you're not smart, if, as a father, if you make a lot of money, you don't just give it to your kids. That's absolutely ridiculous. Talk about a really great way to destroy your children, but the big problem with that cycle that you just mentioned that's been going on now for centuries is the government. Jeff: When you get the government involved, it's not just people who are destroying themselves through the cycle of people having to have hard times to get better and actually learn skills and work hard, and then they get soft afterwards, and then their kids get really soft and that sort of thing. That happens all normally, but when you add the government into it, it gets way worse, because then what, that's exactly what we're seeing today in a place like the U.S., which used to be quite capitalist. It has been fully capitalist, really, since its inception. It hasn't been, definitely has not been capitalist since 1913 when they first put in the Federal Reserve and the income tax acts in the same year, which is no coincidence whatsoever. It's been kind of a mix of the socialism, and communism, and fascism since then. Jeff: About what you've seen because of the capitalism, because of the free markets, there was quite a bit of free markets in the U.S. There isn't any more, but there used to be quite a bit. You build up all this wealth, and when you have a government, it always seems to skew to these people going, "Well, now that we have quite a wealthy place, we should be quite giving." Yeah, that's great. Give, but what they're talking about is, the government should steal money from everyone, extort everybody, and then give some of it to some people, which is absolutely heinous, and evil, and destroys everything. Jeff: Even the welfare system destroys the people on welfare, but as I was mentioning, like that whole cycle would happen probably quite normally unless people start to wake up and realize what they're doing, but the fact that we have governments today makes it so much worse, because that's what we're seeing in the U.S. You even see communism is really catching on in the U.S., because you've got all these pampered little kids. They sit there on their MacBook Pro at Starbucks ranting about how evil capitalism is and saying they want communism, and they don't even look up the last 100 years of what communism has brought a lot of places, like the Soviet Union, or Cuba, or Venezuela, and places like that. Jeff: They just, because they're so soft, and they've never really done anything, that's why they call them little snowflakes and things like that, and they become social justice warriors. Really, they're just non-player characters, NPCs, but yeah, the big problem with that whole cycle is government. If we can get government out of the way, then you'd have families destroying themselves over time over and over and not realizing the problems that they keep creating for themselves, but they wouldn't force it all on the rest of us through government. Stefan: Yeah. Wow. I mean, this is some really good stuff, and the snowflake thing, the snowflakism's a reason why I wrote Hard Times, because I had some of these snowflakes in my company. I have a company. I got 13 employees, and these little snowflakes were crying, "Oh, you're mean, and I don't love this. This isn't my dream job, and you make me feel like a piece of shit," and I had people showing up late. Just snowflakism all day, and I said, "Where does this come from? Where does the snowflakism come from?" I started writing this book Hard Times, and it's interesting, because what you said is absolutely true. Stefan: We've had some communist subversion come in from the Cold War into our schools, into our churches, into our militaries, everything, and we got this virus in our brain that thinks that communism is going to save inequality, but in history, communism has never worked. It has never worked once. It ends in massive, massive killing and massive death. There's something like 100 million people slaughtered in the last 100 years with communism. It's something brutal. It's the biggest cause of unnatural death, and every 80 years, we think it's going to work somehow. Somebody somewhere's trying communism. Stefan: As an extension, I've been studying communism, I was watching a show with Stefan Molyneux on Freedomain Radio, and he was talking about how feminism actually spawned out of communism when they started talking about equality, and men and women are equal, and next thing you know, in communist Russia, in 1917, when they switched over to communism, you had all sorts of major problems, where there was one crazy stat was, more babies were aborted than were born. You think about that, it's just a big, crazy, evil system. Why do we get this idea that we think that communism's going to save us from our own poverty? Like why does that idea keep coming in every 80 years into different societies around the world? Jeff: Yeah. That's a good question. I wish I knew the real answer, because it makes no sense. Obviously, these people don't look at actual history. As you pointed out, there's never been one ... It's not like there's been one that really worked out well, and they're like, "Oh, we screwed it up a few times." It's like every single one turns into disaster. It actually makes total sense why, because of human nature. For someone like yourself who's read books by Ayn Rand, you kind of understand the individualist sort of a thing, and that people will always do what's in their best interest. That just makes total and normal sense as human being. When you have this system that comes in and you say, "Okay, the guy at the top decides everything that we're all going to do," you don't keep anything from your work, so that makes it so a lot of people don't really want to work anymore, because why would you work if all the incentives go away to ... Jeff: I don't know about you, but when I do work, it's because I know I'm going to get something from it. I'm not just doing it because for no reason whatsoever. A lot of these people, especially ... Well, what's really happened in the West is that they've really pumped it up in the government indoctrination camps. That's why I say to people, "Get your kids out of the government schools. There's nothing that can be worse than that than having government actually teaching you ... " Not teaching, actually indoctrinating your child for like 12 of its most important years of its building of its sense of self, of its intelligence, of everything. Even Vladimir Lenin, of all people, said, "Give me your child for four years and the seed I plant will never be uprooted." Jeff: It starts a lot there, and then you go home in places like the U.S., or Canada, or a lot of places, and you turn on the television programming, and it's called programming for a reason. You get pro-cops, and pro-presidents, and, "The government saved us today," and turn on the news, which is total fake news. It's just government propaganda, and they're like, "Well, we saved this today," and all that sort of stuff. With the cycles that you're talking about, and we're in the snowflake cycle now of sort of this millennials that have never seen anything hard their whole life. To them, the hard thing they've seen is like when there's a long line at Starbucks or something like that. Stefan: No Wi-Fi on the plane. There's no Wi-Fi on the plane today. Darn. Jeff: Yeah, like that's the hardest times they've seen. Because they've gone through this indoctrination and that they're really, I actually stay away from colleges and universities, because it freaks me out to hang around, like they're all zombies, and they're the stupidest people I've ever met in my life. They're all indoctrinated and programmed. You go there, and half the classes are talking about communism and socialism, so they've got them in this sort of thing, and they're all going out there now. We've seen that ... What's that, there's that U.S. politician, some young girl, is just complete and total moron who's just got selected or elected into Congress. It's called Congress because it's a con game, and it's called the Constitution because that's also a con, and all that sort of stuff. Jeff: You've got those people out there pushing this stuff, and these kids just go out, and they think, they don't know anything better. It's very unfortunate, but that's why it's really important that we continue to push out what we push out, which is more free market stuff. A lot of people do catch on to it. It's not as bad as it seems. The worst place that it really is in the world today is the U.S. They've got everyone ... Not everyone, but most people, they're so indoctrinated, and so brainwashed, and so propagandized, but you go to a lot of other places like Mexico here, and a lot of people are pretty free market. They don't like government and things like that. That's why they make Mexico look so bad on the news. That's on purpose, because it's a lot more free market down here. Stefan: It's amazing. I mean, you moved to Mexico. I have this prediction that Russia right now is a freedom-growing country. They're getting more freedom over there. It's like the 1950s U.S. over there, and then over here, it's like we're a freedom-losing country in Canada and the U.S. It's interesting with, you're talking about the universities being scary. When I get a stack of résumés, and I'm hiring, I throw the ones with degrees in the trash. Yeah, they don't- Jeff: Yeah, me too. Stefan: The people can't think for themselves. I remember I went out with this 18-year-old girl, and she wanted a job, so we went out for lunch, and I said, "Okay, look. What do you want to do?" She goes, "I want to start a social media company." I'm like, "Great. Start it." We're eating lunch. I said, "Great. Start it." She says, "Well, I'm in the business school, and I'm going to get my MBA, and I don't think I can start, because I don't know how," and I said, "Well, go google that. Just start." "Oh, I don't think I know how. I'm not qualified." The school system literally disabled her mind from figuring out how she could just start a social media company. Stefan: I mean, I got some guys running my social media. They're 18, 19 years old, and I just met them at a restaurant. Boom, they're banging out my social media like crazy, doing a great job, but this same girl in the government indoctrination camp, as you say, the universities and the schools, can't think for herself. I also think it's interesting in the colleges and universities right now, the number one read book on economics is Karl Marx. That's just like, that just doesn't make sense. Why don't you tell me a bit, Jeff, why does Karl Marx as the number one economics book not make sense? Jeff: Oh, my God. First of all, he knows nothing about economics. He was a homeless guy who had no money, and he wrote a ... If I was around when he wrote the book, I would have given it a few minutes, or even maybe a few days, maybe even a month or two, of thought, because it sounds really good. Right? Like what is the communist sort of slogan? It is, "Give to-" Stefan: Seize the means of production? Jeff: No, but they have this slogan like, "Someone's needs ... " Stefan: Oh, "To every man's need," or, "To the best of his ability and every man's need," or something like that. Jeff: Something, but basically what it's saying is ... See, that's how stupid it is. I don't even memorize the stupid quote, but basically, it sounds nice. It sounds like, "Yeah, if people can't do things, then you help them." It's like, "Yeah, sounds great," but the way they're talking about is, you have this giant government. They come around. They steal things from people, and they decide who gets your money, essentially, and things like that. Yeah, and it's shocking that ... It's really mostly caught on in the U.S. Like obviously, if you go to the ... You brought up Russia. If you go to Russia, no one wants to read Karl Marx. They'd probably burn that book if they saw it, just because they'd be so angry at it. Jeff: Anyone who's actually lived through communism, a lot of the old Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, Poland, and a lot of those places, even Germany to an extent, they still remember a lot of that. That's all you need to know about communism is live through it, and you realize it. That's one thing that I always thought that's funny is, you have all these people like Bernie Sanders and all these people, and they're so pro-communism and socialism and all these sort of things. It's like, have you ever even just gone to Venezuela even for a weekend? Because I was there like a year and a half ago, and it was pretty bad. Jeff: I remember being there about 15 years ago, and it was really nice. In fact, you can look up Venezuela back in the '60s and '70s. It looked just as nice as what you see in the videos of the U.S. People got around in nice cars, looking all nice. Everyone's looking good and happy, and they have lots of food and all that sort of stuff, and now it's just a complete and total disaster, so ... Yeah, you have some people still ... It's mostly in the U.S., though, I have to say [inaudible 00:23:04]. Jeff: I meet a lot of people from the U.S., and they say, "Man, this whole world's going to hell." It's like, actually, it's not too bad. Most of the world is pretty good. It's really the U.S. is like, and Canada is almost just as bad now, and when you go to the universities, as you pointed out, and I do the same thing, I have only hired one university graduate ever, and it turned into the biggest disaster I've ever had. He was actually a producer at CNBC, I hired him in 1999 to head up a video department of a internet company I had, and he was a total disaster. He was an MBA, and I had all the, all that stuff, and I ended up having to pay him out like two years' salary to get him to leave, that sort of- Stefan: Oh, my God. Jeff: But yeah, so I just stay away from the universities. As you pointed out, if I ... I've got a number of businesses myself, so if someone's interested in working with us, I'll ask them what they do, and if they go, "Well, I just spent the last eight years in university," I'm like, "Well, you don't make very good decisions, do you? You [inaudible 00:24:00]-" Stefan: Bro, I'm going to give you a gong for that. Boom. I want you to instant replay that for the kids at home. "If you're hanging out in university the last eight years, you don't make very good decisions, do you?" Tell me why that's a bad decision in 2019. Jeff: Well, I'm sure there's probably a couple courses you could take in college that make some sense somehow. I've never seen them, though, but I ... There must be a couple, but the reason that it makes no sense in 2018, 2019, is because we have the internet now, and all information is on the internet. You don't have to pay $100,000 a year to go sit in a room with probably a unionized teacher who's never done anything his whole life, that's why he's a teacher, he doesn't know anything, and sit there with a bunch of other idiots like you, because you don't know anything, they don't know anything, and learn about socialism-type stuff pumped into you. It's a complete and total waste of time. Really, the best- Stefan: You mean it's a virgin sex therapy class, so the guy teaching, it's a virgin, but he's teaching sex therapy to everybody? Jeff: Yeah, that's one good way to put it, but yeah. It's just a waste of time. I think trade schools or something, where if you're going to become a mechanic, so you have to work on cars, so you can't really do that over the internet, I think that makes some sense, but 90-percent-plus of what you go to college for is just a complete and total waste of time that you could just totally learn much better stuff on the internet. It actually just came out, I don't know if you heard this, but Google and Facebook just said that they've removed university education as one of the requirements to work there. I think they're really slow and late to do that, but I think they're starting to realize, it's like, "Man, the people we're getting from the schools are just brainwashed idiots, whereas the young guy who's sitting at home just hacking away, and going on the internet all day, and figuring everything out, those are the kind of guys you want." Stefan: Yeah. I got a policy in my office, and when people come to me and ask for stuff, I say, "Google it, or handle it." Those are the two things, handle it, google it. Google and ... I think it was Google, Apple, Facebook, they don't need degrees anymore. I think that's been going on for some time, but it's an official statement now. Right? That's like super, super official. Jeff, let's go back to collapse of society and things like that. One thing that's common in history, and I've studied it over and over again when these collapses happen, it's usually, the people can't buy bread. The nonsense can keep going on. The ... Stefan: I've got the numbers in my book here, Hard Times, about minimum wage, and minimum wage in 1968, indexed to gold, is 103,000 dollars U.S., so you work at McDonald's, you made one cheeseburger, one hamburger, French fries, Coke, and a milkshake, you made 103 grand in purchasing power back then, indexed to gold. Same guy today making a cheeseburger, hamburger, French fries, well, he has to make 150 items down at McDonald's. They got a crazy menu. Stefan: Same guy at McDonald's makes 13,000 a year, so he's lost 90% of his purchasing power indexed to gold, and this shenanigan with the money system where the banks and the government rob people through inflation every year, and then suddenly, at some point, it keeps going, going, going, going until the average man can't buy bread. That's when the Russian Revolution happens. That's when the French Revolution happens. Why does that pattern keep happening over and over again? Jeff: Well, first, let me just mention that the reason that these jobs have gone so far down in value is because of the central bank. It's because of money printing and inflation, and that's why you pointed out those numbers in inflation terms. You have a lot of people out there today who are like, "We need to raise the minimum wage," which is, what you're saying is, "We need these people who extort us, called the government, to go out with guns and force businesses to pay us more because we can't afford to live." Well, the reason you can't afford to live is because you've had most of your stuff stolen from you by the central bank, and the central bank, by the way, is a tenet of communism, and that's why I say the U.S. is nothing even close to capitalism today. Jeff: Actual communism has already destroyed most of these people. You ask about revolutions, and yeah, it seems that people, this is one thing you can say about anarchy, a lot of people think about anarchy, "Well, if there was not government, it'd just be chaos, and horrible, and everyone would just kill each other." It's actually not true. Your average person, and this relates to your question, your average person just really doesn't want to do too much. They want to have a nice little life. They want to have a family or whatever, or they don't, but they want something nice, and that's about it. They don't want to go out and rock the boat too much. Your average person just does not want to rock the boat, and that's what ... Jeff: That's one of the problems we have today is, we have the statist system, and most people are just too scared to change it, but it appears, at some point, when you finally run out of even just food, and you can't even eat anymore, that's when finally people start to wake up, and stand up, and demand some sort of change. When I say demand, the problem is, they're demanding from the government change. What they should really realize is, the government caused it, the central bank caused it, and just break away from this system and stand up and become their own person and not be a slave to the systems, but yeah, it's unfortunate that your average person, for whatever reason, will wait until they're basically starving before they actually face the real problems in the world. Stefan: It's interesting in history, I think Putin kicked out the central banks. Is that right? Jeff: I'm not sure if Putin did, but the ruble basically collapsed. I don't think they had a central bank, definitely, at the start there. Stefan: Well, I've heard Putin's kicked out the central banks. I think it's interesting is, Hitler did that back in the day. I guess Germany was so poor, and they were so messed up, and they couldn't make their war reparation payments. They just couldn't pay, and that's how World War II started is, a bunch of people, super poor, couldn't pay their payments, boom, world war starts. It's interesting, because somehow, in the system, the political system, they go right versus left, and the right versus the left, and the left versus the right. Really, it's the same kind of thing. Nobody points the finger at the central banks. Stefan: One thing I love about America that still stands is, there's 300 million guns in the States and 300 million people, and they keep that gun amendment in there because they know that tyranny's going to come at some point. They left that in there, and if people can't buy bread, or they're really hungry, that's where those 300 million people with guns are going to rise up. Do you think we're going to see something like that in our lifetimes? Jeff: Yeah, definitely, because the U.S. is going to collapse in the next few years. It's not going to be decades, because it's so bankrupt. We have 22 trillion dollars' worth of debt now, so we're basically ... I said when I started The Dollar Vigilante that the U.S. dollar will collapse by the end of this decade, so we've got about a year left. I think we're pretty close to on track. That's how close we are to the end of this system. Yeah, we're definitely going to see collapses anyway. As far as people in the U.S. having guns, I think all people should have the right to defend themselves, obviously. I don't think anyone should be able to say, "You can't have this," if you're not hurting anyone else, and that's what government does, of course. It's very good. That's the only thing left in the U.S. that is keeping it from being complete and total carnage is that the people still can protect themselves, so the government has to be very careful about how they enslave everyone, but they've done an incredibly good job of enslaving people. Jeff: When you think about how the U.S. started, it started over the Tea Party, where it was a tax from England on tea, and that was it. It wasn't a tax on everything else, income tax, and capital gains tax, and smoking tax, and hotel tax, and food tax, and all this sort of stuff. It was just a little tax on tea, and that started the so-called American Revolution. Now you have people in the U.S. today where you have taxes that are over 50%. It's probably closer to 60 or 70% when you add up all the taxes, because literally every single thing in the U.S. is taxed today, including death. Death has a tax, and so when you die you get taxed. You still don't have people wanting to revolt. It's because, again, people are fairly, if they have a decent life, they don't tend to want to change things too much. You look at the U.S. and your average person, even poor people have a television. They probably even have a car. Even poor people have cars in the U.S. Jeff: That's how much free markets, even the poorest people are still ahead of a lot of other people in the world, and so because of that, they don't really want to have a revolt or anything like that. Plus, they don't even ... Because of all the years of government indoctrination and all the war propaganda about how they're trying to save the world by spreading freedom by bombing the entire world in the War on Terror, war of terror. It's absolutely insane, but your average person just doesn't seem to want to even break out of this system. Jeff: What's going to probably happen is, that system's going to collapse on its own because of all the debt and go into hyperinflation. Then hopefully, and you brought up about how Russia's become much more free market now. That's what happens. The same cycles that you mentioned before when you have countries, they usually start off quite small and poor. Even the U.S. was like that when it first started. Because it had a lot of freedom, it becomes quite rich. Then they get soft because of that and because of government and statism, they start doing socialism and all these sort of things which start to destroy everything. They start putting kids into the government schools and all that, and they get worse and worse until they eventually totally collapse, like the Soviet Union. Once it has a total collapse, then you can actually have free markets again. The U.S. actually, once this collapse happens, and after a few weeks or months, and that's sort of what happened in the Soviet Union as well, it takes a little bit of time, like weeks or months, definitely not years, then you can start to rebuild immediately again with free markets. Jeff: We've seen how the free markets, if you just allow people to be free, you just have to look at places like Hong Kong. That was a fishing village like 200 years ago. Look at it now. I don't know if you've ever been there. It's amazing to even go there. Singapore, even 100 years ago, was a fishing village. It's now one of the most luxurious, wealthy places in the world. Dubai was just desert. They just started doing like low-tax, no-tax sort of stuff, and all of a sudden, there you got like indoor ski parks in the hot, 150-degree desert. Once you have like all this tyranny, it will eventually collapse. Then once it collapses, you have freedom again, and then things take off again. Jeff: Really, that's the whole point of what I do at The Dollar Vigilante is, that's our actual tagline, which is, "Helping you to survive and prosper during and after the dollar collapse," because if you can hold on to some of your assets, and if you can get through this collapse that's coming, we're going to go on to amazing, prosperous times again, but if you have no assets, you'll have to work a lot harder to get back up, but if you have kept some of your assets and things like precious metals or cryptocurrencies, once everyone else gets wiped out, and all the banks close, and the currency becomes worthless, you'll be one of the richest guys around, and then you can start rebuilding the new free market. Stefan: Yeah. There's two cycles that are coming to an end. I wrote about this in my book, Hard Times. One is the 2020, which is that 80-year cycle of war. That's an important one to watch. Hard Times Create Strong Men. Then the other one is the 250-year cycle of democracy. Democracies only last about 250 years, so if the U.S. was born in 1776, it's going to be dead by 2026, so somewhere between 2020 and 2026, we know there's probably going to be an end of democracy, probably usually goes democracy into tyranny, and then tyranny back into monarchy usually is what happens. We'll see something happen. Do you think it's going to go back to tyranny and monarchy, or do you think it's going to go just to open freedom? Jeff: Yeah. A really good question. I don't know how it's going to play out. I could definitely see the tyranny part coming after this. What will likely happen, and probably be Trump will be in, his regime will be in as this collapse happens. As everyone's gets wiped out, as the banks close, as it's complete, way worse than 1929, Great Depression, someone like Trump will become sort of like Hitler-like in that sense, in that he will be the strongman who will lead the country out of this. Because of that, we're going to need more laws, and of course, Trump has been pro-asset, civil forfeitures, having the police just take whatever they want. He even came out recently and said that he's okay if the cops go and just take everyone's guns and then figure out if they did the right thing afterwards and go to court in that afterwards, so no due process and things like that. Yeah, I could totally see that we have this collapse in the next couple years. Jeff: It leads into a very sort of like Nazi Germany like sort of like tyranny type thing, and perhaps war, because the U.S. does have a massive amount of military just sitting there, and of course, if you're desperate, and if you're broke, and if your people are all crying out for something to be done, and of course, what do they always say on the news, the television programming? "Well, it's always Russia. Russia's always messing with us." Russia's not doing anything to the U.S. whatsoever, but they've been putting this into place, and they also mention China a lot. Yeah, they'll probably go into some sort of major war at some point. The key for people like us will be to stay outside of it and let them all go through this, again, if they want to go through this again, which is unbelievable. Jeff: There's lots of stories of people surviving through all of these, World War II, World War I, the Great Depression, and coming out way ahead afterwards, and even surviving quite well through it. A lot of them would go to places like Argentina or whatever for a few years, wait till all the craziness dies down with their assets and things like that. That's really the key, and to me, it's, we can't change everyone else. I wish we could, but we can't. Jeff: Actually, I don't wish I could. That'd be a huge responsibility, to change everyone else, but I wish that they would be a bit more able to see what's going on, but if they can't, really all that's left for us to do is to take care of ourselves and to keep spreading this information the ways that we can do it, but if they're going to go ahead and destroy the whole world with their statism, and their craziness, and their communism, and socialism, and fascism again, then it's really just up to us to survive and prosper through it and then try to be there to help rebuild once they get through doing it all again. Stefan: There's two interesting things that come to mind when you say that. There's the Hitler-Trump connection, which I think is super interesting. There's two things I want to allude to. There's the Hitler-Trump connection, and then there's another one, an Abraham Lincoln and Trump connection. When you look back in history, so if we go back 80 years to World War II, Germany was one of the most advanced civilizations on the planet, probably actually was the most advanced in science and medicine. They were so broke, they were so poor, they were so hungry, they were so messed up that the Nazis became popular, because Hitler was offering them a better life. He said, "Look, here's a better life. We can have a better way." People got behind that, the most sophisticated, probably, society on the planet went into absolute terror at that time. Stefan: I think there's a similar thing going on in the U.S. You've got a huge amount of people on food stamps. People are poor. People are pissed off, so they elect a strong leader. It's not ... It's interesting, like if it wasn't Hitler back in World War II, it probably would have been somebody else leading them, because the people were so poor and so messed up ... I like what Jordan Peterson said in the summary. He said, "You don't have an idea. An idea has you." That idea had Nazi Germany. I think there's a similar idea in the Brexit right now. There's a similar idea in the United States, and then that's the 80-year cycle. Stefan: If you go back 80 years before, you got the Civil War, the American Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln got shot. It's interesting, because Lincoln was a guy that wasn't totally popular with half the country. He got assassinated, and those things are all kind of floating around. You got a Trump, Trump-Hitler-like ruler there. I mean, I actually like Trump, personally, but at the end of the day, there's a sentiment in the country and a feeling around that that's Hitler-like, and then there's also an Abraham Lincoln kind of feeling where do you think he could get assassinated? Jeff: Look, I think it's possible. I think most of those sort of things, they're all actually orchestrated. JFK, for example, I believe that was Lyndon B. Johnson and the CIA who took him out. Ronald Reagan, that was the first Bush, the one who just died, George W. Bush, or sorry, George Bush, who was behind the assassination attempt, so-called assassination attempt, on Ronald Reagan. It's usually like an inside sort of a thing. It's really controlled. It's really theater. They actually keep all these things, including Putin, including little Kim in North Korea. They're all controlled by the same people, and it's just this big theater to keep people just mesmerized and watching their CNN and, "Oh, what did Trump say today," and all that. It's just no different than people in North Korea like, "What did little Kim say today? What are we supposed to do today?" Jeff: That sort of a thing, but anything is possible, but it is pretty tough to assassinate the president, as an outsider, but as an insider, it's not that hard, but they also seem to have some sort of weird like almost like protection around them. Like even George W. Bush, when he was in Iraq and the guy stood up at the media thing, and he was very mad, because Bush had been destroying his country and killing his family and all that sort of stuff, and he threw one shoe, and Bush just did the little dodge and just missed him, and then threw another shoe, and he just ... It's like, I don't know what it is with these people. They're kind of like, I don't know what it is, but it seems like he can't really get to them that way, not physically violent sort of thing. I think the only way we get rid of all of this is for people to wake up and realize that these people don't own you, and start to move away from these systems, and these people just go away and have to get real jobs. Stefan: I think one of the problems with human nature and people, I mean, you were talking about human nature and communism, where human nature doesn't work inside of communism, and then there's also another side of human nature, which is, I think humans have a hero worship, innate hero worship ability where we see someone, we see a leader, and we just want to worship them, and we want them to handle our problems. We want to have a personal Jesus. We want to have somebody we can just give it all to. Somehow, that's going to be the easy button. It'll all be solved, and then we don't have to think or deal with anything. Would you say that's true? Jeff: Oh, absolutely. That's exactly what government, it really is. That's what government always does. You look at every election. They come up there, and they give all these promises. "I'm going to solve this for you. I'm going to solve that." They never solve anything. They're just extorting you and destroying everything in the process, and making everything worse in the process, but yeah. That's absolutely the case is, your average person just won't take responsibility for themselves and just say, "I don't need this person to run this entire country for me. I can run myself," and that sort of a thing. Of course, it gets a little interesting how that would all, we've been in statism now for hundreds of years, so to actually break away from it's going to be difficult. Jeff: That's actually why we're starting up numerous sort of countries across the world now, so we've started Liberland in Europe, which is near Croatia and Serbia, which is a new sort of anarcho-capitalist country that's just being started, and there's some few others working on buying some islands, and we're going to start some totally anarcho-capitalist free sort of places there. We're also seasteading, so we're trying to start up in the ocean, start up our own little, what you call countries. None of them are really like countries, because there's no real government, but it's a place that we're going to start up that it's going to be completely free. Then through that, hopefully we could show the world, because they've never really seen it, what life would be like in a true free market. Jeff: If, all evidence seems to point to when you have a totally free market that it's incredibly good for most people. It just increases the wealth dramatically, as we've seen, as I pointed out, in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai. Whenever you have a lot of freedom, everything gets a lot more prosperous. The only sort of question a lot of people have is, "What if you have total freedom? What would happen?" We don't really have any good examples for that yet, so we're hoping to start do that in the next couple of years and try to show the world the light that, really, this governmental sort of statism system with central banks, and all these sort of things, are just absolutely terrible. The best thing for all humanity is to get rid of those sort of things and not have a belief in their authority. Stefan: Sounds like a page out of Atlas Shrugged right now. You got all the productive smart people wanting to go start their own country or start their own island. This is, it's just human nature. It's all written down in the book. It's all happened before, and here's a thought, Jeff. I don't know if you thought about this. At some point, there probably was some nice, true freedom in the Wild West, maybe, Wild West America or some place, and then at some point, the people organized themselves. At some point, there's a government. At some point, there's a king. At some point, there's a good king. He dies, and then you got his son, the bad king. Stefan: Do you think we've had freedom in history at some point, like true freedom, and then it just got consolidated into power? Because it seems to me that whether you look at a market like a real estate market, or you look at a Monopoly board, or you look at anything in life with humans, it seems that there's like always a consolidation going on. There's a consolidation at some point where somebody just ends up taking over, and we just end up in that over and over again, and the dominoes fall down at some point. We reset. Do you think we can actually exist as free people, like truly, or do you think someone's going to seize power at some point? Jeff: Well, the thing is, if you have enough people who actually believe that freedom is the way to go, and they want to do that, then no one can seize power, because there's nothing there to seize. You pointed out rightly that over history, it appears that people have always been okay with giving away their power to someone else and hoping this guy takes care of them all, and that never works out for the best, just like communism, it just never works out well. Jeff: Yeah, that's actually been the case over time is that people seem to have always sort of gravitated into these sort of things, but at the same time, when you think about life even today, we actually live in a state of complete anarchy right now. It just so happens that there's a lot of governments on earth which you can just consider to be criminal organizations who are stealing and extorting people, and kidnapping people, and forcing them to do things they don't want to do, but we actually live in a state of anarchy. Jeff: Your average person, actually, every single day of their life, pretty much lives in anarchy. When you're in your home, or you're talking to your friends, or you go to work, that's just anarchy. That's just day-to-day life, and there's no one there telling you what to do, except for a street cop or whatever, a road pirate who might try to extort you if he thinks you're going a little too fast over a arbitrary speed limit or things like that, but generally kind of already live in anarchy. Really, the important thing to understand is that the word "government," what it really means, "govern" is, the word "govern" comes from the Latin [Latin 00:46:24] which means to control, which makes a lot of sense, and the word "ment." Jeff: There's a lot of different sort of where that came from, but I lived here in Mexico, Spanish, [Spanish 00:46:34] is mind, so really, government is mind control. It's controlling people's minds to make them believe that this thing has authority over them and that it's sort of taking care of them as well. This is where we get into Stockholm syndrome and things like that, where people actually begin to really adore their kidnapper, the person who has basically kept them enslaved. I see [inaudible 00:46:56]- Stefan: I wanted to give a gong. At some point, you got to stop for me to give you a gong. I didn't know that "government" meant mind control. It's really interesting, because if you control the information, you control the thoughts, and if you control the thoughts, you control the stories. You control the stories, you control the beliefs. If you control the beliefs, you control reality. It's almost like ... In Hard Times, I talk about we almost live in a 1984 future from George Orwell, and some of it's like Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, which was Orwell's mentor. We got half of our stuff is the American Aldous Huxley Brave New World future with orgies, and synthetic music, and all these women with narrow hips that don't bear children anymore, and we have alphas, and betas, and gammas, and deltas and all that stuff, and epsilons. Stefan: Then the other part of our world is like the 1984 future where there's three gigantic powers that are always at war with each other, and it's like a Stalinist future. What do you think about those two books right now, Jeff, like 1984, Brave New World, and what we got going on right now? Jeff: Yeah. Both those guys, both, I think they went, both went to Oxford or one of those major schools. They hung out with the same people like the Bush crime family and all those, so they hung out with what you could call the elites, or some people call them the Illuminati or whatever words you want to put to these sort of secret societies that mostly sort of are in these schools like Oxford and stuff like that. They were actually good friends, as you pointed out, and it's really amazing that that long ago, what is it, like 60, 70, 80 years ago, they wrote- Stefan: It was 1945- Jeff: ... these books. Stefan: ... I think. It was like right after World War II the books came out. Jeff: Yeah, so I can't do the math. I went to government schools, but 70 years ago, whatever it was, and they've really just roadmapped the exact both ways that we're going. Actually, they're both happening at the same time. The Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, that was a lot of bread and circuses. The people would be too dumbed down, which we're seeing, through fluoridization in the water, through all the government indoctrination camps, through the television programming, all that sort of stuff. People are just watching the Kardashians and all that. Jeff: The sports, so the sports ball games, and that sort of thing, so people, that's what Aldous Huxley was saying is, people would be too dumbed down and too into these things like sports and entertainment to even notice that they're enslaved. That's what we have today, especially in the U.S. Then on the other side, there was Orwell went the other way with a bit more it's like a hard, top-down dictatorship. You can't say anything. Everything's the opposite of what it means in political speak, which is what we have today. You brought up about how there's these certain sectors of the world that always at war. East Oceania's always at war with whatever the other one was. That's what we have today. It's like, who's at war with who? This War on Terror, it's a war on a feeling. It's a war on, it's like terror is a feeling. It's like, "I was terrified when I saw that. We need a war against that." It's like- Stefan: Well, we got the- Jeff: ... "Who are you [inaudible 00:49:47]" Stefan: ... War on Drugs which doesn't work. We got the War on Terror that doesn't work. You got the War on Cancer that doesn't work. You got all these wars. They keep just funneling money into a couple dudes' pockets, and the War on Drugs makes drugs worse. The War on Cancer makes cancer worse. The War on Terror makes terrorism worse. It's pretty scary how those things just simply don't work. Jeff: Yeah, and it's all by design, like the people who really do these things know this is what's going to happen. It's just sad that people keep falling for it, but people are slowly waking up thanks to the internet. Yeah, I even saw like, who's that blonde, fairly not attractive, woman on U.S. TV who's like a really mean, nasty sort of ... Anyway. She just came out, and she just said all these wars are just stupid. They're just like, like we shouldn't be doing them. She was like a total war sort of a person. This just came out. Jeff: People are starting to wake up, but the biggest issue is, they don't know what the answer is, and so that's why they keep going back to what you pointed out, which is this false left-right paradigm, which they tell everyone that's all there is. There's left or right or somewhere in the middle and there's nothing else, but that's a very narrow range of political spectrum. That's basically statism right there, and you can have left or right in statism, but there's a whole other spectrum of just not having governments whatsoever that could really free a lot of people. It's really growing, actually, like when we first started Anarchast, Anarchapulco, Anarchapulco started five years ago. It was 150 people. We're now expecting about 3,000 people. It's doubled every year. Stefan: Wow. Jeff: My show, Anarchast, a lot of people said no one had ever watched the show, but anarchy, that's crazy. They think anarchy is throwing bombs and all this sort of stuff, but it's catching on. People are catching on to a lot of this stuff now, so we're going to see what happens. We're at an amazing time in human history, because all these things are coming to a head all at the same time. All these governments are bankrupt. The central banks are about to go into hyperinflation. Then we have people waking up and starting to realize what's going on, and then you still have all these people in the universities who think that communism's the way out, so they'll probably try to push for that. Jeff: It's just amazing, incredible time, and there's going to be so much change in the next 10 years. I don't think anyone will believe what happens over the next 10 years. I couldn't even imagine what will happen, but I know it's going to be mind-blowing what happens. It's going to be that much change. Stefan: Yeah. It's unbelievable. Now, Jeff, I got to wrap up the show, but I want to ask you a couple questions I ask every guest, because I think they're cool. If you can go back in time to, let's say, 15-year-old Jeff and give yourself a piece of advice, what's a piece of advice you'd give yourself? Jeff: Oh, man. That's a good question. I would say work on yourself. I really just started working on myself over the last couple of years. I'm like 48 years old now, and it's changed my life dramatically. I didn't deal with a lot of my past issues, childhood issues, a lot of the programming that we get from our cult, our culture they call it, but our cult, through our younger years. That still stays in your head. I think if I would have, if I could go back, I'd say, "Buy Bitcoin as soon as you hear about it," and I'd- Stefan: [inaudible 00:52:55]. Jeff: ... say, "Work on yourself," like- Stefan: [inaudible 00:52:57] man. Jeff: I'd probably also say, "Don't go to the bars that much. Don't be having a lot of drunken sex. It's a total waste of time. Try to find a good girlfriend. Try to fix yourself and work on yourself more than anything." That's what I'd tell him. Stefan: Wow. Great answer. Top three books that changed your life. Jeff: A good question again. We talked about G. Edward Griffin earlier. The Creature from Jekyll Island was one of the first books that got me looking into all this stuff that I talk about today. That was a really important to my life. I'd say The Lord of the Rings is, I read it when I was very young. I used to love to read. I was probably like 12 or something. This giant book, it's even bigger than your book there. What I didn't realize about The Lord of the Rings that is interesting, I love the book, and I loved everything about it, and it wasn't until a couple years ago I realized that that ring of power was actually a metaphor for government power. I actually looked- Stefan: Wow. Jeff: ... into it a couple years ago, and J. R. R. Tolkien, who wrote the book, called himself an anarchist, so that entire book was an allegory about the problems caused by government. Those two books are pretty good. I guess the third book that I thought was really interesting, and it's like a pamphlet. You can read it in about two hours. It's called The Market for Liberty. You can actually find it online for free in PDF format, and it shows what the world could be like without government. When I read that book, it just blew my mind, because I'm sure if you even read it, you'd go, you'd be like me, you'd be like, "Wow, I never thought things could work that way or that ... " Jeff: They actually thought about how things would work without government, so there'd be like private security companies. Well, how would that work? Well, there'd be insurance as well, so the insurance companies ... For example, like people go, "Well, how would you put out fires without the government?" Which is kind of funny, because the government rarely puts out fires [inaudible 00:54:34]. Stefan: Fire insurance. Jeff: Yeah. Fire insurance, and then the insurance companies have all this insurance money, and they'll have to pay out a ton if there's a giant fire, so they actually put out fire stuff, and fire stations, and all that kind of stuff so it can all work in the free market. I think that book really, in just such a small amount of time, can really just show how the free market can handle everything. Stefan: Yeah. Well, that's great. I always, people say, "Well, who's going to pay for the roads?" Well, you just tax cars and gasoline. If you got a car and gas- Jeff: Not even tax, right, but like the businesses would own the roads. You would never put up ... Let's say you're Walmart, and you want to put up a Walmart somewhere and there's no road there. You're going to build the road, because you want people to get to your thing. Plus, not to mention there's already all roads. All roads that already exist. I don't know why people think they'll just disappear, but obviously like gas stations would have a giant interest to making sure there was roads, so they would probably do something. The gas stations would all work together and say, "Okay, let's take 10% of all of our money that we make every month and put it into maintaining the roads." Right? It's fairly basic sort of stuff. Stefan: Right. All right. Second last question today, Jeff. What's the one thing that young people need to succeed these days? Let's talk to the snowflakes. Let's talk to the millennials, the guy with the MacBook Pro at Starbucks. What's something you want to say to h
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.
Many people have said that Dec. 25 is an old Roman holiday celebrating the Sun in the sky. Did the Catholic Church co-opt this holiday for their own religious purposes, or are there reasons to believe Jesus might have been born in December? Dr. Jeffrey Chadwick, New Testament scholar at BYU answers that question. https://youtu.be/klM391Ccs0I GT: So do Catholics believe Jews was born in December? Jeff: Yes. GT: Really? Jeff: Well, you know what Christmas means? Christ's mass. They traditionally date Jesus' birth to December. GT: I've always heard the Christmas came about because it was a pagan holiday of the Sun God, and it was December 25th. Was there some Roman [holiday].... Jeff: Well, this is certainly true. December 25th was Sol Invictus in the Roman pagan notion. But the Roman Empire became Christian right, by the fourth century. Particularly when Constantine comes in there, Christianity becomes even the preferred religion. But long before that, the notion that Jesus had been born in early winter existed within Christianity. The problem, I think, is that they didn't know just when. The reason for this is that by the end of the second century, Christianity had become totally Gentile rather than Jewish, which was the way Christianity started out. We will talk further about early Catholic/Christian beliefs about Christmas. Dr. Chadwick doesn't think it's a problem that Christians re-appropriated a pagan holiday. What do you think? Check out our conversation…. Did early Christians appropriate a pagan holiday for Christmas? Do Catholics really believe Jesus was born in December? Check out our other conversations about the first Christmas!
Doug McCary, Jeff Wells Interview with Guest Jeff Wells of Woodsedge Church From December 7, 2017 INFO@JEFFHWELLS.COM Dealing with OCD ------------------ Bible Studies at the following locations will resume January 16, 2019 https://swatradio.com/ SWAT - Spiritual Warriors Advancing Truth Call us Toll-Free at: +1-844-777-7928 Email Us a Question: ask@swatradio.com FIND A SWAT MEETING Whiteway Deli 1237 King St Jacksonville, FL Tues. 7:00-8:00 am Woody’s Bar-B-Que 226 Solano Rd Ponte Vedra, FL 10611 Wed. 6:30-7:30 am Salem Centre 7235 Bonneval Rd Jacksonville, FL Wed. 12:00-1:00 pm Christian Family Chapel, Building D 10365 Old St. Augustine Rd Jacksonville, FL Thursday 6:30-7:30 am
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
This episode will introduce our listeners to the mission behind the No Barriers Podcast and what we are trying to accomplish with putting this out to our community. To start you will meet our hosts and hear about their background. Host Erik Weihenmayer discusses his background as a blind climber and being known most widely as being the first blind person to summit Mt. Everest and what got him interested in starting an organization that helps people challenge themselves to break out of the barriers that confront them in their daily lives. Jeff Evans, who was on Erik's Mt. Everest team, goes through his back story as an adventurer, speaker, and high altitude medical expert. Jeff explains what fascinates him about listening to people share their stories and his experience working with No Barriers. Dave Shurna introduces himself as the Executive Director of No Barriers and his trajectory with the organization and his desire to learn more from our guests. Jeff and Erik talk about the seeds of forming the organization, No Barriers, and how it's turned from a small endeavor into a movement that we hope to continue to expand to anyone that can benefit from this message. No Barriers podcast is about sharing stories of transformation - introducing our community to people who have encountered a barrier and have confronted it and are thriving (or working on thriving). We want to highlight that struggle and maybe unearth some nuggets of wisdom in what was discovered in that process. We hope you listen to these stories and extract meaning in your own life. Subscribe, rate, and share with your friends and family. Learn more about No Barriers --------------------------- EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ----------------------------- Erik: It's easy to talk about the triumphs, but what doesn't get talked about enough is the struggle. Erik: My name is Erik Weihenmayer. I'm an adventurer. I've climbed Mount Everest and the Seven Summits, the tallest peak on every continent, and I happen to be blind. And I can tell you it's been a struggle to live what we call a "no barriers" life--to define it, to push the parameters of what it can mean. And part of the equation of this life is understanding this process of growth that we're all striving for--to dive down into that experience and illuminate the elements, those universal elements that we have to harness along the way, like way points on a trail, like holds on a rock face, that lead us forward towards change, towards growth, towards transformation. And that unexplored terrain between those safe dark places that we find ourselves in and the summit, is a map that we can use to navigate our lives. It's a far messier, gritter map than we're led to believe, with more flailing and bleeding along the way, but there is a way forward. That map is what we call "No Barriers". Erik: This is the No Barriers podcast. Dave: Hi, this is Dave Shurna, and I am the executive director of No Barriers, sitting here with Jeff Evans and Erik Weihenmayer and, let's get this started, Erik. What are we doing here? Erik: Our first podcast. This is exciting, guys. Jeff: Christening room. Erik: I know, yes. Yeah, so- Dave: Tell us a little bit about why we're here. What do you want to accomplish here? Erik: God, where do I start? My name is Erik Weihenmayer, and I am an adventurer and a climber. I happen to be blind, so it's sort of--being a blind climber is sort of like being a Jamaican bobsledder. Erik: I was a teacher for six years. I had an idea to be a full-time climber and adventurer, which I've been doing the last twenty years. I climbed Mount Everest in 2001, with the guy that's sitting in front of me, Jeff, who we're gonna learn more about later, but that experience was so transformational that that led to this amazing climb that I did with these two guys, Mark Wellman and Hugh Herr. Erik: Mark Wellman is a paraplegic. He's my hero because he climbed El Capitan, basically seven thousand pull-ups up the rock face. Just amazing. And Hugh Herr is a double leg amputee, and he climbs with these prosthetic legs. And the three of us were like these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We climbed together. And then, at that experience, I realized that we'd been sold the wrong ideas--that when I looked at people who excelled, like Mark and Hugh, that they didn't do it in the traditional ways that TVs and books always make it look like, that it was much gritter. It was much bloodier. There was much more struggle along the way. And so I thought, "I don't understand what that map looks like." And No Barriers, the podcast and the theme, the message that we're gonna be diving into, all grew from that first experience, because I wanna understand. Like Mark and Hugh and me, we'd all been crushed, and we had to reemerge. What does that process look like? Erik: I realize that most people in the world aren't physically disabled like the three of us, but they have invisible barriers. And so what is the process look like for people as they go from those places that they don't want to be, and they climb to the summit, whatever that looks like for each person? I wanted to understand what that gritty map is that we build and navigate with our lives. And so I'm here fleshing out this subject with amazing people that we are going to interview, because I've gotten to meet people in our No Barriers programs and experiences that have taught me so much about this topic, and I thought "We gotta highlight these people! We gotta understand what makes them tick." Erik: So Jeff and Dave and I are gonna be doing that, and Jeff is my good climbing partner, we've been climbing together for 25 years, and we climbed Everest together. And when I met Jeff he was just a dirtbag. Well, he's still kind of a dirtbag, but-- Jeff: I'm still a dirtbag. Erik: Yeah. Jeff: You can't really divert too much from that. Erik: But Jeff, even though you started as a dirtbag, you've done some amazing stuff, and you've really grown and had your own No Barriers story. Tell us a little bit about that. Jeff: Well, when you and I met, we were both very raw, and I think we met at the right point in our lives where we were just seeking. We were looking for adventure first and foremost, and then looking for allies to share it with. We met at a very fortuitous time, and we've obviously... golly, man, I mean, we've done a lot, you and I. I've had some of the best and worst moments of my life standing right next to you. Jeff: And I think that in a way, maybe that's sort of the take-home for me personally, while you and I have been such good friends and partners along the way, but also, my understanding of the human condition. I used to not want to admit it to your face, but now that I'm older and more mature and I can pat you on the back, is that you've taught me a lot. You've taught me a lot about life; in a way, you've asked me to ask questions of myself, and that's the extension of why I'm here, is that in turn, by asking questions of myself, I wanna ask questions about other people. I wanna understand who they are. I like that grit that you speak of. I like the determination, and I like how folks deal with adversity in this map that gets laid out in front of them, and all these variables that play into where we are--societally, biologically, emotionally--and I think that honestly, that was sort of the impetus behind you and I starting the Warriors program. Maybe you could tell the listeners just a little bit about that and how it came to be. Erik: Well, because it's hard to brag on yourself, I'm just gonna brag about you, because even though Jeff did start out as a dirtbag, he was a smart dirtbag and he had a No Barriers Story of his own, and he went on to climb mountains with me and also went back to medical school to get a physician assistant degree, working in emergency rooms all around the country, and then now being one of the foremost high-altitude medical experts in the world. I can't imagine having anyone next to me in the high mountains, Jeff, who I'd want more than you, because I've seen you save people's lives, putting them in hyperbaric chambers and administering IVs on mountains. Erik: Jeff, you helped us start the No Barriers Warriors program. The tenth-year anniversary of our Everest climb, we decided we're gonna do something really cool. What were we gonna do? Were we gonna do a Disney Cruise reunion? Nah, maybe not; let's do something big. So we decided to climb Labuche, twenty thousand feet, in the Himalayas, and we all got together and then we decided "Well, let's have some other people whose lives have been transformed. Let's see if we can bring together some other people whose lives might be transformed by the mountains, like us." And so we brought together a team of injured soldiers. Talk about the team just a little bit, Jeff, and the culmination of that experience, that first No Barriers Warrior experience. Jeff: We knew, I think, intrinsically, that the mountains provide this great backdrop. It's got all the ingredients that you need to have an experience that's both rich and transformative. You've got built-in adversity, the potential for a massive shitshow, but you also have this rally point, which is this summit. It can be figurative, it can be literal, but whatever it is, we rally around it, and it creates a sort of call to action. We knew that. We knew that the stage would be there for us, and so we took the chance and gathered up a group of injured veterans, in a way to say thank you to them, but also to give them the tools that we discovered, personally, along the way, and help them regain their momentum. Jeff: We hand-selected a group of folks, we took of for Nepal, and sort of set the table. We had a fair bit of adversity, but the mountain did what we wanted it to do, which was be sweet and loving and also be angry and mean. And in experiencing that, it gave us the opportunity to talk about these things, sort of distill out the learning points that can come from that, and create a loving atmosphere, create an atmosphere of fellowship. And I think that community that exists in the mountains was a big stepping stone for us, and I think another extension for us going forward. Did you even anticipate then--I mean, this was seven years ago, right? Erik: Look, let's be honest, we didn't know exactly what we were doing. And that's a good message for our audience here, and that is that a lot of times when you start an idea, it's just a little seed of an idea. That's what we had with our Warriors program, and now it's blossomed into incredible stuff, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of vets that we work with, and getting to know them and getting to know their stories, and we are gonna interview a lot of veterans on this podcast. Erik: Dave, I wanna introduce you, because you are the executive director of No Barriers. You do the real work. You lead our team and put together all these amazing, transformative expeditions behind the scenes. I met you... you came to me out of the blue and asked me if I'd help you start a program for kids, and we started out with blind kids and deaf kids teaming up with sighted and hearing kids. That's all fallen into the melting pot of No Barriers. Tell us how you got into this club. Dave: I think that my role from the beginning, as one of the powers of the organization and the executive director, has always been to build the infrastructure around this global movement that we want to create. My role is to create this organization that can take this message that you guys are alluding to here and bring it to as many populations around the world as possible. Dave: We've been doing that work for nearly fifteen years now, and so as I think about this podcast and what we're here together doing, I was at an event a couple months ago where Richard Saul Wurman was speaking, he's the founder of TED, and he said "Nobody ever writes a book or creates a script for a movie 'cause they know what the heck they're talking about, and if they tell you they do, they're lying. They write the book to learn what it is that they might already know and to discover new things." So when I think about this podcast, I think the same thing; we've been doing this work for fifteen years, with youth, with Warriors, with companies, with women, and this is partly to understand what makes people come to this movement. And as we bring in guests and learn from them, what can we take away from individuals who have overcome great odds, overcome barriers in their lives and achieved that purpose-driven life we all seek? What can we take away from that and learn and apply to our own lives? Dave: I'm here to create that organizational infrastructure, to do that with as many people as possible, and I can't wait to learn from individuals to help us do that work better. Erik: We're gonna be bringing a lot of amazing people to the world--a lot of people that haven't been highlighted in traditional podcasts, from business leaders to youth who struggle to veterans to people with physical challenges, all who have had some difficult things happen to them in their lives and have figured out little bits and pieces of that map that we all wanna walk. Erik: I just wanna lastly say that I think we're gonna try to be different, because when I went blind--it was my freshman year in high school--I remember realizing that when you look out on the world, it can kinda lead you astray. I was blaming and attacking and reacting and responding, and saying "Why me?", and I realized that I was looking in the wrong place--that what I had to do was to turn inward and find out what I could grow inside myself, and how I grew that thing and nurtured that thing and used it to blaze into the world. I think, if we succeed, what we're gonna do is really dive down beneath the surface of people and try to understand what that internal landscape looks like--how they go from those places that they wind up and they don't necessarily wanna be there, to the summit, to that incredible place of purpose and fulfillment that we're all looking for. What are the way points along the way? Let's identify those so that we can dissect this No Barriers life and we can all learn. Dave, what do you say? Dave: I think that's why we're all here. One of the things I loved about our conversation when we thought about starting this podcast was: We've heard lots of podcasts, we've met lots of people, and one of the things we feel is missing is, no one really dives deep into talking about the struggle. It's often glossed over. I think that this podcast is going to be partly about discovering what we can learn from that struggle we all go through in our lives as we're trying to be purposeful. Jeff: The reality is it's not pretty. I think that we've all agreed that there's gonna be moments when we want to ask those questions that allow people to dance around that darker space and explain how they got... how they rose from it, and the tools that they used to be able to come out of it, and I think that's an important thing. You're right, the podcasts I listen to, I'm not sure if I hear that very frequently, and I wanna hear that, I wanna know that. I don't wanna get bogged down in the mire, but I wanna know what that mire looks like and how they got out of it, because to me, that's the true definition of transformation. Erik: And Jeff, you told me something I like. You said, "Growth is volcanic," and I love that. So get ready for some volcanic and explosive storytelling, full of grit, full of flailing, full of some blood, either physical or psychological-- Jeff: Metamorphic, if you will. Erik: --because that is what it's all about, No Barriers to everyone.
That Blind Tech Show Rolls Again. Bryan brings Allison and Jeff back to the sho to talk about some of the latest Tech news, gidgets and gadgets and the latest from Sonos. We are proud to announce that Twitterrific for the Mac is Back, Downcast just got an update and AOL Messenger is no longer. Jeff gives us an update on the fire that hit Enchanted Hills Camp above Napa, CA and how we can all contribute and support #RebuildEHC. Be sure to check the links below to learn more about what the heck we were talking about. :) Check out the Twitterrific Blog and Subscribe to keep up with the latest from iConFactory Google Bought Apple or Did they! Twitterrfic for Mac is here How to get apps back in iTunes 10 Safari Long Press Shortcut Gestures. Do you remember to ever long press? Read more about Enchanted hills Camp #RebuildEHCand contribute what you can and lend your support. Give by phone: Call Jennifer Sachs at 415-694-7333 See Transcription below. Thank you for listening. Send us Feedback via email Follow us on Twitter @BlindTechShow That Blind Tech Show is produced in part by Blind Abilities Network. 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. Transcription: That Blind Tech Show: Twifferrific on the Mac and Downcast is Back andSonos Gets 1 Bigger. (Transcription provided) [Music] Alison: Sonos One's which are the newest iteration of the play one, are the ones that have Lady A built-in. [Music] Alison: I did put the Eyes Free Fitness app on my phone and I'm hoping that you know buying some of the workouts for that, I will literally have no excuse not to, not to do it because my phone is always with me no matter where I go. Bryan: Somebody in New Zealand had something about unboxing one very early before the rest of the world which..... Alison: Oh yes Jonathan was very very happy that you know when he get, when these items come out he gets them a day ahead everyone else because New Zealand is a day ahead. Bryan: He should let people know that. [Laughter] Alison: He really doesn't gloat about that enough, but yeah. Jeff: So Alison you use your phone on a daily basis. [Laughter] Alison: The face ID, I'm still, I find myself still kind of getting used to this new thing called face ID. Jeff: I want to see the Grinch again this year. Bryan: So you want me to come visit? [Laughter] Big smiles okay, three, two one, welcome back to yet another episode of that blind tech show. I know it's been a very long time since we've been here in fact you've probably heard a lot of us on other great technology podcasts. I know our friend Allison Hartley recorded one of her regular tech doctor podcasts as well as she was on with the great people over at main menu. And you may have heard Jeff Thompson on with AT Banter and I believe he's got another podcast coming out with the good folks over at Mystic Access and you may have heard me on Blind Bargains but we finally got the band back together again and we're here to talk you through some of the holidays and the goings on now, so I'm going to go ahead and say yeah how you doing over there Allison. Alison: I'm doing okay, it's the day three of a four-day weekend so I'm just kind of milking the the time off work for all it's worth, I've been reading good books that I'll talk about later and eating lots of food, lots of pie, so much pie. Bryan: There's never such a thing as too much pie. Alison: No never. Bryan: What about you Jeff, how has your Thanksgiving holiday been? Jeff: Well pie is a continuum. Alison: Yep. Jeff: It's been great here, I've been bacheloring it, the family's been gone, and I'm living it here with the dogs, happy Thanksgiving, it's Thanksgiving everyday now. Bryan: I'm actually down in Florida still recording you see, we're all about bringing you the show. Holidays don't stop us. One thing I was very excited though on the plane ride down here, I was very excited some of you might have heard about therapy pigs getting kicked off planes. [Pig noises] I'm happy to report there was no therapy pig on my plane down here, just get old Nash in me. How about you Allison, have you ever been on a plane with a therapy Pig? Alison: I have never been on the plane with anything more exciting than another guide dog, I have to say. Bryan: What about you Jeff have you ever traveled with any pigs? Jeff: No but it, it would wouldn't be that bad if it was therapy bacon. Alison: Oh yeah. Bryan: That is true, that is true and for those of you not hear about that story it's actually not the first time a therapy pig has gotten kicked off a plane so, go ahead and check that out, it was one of the more humorous stories and, you know, it's great that they stand up for our rights as guide dog service dog users, but seriously, therapy pigs. [Pig noises] Now Allison, I think you're probably the only disappointed one because I'm hearing the Soup Nazi said no soup for you, no home pod for you this year? Alison: Yeah I mean I have really no reason to be disappointed. I have speakers coming out of my ears. [Spring noise and laughter] Alison: Quite literally right now cuz I'm wearing headphones but, I am, I am still interested in getting the home pod when it comes out, home pods I should say, cuz I want to get a stereo pair. I have my Lady A controlled Sonos speakers now, and I'm finding that that is honestly filling a lot of my needs in terms of playing satellite radio and playing any song that I could possibly think of. I do still want to get the home pods because I hear that the sound quality is gonna be even that much better than the Sonos speakers, but I'm not, I'm not tearing my hair out, if these new Sonos hadn't come out I might have been a bit more disappointed, but I'm okay. Jeff: Now you said they're gonna be better sounding than the Sonos? Alison: They are, they're going to have more tweeters and better far-field microphones for understanding you, the only limitation in my opinion it's gonna be Siri, I know this is a controversial subject on an Apple themed podcast but, Siri is terrible. Bryan: You will get no argument out of me, Siri and I, we're not even dating anymore, the relationship is over and.... Unfortunately this is not surprising news, Apple you know when they used to meet their deadlines, we talked about it this summer, it was a little odd that Apple was talking about this, it almost reminds me of you know back 10 years ago when they used to say there's an attack coming, it's not coming today, it's not coming tomorrow, but it's coming, and I kind of feel that's the same thing with (inaudible) Alison: Yeah. Bryan: Apple pod, they're not gonna be out today, they're not gonna be out tomorrow, but they will be out, probably around the same time that the Amazon app comes to the Apple TV. Alison: I would, I would say you're probably right there, and I would say that when they do come out they're gonna be a couple of years behind all of the other smart speakers with better AI. It's really, it's kind of gonna be sad almost. I really I want to see Apple push forward in this arena, but unfortunately you know, I, I've played now with Google assistant, I've had a Lady A in my life, I have been playing even with Bixby on a, on a Samsung phone, and yes you give something up in terms of your data, and in terms of your privacy, but when you're putting security above all, the AI, and the assistance itself becomes very limited in what it can do, and it's really starting to show in Siri when there are so many more worthy competitors. Bryan: Yeah, the Apple really missed the boat on the the home assistant and you know, Tim Cook was wishy-washy on it for several years and now it's just gonna be a speaker, I really have no interest, I mean I'm very happy with my Echo devices, heck, I got a small apartment you know, I've got one in the living room. They're $30.00 now over you know, the weekend... Alison: God Yeah. Bryan: I just don't have, I'm like, well do I really need another one, and I'm like, I've got one in the living room, one in the bedroom, and I don't spend much time in the kitchen so you know it's, there's no point really in getting another one but I, you just can't say no at that price and, how was the Google assistant, did you like it? Alison: I do, I actually I have a Google home speaker that I don't have plugged in at this point but on the Galaxy I mean it's just, you can just ask random questions and instead of saying, let me check the web for that, here's what I found, it actually just gives you the answer to your flipping question. Bryan: Yeah. Alison: It's really amazing and then you can ask like follow-up questions and it jives with what you were talking about and it answers intelligently. I just, you know maybe the home pod speakers will come out and something about Siri will blow us out of the water or something out of the speakers, about the speakers will blow everything else out of the water because they've had a little bit more time, but I'm starting to get a little impatient with Apple's obsession with, I know they want to get it right, and I know they want to have a really polished user experience, but that user experience is starting to suffer because of that need to be so meticulous, and so perfect. Jeff: Well I think they've actually, having it come out next year might be a good plan for their stocks in a way because people are buying the eight, or the ten, those are big items, and you're talking about $349.00 here. It's hard to comBryan when everybody else is you know flooding the market with these $29.00 minis, and dots, and Amazon, what do they have seven different items now in this department? The Look, the Show, the Tap. Alison: Now Google has three, I mean, it's a lot. Bryan: And, I'm hearing about headphones, Bose, I think there is a set of Bose headphones which you know, I couldn't afford those, but that have the Google Home built into them so we're starting to see more and more even headphones with these kind of assistants built into them and, I think Apple, you know, they've just been left behind and, not every company needs a home assistant so, I really don't see what the marketplace unless you are a big music listener, you know, or have capitol to spend, I really don't see the point to it, I guess I don't have a fine ear for music because I think the Echo speaker sounds fantastic and everybody I know that's into music says, "Are you kidding?" Alison: Oh no, oh God, no no no no no. Especially the Dot. The Dot is barely passable for spoken word, but even the big Echo, drives me crazy because it tries to simulate fake stereo, but it doesn't quite get it right on the one speaker so, it's, it drives me nuts. Bryan: What's the opposite of perfect pitch? Because that's what I have. [Laughter] Jeff: Either you have it, or you don't. Alison: Yeah. [Laughter] Jeff: So with the Sonos, you have two of them, that's the Sonos one you have two of them. Alison: Yep. Jeff: That does perfect stereo? Alison: It does, yeah I have them equal distant from each other on a table, and the stereo separation is amazing, it's really beautiful. Jeff: Oh that's great. Bryan: Are there multiple different kinds of Sonos? I've just heard phenomenal things about Sonos speakers, or is there one product line or are there different kind of product lines for the Sonos speakers. Alison: There are in the non smart, non Lady A connected Sonos products, there are three, well four technically different tiers of Sonos products, and it all depends on the number of tweeters that are in each speaker, and with all of them you can pair to get a stereo pair with the Play Ones, Play Threes, and Play Fives, but they become very expensive, and they have a sound bar, and they have a subwoofer for the television, but you couldn't pair Lady A with a skill now, to make all of your Sonos products somewhat controllable via Lady A, but the Sonos One's which are the newest iteration of the Play One, they look exactly the same except they have microphones, are the ones that have Lady A built-in. Bryan: Yeah well everything, everything seems to be getting smarter except Apple News, which you know, I often go through Apple news and my subscriptions when I'm putting this show together and, lately I've been noticing there's about two articles and then everything goes back six weeks, and they just don't seem to be coming out with a lot of content and as Jeff and I were talking about, a lot of ads you'll see an article, title of an article, title of an article, then an advertisement, and then a bunch of text, this is something about Apple and an ad and everything. Jeff have you been using Apple News, and have you noticed how down hill it seems to have gone? Jeff: I've noticed it's changing a little bit at first, the ads you can't even read the ads because that, all it does is give you description of it, and you have to skip over it, so they're not trying to sell to the blind. The thing that I noticed about Apple News is Apple shuts down at about four o'clock on Friday, there's no new news, they just kind of rehash the same stuff until Monday, and it's just like looking for an app update. If I get one on on Saturday/Sunday, someone paid extra to have that pushed out. Bryan: Yeah maybe I should go back to Newsify and actually reading my RSS feed for technology news. I'm not seeing that much content coming through there, I was I was really excited when Apple news came out because I thought it was gonna be great and I enjoyed it at first, I was using it all the time, but now I'm seeing less and less content and a lot of that content, there's nothing worse than when you're reading an article and like a paragraph into the article, all of a sudden advertisement is starts being read to you... Alison: Yep. Bryan: It drives me absolutely bonkers, and Jeff you actually said, and I'm curious because I read a lot of television recaps in Safari, where I'll say, Arrow episode, season six episode three recap, and it will, I'll find an article that will describe the action and a lot of times these articles, a paragraph in it starts reading an ad to me, you just got a pop-up blocker, now do you think those pop-ups might block those in article advertisements, or just really block pop-ups. Jeff: Actually it's not a pop-up blocker, that is native to the Safari app where you can turn that on or off and it blocks pop-ups. Now some colleges, if you're a college student, they use pop-up so you might want to beware that you might be shutting off something and not being able to gain access to so, try it out. What I got was Purify and that's P U R I F Y, it's a content blocker, and when you get that you, you purchase it, and I got it for a dollar ninety nine, I don't know if that was a Black Friday deal or a special over the holidays but, a dollar ninety-nine, it's very popular app according to Nick, my buddy up in Canada, and what it does is it works on your browser. So what you do is you purchase it and then you have to go into your Safari app settings, go down and just below pop-up blocker, you're gonna find content blocker, and then you have to enable it by turning it on. Bryan: Allison, have you ever used any kind of pop-up or ad blockers or anything? Alison: I do also use Purify and I find that that eliminates a lot of the ads on the websites that I use. What I love now also is reader mode for specific websites in iOS11, if you activate reader now, it's an actionable item and you can go to Auto reader and you can tell it that I either want reader to be active on this website all the time or, all the time for everything, so I have some very specific websites for which I just have reader all the time and I never have to worry about any extra crap on the webpage. Bryan: Where is that setting where you could set it specifically for an individual website? Alison: When you actually turn on reader and you've got reader selected, then there's an actions available, it might even be available for you to select it, and one of the actions is automatic reader when you flick down. You double tap that and then it comes up with a message that says do you want to enable reader for all websites or just on this domain and, you could turn it on for just on this website, and so like 9 to 5 Mac for example and a couple of other more the, more of the busy Apple news sites, I have since I do so much Twitter reading on my phone, I've got automatic reader turned on and it's changed everything. Bryan: Yeah that's something I'll have to, you know I I use the reader all the time, but I, and I remember hearing about, that you know, you hear, about so many new settings but I've never played around with it so, that's something I'm really gonna have to make use of, and by the way if you're out there and if you know of any specific ad popup blocker that might work in individual apps, let us know, you could tweet us in at BlindTechShow or shoot us in an email at thatblindtechshow@ gmail.com, let us know about that. This next thing is really interesting because I was down here listening, I have an app where I'm able to get any NFL audio feeds and everything, and the one thing that drives me bonkers because my dad's a little older so sometimes he forgets is I'm watching the Washington Redskins game here on Thanksgiving with him and I'm listening to the Redskins radio, the only problem is streaming audio is a good minute and a half to two minutes behind real time, and he keeps commenting about what's on TV and it's just driving me insane, I'm like Dad, remember it hasn't happened again you know, so, one thing that would be nice is if FM radio actually just worked on your iPhone which supposedly it could according to this article, we'll put in the show notes that it's built into the phone but Apple just will not activate it. Have you guys been following this story? I know it's been in the news a lot lately. Alison: I've heard two things about this, I've heard that Apple for whatever reason has just decided not to activate it but then I've also heard that the newer modems actually don't have the FM radio so it's a moot point. Bryan: Mmm okay, what about you Jeff if you've been following along to this? Jeff: Yeah I have but, you know it's to me it's like, is it, is it, am I dying for it, I don't know, I really don't know. Bryan: I think it'd be nice, just, you know to be in real time. I don't understand why they can't get streaming audio to be at least maybe you know a second or two behind. I mean it's just such a significance difference, I've got it put on do not disturb, otherwise I'll get notifications about a score in a game, you know, before it happened. The fascinating thing is during the, the Yankees playoff run, I went to my local bar with a pair of my head with the headphones with FM radio, and sure enough FM radio would get it like 30 seconds before television would. [Laughter] Alison: So there's no perfect solution. Bryan: No, there's not, I'd be like, I'd yell out "damn it" and people were like "What are you talking about, they've yet to throw the pitch". [Laughter] So yeah, there's there's no perfect solution. Jeff: I like tuneIn radio, I like stuff like that. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: If there's an emergency or something we got those alarms that go off and everything. I don't see myself turning it on, I don't know, it's just, it so interesting, there's so many resources, so many different avenues that I can get information that, just one more to be on the phone and then, where's my antenna. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: You know it's, now that we're Bluetooth everything so, do we have to wrap it in tinfoil? I don't know. Bryan: You just hold it up in the air while you're walking down the street like an umbrella. [Laughter] Am I getting a signal now? Damn it, the signal is better over here. You know it's funny because the one thing my headphones don't get is AM radio. Jeff: I think it's just as important to think about this. Now do we really want that on there because everyone was so excited when like your Amazon device could make phone calls. As soon as you make that phone call you're standing there for about two minutes going I can't walk away. Alison: Yeah, yeah. Jeff: It's not fun. Bryan: No no no, like I've said for a very long time, the worst app on the iPhone is the phone, and it's also my least used app. I wonder if I could take it out of the dock and put it on like page nine. [Laughter] Alison: You could yeah. Bryan: Yeah, you know it's funny yeah I've been down here in Florida like I said for a week and everything, so I've been in a lot of automobiles which in New York City you know I'm not in cars a lot, and I've noticed my phone still thinks I'm driving sometimes. Alison: My phone thinks I'm driving when I'm not even in a car, like I'll be laying in bed and all of a sudden that do not disturb while driving thing will pop up and I'll be like I'm just reading a book, can you go away? [Laughter] Bryan: But do you have a waterbed so maybe you're moving. [Laughter] Jeff: Too much coffee. Alison: Unfortunately no waterbed, but it's crazy I wish, I have it set on activate manually, so it should not be popping up at all, but it's driving me nuts. Bryan: Real quick for a millennial crowd, water beds were beds with water in them in the 1980s. [Laughter] Look them up. Jeff: California has regulations on waterbeds. Alison: Yeah. [Laughter] Right. Jeff: The other thing is someone told me about the notifications you know that, while you're in a car if you turn it to what is that the Bluetooth setting in your car mode, that that's supposed to trigger it, I don't know sometimes that some things are on, some things are off, I don't know. Bryan: Yeah, and I've got mine set the manual where I'm supposed to be able to turn it on, I have read in a lot of places and I think we may all be running different versions of betas, or some people may be having this problem, others may not and supposedly some people claim it's fixed in a certain beta. I don't even know if I'm running that beta, I think I'm one update behind, you know there's been so many betas out that I can't keep up with them, and a lot of updates coming out too, I notice all the time I seem to have like 80 to 90 updates every few days cuz, I self update, what about you? I know you guys self-medicate, do you self update? Alison: Well I'm constantly working on self improvement, self updating, oh oh you mean apps, yeah. [Laughter] Bryan: The apps, I like to make sure tha,t I like to read those little release notes, and the worst is we update our app fairly regularly, we're not going to tell you what we're doing. Alison: Nope. Jeff: If you get a self-improvement app, would that be self defeating? [Laughter] Bryan: I don't know, you know what, email us and let us know what you think. You know a lot of people are big fans of the Star Wars saga, but have you guys been following the blindfold game saga. Alison: It's been it's been rather epic. Bryan: It has, there's been multiple parts you know. We had, we even had my favorite was Blindfold game Strikes Back you know. Alison: And they did to their credit. Bryan: They did, they struck back hard. I'm a, you know I am a big fan of the games. Blindfold Uno, I've bought plenty of them, I know some people don't like them, I think Marty does a phenomenal job and, God I love the trivia games, and there's nothing like when you've got a, you're sitting in the store you got a few minutes to kill. I've actually set my Blindfold Uno to unlimited scoring so I've got like thirty thousand points in there, it just keeps... [Laughter] Every time the computer gets within ten thousand points of me I think it's cheating you know, but, he really does a great job with a lot of those games. Marty is a businessman and he makes these games you know, out of his love of making games for the community as well as to make money and... Alison: Sure why not. Bryan: I couldn't believe what, when Apple was telling him he needed to roll them into tab less apps in the App Store. It really seemed like Apple didn't know what they were talking about I, you know you could Google Marty's website, I'm not sure the exact site but blindfoldgames.com probably, or just google it, and he's got a blog that'll explain everything that happened if you're not aware of it but, I was really shocked at the stance Apple took against him starting out. Alison: I can summarize briefly if you'd like. Bryan: Sure. Alison: I've been fairly involved in reading about it. So essentially what happened was, and there's a whole detailed timeline on the website. Bryan: Start with episode 1. Alison: In episode one Apple was going through the review process for some iOS11 related updates for Marty's games and they noticed that a lot of the games used the same template. Now Apple technically has a rule that apps cannot be clones of one another, and not looking at the content of the games which are all different decided that these games are too similar and so we're going to have to reject these updates because they have the templates are too similar and you have to make the the gameplay different. Well the whole beauty of the blindfold games is once you know how to play one, you can pretty much figure out you know, several more, so Marty defended himself and said look while these templates are all very similar, the content within them is very different, but Apple didn't want to hear it, they heard, they're like 80 apps is too much. You have to compile them into less. Bryan: A handful, yeah. Alison: Amounts of apps. So Marty's stance, with which I agree, is that then that would make the apps too large to download because they all contain different voice files, and sound effects, so they're already you know pretty sizable downloads anyway, and it would hurt discoverability. For example if all the card games were in one app, somebody might only play one or two, and that might hurt his chances at making more revenue, and the man has got to be able to make some sort of money off it. Bryan: Sure. Alison: I get it. So eventually it came down to a lot of members of the community myself included, advocating with Apple to make them understand that this is a different type of situation than just the average you know, Yahoo up there trying to clone a bunch of flappy bird apps for example. And it worked, they understood, they eventually understood and had a conversation with Marty about, hey we understand that these games are different and now it's it's okay, when the review was passed and Marty at one point he was going to be taking down the games because he just didn't have the resources, either financial, or time wise to do the rewrites that Apple was starting with, so I'm really glad that this ended up, ending happily, and I got into some, some real Twitter spats with a couple of people who really think that, that oh, it's just blind people whining. No, it's, it's people advocating for games, which are truly different in the App Store, and yes blindness does have a little bit to do with it because we have a shortage of accessible games as it is, so don't take our choices away. Bryan: Would you summarize saying basically that Marty basically after the the Clone Wars beat the Empire? Alison: He did. Bryan: Yes. Yes. [Laughter] A Star Wars theme, yeah, no, not to make light of it, it was great that Apple reversed it's course and, Jeff, any comments? Where you following along on the Blindfold saga? Jeff: I was more or less following Allison on Twitter, I'm stalking again Allison. Alison: Oh no. Jeff: But Jonathon Mosan wrote a letter, other people in the community got going on, it was nice to see everybody come together for that you know, like some people were pretty negative, they were saying like "oh yeah, they come together this, but not for jobs" Alison: Some people were jerk faces about it, and I will call them out for that. Jeff: Other people were saying like "Oh Apple, they played the blind card to Apple" it's not that, it's like Allison just explained, it's more like that. It is kind of neat to sit back and watch how different people rise up to certain things and other people take sides, you know the bottom line is the guy is doing something. he has to make money. If he bundles them all up, and you only like one of them, you're not going to buy 8 you know, it makes sense, business sense for him, and I'm glad Apple saw it that way. Bryan: I think he's got a great price plan, because you know, yes, he's got a ton of games you know, nobody buy them all. You could test them out, you know he gives you a free amount of games with each one which I think is fantastic. How many mainstream games out there allow you to test it out before buying it? Alison: It's true. Bryan: So basically what we are saying Marty, "Stay Strong!" Jeff: And may the Force be with you. Bryan: You know something that just came to the app store new and I, I've gotta actually take a look at this, because I haven't exercised since last millennium, The Eyes Free Fit, you know Blind Alive some of you may know it as, I looked up Blind Alive, i couldn't find anything related to exercising. But if you look it up under Eyes Free Fitness, and this just came to the app store last week, and I looked through it, you gotta buy the programs, but it looks like they got a ton of different exercises in there, and I know they've been around for quite a while and on a lot of podcasts. Have either of you guys ever done any of their exercise programs? Alison: A long time ago I bought Cardio Level 1, and it is really great, and really descriptive. I did it a couple of times, I'm really bad with sticking with exercise routines no matter how accessable they are. So, it's really a motivation issue, its not an issue with the workouts themselves, but now I did put the Eyes Free Fitness app on my phone and I am hoping that, you know buying some of the workouts through that, i will literally have no excuse not to do it because my phone is always with me no matter where I go. Bryan: Yeah. How about yourself Jeff? You're an outdoor mountain man, have you ever indoor exercised? Jeff: I was actually testing her website with her so I got to get a few of those and she was next to me in the booth at ACB in 2016. It was in Minneapolis, it was really fun, it's really great that she's taken it to this level now that, you can even hook it up to your health app inside your phone too so.... Bryan: Wait a minute, there's a health app in the phone? [Laughter] Jeff: Page 9 Brian, Page 9. Alison: Page 11 yeah. [Laughter] Bryan: It's next to all of my pizza services. [Laughter] Jeff: So I suggest if people want it, it's Eyes Free Fitness, it's well described, that's the whole intent of it. She uses people who are professionally trained to come up with these exercise routines, but then there's also some stretching ones, and all that stuff. So it's pretty versatile, and they got some Yoga stuff in there, and then there's.... Alison: Pilates. Jeff: Yeah, lots of good stuff in there. Bryan: Yeah, yeah, my only complaint about this app and what she does, is she makes the rest of us look lazy. [Laughter] Can I set a New Years resolution in November, where that's my plan is to, exercise and, you know, a lot of people say they want to get in better shape. I would just like to get into a shape so.... [Funny sound effect and laughter] Alison: See it's a good time for me to get back into this because now I'm walking everyday with Gary with our neighborhood in Napa being so walkable that I actually am in a little bit better shape, so I feel like these exercises would be really great, you know especially if on the weekends when we walk less, it would really help me to get in even better shape. I'm still a far cry off from where I want to be and I still eat to much, but that'll never change. [Laughter] Bryan: I don't even eat that much, I just eat all of the wrong things, I've learned if I like it, it's bad for you. Alison: Yeah, that's kinda where I'm at too, I don't find that I eat these ginormous portions, I mean although I do like a healthy portion of food, but yeah, it's not the good things. It's a little light on the leafy green vegetables and such, although I like fruit. Jeff: You know one of the main things about exercise and all this stuff that we're talking about is the mindset and it takes a while to get your mind wrapped around it. I've been using a trainer for, it'll be coming up on a year and I finally got my mind wrapped around it after 10 months. I mean, it really takes something, I used to be in really good shape, I used to do a lot of stuff, I used to run and all sorts of stuff. But I am not being chased anymore so... you know. Bryan: It's may favorite line, "Do you still run?" "Only when chased" [Laughter] Jeff: Yeah, I think people who want to get back into it sometimes it takes a little commitment. You can buy these from $19.00 to $25.00 or something like that, but you have it, you can do it in the privacy of your own home, it's accessible, and it describes all of the stances, all the positions, well described steps, so if that's what it takes to get your mindset involved in it, it might be a good start for you. Alison: Yeah. Yeah can get as of out of breath or sweaty as you want, as quickly as, however quickly it takes and it doesn't matter because it's just you and yeah. Jeff: But make sure you have your phone notifications for driving set right. [Laughter] Bryan: Either that or in my kind of condition make sure you have 911 on speed dial. [Laughter] I got a good work out there, you know we're recording this the day after Black Friday, it's not even Cyber Monday yet but you'll hear this after Cyber Monday, and it was a low tech Black Friday for me because I got some clothes and everything, no technology but I wanted to ask you guys, what about yourself Allison was it a techie Black Friday Cyber Monday for you or no? Alison: No cuz I, I bought what I want throughout the year, I don't, I don't have the the impulse control to wait three months for something to go on sale on Black Friday, I just buy it when I, when I have the money and what I want it / need it. So Black Friday / Cyber Monday are always kind of a bit of a letdown for me cuz I'm like, oh this thing's on sale, oh wait, I already have it, this thing's on sale, wait I already have it. ]Laughter] Bryan: Got it got it got it got it got it need it you know. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: I just went shopping at Allison's place, I just walk to her house. [Laughter] I'll take that, that, that. [Laughter] Ain't got it, ain't got it, ain't got it. Bryan: You know it's not a big tech year for me because I'm not upgrading, I do need to get a new key chain cuz I have one of those key chains with the Lightning charger and for some reason the Lightning charger broke off of the key chain so, one of the things I heard somebody talking about was you know I've got all these kind of what I call lipstick chargers where you have to plug the cord into the charger. I heard they now got a charger out there that has the lightning charger built into it as well as a USB built into it and I think I'm gonna probably get something like that. Alison: Send me that when you find it. Because, send me the link, yeah because that is something, you know, I love my anchor batteries. I have the ones that are like even 20 thousand milliamps witch are a little bit bigger but I just put them in my purse, but yeah you've got to have the little the cables for your Apple watch and for your micro USB devices and your, your lightning cables all together and it's just it's a little bit much, it gets to be a little bit much to carry around. Jeff: Jack really makes a couple of these. One is a six thousand, one is a ten thousand fifty claiming that X needs more power so they made that one. They do have two cords, one is the Lightning port cord and the other is for all the Android stuff, your mini USB plug, and there's a third you can plug a USB into it so you technically you can actually have three by both outputs going at one time. My concern since their dedicated cables on there, are you committed to that if, what if the cable goes bad you know, I, I don't know but it does get a 4.5 out of 5 ratings on Amazon. Myself I like the big ones. Alison: Oh yes send me that one. Jeff: Cuz size does matter. Alison: It does. [Laughter] Bryan: Hey hey, this is a PG podcast. [Laughter] Alison: What, we're talking about, we're talking about batteries. Bryan: Oh. Jeff: I must admit I like big batteries. Bryan: I've heard that about you. Now Allison you've had the iPhone for a while now what are your thoughts? Alison: I basically really like it, it's nice and fast, I like the size, I have it in a leather case because it's glass on both sides and I do not trust myself with glass on both sides and I have dropped it and the leather case has saved me a couple of times. The face ID I'm still, I find myself still kind of getting used to this new thing called face ID. I find that it's very accurate. I find that even when it doesn't get your face it learns from the experience and it has been consistently doing better but it's not as fast as touch ID, the gestures for bringing up home and app switcher are pretty fluid and elegant I think. Bryan: Are you used to doing those after having the press on the home button for so long or does it take a little training yourself? Alison: I'm used to it now, I've had the thing now for a couple of weeks so I've gotten it back into my, into my muscle memory now that this is just what you have to do because there's no home button and luckily I'm not using any other older devices to confuse me, that's convenient but yeah it's it's never going to be as fast I don't think. Jeff: So Alison you use your phone on a daily basis? [Laughter] Alison: Pretty much almost every minute of every day. Bryan: Are you happy with the purchase, are you happy with the upgrade? Alison: I am because I wanted, I wanted the latest and greatest technology and now I've got it and I realized that sometimes that comes with some caveats so I am happy with it, there are some times though when I have just become resigned to entering in my passcode. For example if I'm laying in bed and I want to unlock my phone, I don't want to have to sit up put the phone all the way in front of my face, get face ID to authenticate me, wake up the husband, wake up the dog, so I just enter in the passcode and it's that's even become a little bit faster. Bryan: My dad was having trouble with his phone recently and I finally found out what the problem was. Alison: Yeah. Bryan: He's running an iPhone 4. [Laughter] Alison: Oh for goodness sakes. Bryan: Yeah, I said.... Jeff: Wait, you, you said it's running. Bryan: Yeah, barely, yeah he can make phone calls that's about it, I said no wonder you're having so many issues with everything else and yeah, he's getting ready to get a new one because my mom did order the iPhone 10 and he's gonna get the hand-me-down. I guess he's gonna move up to a 6 which is all he really needs. Alison: Yeah. Oh that'll be quite an upgrade for him. Bryan: Oh yeah, yeah, so but, my mom's got the 10 coming, she's got the, she ordered it online and has the two to three week wait so, I will not, not get to play around with it while I'm down here and everything but I've been you know listening to you on with Dr. Robert Carter not to be confused with Dr. Richard Kimble. Not that anybody but me. Alison: Not to be confused with John Kimble yeah. [Laughter] Bryan: I thought of Richard Kimble immediately but I'm probably the only one that did that so but you know you guys had a great walkthrough of the iPhone 10 and somebody in New Zealand had something about unboxing one very early before the rest of the world which... Alison: Oh yes Jonathan was very very happy that you know, when these items come out he gets them a day ahead of everyone else because New Zealand is a day ahead. Jeff: He should let people know that. [Laughter] Alison: He really doesn't gloat about that enough no but yeah. Bryan: Allison did I hear you do laundry every now and then? Alison: Every now then, you know I, the house-elves or my husband will not comply and I have to do my own. Bryan: Are you testing out that new GE, was it the GE product that you're testing out? Alison: Yeah so, so I have purchased the GE talking laundry box and actually we were in the market for a new washer and dryer anyway so we got the compatible washer and dryer and I've actually been doing a lot more of my own laundry and enjoying the heck out of it now that we have this talking machine because it's so easy to set all you really have to worry about is the start button and the little knob that controls the settings because the different wash cycles, because it verbalizes everything, you turn the knob, it verbalizes if you're on like cold wash, or towels and sheets, or casual wear, or bulky items, and you press Start and it says starting load on bulky items with an estimated 70 minutes remaining and there's a button on the box that you can press if you need an update of what, of time remaining and the dryer is much the same you just mess with the one knob, you can set your cycle and it just works. Our old washer and dryer we had the little arrows marked, but the one thing would spin, and there was another arrow that you could accidentally move, and Jeremy was really the only person who could set it without getting the other thing to spin, so I'm glad to be able to have some agency over my laundry once again. Bryan: And this works with all GE washer and dryers I believe right? Alison: So on the website it does say that it is, should be compatible with most, it should be compatible with the ones that have the ports in the back, the technician ports, but then it says these are the compatible models and it lists just a couple of different models. Slightly more expensive, that are compatible, I think that you can get this to work with older GE models if it has the port for technicians to hook up, but it's better I think in terms of the software working is optimally as it can if you can buy the the newer ones. Bryan: Yeah full disclaimer if your washer and dryers from 1974 and is GE..... Alison: Probably not going to work. Jeff: I do laundry and the thing on my washer and dryer mostly my washer is, there's that plastic cover that covers things up so you can't really tell the dial, so I took a needlenose pliers, it was excruciating sounds but I got that piece off of there, then I put some little markers on there, so now I just put my finger down there and I just turn it and everyone uses it that way so, yeah I don't recommend anybody to take a needle nose and tear that apart unless you know what you're doing but, yeah that's how I access that. Bryan: Yeah when you're like me and you live in New York it's great because I've got like fluff and fold where they pick it up and deliver it and it's pretty cheap and yeah I'm spoiled like that I think I've mentioned that on the show before. One of the things we did want to mention to the listeners if you do not have knfb reader you're just making your life harder, and it's a phenomenal app, I believe and don't quote me on this but I believe it's on sale at least through Christmas for about 50% off. Normally it's $100.00, I believe now it's $49.95. Go ahead and get that app, you'll make your life a lot easier if you want to read your bills or anything along that. Jeff: I really think if you're a student that that's the app to have. Seeing AI is a good app for a convenience, it's just a quick shuffle through the mail, but if you're gonna do bulk reading or if you want to save it and all sorts of things, you know, that's a workhorse the knfb reader app. Alison: I agree. Bryan: Yeah luckily I think all of us have easy names to pronounce, but I have a friend named Keith Strohak, and every time I tell Siri call Keith Strohak, it says did you mean Keith Sholstrum, did you mean Keith Beyer. It drives me bonkers, I have to go in and manually do it and I will put this link in the show notes. Did you know that you could teach Siri how to save names properly? Jeff: Mm-hmm. Alison: Yeah. Bryan: Okay I was the one who didn't. By the way ask Siri to pronounce Charlize Theron because I heard that's another name that she can't pronounce. Alison: Oh boy. Bryan: Yeah so if you're if you're one of those people and your name is Mustafi Mustafasin or something, go ahead and read this link and you know, maybe you could teach Siri how to read your name and everything. Jeff: The trick about it is that it asks you for the first name and then it asked for the second name, well I didn't know it was doing that so I said Laurie Thompson that's my wife, and then I said Laurie Thompson again. I wondered why it asked me twice, so every time she calls, are you sure you want to call Laurie Thompson Laurie Thompson? I left it I thought it was kind of cute. Alison: That is. Bryan: Now Jeff was a great guy and he posted you know happy holidays to everybody on the Blind Abilities Facebook page and I chimed in with my typical bah humbug and he thought that was you know the happiest he's ever heard me, and that's because he didn't hear how mad I was that my old Grubhub app that I've been running for several years because GrubHub has refused update is now officially dead. I finally had to update it and I don't know what I'm gonna do because this happened shortly before I left New York. I kept getting server error, server error, and I could not do anything so I had to update the app, GrubHub prepare for the barrage because I am gonna be hammering you every day now with fixing your heading navigation. I don't know. Alison: Now that your life depends on it yeah. Bryan: Yeah you know. Jeff: It's time to get that Blind Alive app, get that exercise going. Alison: Yeah. Jeff: Screw GrubHub. Bryan: I still gotta order dinner. I still gotta order dinner and everything. Alison: Try Postmates, try Doordash, you said Eat24 doesn't.... Bryan: Doordash I just heard about so yeah that's one I want to check... Alison: Yeah Postmates is also very good. Unfortunately in Napa our only choice really is Eat24, and that only has a couple of options. Bryan: Yeah you know one of the other things I plan to do when I get back from Florida is, because I've been running my old laptop here my Mac air, and it's so nice because it's running Sierra, and things have been running so smooth, as soon as I get home one of my first acts to do, I'm rolling High Sierra back, have you guys, I know Jeff's been playing High Sierra, Allison, are you still using High Sierra..... Alison: I am and for the limited number of things that I do on my Mac it's absolutely fine, I haven't really had any problems. Bryan: Editing text, when you're working with a lot of text and emails or documents and everything, it just befuddles me and everything, you know sometimes you gotta use the option key, and I did report this to Apple, quick nav does you know, when you use quick nav with words, it does not follow the insertion point, we did test it it is getting kicked up to engineers, there is a navigation problem with quick nav in Hi Sierra. Alison: That's unfortunate. Jeff: Yeah I'm using the beta's and you know it keeps on changing so I don't really complain about it I just keep using it and I know, I know it'll get better, so I just putz with it. Bryan: Yeah well Jeff you said you're running the latest beta and it's, you've noticed an improvement so, maybe it won't be the first thing I do when I get back to New York you know, maybe I'll give it one more update. I am not running the beta so I never run the betas on my computer and the word to the wise if you value productivity do not run those betas. Alison: Yeah, or have a partition on your hard drive or a separate hard drive on which to run them. Jeff: Oh my MacBook Pro [Inaudible] I'm not doing the betas on that so I can always go back to that if I need to but, you know I I usually forget that I'm slowly tweaking my muscle memory like you said Allison, and pretty soon I'm just readjusted. Changes happen and I don't know. Alison: Yep. Bryan: Chit chit chit chit oh wait, do we have to play now to use that song? In a more positive segment, I know we've rolled through some some negativity here, we don't want to be negative all the time but you know these are just some things that were pissing Brian off now because, Brian's been known to get pissed off. I always like to hear you know, what you guys watching, what you're reading, you know especially the holiday time of the year, there's a lot of great content out there. Netflix just seems to be piping everything out. Allison what you watching, what you reading? Alison: Well I'm still trying to work my way through Narcos, I have not had as much time for for Netflix recently, but I've been reading this really great book, I'm not sure if it's available on any of the freebies, unbarred or well book sure it's not free but it's practically free. I got off of Audible it's my Brandon Sanderson it's called "The way of Kings" it's part of the Stormlight archive series, it's an epic fantasy series, long long books, the first book I think is 45 hours long and I'm about 2/3 of the way through it, and it is absolutely amazing it's quite frankly taken over a lot of my life this holiday weekend. [Laughter] But it's amazing. Bryan: Well we're thankful that you were able to fit time in for the podcast. [Laughter] Alison: I did, I did have to interrupt my reading to.... [Laughter] Bryan: That 45 hours, that might take me 4 and 1/2 years to get through. Alison: Well I read at speed, I'm not gonna lie, I cranked it up to 3x and I can understand it just fine, so I'll get through it pretty quickly, but there's then two other main books, and then a little novella in the middle to read so. Bryan: That's a, that's a big.... Alison: It's gonna be ten books so... Bryan: Wow, wow, what about yourself Jeff, you been reading anything, watching anything? I know you've had some time alone there or are you just thinking in the dark? Jeff: I really got nothing, I guess I am thinking in the dark, family's been gone and I've been catching up on a bunch of other things that I hadn't been able to get back t,o and yeah, I got to get back to it so sorry you don't have anything to contribute. Bryan: That's okay Jeff. Jeff: Oh sorry. Bryan: I just finished down here with my parents you know I, they they were very nice and they watched, because their sighted with described video, the second season of Stranger Things, and the first season if you have not seen it as phenomenal I said to myself I don't know how they're gonna do a second season. It was really good so, it was very enjoyable, if you have not checked out Stranger Things on Netflix, you're definitely gonna want to check that out. I know we're gonna watch another series on Netflix that just came out I'm blanking on the name, the guy that was in Dumb and Dumber, not Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels is in it, it's a Western that just came out on Netflix. I'm hearing great things about it of course I'm, like I said, God, Godlessness, or Godless or something, it's a Great Western, and I've heard from other people it's very good and everything and, yeah I've still got the same four books. You know it's so funny I'm one of those people that loads up all the audio digital content to all the devices for the travel and then I end up listening to podcasts that I have on my phone. [Laughter] During the travels so, like I said this is a That Blind Tech Show, we're gonna wrap it up here. We are at Blind Tech Show on Twitter. thatblindtechshow @gmail.com if you want to email us in let us know what you think, let us know what you like. You can download our feed through the Blind Abilities podcast speed of your podcast player of choice, victor reader stream or download the Blind Abilities app. Allison what do you have coming up the next few weeks leading into what's that holiday Christmas? Alison: Just a quiet Christmas at home, gonna take maybe a couple of days off and just probably still be reading the Stormlight archive honestly, although I, although I may do a reread of Harry Potter, I lead such an exciting life. [Laughter] Bryan: Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with that. What about yourself Jeff, family coming back or have they given up on you? Jeff: My folks for 17 years they've been going down the Texas but they stayed up this year for the holiday so I got to go to spend time with them Thanksgiving. We were all up there and so they're here so we're gonna have Christmas there and my daughter and grandkids will be coming up mid-December, we try and offset it each year and so yeah, a lot of lot of family holidays and I want to, I want to see the Grinch again this year. Bryan: So you want me to come visit? [Laughter] Yeah I'm not a big holiday person so Thanksgiving I guess is our big holiday and, we just wrapped that up down here and Thanksgiving, I'll be heading back to New York in the next few days and you know, it's funny I'm sitting here in shorts and it's 80 degree weather so it doesn't feel like November, and then I'll go back to the 30 degree weather and, yeah amazingly Nash is not even shedding that much here in Florida, you would think he would get rid of that winter coat, but he is panting like it's August. This is That Blind Tech Show, maybe we'll have one more before the year hopefully, you know, all of our schedules have been so crazy we haven't been on a regular schedule, we plan to hopefully eventually get on it, but for now we are out. When we share what we see through each other's eyes, we can then begin to bridge the gap between limited expectations and the reality of blind abilities. For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at BlindAbilities. Download our app from the app store Blind Abilities, or send us an email at info @blindabilities.com, thanks for listening.
In partnership with State Services for the Blind of Minnesota we are proud to present, PACER Center – Champions for Children with Disabilities: A Visit with pACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center Director Julie Hertzog Julie helped start the Bullying Prevention Center back in 2006 and is a recognized National Leader in Bullying Prevention. She has been featured on CNN, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Time for Kids, PEOPLE, Family Circle and The Huffington Post. Julie sits down with Jeff Thompson of Blind Abilities in the first of a series of podcasts in partnership with PACER Center and State Services for the Blind. Be sure to check out our upcoming Pacer Center podcast featuring the Simon Technology Center and how innovations and opportunities are being created every day and every way. From the web: PACER Center enhances the quality of life and expands opportunities for children, youth, and young adults with all disabilities and their families so each person can reach his or her highest potential. PACER operates on the principles of parents helping parents, supporting families, promoting a safe environment for all children, and working in collaboration with others. With assistance to individual families, workshops, materials for parents and professionals, and leadership in securing a free and appropriate public education for all children, PACER’s work affects and encourages families in Minnesota and across the nation. You can find out more about PACER Center on the web at www.Pacer.org And PACER’s national Bullying Prevention Center at www.Pacer.org/Bullying You can reach pACER Center by phone at 952-838-9000 You can find out more about State Services for the Blind on the web at www.MN.Gov/Deed/SSB And by calling 651-539-2300 Live Learn Work and Play Thank you for listening! 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 [Music] Child 1: Bullying is hurting too many people in this world. Child 2: Sometimes I cry when I'm being bullied. Child 3: Bullying makes me feel sad, when I am bullied I try to walk away. Child 4: Sometimes they punch you in the eye, it's so bad that you could cry. Child 5: I got bullied at school. Child 6: Children leave me out of games. I don't like it at all. [Music] Jeff: State Services for the Blind of Minnesota presents "PACER Center Champions for Children with Disabilities". This episode focuses on bullying and with us today we have Julie Hertzog, director of PACERs National Bullying Prevention Center. Julie helped start the bullying prevention center back in 2006, and is a recognized national leader in bullying prevention. You can find out more about PACER Center and PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center on the web at www.PACER.org, we hope you enjoy. [Music] Jeff: Welcome to Blind Abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson. We are at the PACER Center located in Bloomington, Minnesota. We're talking to the director of PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center, Julie Hertzog. Julie, can you fill us in on what Pacer Center is all about and what you do as Director the National Bullying Prevention Center? Julie: Sure, thank you Jeff. Yes, we are in Bloomington Minnesota at Pacer Center and PACER is actually an acronym, P A C E R, and its Parents Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights ,though that's probably outdated. We've been around since the late 70's and we, our organization began when students with disabilities were given the federal right to be included in the classroom and so that law today is called the IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and so we are a parent advocacy organization and what we do is help parents understand what their rights are when their child has a disability in an educational setting. People will oftentimes say, well where does your connection to bullying come in then as a disability organization? In response to that, as an organization we're here in Minnesota, so we do take a lot of calls from parents in Minnesota, and starting in, well it was around early 2000, we noticed that our staff noticed that we were taking more and more calls about kids who were involved in bullying situations and really both kids who were being bullied as well as kids who were doing the bullying, and a lot of those stories just kind of broke our hearts. We knew that we wanted to, to do something we knew we wanted to take action. And at the time bullying in early 2000, it really wasn't something that people were talking about and so PACER pioneered a lot of the education that happened around early 2000, and in 2006 we actually formed a program under the PACER umbrella called PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center. And the connection to our mission with disability is that students with disabilities are bullied two to three times more than their non-disabled peers, and at the time when we formed the National Bullying Prevention Center we knew that, we wanted to always make sure that we emphasize students with disabilities, but to really make a difference, we realized that we, we also wanted to focus on any kids who are vulnerable to bullying and whether that was a student with a disability, are being bullied based on their disability, on their race, their religion, their weight, their gender, we wanted to be inclusive. But we also didn't want to focus just on the kids who are being bullied, we wanted to really engage, we knew to make a difference, we wanted to engage the entire community, so we wanted to be speaking to schools, we want to be speaking to teachers, and and parents, and the students themselves because at that time we had adopted the tagline, the end of bullying begins with you, and we knew that we wanted to really have a community conversation about this. That it wasn't about saying that, you know, schools need to fix this, or teachers need to fix this, or the kids need to fix it, it was really about all of us working together. And so that is the background on the National Bullying Prevention Center and how we got started. Jeff: You mentioned something that really struck me as it's more than just one person, it well, it is about one person, what I'm getting at is, it's a community, it's the family, and the communication that happens between all of them that will help solve this. Julie: Yeah for so long we talked about some of those misperceptions that we had about bullying or some of those stereotypes that we had about bullying and if you think back to early 2000, I remember when I first started working on this and again I've been on this project since its origin and there was so many statements such as boys will be boys, yeah, meaning that it was justified because they were boys, that it was okay for them to fight, that's just the way it was. Of course, we've all heard that universal one, sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. We know that that is not true, that bullying is not only about physical, it's about emotional, and you know through the years we've had kids say some really poignant things like, words are like weapons, or words will break your heart, and we know that that emotional bullying has just as much effect on students and probably lives inside them much longer even than the physical bullying has. There's also other stereotypes and misperceptions out there that have rationalized bullying for so long such as, you know, just fight back, or you know, kids have also been blamed for why the behaviors happening to them and parents or adults have said to kids, well if you didn't act that way, bullying wouldn't happen to you. And so those are all things that in early 2000, just those stereotypes allowed bullying behavior to perpetuate because we were silent, so when a child was reaching out to us and we were saying things back to them like, well what did you do to make that happen? Really what we were doing is shutting down the conversation and any options that they had to make it stop. Or even when kids would tell an adult that someone else was being bullied, you know our response was, don't be a tattletale. And so again if we're so long what has happened is our society allowed the behavior to perpetuate not, not intentionally but, there was also that statement of, bullying is just a natural part of growing up, I mean those, those were all rationalizations for the behavior for so long. But I will say around you know in that early kind of mid-2000's that people really started recognizing the incredibly negative impact that bullying had, not only short term, but also long term. And there was a couple things that happened at that time in that, the results of the advent of social media at that time. I can remember saying that in 2006 that the Internet is the new bathroom wall, meaning that bullying used to be limited to the school or you know, possibly the neighborhood and kids could go home and escape that, well maybe except for that occasional phone call that they would get or something, but they were really able to, you know, go back home and remove themselves from it. But with social media it became their, you know with the evolution of technology also became the evolution to bully, and so kids were vulnerable to bullying 24 hours a day, and I think that that was one of the reasons that bullying really was put on kind of that national dialogue and also there was a recognition that kids because of things like self-harm, things like depression, anxiety, we began to recognize that there was medical things happening with our kids that were the result of being bullied, and also their you know, the suicide ideation, and suicide attempts, became part of the dialogue as well. So those two things really kind of started to put bullying much more in the public radar and also, they turned a lot of those stereotypes around and we recognize that bullying was a very serious issue for our kids. Jeff: You mentioned in the beginning that educating parents and giving them tools to deal with some of the stuff that comes with, I mean mostly parents in my situation that I know, they didn't choose to become a parent of a child with disabilities, and where do they go for that so, that's what PACER was basically built on. Julie: Absolutely and Jeff I'll just share too that I am the parent of a young man who was born with Down syndrome, who was also nonverbal, he has a feeding tube, a pacemaker, some really significant medical issues and so, it was David who, he was three when I started here at PACER, and he's now 21, and it was thinking about those vulnerabilities of kids that really inspired our, my work here, and also the work of others, in that so much of bullying happens because someone is not able to defend themselves against it, and so it was about how do we educate parents to raise kids who are self-advocates? How do we educate parents to be advocates for their own children? You know and I think back, and again I'll just reference back to 2000, so often when kids would tell their parents that they were being bullied, I think the first response from parents from majority of parents was, oh just ignore it, it'll go away, and you know, and that came from a really good place, and I think parents hoped that by ignoring it, it would stop, but we know from history that just ignoring it does not make a go away, in fact it usually gets worse, and and I remember kids, there was some kids who jokingly when we were talking to them for the focus groups and everything else and they said, well what if I would tell my parents to just ignore their annoying boss? Would that be a solution to the situation? And I remember there was another kid he said, What if I told my parents just to ignore their bills? Would their bills just go away? And so, you know we'd say that, and we realized that, how ineffective that response was, but that was the only thing we had at that time, and we know now that there's so many more solutions. And since 2000 now, every state across the nation has a law about bullying, and bullying prevention in schools, and legislators focused on the school environment when creating those laws. So, we now know that parents and kids have rights and within every state about what can happen if they're being bullied and those weren't in place before, and we also teach parents just how they could be supportive of their child. So instead of being that dismissive, just ignore it, we help them understand how important it is to talk through it and let them know that they're not alone, that we're getting, that you're gonna as a parent, you're gonna be there to help them learn how to advocate their way through it, and I would say to Jeff, that you know, I think for my own son even, self-advocacy skills were so important for him and being a child who's nonverbal, one of the things that we taught him how to do is, if, if you're not feeling comfortable, first thing we want you to do is find a teacher, and we had that written into his IEP, and even from there we continued developing more strategic options for him. Jeff: So, when I was on the website for the National Bullying Prevention Center, I noticed there's some videos and it just wasn't a collection of videos, they were broken down into young children, teens, and you know it even led to what you're talking about educating adults. Can you tell us a little bit about those videos? They really impacted me because it brought me back to the realization that, I may have been part of, not may have, I was part of bullying a little bit and I was bullied, and it just it doesn't go away really, because it all came back to me pretty vivid, pretty, it was all there. Child 7: It makes me cry after school. Child 8: We are different in many different ways, size, shape, and color. Child 9: I have been bullied so I know how it feels to everyone going through a hard time out in the world. Several child voices: Tall, short, skinny, or round, tall, short, skinny, or round, you have a voice, so make a sound. never meant to be the same. Child 10: You have to care because there are other people in the world besides you that have feelings. Child 11: Bullying can prevent good in the world and make the bad go in the world. Child 12: It's not nice to bully, it's better to be a friend. Julie: Yeah absolutely, and you bring up such a good point to Jeff in that, one of the decisions we made very early on was to recognize that any student within the same day can play multiple roles in what we call a bullying situation, and that you may be that young person, you're on a bus riding to school and someone might be throwing, you know, wads of paper at the back of your head over and over and everybody's laughing. So you're that person that's targeted by bullying on the bus and so you can imagine how that feels, that vulnerability, you're on the bus and you get to school and there's all sorts of emotions you're feeling, you're, you know you might be feeling anger, you might be feeling fear, you might be feeling sad, and then you get off that bus and you walk into school and you see a kid by a locker and for whatever reason you just decide to push that kid because you know that you can, and you you push that kid, you've now taken on that role of the kid who's doing the bullying. The next hour you might be witnessing a similar situation you know, in your own classroom, and so to just be labeling kids as a bully, or as a victim, or as you know, somebody who sees it, it wasn't strategic for us. We realized that this is the root of all bullying, it's a social issue. It's a very social issue and by us allowing the behavior to continue to happen without anybody saying anything about it is why it was perpetuated for so long, and I think it's about, we say bullying is about behavior, and so our kids, they're about behaviors, they're not about labels, and what we really want to do is be educating them, and Jeff you mentioned those videos and I think that, again in today's culture, and our evolution, the way we absorb information, we thought it was so important to be offering everybody a variety, so everything from being able to read information, to listen to information, to have access to videos, and you know, and we do a lot of interactive stuff as well. The video series we wanted to touch a parent audience because we want to be giving them a little bit different information than what we would give our kids. So, we actually do have three different websites. We have the National Bullying Prevention Center which we consider our portal page, and that's really for our adult audience, and then we also have two age-appropriate websites. One is called Teens Against Bullying and that is for middle and high school students, and the second is called Kids Against Bullying, which is for elementary school students, so we present to information that that's age-appropriate on those sites through a variety of dissemination, so everything from reading, to interaction on the website, to videos. Jeff: Yeah that was really interesting because I think the ones for kids had animated drawings, it actually described what was going to be on there and said drawings that the kids did, and then their voices, so it really brings it home, and when you witness, or you hear that kids voice, and the tones in their voice, it really like, you can feel it and you mentioned something about everyone's kind of a participant in it. Either your bullying, your target, or you're a bystander. Julie: Yeah and you know, bullying doesn't affect just that kid who's being bullied because when we think about, we like to talk about bullying on a continuum, so if you take a hundred students and you'd line them up, there's gonna be ten students who are frequently targeted by bullying, there's gonna be ten students who maybe are doing the bullying, but that leaves these eighty kids in-between who probably you know might experience bullying a little bit, or might participate in groups, but they're also that 80 percent that sees it happening and you know Jeff I'll tell you universally from talking to kids for, for the past almost twenty years, that group doesn't like it, they don't like what they see, but what they've never had in the past is that they didn't feel empowered to do something about it. You know it goes back to maybe one of those kids in that group was the one that went and told a teacher when they saw a bully and when they were met with, don't be a tattletale, you know what does that do, it shuts them down, they're not going to go back again and say something about it, and so again, it's about making that cultural shift to really engage that 80% to be what we call advocates. It goes back to our PACER model of advocacy, and we say it's advocacy for self, and advocacy for others, and so really giving that that group the dialogue and the tools about, what do you say if you see a bullying situation? And I think that 80% is so important for our kids with disabilities to because the majority of bullying is happening outside the adult's world, and so it's happening in places like a bus where there's not adults, you know, the one person who's on a bus is the bus driver, and what are they doing, they're facing the other way of where all these kids are sitting behind them. And so bullying also happens online, in places where adults aren't, you know that's why so many social media sites that adults are using, kids aren't, because they want to be in a world of their own choosing, and interacting with each other. And so if you think about it, it becomes extremely important for this peer group, this, these bystanders to be empowered to do and say something about bullying, and especially for those who aren't able to stop it on their own. And there's also a really powerful statistic that almost 60% of bullying situations will stop when a peer intervenes and that peer invention becomes so much more powerful than anything in an adult could ever do because just as kids who bully have a lot of power, the peers can take that power away in that situation by saying, you know, we don't accept this, this is not what our school is about, we're better than this, and we've found that that it's extremely effective. [Music] Jeff: It's cool to be kind. [Laughter] Julie: Yeah you know you want to say something, it's cool to be kind sounds really cool to us as adults, but we like to frame it a little bit different for kids and, and especially you know, I think our elementary school students, things like that still resonate with them, you can go with that, some of those really very simple messages. Life gets a lot more complicated for our middle and high school students and how that empathy is, how do you tap into that natural empathy that kids have, because most people don't want to see another person be hurt, but they don't want to put themselves in that situation where they themselves might next become the target, or they get in trouble for sometimes intervening, and so you, you want to really make the payoff, you want to make the trade-off worth their investment of intervening and taking that risk. Jeff: Yeah that group mentality, those eighty students, is it cool to be part of the cool group, that the group is doing this, or is it cool, and I think because of PACER and you know the states passing the laws about bullying that the youth now is starting to realize that it's okay, and cool, those to step out step in, and be part of the conversation part of the solution to bullying. Julie: Absolutely, and Jeff again, my son David, I remember when he was going into middle school and again, you know everybody has their individual vulnerabilities and for him, it was not being able to tell us if he was in a bullying situation he just he wouldn't have that ability to do that and we wouldn't know, and so one of the things that we wrote into his IEP at that time was about training kids to be his advocates. So, at that time, we selected four young people who I knew were already allies of David and these weren't popular kids, they weren't the student council kids, they were they were kids I just knew who had empathy and who cared. We gave them the training to look out for David because we knew that they would know about bullying long before any of the adults would and those students were amazing, and they had such incredible, just their own self-worth and their self-confidence was brought up so much by learning those advocacy skills for David that they shared it with friends and they told people how much you know, this meant to them being part of you know, being delegated with this responsibility, and so that model quickly expanded within my son's school, that advocacy model and they became known as peer advocates. And so, what we did is we continued to train students about what to do if they saw somebody in a bullying situation, how they could intervene, what kind of support they could provide for David, and we also provided an adult mentor that they could go to. So that they could you know, share if there was something that was beyond what they could handle. And that model was incredibly effective, and it became known as the peer advocacy model, and it's still in place at that school today and I know we also have information about it on PACER's website. Yeah there's a great video on there, there's the toolkit, there's statistical data, and there's also a way that you can start it within your own school as well. Jeff: And that's what that toolkits about right? Julie: We have several toolkits on the website, but there's a peer advocacy toolkit on the website that really explains that model in more detail. Jeff: In my world of disability with the blindness and vision loss and difficulty in reading the printed word, self-advocacy is an important skill to develop because typically the parents are what becomes a personís advocate to make, ensure that they're receiving services, or they seek, come to PACER's to learn how to be their advocate in a sense, but then there's a point where the parent will assign chores, or wean them into responsibilities and self-advocacy because they're going to transition from high school to college to the workplace and having that skill set is very important. I was glad to see in the bullying that you guys mentioned self-advocacy. Julie: Yeah, I would say with self-advocacy in bullying, the one important nuance there, is that, we want to make sure that we're not putting full responsibility upon the student to stop it themselves because if they could have stopped it themselves they would have already done that. But what we do say is that self-advocacy is very important and that'll help you get your power back in this situation because I think so much about being bullied, you start to feel powerless, you start to feel like you don't have any options, so in doing that self-advocacy piece is really powerful, and in the world of disability too, it's important to note a couple things, that you have either your IEP, or your 504 that you can be writing those goals and objectives right into, and we've seen parents and teachers get incredibly creative with that. So everything from identifying an adult that a young person can go to if they need help in a bullying situation, and, and that advice, because that isn't always readily available in the school, and so writing that right into your plan is very important, or you know, we've seen other situations where students can leave class five minutes early just because if a hallway is really busy and they're getting bumped around you know, quote-unquote by accident, when we really know it's not by accident that it's on purpose, you know maybe for a short period of time they want to leave class early just to make sure that, that it's not happening, but ultimately we want that behavior to stop in the hallway and for it not to be happening so that they can be included with their peers. But the other important piece is that there's not a federal law about bullying, so every state has a law, but at the federal level there's a law on harassment. So, the distinction between that is that if the bullying is based on an individual's disability, or their race, or their religion, or their gender, or their national origin, then it reaches a threshold of harassment, and at that time the Department of Education as well as the office for civil rights are looking at those scenarios too, so there are some protections in place when the bullying is based on an individual's disability. Child 13: I push myself and yet it is never enough. Child 14: It's never enough. Child 13: And it's hard to ask for what I need. Child 15: I wish others could see that I may not be tough on the football field. Child 16: Or deal with social events very well, but I am a dependable friend. Child 17: It is hard to be understood. Jeff: You mentioned harassment and bullying and you thinking about all the definitions as they're defined in whether a dictionary, you know Webster would say, but it seems like they all blur together, it's a little blurry like conflict harassment, bullying, can you talk just a little bit about that? Julie: Sure I'll give a quick 101 on a definition of bullying, and again Jeff, you know like you say it's, it's somewhat nebulous, and so I'll go back to, if you're listening to this, this recording in the state of Minnesota, Minnesota's definition of bullying in the schools might be much different than how California legislation defines it, or legislation in Pennsylvania, but there are some common hallmarks that I'm gonna mention as far as what defines bullying. So, the first would be that there has to be the intent to hurt, harm, or humiliate, and that can be either emotionally or physically. So, everything from a push, a shove, to name-calling/gossip, so there's that intentionality to hurt, harm, humiliate. The second is is that, the act is typically repeated, instead of you know, but often you know, if it's of significance it can be a one-time act, and I'll use the illustration of say for example if somebody's on social media and they say something really inflammatory and it reaches the an audience of a thousand people immediately, to me that may be a single act, but because it's reaching a thousand people it would definitely hit that threshold of bullying. The third is there's this power imbalance, and again this is, this is I, you know, the imbalance of power up, with that in quotations because it sounds very lofty, but what it is is when a person has either more physical or social power, so everything from you know, so a larger person being much more intimidating to someone else, to a person of smaller stature, but it can also be social power you know, so often we hear it's the quote-unquote the cool kids who are bullying, and so they have much more social cachet then the person that they're bullying. But that imbalance of power can also be about groups, because so often with bullying there's a group mentality and you know, against one person, and it's awfully hard to have power in that situation as an individual versus a group. And the fourth one is that the person is not able to defend themselves, because we see a lot of times people act inappropriately, but it's when, when that person is, feels vulnerable, and they're not able to stop what is happening to them without the help of someone else. The distinction between bullying conflict and harassment then, so with harassment, it has all those hallmarks of bullying, but it's also, and again we're looking at the legal definitions based on legislation, and so the distinction with harassment is that it has all the hallmarks of bullying, but it's also based on an individual's disability, gender, race, religion, national origin, and so the legal, that's the legal definition. And at the interesting nuance to is just to understand what the difference is between conflict and bullying because I think that's very important with our kids, is that we want to let them know, that to have a disagreement, to have an argument, that's a natural part of just life, and it's going to happen through through life, and the distinction of when conflict crosses over into that threshold of bullying is when one person feels unsafe, they no longer feel safe in that disagreement, and also that most conflict will stop when the person realizes how much they're hurting the other person, and so those are really those those distinctions. Jeff: Yeah, I remember there's something saying, guided by empathy that someone does then, retreat or realize they're doing, they're harming someone, they actually realize it, and some people just don't. Julie: Yeah and they'll usually though, they'll be an apology or just an acknowledgement of, hey I guess you know, we've, we've crossed a line here that's not comfortable for someone, for the other person. Jeff: I think the, one of the biggest things you know I, I knew I was coming here to talk about bullying and so I you know, looked at the website and I talked to a couple people about it, and I reflected some things in my past, and I just am grateful that the children today in schools and stuff have the opportunity to be part of the conversation that you and PACER are doing, the bullying prevention, are doing, that there is a conversation that people can join in on. Julie: Yeah one of the I think important parts about our websites is that we wanted to make it not only educational, but we also want it to be aspirational and inspirational and you do that through the sharing of stories, and so if you do go on our website, one of our primary hub and navigation just lists stories, and that's true in all three of our web sites, whether it's for our kids, teens, or adults because we need to understand that impact that bullying has, and I think it's so, it's so easy to say, oh you know it's horrible what happened to somebody, but when you read their their personal story, and you understand the impact that it had for that person, literally about them maybe not wanting to get up and go to school because they couldn't face another day, it's important to know that, and it's those stories and the sharing of stories that really changes lives. And so we wanted to have a way that people could interact and so story sharing is one of those, we also have a nice feature called I care because dot dot dot, where individuals can go on there and fill out why this topic matters to them, and again those are very poignant, and very telling, and also just that kind of that aspirational piece is that, we want the opportunity for anyone to get involved and we realized that we're a small staff so PACER overall has a staff of almost seventy people but on our bullying prevention project there's only three of us, so there's three of us within PACER and we obviously have an infrastructure that supports us, but one of the things that we knew is that the only way we could make change with such a small staff was to really have people who wanted to get invested within every community and that's really what we found is whether it's kids, whether it's parents, or teachers, or even community members, we want to give them tools so that they could be part of the conversation. I think an important evolution you know, what you've heard me talk about what bullying was like in 2000 and where we are now in 2018 is that when we started in 2000 we really needed to be educating people about why do you need to care about this topic of bullying, and then you know, and the reasons were is because it had such a negative impact on her kids, everything from them not wanting to go to school, to also having these physical symptoms of depression and anxiety. You know I think the majority of our society now understands that, that bullying is is not acceptable, but now we need to beware. What are we going to do about it and what behaviors do we want to replace it with and so our conversation has continued to evolve to, we are together against bullying but we're also United for attributes such as kindness, because again you can't go wrong with kindness, and the world just needs a lot more of it. But we also started talking about the concepts of inclusion and acceptance, and we chose those two very purposefully. Inclusion because so often our students with disabilities are not included, you know traditionally they're not included in a classroom setting, they're not included in peer groups, they're not included in friendships, and so to be having active conversations about that we felt was really important. And the other values of kindness, inclusion, and acceptance, and I think so often bullying is about people's differences and in thinking about it, so often what somebody is bullied about is really what makes them unique and valuable to society and I'll just use my own that I, I'm five-eleven now, and I think I was five-eleven back in sixth grade and though I was teased about height and, but really that's what I value, and I think in blind or visually impaired community, and again Jeff, you can probably speak to this, but it's probably your uniqueness that you value about yourself. And so one of the things that we want to do is to say that acceptance is about who somebody is and things that they cannot change, but it's also probably what really they value most about themselves as well, and even my son with Down syndrome, I think what people value about him is his disability because of what he brings to a community, because of his uniqueness, and how he approaches life because of this disability. Jeff: I'm so glad to be part of this conversation because I'm just reflecting back and you talked about acceptance, like when I first lost my eyesight there was a period of time there where I was like, hmm, I didn't know what I didn't know, and I was like kind of lost, so vulnerability at that point until I was able to accept my blindness, my visual impairment, then I could deflect comments or just things like that so, Julie what suggestions would you have for someone who may be experiencing bullying? Julie: Sure, and I'm gonna look at this through the lens of we really focus on students in K through 12, and the first thing I always want to tell anyone who's in that age range and/or their parents is to know that, especially if you are experiencing bullying, that you're not alone, and and I say that Jeff because, one of the things we so commonly hear from individuals is that they feel like they're the only ones that are going through this experience. And you're not alone, in that people are here for you, and if you are being bullied, absolutely as a young person reach out to somebody and let them know, because you have the right to do that, you have the right to be safe at school, you have the right to feel safe online, and so in talking to a parent it's not a show of weakness, it's a show of strength, and I think it takes incredible courage if you are being bullied to just show up to school every day, and so use that courage and translate it into action by talking to an adult and then figure out what you want to do to, to advocate to make it better, and part of advocacy is telling somebody and letting them help you through a plan, and you know whatever that plan may be, make it unique to you, that fits your needs. And for adults, if you find out that your child is being bullied number one listen to them, and let them talk through it because it's a very emotional thing, and you as a parent are going to be experiencing a lot of emotion if you find out that your child is being bullied. Everything from why didn't I know about this before to why didn't they tell me before, but the most important thing you can do is be supportive and the 2nd thing is to go in and find out what your rights are, you know be calling us, or be emailing us, or going online and in finding out what your rights are because your child does have the right to be safe at school, I think that's, that's just of primary importance in of advocate. Jeff: I don't know this one will make the podcast, but as you're talking there I was thinking, do kids who bully ever come forward and wonder why they're doing it? Julie: Yeah absolutely and it's a great question and, and again, I can only speak [inaudible] from the kids that we that we have communicated with, but we've heard where kids go on our website and we actually have a checklist on there especially for our young kids and it's called, do you bully? And they go on there and they read through those behaviors and they, they read through it, and they say, wow I'm doing that, and they don't realize the impact that they've had on another person through their actions, and so we need to be teaching our kids about what appropriate behaviors are, and if you as a parent find out that your kid is, is showing those bullying behaviors, absolutely be having that conversation with them and saying how can we redirect what you're doing? And teaching them how to have empathy for others, such an important piece, and, and I don't think most kids would identify themselves as quote/unquote a bully, and so that's where it's particularly important for adults to be acknowledging those behaviors and saying what can we do to redirect them? Jeff: Once again thank you so much for all this information, there's just a wealth of information that I was able to tap into, I'm going on to the website and talking to you, and you know even this podcast people are gonna be listening, and it's just, sometimes you feel like you're in a vacuum in life, you're isolated from it like, what do I know about bullying in a sense that do I have the answers, but with the conversation going on, and the website and stuff people can get connected to each other and share, especially their parents because they're the ones if they know about it, they're the ones that can do stuff too, and it's just great resource. Can you tell people how they can get to your website? Julie: Absolutely, you go to PACER, again P A C E R, is that acronym that I talked about way back at the beginning and it's PACER.org, and that'll get you to PACER's primary website, and then to reach the National Bullying Prevention Center you would put in PACER.org slash bullying. Jeff: Well that's easy enough, well Julie thank you so much for carrying on this conversation that we all need, and I don't think just because I'm in the blindness community, and bullying doesn't have boundaries, so opening it up to so much, most of our podcasts deal with blindness and stuff but we can't hide from bullying because it it does exist, so thank you very much. Julie: Thank you Jeff and thank you listeners! Child 18: Sometimes we are just told to deal with it. Child 19: Sometimes I don't think I'm any different from other teenagers. Child 20: We kind of all struggle to be understood. Child 21: But yeah, I struggle. Child 22: Emotionally and intellectually, it's sad when people are insulted and made fun of because they have something they're born with and cannot help but have. Child 23: If only others could see, I have so much to offer. Child 24: I would like to encourage kids of my generation... Child 25: Well, really everyone.... Child 26: To be more kind each other.... Child 27: To be more kind to each other...... Child 28: To be more kind to each other. Child 29: Think about how good it feels when someone comes to help you when you least expect it. Child 30: We are all trying to fit in. Child 31: We are all trying to fit in. Child 32: We are all trying to figure life out. Child 33: We are all trying to figure life out. [Music] Jeff: Be sure to check out PACER's Center Champions for Children with Disabilities and PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center on the web at www.pacer.org, and check out State Services for the Blind in Minnesota at www.mn.gov/deed/ssb. Live, learn, work, and play. And a big thank you goes out to Chee Chau and Steven Letnes for their beautiful music. You can find Chee Chau on Twitter at lcheechau, and Stephen Letnes at stephenletnes.com. For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on twitter at BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the app store, and on Google Play, that's two words, Blind Abilities. You can also enable the Blind Abilities Skill on your Amazon device, just say enable Blind Abilities. And from Pacer Center, State Services for the Blind, and Blind Abilities, Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye bye! [Music]
Job Insights #4: Apps With Productivity in Mind for Education and in the Workplace. Transcript Provided Welcome to the 4th episode of Job Insights with Serina Gilbert and Jef Thompson. We focus on Employment, Careers, enhancing opportunities and bringing you the latest innovations from across the Vocational Rehabilitation field to ensure your choices lead you down the career pathway that you want and succeed in gainful employment. From getting started with services, to assessments, Individual Plan for Employment (IPE) to gaining the skills to succeed and tools for success, Job Insights will be giving you tips and tricks to help your journey to employment and break down the barriers along the way. On this 4th episode of Job Insights Hope Paulos joins Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson in the studio and they talk about productivity apps and software. From the classroom to the workplace, these apps are geared towards making your daily challenges a bit more manageable, efficient and productive. Hours Tracker, Black Board, Drafts, Files, SeeingAI, Dictionary Thesaurus Pro, KNFBReader and Bookshare’s Read To Go app are all mentioned with some great discussion about how we use these apps. A great little Scan Stand named Foppidoo makes the scene and a conversation on Lift and Uber gets quite a chat as well. You can check out the Meet Me Accessibly book from Jonathan Mosen and learn about Zoom on the PC. Join the Job Insights crew and download some apps and give them a whirl. Hey, productivity rocks! We hope you enjoy this Job Insights episode and you can send your feedback and suggestions to the Job Insights team by email at JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com Follow the Job Insights team on twitter @JobInsightsVIP Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities network. A big Thank You goes out to CheeChau for his beautiful music! Thank you for listening! 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. Job Insights #4: Apps With Productivity in Mind for Education and in the Workplace. Transcript Provided [Music] Female voice: I feel like I'm getting a lot better education so yeah, I think, I think the online learning is an equalizer. Jeff: Job Insights, a podcast to help you carve out your career pathway and enhance the opportunities for gainful employment. Female Voice: But sometimes I require KNFB Reader when I have more than one page that I want to kind of read continuously. Jeff: Learn about resources for training education and employment opportunities. Female Voice: Blackboard, that is a learning management system and a lot of universities are using them as well for classes. So this particular app is available on Android, iOS, and PC, and Mac of course. Jeff: We will hear from people seeking careers, employment, from professionals in the educational field, teachers, and innovators in this ever-changing world of technology to help you navigate the employment world and give you Job Insights and enhance the opportunities to choose the career you want. Male Voice: Fopydo people sounds good and I actually at that time asked my son, and I, it was actually a play on the on Scooby-doo. Jeff: And you can find the Job Insights podcast on BlindAbilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities Network with hosts Serina Gilbert and myself Jeff Thompson, and you can contact us by email at JobInsights@BlindAbilities.com, leave us some feedback, or suggest some topics that we cover. On Twitter at Job Insights VIP, and check out the Job Insights support group on Facebook where you can learn, share, advise, and interact with the Job Insights community. [Music] Female Voice: Lift also released an update to their service dog policy saying that an allergy or fear of animals is not a valid reason to not pick up an individual with the service animal. Jeff: But hey it's a good learning tool, because it's just repetitious and pretty soon it just starts coming to you, mm-hmm, so I dug right in, when I saw they had flashcards I went Wow! [Music] Jeff: And now please welcome Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson with Job Insights. [Music] Jeff: Welcome to Job Insights and this week we're talking about apps, apps that you'll use in school, at the workplace, and these are productivity type of apps, and with me today of course is Serina Gilbert how are you doing? Serina: I'm good Jeff, how are you? Jeff: I'm just doing great and we got a guest today all the way from Maine. Hope Paulos, how are you Hope? Hope: I'm doing great, how are you? Jeff: I'm doing good, we're all doing good, so that's good. Today we're gonna talk about apps, you know some of these apps are mostly productivity type of things, stuff that you'll use to, you know get things done and that's, that's what we're, we're all about here on Job Insights. So Serina, last podcast you said you were holding out on us from what you're gonna tell us, is the cliffhanger over or are you gonna tell us? Serina: Oh we've got a little bit of a wait cuz we have to talk to Hope first, we have a guest. Jeff: How about you Hope, what do you got? Hope: I certainly don't have a cliffhanger. [Laughter] Serina: We set her up there Jeff! Jeff: yeah. Hope: Yeah you did! [Laughter] Jeff: So Hope, how's it going out and Maine? Hope: It's going well, the weather is nice finally, when I talked to you and Pete last time, it was March, and it was in the 20's, 20 degrees. Now we are in about the 60's, 70's, so I am absolutely loving it, birds are chirping, the guide dog is going for walks, he's enjoying it, Jeff: Is he bringing you with? Hope: Oh yeah of course! [Laughter] Jeff: That's great! Serina: But Jeff needs to know if you planted any Apple trees? Hope: No. Serina: Only PC trees? Hope: Only PC trees. [Laughter] Jeff: Oh that's the running joke isn't it? So when it comes to productivity type of apps, Hope what did you bring to the show today? Hope: Sure, so I have a couple of them. I don't use this particular one very much right now because I do work for Apple, and Apple has me on a strict schedule so I don't need this particular one, but for people who are freelancing, the name of the app is called Hours Tracker, it's a free app and basically it allows you to track your hours of course, hence the name, but it also allows you to track your earnings, and it will deduct the taxes as well. So it will tell you how much is deducting for taxes. So it's great for individuals who are freelancing. The second app that I have brought to the show is Blackboard. That is a Learning Management System and a lot of universities are using them as well for classes, so this particular app is available on Android, iOS, and PC, and Mac of course. This will allow you to do your classes online literally anywhere and actually a couple of the blindness organizations were working in tandem to get this particular app accessible. It's extremely accessible, there was only one thing that I commented on a couple weeks ago and I sent feedback in to the iOS developers and they fixed it. They're very very good about fixing issues that people might have. The other app that I brought, that I brought to the show is Learning Ally. This is an app that will allow you to download books and it's also good for individuals who are dyslexic and who have low vision because I believe it will allow you to magnify the print in the actual book so you can read along with the narrator which is quite helpful. That's more University as well, University-type app, Productivity app and of course the last app would be the Bookshare app. The Read2Go, this allows you if you have a membership to Bookshare, which I believe most students can get for free, it allows you to read the books on your phone be it Android or iOS. Jeff: Now on the Hours Tracker, is that what it's called? Hour Tracker? Hope: Hours Tracker yeah. Jeff: Hours Tracker. So when you're doing the setup, your presets, do you put in your wage, and then it just calculates it and are you able to output that anywhere, or is it just something you read? Hope: Absolutely, so this particular program allows you to put in the wage, and it allows you to put in whether or not taxes are withheld, so technically even if you were, you know not freelancing, if you working a job as an employee, a W2, you could use it as well. Basically it allows you to put in your breaks and your lunches and things like that, and it lets you know when to go on the break, and when to go to lunch, and when to clock out, and when to clock in. [Music] App Voice: Sample Job, 0.05H today, 0H button, clock out now or long-press for extras menu, button, next clock out now, button, cause now, button, break now button, break now, sample job 0 H on break 8:10 a.m., 0.02H button, end break or long press for extras menu button, end break. Hope: It also will let you know, like you can, you can set a reminder to have it automatically clock in when you get to work, and yes you can send it, I think it's a CSV file, or CV file, something like that, a database file, and it will put it in an Excel spreadsheet I think as well, so that you can show it to your employer. Jeff: That's kind of neat. Serina: That's pretty cool I like that. Hope: Yeah it's a it's a pretty neat app for sure. Jeff: Intuit the makers of QuickBooks and various tax applications has a program and it might be part of their bundle and I believe you can buy it separately, I believe it's called Self-Employed, but that sells on a monthly subscription for 7 to 8 dollars a month. Hope: Yeah this is free and I think, I'm trying to think if I paid for anything, I think I did just because I was freelancing at the time and I wanted them more, more, so it has a lite version and it has a full-featured version, but even the full-featured version wasn't some really really, you know cheap price. Jeff: A one-time fee? Hope: A one-time fee yeah. Jeff: That makes perfectly good sense, economically I can track that pretty good. [Laughter] [Music] Jeff: You can download Hours Tracker free from the App Store or the Google Play Store. Hourlys Tracker is free for up to 21 days of time entries and if you upgrade to the pro or professional, you get rid of all the ads, unlimited amount of entries that you can make, the only difference between the professional and the personal is you can have unlimited amount of jobs in the professional, and you can upgrade to the professional or the personal in the in-app option. The professional will run you $9.99 and the personal will run you $5.99. Once again, a one-time payment, I was really intrigued when I heard about Hours Tracker, I downloaded to my iPhone, and started using it right away, I named a job, I started the time, and when I was completed I stopped the time. I also had the option to input the time that I wanted it to start or input the time that I wanted to stop, otherwise you could do it in real time and that works out really nice. There's also an option that you can take notes and keep them with that job. I found that the accessibility on Hours Tracker on my iPhone was second to none, all the buttons were labeled and the intuitiveness was what I expected for when I have started logging the job, putting in the hours, getting out of the job, putting notes in, was just exactly how I expected it would work and it did work that way. Another small part of the accessibility, it lets you cancel a pop-up or dismiss the pop-up that comes up, and I really like that because if you've ever had a pop-up pop-up and not be able to get rid of it, that's not good. So after kicking around Hours Tracker on my iPhone for one job, I personally recommend this for anybody who is self-employed or someone who works on projects and just wants to have better records of the time they spend on their projects and jobs. [Music] Jeff: So on the Blackboard, I remember I have not experienced Blackboard yet, but I remember going to college and I was at the mercy of every professor that was experimenting by putting stuff on the web and accessing it through a link they give you, and if it was accessible you got lucky, so Blackboard is a collective effort to make it accessible for everyone. Hope: Absolutely, so it all depends on the type of class you're taking obviously right, if people don't know I'm going back to school to become a teacher of the blind and visually impaired and so all of the courses need to be accessible to me. So the professor's will tag their images so that I can know what's going on, their quizzes are all accessible, obviously the discussion boards are all accessible, and I use a combination of the two apps, so I use the combination of Blackboard and I use Learning ally to be able to do my classwork, and literally like I said, I can do it anywhere. With the phone if I have a Braille display and/or a Bluetooth keyboard I can do my homework on the beach or in the park you know, so literally anywhere and that's huge compared to when I was going back to school to get my undergrad degree, like you know 2009, that's when I graduated so it's, it's huge it's a huge step up. Serina: Yeah I remember using Blackboard when I was doing my master's degree which would have been gosh, probably around the same time as you are doing your undergrad, so I finished in 2010 and so, I don't know, 2007, 2008, somewhere around there's when I started it and they used Blackboard for everything. My program was pretty much 100% online, we didn't have the app back then, we just had the website, but even back then the website was pretty accessible. I rarely had any difficulties with it and I was going for the rehabilitation counseling so the professors were a little bit more cognizant of accessible media and documents and things like that. I loved using blackboard because it is easy to log on to, you know if I was on a break at work or whatever, or at home trying to get a discussion posted or something like that. Hope: Yeah it is really easy to use extremely easy to use. Jeff: Is that why you opted to do your classes online, not that you're on an island out off the shore of Maine, but..... [Laughter] Hope: Yeah I think, I think it's easier because I've done classes on site to, not having to do as my masters, but having to do with my undergrads degree. I find the digital world to be a lot more accessible, I just remember going to classes on site and didn't have a lot of input from the professor. The professor was teaching to a lecture hall full of I don't know, a hundred students, I just felt like I was kind of left out and wasn't getting all the notes that I needed to get, whereas here taking the classes online and using, again the combination of Blackboard and Learning Ally, I'm able to take the notes that I need, I'm able to contact my professors if I need to. I have peer to peer interaction as well. I feel like I'm getting a lot better education, so yeah I think, I think the online learning is an equalizer. Jeff: Mm-hmm. Hope: Of sorts. Jeff: Yeah that's great because you know everyone has to do what works for them and if you found a good way of doing it that's great, having those two apps makes it all accessible. Hope: For the most part yeah everything is accessible, even from registering for classes, I go to Missouri State University, so using Missouri State's website is accessible. It's just huge, it's what we're able to do as people who are blind and visually impaired with a digital world, it's absolutely huge. Jeff: So is that something you looked for when you were looking for an online course that they did use Blackboard? Hope: Not really, I didn't know what they used, I contacted them, I did ask them in the beginning when I was registering for the program what they used and I could have used Moodle, Moodle was another application, another learning management system that I'm familiar with and either one I would have been fine with. I looked online and and saw the collaboration between the two blindness organizations regarding Blackboard and I'm like okay this is going to be fine, this is gonna be great, I know it's gonna be accessible, I contacted my professors beforehand and gave them my accommodations and all that and said I need extra time and because it's a digital world they can input my time-and-a-half for quizzes and allow me to have that time and you know they can input that in Blackboard and all is good. I can't speak enough good things about accessibility and digital stuff. Jeff: So let's see, there's Learning Ally, we will put that in the show notes, we'll put Blackboard in the show, we'll put all these in the show notes so people can click on them and go right to the App Store or the Google Play Store and we'll have the links there, so back to the cliffhanger. [Laughter] Jeff: Hi Serina. Serina: And I thought of one like while we were sitting here, so even you'll be surprised Jeff. Jeff: Ooo. [Laughter] Serina: My absolute number one favorite app and I see it all over all of the groups like iPhone and iPad apps, and the assistive technology group, all of them, a seeing AI, I don't think it's any surprise there. That app allows me to be a lot less dependent on a human reader to just go through what's in my mailbox that I get at work. Now I can just kind of okay, yeah I need someone to finish reading that to me, or oh, this is just something that needs to go in the file, it's cut down on how much time I have to spend with somebody sitting at my desk with me going through stuff, and it's free, which is amazing to me because I remember reading gosh, I think it was like two years ago when Microsoft had their hackathon and they had released a video about seeing AI and they were showing a demo of it and I was like, well that's cool but it'll never come out and if it does it'll be super expensive. And then all of a sudden there's a link, and it's free, and it works, like amazingly and it, I can't thank Microsoft enough for that, that actually was a big surprise for me. Jeff: Yeah, you just open it up and boom, short text is reading. Serina: Yeah, from across the room right Jeff! [Laughter] Jeff: Yeah, that happened to me and, I shouldn't say it but I was that Orcam demonstration when they were having the little issues, and I was reading the wall that had their sign on it, so I was like wow, this is already talking, just out of the box, just turn it on and there it is. Male Voice: I use seeing AI all of the time to determine what's in my medicine cabinet, for documents you know I use seeing AI for short text. [Music] Female Voice: I use the document reader all the time, not gonna say it's as good as KNFB Reader because it's not. I did a test between reading my mail with it and with KNFB Reader and I found KNFB Reader to be far more stable, but I still like the app, I use it a lot, I'm glad that it's one of the tools in our toolbox. Female voice: For reading and stuff I used to go to KNFB Reader all the time but it just seems like Prizmo go and seeing AI is so much easier that I tend to go to them more. Male Voice: Seeing AI is my main go-to app and I use that, the short text channel mostly if I can't identify an item with that I will switch to the product channel if it has a barcode. A lot of the apps like [Inaudible] and Aipoly Vision and [inaudible], I've deleted most of those off of there because I can accomplish the same thing with seeing AI [Music] Male Voice: Jeffrey I see apps like Aipoly Vision, [Inaudible], Identifee, of course the KNFB Reader, I think seeing AI is becoming the main tool in the toolbox. Jeff: And you know, all the other channels that they have on their to four options but that's the one I use all the time because, you open it up it works. Serina: Yeah there's a handwriting one too that I've tried only a couple of times, but it surprisingly did recognize the handwriting enough for me to figure out at least what the note was generally about cuz sometimes my clients will stop in and I can't see them, and they'll leave a handwritten note at the front desk and obviously it's probably dependent on the individuals handwriting but I was at least able to get the name of the client and know, okay I'll just call them and see what they needed. Jeff: Hmm, well that's good. Serina: That one's in BETA I think. Jeff: Yeah you always wonder when they have a little feature that's in there and they tag the word BETA after it's like, you better use it now because it may not be there! Serina: Or it's like the disclaimer don't trust this feature. It might not work right! Jeff: Mm-hm try it on a doctor's prescription. [Laughter] Serina: Oh gosh. Jeff: That's the to test. Serina: This is totally not productive but when seeing AI first came out, we were playing with it in my office to see how old it thought everyone was. [Laughter] So all of my co-workers were like changing their hairstyles or putting on glasses or taking off glasses to try to trick it to make it think that they were younger. Jeff: That's a great use of state-funded money. [Laughter] Serina: Hey! Jeff: I know everyone's been doing that, it's kind of a novelty thing and that's like artificial intelligence to me when they're built into apps to me, it's like you know when you go to the carnival, you know, they'll guess your age and you win the whistle or something but you know, I'm not into the novelty stuff but that really does work. Serina: Hope, do you use seeing AI for any of your school work, or since it's mostly digital do you not have to use it a lot? Hope: Yeah I use it sometimes, I use it for work actually to find out whether or not my Mac, my work Mac is gonna turn on correctly. We have so many policies in place at Apple that sometimes voice-over doesn't turn on correctly and so I use either seeing AI or I also use AIRA for that, but most of the time I just grab my phone and you seeing AI. Speaking of the, or how old people were, I actually did that last weekend I think it was on my grandmother's 93rd birthday. I went up to her and took a picture of her and had seeing AI tell her how old she was, now again she's 93 right, so it said a 65 year old woman is smiling, or looks happy or something like that and she's like, wait, did it say 65? [Laughter] Hope: Shes like, I like that! So it made her day. Serina: Yeah. Jeff: I actually think for women they do have a built in algorithm that knocks off a couple years just to you know, keep the customers happy. Serina: No it added 10 years to mine, no matter what it says 10 years. Hope: Oh really. That's funny! [Laughter] Jeff: The algorithm breaker! Serina: Gosh. [Laughter] The other one that I use is obviously very similar to seeing AI but sometimes I require KNFB Reader when I have more than one page that I want to kind of read continuously. To my knowledge I don't know that you can scan multiple pages in seeing AI and if you can, somebody let me know, cuz I actually like it a little bit better. But sometimes when I'm working from home and I don't have access to my flatbed scanner but I need to read some printed like medical documents or things like that, I'll take out KNFB Reader and just scan a whole bunch of pages all at once and then read it, through it continuously, so that's very helpful, and then also you can save on KNFB Reader in their file system, and I think I saw on the latest update that now they can sync with Google Drive and Dropbox now to, so that's kind of a really cool feature that they've integrated in there now. Jeff: Yeah I like the KNFB Reader when I have like, I might have 10 pages of something to read and I don't want to take a picture of each of them so I put it on double sheet and then batch mode and when I turn the page it'll sense that, so you know you got the page turning then ch-ch-ch. KNFB Reader Voice: Manual picture button, automatic picture, picture from ste..., alert, please place your device on an empty document stand and align the camera with the aperture, okay, button, flash off, button, multi-page mode off, button, multi-page mode on. [Camera Sound Effect] Serina: Do you have a stand that you use with it? Jeff: Yeah I do, its the Fopydo and it was designed by Thomas Wardega, and here he is. Thomas: Fopydo sounds good, and I actually at that time asked my son, and it was actually a play on the on Scooby Doo. So basically this was designed from the ground up for people who are blind and visually impaired and along that process I learned to work with people who are blind so I went through a couple of revisions of the stand before I even started selling it just to make sure that people are happy with using it and that it fulfills whatever is needed from a scanning stand for people who are blind and visually impaired. [Camera Sound Effect] Jeff: It comes with a set of instructions that you can scan, you can put it together, once you got it together it just folds right up and you can put it in a suitcase, it takes up very little real estate. Serina: Oh I need one, and does it work with any phone or? Jeff: Well back when I talked with him he said it would handle, if you balanced it right, and iPad Mini, so I, I guess your your beast of a phone, your iPhone X may work. [Laughter] Serina: Yeah and put the link in the show notes cuz I've been, I thought, I had somebody looking for one before and they were like $50, I'm like mm-hmm, I'll just hold it up, you know. [Laughter] Jeff: Having the batch mode on the KNFB Reader really makes it viable product for someone that's in school that may have to be scanning a lot of pages. Serina: I definitely need one of those. Jeff: Yeah we'll put the link in the show notes and I believe he sells it on Amazon and if you have Amazon Prime, there you go, ten, twelve bucks. Serina: Primes getting expensive though it's like $120.00 starting this year. Hope: I think there's a discount for students. Serina: It's half off for students cuz I had that for a couple of years, and then they got smart and realized that I'm not a student anymore because my school let me keep my student email address for years, and I don't even think I have it anymore now. Now they make you verify by sending in like a schedule. Hope: Oh really? Serina: Yeah. Hope: Similar to Apple music, they do the same thing. Serina: Yeah, and I think Spotify does the same thing too. Hope: Yep. Serina: They got smart. Jeff: So we'll have to put the link in there for Amazon Prime half off for students, that's good news. Serina: Yeah that's it, and half off of Apple music and Spotify, not that those are, those could be productivity apps because if you need music to stay focused. Hope: Technically yeah, exactly, that works! Jeff: Or books. Hope: Yeah. Jeff: Amazon still sells books. Serina: Who orders books anymore? Jeff: Does anybody use Audible for books? Serina: I do not, I totally looked at it, but every time I looked at it I just can't, like I think it's thirteen ninety-nine a month for so many credits and one, the amount of credits you get for that amount is equal to downloading one book, and I haven't found that it's better than just using BARD, because they usually have especially if it's a best-seller what I want anyway. Jeff: Mm-hmm and the BARD app is totally accessible too. Serina: Yeah it's, it's a little old school sometimes, it has its glitches but it gets the job done. Hope: It can be yeah, exactly. Jeff: But it's, it's something that if you do send in a report and stuff like that they'll fix it? We can hope for the best right Hope? Hope: Yeah exactly, yeah sure, I'll write them, I'll give them a good report! Jeff: There you go. Hope: Sure. [Laughter] Serina: Well and it's hard because I know, I think that's run by the Library of Congress so that probably takes like an act of Congress just to get a glitch fixed you know. Jeff: Oh good one! Serina: I didn't mean it to be all cheesy but it's kind of funny. Jeff: Yeah it is, it is, it's nice when things work and you know, you were talking about seeing AI when you open it up short text just starts. I got an app called Drafts, just like the seeing AI, when you open it up it just works the short text is working, do you open it up and the cursors waiting up in the upper left-hand corner and you can start typing, you don't have to open up a new file. The neat thing is if you're in a meeting and you're taking notes and you can set it for certain increments of minutes that pass by and then next time like you open your phone, say it closed, it'll start a new file automatically. Serina: Well that's cool. Jeff: So you're not adding to your recipe you wrote two days ago that's still sitting there, do you want to save it, you don't know if you should save it, it automatically, so if you set it up for 10 minutes, if 10 minutes goes by, it saves it, and opens up a new one, just ready to go, so it's like a new sheet of scratch pad for you, can actually do some markups on it, yeah share it anywhere you want, it's really cool. I do the cut and paste and then just pop it into an email, bang! Serina: I like that, is that a free up too? Jeff: Yeah Drafts is free, I think it's called Drafts 5, there is a professional upgrade, a pro version and that is $20 a year or two dollars a month, but you can do a lot with just the Drafts app. I just love that because when you just want to take down a note, I don't like going into, I use pages because it syncs up with my apple orchard but when I'm at someplace where the meetings starting and I open up pages, you know it has to load up, it goes to the recent, and it seems like, you know all the gears have to spin around five times before anything happens, but this one opens up just bang, it's ready to go. Serina: I especially have that problem using the native Notes app on the iOS devices. Ever since they made it where you've got some notes on your iPhone, some on iCloud, some on Google Drive, or Dropbox or wherever, it's so hard for me to figure out where my notes are anymore that I just don't use that app anymore. Jeff: And that's my second app that I was going to talk about, it's the files app in iOS platform on the iPhone. Files, if you don't know where it went because it says, oh it's stored on the iCloud, or on the desktop in the iCloud, or on the iCloud Drive or wherever, and you start hunting around, but if you go to files and go to most recent, it'll check all those files, all those different drives, all the different places on your phone and everything, but if you go to recent and then if you click up on top you can go back and actually go specifically only to one area where you think it is, but if you put it on all, its checking all those drives that you have synced up with it and you can usually find it, so when I get lost for a second I just open up files and go to the most recent and there it is. Serina: That's a good tip, I didn't know that. I never really knew the point of the files app. Jeff: Yeah check it out, open it up and just see, and you'll see what you've been doing lately. Seirna: So I have one more that you do not know that is my favorite apps to use, any guesses? Jeff: Hope, what do you think it is? Hope: Hmmm, Uber, no it's not productivity, nevermind. [Laughter] Serina: Well technically it is, I do use Uber and Lyft a lot for work actually because I have to go as part of my job, I have to be at high schools and things like that and I am almost an exclusive Lyft user personally. Jeff: And why Lyft over Uber? Serina: I just have found just with my personal experience in the city that I live in that I've had better luck with Lyft drivers as far as friendliness and I have a service animal so, I've never been rejected on Uber, I'm actually, the only place I was was actually on Lyft. I found that the cars have been cleaner and the drivers just seem friendlier and with Uber I specifically am NOT a fan of the, if we wait more than two minutes, we're gonna charge you policy. Hope: Oh that's not good. Serina: Yeah that's a newer policy, maybe in the last six months and that policy just really bothers me especially when you're visually impaired. Drivers will say they're there and you're like where? You know, and if they're automatically gonna charge you, I think it's, I don't, I guess it's maybe like five dollars, if the driver has to wait I believe it's more than two minutes, like that's stressful, it's already nerve-racking like being like, hey I've got a service animal, are they gonna drive right past me, are they gonna pick me up, and then to know they're also gonna charge me an extra five bucks if I can't find them. And then they also tend to do the walk here and meet your driver thing. Jeff: Oh yeah. Serina: And I've never had that happen with Lyft no matter, I've been in downtown Denver and that's not happened before, but Uber will send you up a random parking lot or something to meet your driver. Hope: Oh wow! No thank you. Serina: Yeah so that's more why I'm Lyft exclusive, and then on the driver side I'm not quite sure how it breaks down, I don't remember how much the drivers get but I know with Uber it's not like a set percentage that the drivers get as far as, like I think it with Lyft the drivers get 75% of the fares With Uber, nobody really knows what percentage of the fare they get because they can, I've had drivers say like, yeah I've done rides Denver to you know, the DIA Airport and sometimes I get 60, sometimes I get a hundred, like there's no, I guess transparency with it. Jeff: Mmm-hm. Serina: And I can only speak to you know what I'm told, but I just personally feel better about using Lyft and for those who don't know, Lyft also released an update to their service dog policy saying that an allergy or a fear of animals is not a valid reason to not pick up an individual with a service animal and I feel like that's a very strong policy, and that's telling you where they stand on that very clearly, and I'm not, I'm not sure if Uber has come out as strong as they did. But that's all for a whole another podcast, you have to use all that when we talk about transportation. [Laughter] Jeff: No that's, that's good information because in my neck of the woods my wife uses Lyft, I use Uber and yet, I've been noticing that at certain peak times the price goes way up and other times it's low, and the waiting time changes, but you know, if it were two minutes, it's sometimes it's as low as thirty seven cents, but other times it's higher, you know, so things, I think it's the area you're in that really has, it makes a difference between which one you use, it is productivity because you got to get places and it's nice to know you can get there. Serina: And on time and on your own time. Jeff: Good. Serina: But that was a really good guess that brought on a whole another discussion, I liked it. [Laughter] Serina: But honestly we're on the app right now. Jeff: Ahh, zoom zoom. [Laughter] Serina: But part of my job is to train other people and to hold conference calls and things like that, and to my knowledge as far as like a true training platform where you can record and share your screen and things like that, I found that Zoom is the most accessible system out there that's also used by like companies all over the place. I know Skype is out there, but I don't know if Skype lets you like record the calls and things like that, I don't, like independently, not by pushing it through a different software but just right in the program recording it and having that access to be able to share your screen and still use your PowerPoint effectively and things like that. Jeff: Mm-hmm, and we're doing a neat thing for the first time here and we didn't know if we could do it but Hope sat beside us waiting patiently for us, but we figured it out and we're recording on two ends right now. Serina: Unless I pushed the wrong button again which is very possible. [Laughter] Jeff: Another cliffhanger, stay tuned next week when we find out! Serina: That will be our opener next week. Guess what I actually did it right! Jeff: You know, I'm starting to like Zoom because it's like I can't even tell you, you guys are here, because typically when we're using Skype in my headphones, I have this hiss when other people aren't talking so there's continuous hisses going on and then in the editing phase. So Zoom's really good and I really like the feature where you can send an email and people can just click on the link and they connect right up. Serina: Yep, it makes it really really easy. Hope: So a question I have, you mentioned sharing your screen, how accessible is that with voiceover? I heard through the grapevine that the voice-over will read actually what's on the screen. I don't know if it's true or not? Serina: So I haven't had a chance to test that because at work we don't use any Max, and then when I'm on a Zoom call and I am a participant I'm not usually on my iPhone. Hope: Right. Serina: So if you are leading the meeting and you're sharing your screen, it's actually pushing through a video of your screen, so it's almost like, I just imagine like a webcam watching your screen or whatever. Hope: Right, so I would assume it's not accessible then. Serine: Correct, but and I don't remember the keystroke, maybe Jeff knows, but I know in the latest major update to the OS on the Macs and iOS, you can have it essentially perform an OCR on the screen like live, with the software on the Mac, but I haven't had a chance to truly test that out just because I'm not usually on Apple devices when I'm participating. The way that I work around that, because I do have to present to individuals that use screen readers as well sometimes, is I usually will send my PowerPoint out ahead of time so that they can follow along while they're listening to the meeting, but then they also have access to the chat panel and everything else, it's just the visual of the video that they're not quite having access to but I, I just send it out ahead of time. Jeff: Yeah I haven't dug too deep into this, but Serina told me about Jonathan Mosen's book, and he did a full fledge book on using Zoom for calls and meetings and stuff like that, and yeah, I believe you can get that on Mosen's consulting on the website, and we'll put a link to that in the show notes. Serina: Yeah the book is called "Meet Me Accessibly" and it's very current based on, because I listen to maybe four or five chapters so far, and it sounds like he recorded it maybe in June of 17 and he does a really good job of letting you hear the screen reader and how it interacts with everything and going through all the different settings and explaining what exactly it is that they all do. Jeff: Yes he does he has quite a few books on Mosen's consulting so when you get there, just look around and he has tutorials on a lot of different topics, he's into the Mac, he's into, no not the Mac as much anymore, but he's into the PC, Microsoft. Serina: All these plugs Jeff, you're going to need to get some royalties! [Laughter] Jeff: Hopefully I get their name right and their website right. Another app that I have that I use and some people laugh at this, I use Dictionary Thesaurus Plus, and if you get the dictionary you can upgrade and you get, its a combination of Dictionary and Thesaurus Plus and I get the word of the day, and I'm just waiting to get that specific word to send Serina because she laughed at me when I talked about this app before. But it's just kind of neat because in there, they have flashcards and I'm on the bottom, they're not labeled but I figured out what two of them are, flashcards, so I took insight today just when I was skipping around there and I made a flashcard so on one side it says insight, on the other side it says the definition, so someone could actually go through there if they have a 10 word list that need to know or learn, like they're in school and they could actually input the word, get the dictionary, and there's also a button that says go to page, so if you want more definition you can just click on it, brings it right to the dictionary page and it's just kind of a neat resource if you're into that you know. If you want to know what words mean. Serina: Well that could you, I mean you just brought up a good point though, that could be a really good study aid for somebody if you're in a class where there's a lot of maybe theories, or specific definitions you need to know, you could load all those in there and while you're on the bus or whatever kind of be going through those, probably a more fun way than just reading the book. Jeff: Yeah and that's why I did it, like when I took Spanish, I made, I made note cards. I took these note cards and I brailled on one side, and then on the other side I had some other Braille, the translation in English to what it was, so I could just go through, and people were like joking with me like, Oh flashcards, it's like it's something for the kids or something, but hey, it's a good learning tool because it's just repetitious and pretty soon it just starts coming to you. Serina: Mmm-hmm. Jeff: So I dug right in when I saw they had flashcards, I went wow! So I really like that and it's, uh I think there's a fee for the upgrade, might be a few dollars but you can get download at all for free and test it and then in the in-app you can upgrade. Serina: Nice! Jeff: Well I think we got a handful of apps here that you know through experience we, we've been trying, we've been using and stuff. Some of these apps if you find them useful click on the show notes, download them, check them out, and if you have any feedback or suggestions on the apps that you want us to do on our next show, give us a jingle, drop us an email at JobInsights@blindabilities.com, on Twitter at Job Insights VIP, and uh, let us know what you think. Serina: What are we talking about next tiem John....John? Wow! Sorry! [Laughter] Jeff: Well Sarah! [Laughter] Jeff: What will our next one be on? Serina: I don't know, we have so many topics, normally I'm like, let's take this, let's let Hope pick the next topic, no pressure! Hope: No pressure yeah right mm-hmm! Let's do transportation since we kind of talked a little bit about it in this one, that would make sense. Serina: Getting to work. Hope: Yeah, absolutely. Serina: Perfect. Jeff: Getting to work, school, college. Hope: Yeah. Jeff: There you go Sarah! Serina: Stop it! [Laughter] Jeff: And if you want to contact Hope, she's on Twitter. Serina: If you want people to have it? Hope: Yeah my Twitter is Fidelco, capital F as in Foxtrot, I, D as in Delta, E, L, C, O, 4, the number four, ever. My email address is hopepaulos@gmail.com, so hopepaulos@gmail.com. Jeff: Well Hope thank you very much for coming on to Job Insights, it's really neat to have you and we're gonna have you back as soon as possible here for our next round table. Hope: Thank you so much Jeff and Serina, it was wonderful being here. I appreciate it! Serina: Yep, you have a great day! Hope: Thank you! Jeff: Do you know it's nearly midnight and you said have a great day? Serina: Well this will come out during the day. [Laughter] [Music] Jeff: It was a real pleasure having Hope Paulos join us on the show today, all the way from Maine, and next week when we're talking about transportation all the way from New York we'll have Joe De Niro, so stay tuned to the next episode of Job Insights. And a big shout-out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music and you can follow him on Twitter at lcheechau, as always thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time bye-bye [Multiple voices] When we share what we see through each other's eyes, We can then begin to bridge the Gap between the limited expectations and the realities of Blind Abilities. Jeff: For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on twitter at 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.
When it comes to buying internet businesses, is it better to buy big or buy small? Today we are chatting with Jeff Hunt of Own Optimize. Jeff has one of the largest web business portfolios we have come across here at Quiet Light. Through close to 60 transactions, he has owned a total of nearly 500 websites. These days Jeff spends his time working on his websites and educating others on how to buy internet businesses. After a career with IBM in the services business, a move overseas led Jeff to the internet where he started a real estate website. Despite a tech background, he didn't really know anything about websites when he started out. Soon he learned that buying them was much easier than making them and started to build his portfolio. Today we talk to him all about what to focus on once a website catches your interest. Episode Highlights: Start off on the right foot at the very beginning of the process. When buying a site, what you're really looking to buy is a quality website that you can grow and automate. Jeff's range of investment is typically sites valued at $50,000 and under. Of course Jeff experienced failure, 8 out of 10 of his sites didn't make it. He admits to being guilty of chasing too many things at once. Success for Jeff has come from a combination of buying and building. Making a smaller purchase is not always for financial reasons, it can be for a new buyer to explore whether or not they even like the business. When a buyer starts small they get an opportunity to learn the transaction process. Smaller websites can carry more risk. They may not have had enough time to grow. With large sites, you still have some leverage even if you come across hard times. Owning larger sites that garner larger revenue allow buyers to afford to hire a team. Before a purchase, study the heath of the business; the historical data, the ratios, and the percentages of cost that make up the total cost. The seller should have found the key to attracting new buyers and that knowledge can be passed onto the buyer. The buyer needs to really understand the business model and hone the process that the seller has achieved. Transcription: Mark: Joe, How are you? Joe: I'm good Mark, how you doing today? Mark: Good, good! I got to talk to another member from Rhodium Weekend, which is one of those events that we talk about a lot on this podcast, to talk to Jeff Hunt. Joe: I know. Jeff Hunt's a good guy. I think he's bought four hundred (400) businesses in his lifetime. Mark: Websites, a lot of these– yeah it's about forty (40) or fifty (50) transactions that he's done, so mostly some 50,000 dollar transactions. Joe: Pause, I said four hundred (400). Am I completely wrong? Mark: No, you're not completely wrong at all. So forty (40), fifty (50) transactions but whole of about 400 to 500 websites at all. Joe: Okay, got it! Mark: Yeah, can you imagine trying to manage that many sites? Joe: Absolutely not! –trouble doing my job here at Quiet Light that is an immense amount! Mark: Yeah, I know everyone recognizes you as a slacker. Joe: (laughs) Mark: So anyways, he's bought a lot of businesses, he's bought a lot of sites and he has a lot of experience on that. Now he's teaching people, he's got the website investor– the book that he wrote. And he talks about developing systems to buy sites, successfully. And he talks a lot about some of the mistakes he made along the way. What we talk about some due diligence, but also about this ongoing question: Is it better to buy small or buy big? Now what was better for you, what's– could've helped you avoid risk more and how's that changed from the years. He's got a lot of insights into due diligence that were fascinating and honestly, the interviews I've done, I kind of wish we would flip this one around because towards the interview, absolutely, really going to miss some good topics. Joe: It's interesting that the subject of should I buy a million dollar business for– or ten– how many thousand dollar businesses always comes up. And all we can do is thought from own experience and on what other people like Jeff have done. And I think, I've had Kevin Peterson on the upsell buying portfolio SAS business as he said– I think we've quoted him that it– it takes the same amount of work to run a million dollar business as it does a hundred thousand dollar business in some cases actually takes less because it's more established. And Jeff bought forty to– 5400 smaller sites, right? Mark: That's right. And we talked about that. I do think that running-a-large of business is often less work And I wrote an article on this, years ago, We have not been blogging for almost a year now because we've been focusing on the podcast but I did right an article on this rad. I went into the data actually to take a look at: What are the average number of hours that people are working on smaller sites versus larger sites. And what is the average number of staff and how does that correlate with revenues. Really some fascinating data in there, so excited. I got to transcend you deep dive there. So all in to that much show notes, anyone wants to do some further reading. But larger sites, they're often less work. And in some ways, that's risky because there's– you have more cash flow and we talked about that. If you have a business that's– that has twenty (20) thousand dollars of revenue and you lose a key client or you lose a key-traffic source when things get cut in half, you don't have but ten (10) thousand. Joe: Absolutely! That's why, just to say it so people hear it that the– the multiple's evaluation on these jump when your discretionary earnings is up that million dollar mark, you're going to jump significantly in terms of the over-all value not– obviously because of numbers but because the multiple actually jumps too, from a– let's say from a three (3) to four (4) for an instance. Mark: Yeah and I was talking to a potential client the other day who has a business who– it's multi-million dollars of revenue but the earnings are starting to have troubles and he said, “Would anyone buy this?”. And I explained to him that if a business has millions of dollars in revenue, even if it's struggling from an earning stand point, yeah, that's going to really negatively affect the business but this is probably still is soluble. But if you have a business that makes five (5) or ten (10) thousand dollars a year in gross revenues and isn't making any money probably not going to be sold. An orgs couldn't be very difficult to sell for anything of value, so can newly certain size? It's just more flexibility on the part of a buyer. Joe: Yeah! But Jeff has a different model in system and he's buying lots of smaller one's so he's doing something very, very right. Different than your blog couple of years ago, talked about so be real interesting series got to say. Mark: Yep, let's get to it. Alright, hey Jeff! Thanks for joining me. Jeff: Hey, it's great to be here, Mark. Mark: I know we know each other from a mutual group that were both part of. And people who have listened to the podcast before will be familiar with this group, at least you've heard of it before, and that's Rhodium Weekend. You and I have attended it from the past some years, right? Jeff: Yeah, love–met a lot of fantastic people–Rhodium is a good– as you know, it's a group of people either buying, or have already bought in to operate online businesses so it's kind of really unique crowd and be part of it. Mark: Yeah, if anybody wants an introduction 0:05:43.3 let me know, I'd be more than happy and of course, Chuck will surely be able to provide that as well. Chuck Mullins who works at Quiet Light Brokerage, introduced me to Rhodium. And really– Chris had actually stopped me, but really Chuck encouraged me to go. And it's been a good investment of our time and place. It's good group and I met you there few years ago. We talked at the conference and we've seen each other at conferences since then. I think the last time we met in person was Afilias somewhat last summer. Jeff: Yeah! That's right! And I met Chuck there I think the first time at Rhodium and I formed a number of partnerships there so it's a great group of people, it's your (0:06:22.0) way around the business that were in. Mark: Alright! So, let's start getting into little bit in the– as our listeners know, we usually love our guests introduce themselves. So if you want just give, just kind of quick background on who you are and what you do, that'll be really helpful. Jeff: Okay. Well, you know, I maybe one of your older guest– I don't know but if the white here kind of gets it away a little bit, I'm in my fifty's and I'm still on the website business so… Mark: Oh, my! Jeff: Kind of funny like the bunch together that we hangout or they're a little bit younger than I am but I give them a run through their money. I actually started out in the corporate world. Probably like a lot of people buy websites and I had a crew with IBM and I was in middle managements. I had a pretty lardge organization, people who were in to service this business. So, big companies with give us their I.T. departments to run so I had development organization, infrastructure guys, and a lot. And how to buy a budget of about twenty five (25) million dollars, at that time. It's kind of funny that even though I was kind of that technical business, I didn't know anything about the internet at all. And so my first introduction to the internet was actually I started a real estate business. So I moved overseas, left IBM, moved overseas, I started this real estate business and I realized it needed a website. And so, I kind of just dove in and I learned out to do all the websites, staff and crew website for this business. And then after that , I– you know, my eyes kind of got opened to the side of the all. Starting website really hard and so I started looking at as ways to buy them. And I started buying websites and over the last ten years I actually– I've done probably fifty (50) or sixty (60) transactions and about something like three hundred (300) websites, actually probably closed to the five now but while it does ring, big groups like networks of websites that did some more functions than those kind of things. So– Then along the way, I kind of wanted to leverage some of my assets. One of my assets was just– I have been doing this for a while and you know, having my fingers and all kinds of online businesses and different business models across all the sites. And so I wrote a book called The Website Ambassador and then I've done courses on website investing and some networking like at Rhodium and other places and stuff. I really enjoyed this– I just love– I really love almost everything about online businesses. And just the lifestyle part of it but really like the analytical part of it, the marketing component and operations component. Component is just– is just low fun. So that's my story. Mark: So– I'm sorry, you said three hundred (300) and four hundred (400) websites in total? Maybe more? Jeff: Yeah! Like one of my purchases is something like two hundred and fifty (250) websites that were– I can't even read the domain names. They were German and French. And there were these affiliate websites selling Amazon FiliA products and to Amazon Germany and Amazon France. And I ran with those for couple of years some of them died off and then I sold them. Mark: Oh, okay. How in the world do you begin to even manage that many sites? Jeff: Yeah, well–you know, that's one of the many mistakes that I've made I think in the course of my website career is buying too many and chasing too many ideas that looks really interesting like– it's probably happen to you. Maybe it hasn't happen to you though like I see these things and I think “Woah! That's a very unique business modeling and that's really cool. I like to learn more about it and pick it up. Like uncharmed by those particular sites, actually those who're kind of template sites and so there was a lot of automation. There were programs that could make the same update to, ten's, twenty. Sometimes more sites at a time. So that's how we managed them. Mark: Okay, That makes a little bit more sense. Now when you say that you've been buying all these websites, we don't have to talk specific dollar amounts but who are we talking about larger sites, smaller sites, what's the range that you really been investing in. Jeff: Well I've bought in– again maybe this is something I would do differently for starting over again but most of my sites for sub- fifty thousand dollars only handful of that amount, just a lot of them as like mentioned. And I've done kind of a combination of buying and then building and typically for me the cycle's ban or buy something that I don't really know that much about like I started out with Google news approved sites and merely day so I bought a dozen different news site over time but then after a while after a year or two into that, I really understood that news business borrowed so it was very easy for me to actually create my own news websites and then go from there and I've done some more things. For example Mozilla site– so one of the reasons that we buy is because were learning something, were picking up. Were kind of learning from something that's already working. And then later on if you want to add to it by building from scratch, that's kind of a logical sequence for me. Mark: Yeah, alright, let's dive in to that topic a little bit because we get that–this question a lot from potential buyers, especially first time buyers. People that might become mean and in. They know that they want to get in to the website business or some sort of online business, they're coming from the corporate business world like you did and they might have good enough money to do a larger deal but their wonder, is that the right thing to do? And I think you might have touched a viewpoints here which might be interesting. let's talk about, specifically, let's just start with the benefits, binds small to start. You've done a lot of bind small sites and smaller sites. What were some of the big benefits that you've gotten from that and then maybe later on we can move in to some of the drawbacks from that. Jeff: Okay, yeah! That sounds great! And one of the first things that I say when I get that question by big or small is: Whatever you buy, it needs to be a good quality so it needs to be something that's very stable no matter how big or small it is. So, kind of get to your specific question, what are the benefits of buying small, first the obvious one is that you're risking less capital and for many people, that's important, especially when they don't have that experience that leads to the confidence to something bigger. So that's kind of important. And many people are running to ask me that question and it doesn't even matter what their capacity is. Some of them have a capacity in capital to buy very very large websites, multi-million dollar websites. They still don't want to do it. They want to spend five (5) thousand or twenty five (25) thousand or something like that and the reason is because it gives them the, yeah. One of the things that they think about necessarily is they don't even know what it's like to be a website owner. So it isn't just the risk of the money but they're not even sure that they'll enjoy the– be and stay which is being the owner and upper of your website. So that's one thing that binds small can do. Kind of give them a taste, what it's like. And then secondly it gives them an exercise of the transaction process. That's as you know, the transaction process is quite different from very small sites than from a large one but at least they're going through the steps of– during the evaluation, looking, evaluating, waiting, executing a transaction, setting up the accounts, perhaps hiring the team, and all of those kinds of stuff. And then some basic things that if you've never been on the website business, you've never done before like giving hosting setup and domain ownership and some of those basic things. So that's kind of the value. And the other thing is that, whereas the dynamics and management of large versus small can be quite different some of the basics in terms of the actual business models behind the sites are actually quite similar. So the content website monetized by advertising is very similar too. Whether it's big or small. Just the mechanism and process you put around that are different. So if you're unfamiliar with the business model, you can pick up some familiarity from buying a smaller site. Mark: So, you said that I think it's a key point here, and that is bind for education. And bind small for education is something that you've done quite a bit, in where you bought, you've learned in this industry a net shore, a style of online business. And I've been able to use that as an education, they will build your own as well. I talked to buyers a lot about their first purchase and an advice to buy smaller if they want to get that education set, understanding that, can you talk about that a little bit more how you've used buying small to be able to learn more about the nature, about the business style? Jeff: Yeah, that's excellent accredit in general sense education and one of the ways that we educate our self is through relationships and at working and so really, the important part when you buy a site is the relationship that you have with the seller and those have been valuable to me. I meet so many really , really instructional, educational relationships, from sellers who– and that starts with setting at the relationship– setting off at the right flow with the relationship at the very very beginning on the process. But many of the sites I bought I got really good coaching, I have relationships to this day with people that I bought sites from eight (8) years ago who were entrepreneurs, they figured something out. Most– as you know, most business is fail. Very high percentage of business is fail, off line or online. And even at higher percentage of online business is fail, been off. And I think it's just because more people try at the online business but when you have any site that's been around for a while and it's kind of built up a following and so on, is one that hasn't fail or at least not yet. And so the entrepreneurs who're able to do that and figure that out, a lot of times, they know things that you want to know from them so the key thing is actually learning what has been built, what the process is, that they use to attract customers and we'll probably talk more about that later. I hope we could. Mark: Yeah, I'll get you to talk about whatever you think will be worth talking about. I do want to talk a little bit about the differences though on bind big versus small. You mentioned in there one of the benefits to bind small is you're obviously risking what's capital. And I would completely agree with that. I mean, it's pretty obvious, if you're buying a million dollar site to buy in a ten (10) thousand dollar site, there's significantly less at stake. When I tell buyers to buy small, initially, often times I'd tell them that and say, you know, be prepared for a little bit higher risk profile. And in my experience in– feel free to disagree with this , that's in my experience buying small often comes with a little higher level of risk. I know you said you have to buy quality. What's been your experience as far as the quality businesses that you bought in this small range? Jeff: I totally agree with you and the reason that buying small carries more risk is because most smaller websites don't have the same age. They don't have the same momentum they haven't necessarily withstood the test of time. And what that really means is, in the internet business they change really fast so new competitors enter the space, there's changes in technology, changes in software, and most importantly there's changes unlike the big players like Facebook, Google and the like. And they're making policy changes and all those things, so when you buy a smaller site, in most cases, they may be successful, cause they're flying under a radar of sorts and they haven't been around long enough to see the change from desktop to mobile or from easily making Facebook ad purchases to a more competitive environment, faced to capture all those things, so as a result, the lower in sites is almost always more risky. Now obviously, you can mitigate the risk the longer you look but sometimes it takes a really long time to find the site that's– that has true stability. That's still kind of that low end so, yeah, that's right. So my experience with that, that answers a specific question is that I've failed a lot of times. Probably, my early sites that I bought, I bet you eight (8) out of ten (10) just didn't make it. Either they didn't pay for themselves and some of them might've made almost no money, most of them made some money but not nearly what I wanted and then they kind of take her off. It's hard. Mark: I found as well what larger sites having that extra cushion more discretionary earnings and more revenue, gives you a lot more ability to, not to make a mistake and absorb it. With the small site, if it's only generating twenty (20), thirty (30) thousand dollar per year, if it loses a major source of traffic, all of a sudden that twenty (20), thirty (30) thousand will go down to five (5). And now, all of a sudden you're questioning why I'm even doing this anymore. Where, you were as a few–you have a business's doing five hundred (500) thousand dollars a year and discretionary earnings and it gets hit hard. You're still probably making six (6) figures and have some leverage that are to be able to– may buy yourself out of this situation or fund what needs to be fixed Maybe place that better or so, there's a little bit of subordinate there. Workload as well, I mean– I've found in your website, in some sense, I found that with larger sites, sometimes that workload can actually be less because you can afford the higher people, where as with other site that's kind of on the edge. And I ran into this with my first company actually that I owned, I got it to a hundred twenty(220) thousand dollars in revenue and really I needed to hire people but I needed all the money. I was getting so– I couldn't really afford six months of that financial hit. What's been your experience with that? With dealing with casuals and maybe the freedoms that casuals would– of a large business would bring you? Jeff: My experience is exactly what you said where– and in fact I have websites right now where I'm forced to do things that I really shouldn't be doing, I should be spending my time thinking about the strategy, looking in for competition, time plotting on a road map, and in managing people on. And some sites is just aren't making enough money for me to hire someone to do that on month you have. So that's absolutely right, that when you get that, and you know– as I mentioned I– that there were intersections and that I've done everything where I sweep the floor myself, so I kind of gone the whole gimmick and certainly when you have a team then it really freeze you up to use your mind in a different way and that's a lot of fun if that's kind of where your skills are, what you want to do. So definitely not to big advantage of buying big. Mark: Alright, so you have done– how you told me at the beginning, I didn't worry about, how many transactions again, estimated? Jeff: Only sixty (60). Mark: Alright, that's a ton! I mean quite label with more or less than a thousand for ten years, that's with lots and lots of buyers and sellers. Sixty (60) percent is a lot. I'm going to put you on the spot and if you don't have an answer for this please just ignore it. I'm curious, what's one of the craziest thing that you can share that you've ran across in your process of buying sites? Jeff: Well. you know, I've ran across more than I– there's some crazy one's I've ran cross that I haven't bought. But there's several of them, one of them that I talk about in my book is– I found this site that– I had a hard time finding out what product is sold but it was insanely profitable like nine (9) percent profit margins but it was an E-commerce site. So it was a hard physical good and when I looked into it carefully, what they were selling was a urine. Laboratory processed urine for people who're trying to pass drug tests. And so they said, after I finally understood exactly what their product was, I understood why it was hard for me to understand, because they didn't want to like, advertise it too much that they had to do it enough to be on the safe side. Mark: There you go. One of the first clients I took on was selling poppy flowers and they were selling them for couple rearrangements, I may be naive. I had no idea that they were used for opium as well. And I had one person tell me, one buyer was like, “So are you okay with selling drugs?” I'm like, “What? What are you talking about?” Ends up, they were not, but there is people buying the poppies. At least my theory at probably buying the poppies thinking that they were buying drugs. They're probably just get stomach ache. Jeff: Alright, well, you know, that's interesting you bring that up because it's an example of one of the subtle eficlosures and we ran into this issues a lot in this business crossly, even for sites that you would think don't really have controversy around them. We ran into this kind of things. So it's one thing that buyers should be aware of. Mark: Let's (0:23:21.2) to that because you've got your course to write your book as well. Your course is at website investor.com? Is that right? Jeff: Yeah, ownoptimize.com is a good place right now. Mark: ownoptimize.com, Okay. Jeff: Yeah! Mark: We'll link to that in the troll notes so just go over to our website and look in the troll notes for the course, the online course. Let's talk about some of the lessons that you teach in this course. Obviously, we'll keep the best secrets for the courses. So– but, what are some of the things that you try and teach buyers who are taking your course? Jeff: Well, one of this– I don't want to over simplify and this may just sound too simple but one of the biggest mistakes I think that new buyers make is they don't just look at the graphs. And it's amazing what this simple graphs can tell you, the direction of the traffic, and the direction of the financial, those two simple things are really, really important. And a lot of times when you look at a graph, let's say twelve (12) month graph and it's– you can kin od tell visually that it's down or gently downwards sloping, but in truth it may actually be like twelve (12) or twenty (20) percent downward sloping and if you just extrapolate that into the future– I mean, business is going to be worth nothing in just a few years and so I think people tend to have an optimistic view when they look at numbers and sometimes they realize that their businesses that are losing money overtime and they feel like the moment that they buy this site, it's going to stop losing money, it's going to start– it's going to be flat or go up from there and there's no real reason to think that. So that's kind of really simple but that's a way that you can dismiss a lot of sites unless you have really specific knowledge about why it's going down and a very specific idea about how you can turn it around. Now we can talk about that way or two because a lot of people– that's hard to really know for sure. So then you need is just to stay away from those kinds of sites so we need to look–. So overall, key thing is you look at the graphs, if it's a stable business, you're looking for a stable business because the most important thing is– I kind of teach a risk-based methodology but for valuation and also for valuation-selection websites so for me, real core thing is you're looking for the engine for customer acquisition and you can– all kinds of sites she can evaluate, usually the successful ones. The owner, the creator, has found a way to systematically attract new clients and if it's a content site and the client is website visitor or if it's a services site, a client, whatever it is. And that process–whatever the process is, it might be toasting the Facebook every day, it might be buying Google ad words, ads, it might be just content creation regimen, it might be a product launch, philosophy on Amazon like these kinds of steps, I'd choose these kinds of products, I'd brand them in this way, I'd quadrant them in this way. And the process may be –it may not be like mind blowing in terms of what it actually is, but it might just be very consistent and perhaps complex and blast. and whatever that process is, it's that– is that engine it drives the site, that's really what you're buying because if you can get your mind around it and understand what it is that they're doing that attracts these customers consistently and then you can start envisioning how you would do that yourself and perhaps, how you would scale it, how you would tweak it to enhance it, then that's kind of the whole agree, So you want a process like that but you feel like doesn't have a hauls or gas in it, like you can see why it's working and how it's working and you get your head around that then you know the business model and then if it's historically if it's a cheap pretty solid results, consistent results, there's always going to be pivoting and changing strategies and so on but you get a model like that, that's kind of what you really want to buy, to probably grow what you're trying to buy as a buyer so that's kind of a key thing and then there's all kinds of methodology around you, valuation. We look like — there's like several dozen things you can evaluate that there's content and ownership and reasons people are selling and the financials and branding, legal aspects–all, all those kinds of things that you want to look at but the core thing is that how do they get their customers and what's the risk profile on this side. Mark: So how do you– how do you, work for– so that's really, really good advice, understanding the customer journey from beginning– from top of funnel, just awareness of the site that you're looking at down to the actual acquisition of the client. Right? How do you handle that insane environment like Amazon or were dealing with all the market places or even with– I guess with E-commerce, you do have a customer journey but have you worked much with Amazon to see how you would evaluate that? Jeff: Well, no, I don't have a lot of very specific experience with Amazon but I can tell you that– Amazon FBA is actually a very sophisticated business because there are so many elements of it and you have to do each of them quite well, actually. That's one of those cases were it's not just a simple three (3) or four (4) silver bullets and you win. It's like the people who do Amazon FBA well, do a lot of things well. They do product selection very well. Niche selection first, product selection well, then they understand the launch process like putting the right brand on their product and giving those initial reviews. And they understand the inventory process. They don't have cash problems with having generating a man and then having nothing to sell to people. Then they have to understand the operational aspects too like how do they wants making sales, how they actually get the product out and in a good way and then servicing the customers later on and answering their questions from there, just get a review and so it's really kind– it's a complex process so the– what I just said earlier about what's the engine behind it, well in that case, the engine is, are there good SOP's, is there a good team, is there like –what's kind of the new ones that has a loud– like some people, super good at branding and they're super good at that product launch process in Amazon and so that's kind of what's giving them the edge over the competition and other people were good with analytics and numbers and ratios and shipping cost, cost of good sold to whatever they're spending on customer service and all that kind of stuff. Which that's all fine but it's kind of that it's up front-end that's probably more important in Amazons like how they're interacting with the customer. Mark: Well this is why it's so important for pre-sellers to document their processes because a lot of this stuff is done almost from a skills like that is developed over years. Having those processes, documented, the stuff that you're doing on day-to-day basis helps buyers like you, Jeff or any of the buyers out there understand what's going on and try to sum it– that is as well. I want to go back about what you said about graphs because that really caught my attention. I–I'm with you on that. I love graphs. I think visualizing data, specifically the financial data is something people don't do enough. And I might geek out a little bit here, and save my finger craft that I used when I'm evaluating business myself, is year over year analysis that I like to look at both the revenue and to those gross profit. Definitely take a look at that if you're able to, if it's done on cruel basis. My discretionary earnings, it was a year-over-year because it soothes out some of the seasonality that you're naturally going to have in pretty much every business (0:31:12.3) has, even a little bit of seasonality. Is there a better–like a favorite approach or favorite sort of graph that you would recommend or any other piece of geo that you would look at to say, “Hey! Here's kind of a peak into the future or maybe what the drafts of help of these businesses” Jeff: First of all, I love year-over-year analysis too when you have a business that has enough historical data out there to be able to do that, and that's really, really helpful. But in terms of adding to that, for me, one of the important things is ratios and if you have a numbers degree, whether it's finance or accounting, whatever they teach you about that. But actually it's simpler than– you don't have to learn what you do in school. What it is, is your looking for things like the percentages of the cost that make up the total cost of the product or the service and a lot of times you can find problems where, for a few months, shipping was a lot of money or cost of product or cost advertising is a lot of money and then there's–and then some of those cost drop-off where the ratio changes, the percentage change radically. And for me, those are kind of– a lot of people are afraid of financial analysis in funnels but actually, we understand that what you're looking for is kind of that stability in the business and then a little– the flags or things that changes in the ratios, changes– the peaks and valleys in the chart. And is there good explanation for those peaks and valleys. Peaks and valleys are just fine. The only concern is what are the reasons behind those peaks and valleys and sometimes, for example, sellers, so they really have– they may not have any idea why they're getting more customers or any idea why they lost customers. And the big problem with that is that when you buy the site and something happens, you're not going to be able to get those customer back if you don't know the reasons for those things. So some of the tools and things that I look at. And also just say, they kind of end in the evaluation stage and stay on in due-diligence stage. One of most important tools for new buyers is to compare different sources of information, just in the content, for example, a lot of times, you'll have analytics reports then you have your ad network reports and sometimes you have bank statements, you have taxes, you have– you actually, a lot of times have a lot of different sources for very similar information and it's important to kind of compare those sources together to see if something's missing, something's kind of wack. And it kind of really helping, so in E-commerce is same thing, where a lot of times you'll have traffic and saying why I'm getting this many sales, repay-dues and then you have shopping cart software on your website, you have merchant processors who have similar data and then whatever is in half-thing in your back account and all of those things that's lying out. So , there's actually some, pretty simple tools, once your kind of aware them to take the mystique off of what're people are a little bit concerned about when they first enter business. Mark: Wow! there's– I kind of always restarted with this, rather than buy a big verse and buy a small sort of conversation that is a lot of details you get in to hear, but we are up against clock a little bit here. I think this idea of understanding the customer journey, understanding how they become customers, and the process they're involved there both can help any buyer understand how healthy a business is and how new was or how specialized they're going to have to be in their–works with that business but also potentially uncover some opportunities if there's leakage, for example in that customer journey wherein you're losing a lot of people at a certain step maybe they are taking advantage of cart abandonment technologies or maybe they don't have a good e-mail automation. Well these are opportunities that might be available for buyers. And then also this idea of looking at ratios; really, really solid advice. Jeff: Yeah, the ratios– what I will do again when I'm evaluating business is I'll look at cost of good sold– gross profits were the first things I will look at. Is that ratio staying healthy because you don't want a business where that's getting squeezed up at time or at least you need to understand that. But also you compare advertising to total revenue are you having to spend more just to keep the same revenue? Or has that owner adjusted another area so maybe they're spending more but cutting back on staff–But to make the bottom line look healthy but ,maybe lying underneath there's a few issues that you have to be aware of. Mark: I would love to sit and talk for a couple of hours because I think we could talk for a couple of hours. So, maybe what we'll do is we'll have you on again in the future and we can continue the conversation. In the meantime where can people learn more about you? Jeff: I've a website called “HeckYeah.org” and then “OwnOptimize.com” is where I'm selling my courses right now. So those are the two places. And yes Mark, I would love to– this is one of my favorite topics really is this idea. First time buyers, second, third time buyers; what are the questions that they have, which they look for and as you said, lots of things we could talk about. We're just barely scratching the surface so I'd love to come back and talk some more about it. Mark: Cool! Hey Jeff, thanks for coming on. Really appreciate you coming on and well, stay in touch. Jeff: Yeah, sounds good, great. Thanks a lot for having me. Links and Resources: Jeff's Website Jeff's Course The Website Investor
Job Insights Extra #2: Advice from Team Sea to See on Transitioning and Rebranding Disability Through Achievement Welcome to Job Insights Extra, part of the Job Insights Podcast with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson, a podcast focused on the world of employment, career pathways and gainful and meaningful employment. The Job Insights Extra podcasts are success stories, interviews and demos that enhance the experience of reaching that career you want. In Job Insights Extra episode #2 we share the insights from Team Sea To See, a team entered in to the Race Across America (RAM). The team of 4 will tandem bike race across America dipping there wheels in the Pacific Ocean and racing non-stop to the Atlantic Ocean. While they were in the Blind Abilities studio promoting the race, they hung out to talk about a topic they feel is very important. We asked them what advice they would give to a student transitioning from high school to college and the workplace? Jack Chen, dan Berlin and Tina Ament each took turns talking about their personal experiences and gave us some very good insights and we are glad to share the conversation with you all on episode #2 of Job Insights Extra. Full Transcript Below You can check out the Race Across America podcast with Team Sea to See on Blind Abilities.plain-sight-meet-team-sea-to-see/ And check out Team Sea to See on their Facebook page. You can learn more about Rebranding Disability Through Achievement on the web at Lime Connect Thank you for listening! Follow Job Insights on Twitter @JobInsightsVIP Do you have any suggestions or feedback? Send the Job Insights Team an email Job Insights is part of the Blind Abilities Network. 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. Transcription: Job Insights Extra #2: Advice from Team Sea to See on Transitioning and Rebranding Disability Through Achievement [Music] Jeff: Welcome to a Job Insights Extra and today I want to share with you some job insights that came from Jack Chen, Dan Berlin, and Tina Ament. They're three quarters of the team of Team Sea to Sea, and they're entering the race across America this summer and some of the feats these three have been in is quite astonishing. From climbing Kilimanjaro, to racing in ultra marathons, world champion Hill climber, Google lawyer, a US attorney, co-founder of a major food company, the list goes on and on. And be sure to check out the podcast with the Sea to Sea race across America. I'll put the link in the show notes and you'll learn so much more about each of these individuals and the feats that they've accomplished. While I had them in the studio I asked them some questions about transition age students and employment and I really appreciated them taking the time to answer these questions and being willing to share their experiences and advice with us, so please welcome Jack Chen, Dan Berlin, and Tina Ament on transitioning students and employment. We hope you enjoy and thanks for listening to this episode of Job Insights Extra. Job Insights is a podcast that is helping you find careers and gainful employment through innovations and opportunities and you can find the job insights podcast on blindabilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities network, and as part of the Job Insights podcast we will be bringing you the Job Insights Extras consisting of interviews, demonstrations, and news surrounding employment, careers, and jobs. With host's Serina Gilbert, and myself, Jeff Thompson. And you can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.com, leave us some feedback, or suggest some topics that we cover, you can also follow us on twitter at Job Insights VIP. So while we're here I want to take this opportunity to ask you a couple questions about transition and employment and some words of advice. Dan there's a topic that you brought up and it's about people not knowing what they can't do, something of that nature, can you explain what you meant when you said that? Dan: Yeah it's so, it's so true in human, you know our existence, and so often I mean, none of us know what we can't do, we all know what we think we can't do, but until you put it out there and actually try it, actually go for it, we really don't know what their limits are. And so often what we're pushing up against as blind individuals just happen to have it highlighted more than others, but this is universal, we're pushing up against our perceived limitations. That's something that all of us can challenge, that's why this message can be universal, you know beyond blindness, beyond disability. We catch a lot of attention because we're a cyclist who was blind, or a runner who is blind has done X Y Z, and I hear the comments all the time from folks that say yeah, I can't believe you run a marathon, I can't believe you did an Ironman, I could never do that, and that label right there, it's like, you know no, you probably could do it, you just, it would need a lot of work and and you know we tend to limit ourselves quite a bit right there. And it's so freeing to have those limitations removed, just that idea that you know we really can do whatever we want to do, it's just where we're going to focus and whatever we're going to put into it, so attitude, effort, and discipline is really what it all comes down to. Jeff: Dan, you mentioned at around age 30 you went through some vision loss and that you said you weren't even much of an athlete, now I don't know what not much of an athlete at the level that you're at right now means, but could you explain that? Dan: Yeah definitely, you know I started losing my sight when I was 7, and it was a slow progression all the way up through my 20's and by 30 I was pretty much legally blind you know early thirties. I was an amateur athlete, I was the type who would run two to three times a week 2 to 3 miles a time, I jogged for 20 minutes on the treadmill, I go to the gym once or twice a week and lift weights up until I was about 39 years old and then I had moved from New York City to Colorado, given up a lot the public transportation, was feeling pretty down, I mean I was, I was really low for a while, my whole family had moved out here with me, for me to start my own company out here. I realized at some point that I needed to take on something to kind of turn my mental state around and that's when I just started, I started running, I started just running around my neighborhood you know three miles at a time. Soon realized I needed to find a goal and so signed up for a half marathon and took it from there, so I've been running now, I did my first half marathon, well it'll be seven years ago, let's see I'll be eight years ago in September, so I've really started what I would consider converting myself into an average middle-aged dad about eight years ago into what I would define myself more as an athlete now, and it was completely done just by saying, I was going to do it. I joke with everybody, I definitely don't have the genetic gifts for running or pretty much any endurance sport, but I have the willpower to do it, and you know will trumps skills almost any day. Jeff: Mm-hmm, now you also climbed Kilimanjaro, I mean is it just because it was there, or did you go down to your local gym and just start wall climbing and want another challenge, how did that come about? Dan: Well you know it's because it's there. [Laughter] Jeff: Well there you go. Dan: Just kidding it's, yeah that's it, no it was just a challenge, you know was something that you know I love mountains I moved to Colorado like I said about ten years ago now and after being out here, I love being in the altitude, I love being in the mountains. You know for me what a lot of this comes down to is this idea of setting a goal and going out there and focusing on it and seeing if we can achieve it. Part of the excitement is you know is one of my good friends has a quote that he often says "if something excites and intimidates you it's worth doing" Jeff: Mm-hmm, that's a good one. Dan: And that's what RAM is to me, that's what I think RAM is to all of us on the team. None of us are sure we can do it, but we're all excited by it. Jack: And I think it's a really important point Jeff to drive home is, a lot of people count themselves out before they even get started right, I mean they ask the question can I, but they don't say I can, and so I think that for all of us, I think I would say, where our blindness started, our lives really began, and what I mean by that is, it's easy for folks and this is not just cyclists of course, but for anybody to have something significant happen to them, and in their lives, or to be treated in a particular way, our fifth grade teacher told me very specifically that, you know you don't have to work so hard, government's gonna take care of you, don't stress out, don't, don't work so hard in school, because that was a kid who I really wanted to do well when I was younger, and I struggled, and so the mentality sometimes sets in that, well I do have certain limitations and I should really count the costs, and, and for me I've come to the point now where I say, well rather than thinking first about whether I can do something I say, how can I do it, you know, so it's not can I, but how can I? And that extra word adds an incredible amount of power and success in one's life, and that's kind of one of the things that we want to communicate. Jeff: Well put, very well put Jack. Tina, being that you lost your eyesight early on, how did you overcome the obstacles that you faced? Tina: Well to some extent, with a lot of help, a lot of support from family. I grew up in the days when my parents fought to get my sister and me into public school and we sort of fought for every you know, between them and, and, and us individually, we fought for every little thing, and on the be careful what you wish for side, you know there were, there was a lot of bullying, you know back then teachers didn't care if kids picked on us, there was no stigma attached to bullying or any of that, so a lot of it was between that and being military kids who had to move all the time, you just had to learn how to jump in and swim, like essentially. I think having sports and activities was a way to belong and I can remember when I was a, in fourth grade and I had a little bit more vision than I do now being forced into gym class, and the day that we were doing soccer drills and I actually saved a goal and the class cheered for me was you know one of the greatest days of my life. I mean who remembers a silly a PE class in fourth grade, but I do because it was sports was a way do you belong with my sighted peers and I think it's so important for anybody with a disability or, to have the chance to fit in because it's, it's such a big part of growing up in the states and you know, sports, music all these kind of activities that kids do, my parents and my sister and I both, we had to push ourselves to get off the sidelines and be able to do something to belong. So I think you know, doing sports through, for me I'm a very competitive person, so like Jack, I always wanted to do well in school and was sort of you know very self motivated to do well, but it was hard and you did have to deal with low expectations, because a lot of teachers and and people didn't expect much of you, and you know you had to find it within yourself to decide, hey I'm gonna go for what I think is important because, you know nobody's going to tell me. Jeff: Tina what advice would you have for someone who is transitioning from high school to college to the workplace, and has their job sights on employment? Tina: Be your own best advocate. I think that the hard thing about leaving high school is, and then about leaving the education environment going into the work environment, is that the older you get the less built-in support systems you're gonna have, so my advice would be to learn early on how to advocate for yourself and how to dispel people's assumptions about you. When I started at my law firm out of law school there had been another blind attorney who worked there before me and he had left to go and teach and I started maybe six months after he did, and I got put in the same office as he had been, and I remember one of the partners coming in and saying, don't let this firm decide that you are Max, you're not Max, you're you, and not that Max wasn't a great guy and had a lot of you know great talents, and, and nothing against him, but you have to overcome people's assumptions that either, they know what's best for you, or whatever some other blind person did is what you do. So I would say learn how to self-advocate and learn how to recognize people's assumptions for what they are because sometimes you won't necessarily see them unless you're on the lookout for it. Jeff: That's a great point, how about you Jack? Jack: One of the things that's absolutely key is to find people who have done this thing, whatever it is that you're doing before you, if that's possible. And one of the great things that I've also been involved with is creating a network of people who have incredible talents who have disabilities. It's called Lime Connect and its motto is to "rebrand disability through achievement" and one of the the great things about this organization is there are ten thousand, ten thousand plus other people out there who have disabilities who are doing what you're doing, and who can act as a resource, and you know when you go to your first job interview and they ask you a question that you don't know how to answer, like for example they come to you and say, hey, well how are you going to draw this drawing? Well you go back to your network and you say, hey guys, anyone else face this issue, how did you deal with it? And just being empowered by having this as a resource is incredible, incredibly valuable I think. I know I didn't have that when I was growing up but, sounds like Tina didn't have that when she was growing up, but now there are resources available just, you know, quote unquote click of a mouse. You can find people who are similarly situated with you or people who've gone before you so, finding those individuals who know what you're going through and can help give you some advice and some support along the way, that our resources are out there, so go find it. Jeff: Dan, I know these are two tough people to follow, but you want to give it a shot? Dan: Tell me about it. [Laughter] Yeah sure I mean, I have a little bit different perspective too because I lost my vision a little later in life so I was into my career and working hard at it. I hid it for years you know kind of that fake it to you make it mentality, and then I had an epiphany at one point, I had this whole change in attitude that was so great for me, and the advice I would give to someone is to be yourself you know just be comfortable in your own skin, you know at the end of the day, you are who you are and nobody can change that. The second thing is, with that in mind, don't be afraid to ask for help. You know if you need some help, if you need to tap into your resources, if you need to ask somebody, hey can you tell me where this is, don't be afraid to ask. The third thing is, use the limitation as your advantage, you know, one of the things that whether we like it or not, and it's just what Tina was alluding to here is, the standards are set lower for people with disabilities. So not that, we have we do not have to live up to these standards, but that's our benchmark now. So it gives us the opportunity to achieve above and beyond these standards, so look at this as an opportunity. Opportunity that the shackles are off, my expectations are low on what I'm going to do, so I'm just going to blow it out of the water. Because my my downsides of being wrong is quite minimal, so take advantage of that, you know just go for it! Tina: I would sort of add to that I, I think the one thing that sometimes you know I let for me or discourage me as, you know as I said before people are always making assumptions about you and the first thing they're going to make an assumption based on, is that you're blind or differently-abled, and so much of the time I mean, you don't know how many times I get on to public transit and somebody says, do you know what stop you're going to? As though I would get my fare card, dress up and work clothes, and get on the train having no idea what stop I wanted to go to, [Laughter] So it's it's sort of like half the world assumes that you're feeble-minded, and then a quarter of the world assumes that you're some sort of superhuman like you must have Steve Austin bionic man hearing and of you know computer chip implant for a memory because you actually get up and function in the world, so a lot of the time I just have to remind myself not to let either of those assumptions you know, or people say like, oh well you're just so much more doggin and determined because you do your sports, it's like well no, I'm not a Superman, I'm not a bionic woman, I don't have a Harry Potter time turner so I can do twice as much training as anybody, I'm just a person who doesn't see, and so when you strip away a lot of the assumptions, you have to remind yourself, like I'm not as great as some of them think and I am not as feeble-minded as some of them think I am. But you have to I think really look to your own self to try to decide where your self-worth comes from because assumptions that a lot of people make about you are so bogus and so out of hand that if you listen to them you'll drive yourself crazy. Dan: To put that into you know perspective too, in our modern capitalistic business world here too, I would love nothing better than all my competition to underestimate what we as a company are capable of doing, and then you get out there and you just outperform it. It's one of the classic mistakes that people make you know in life and in business, and it's one of those things where we again can turn the disability, we could turn the perceptions others have of us into a positive. Jeff: That's great, turn it into a positive! [Music] Such a great opportunity to talk to Jack, Dan, and Tina, team Sea to Sea in the Race Across America this summer. That's Ram, Race Across America, we'll be covering it, stay tuned, and such a great thing that they shared such great advice, such transferable advice, it's not just for school, not for employment, but life itself that they shared with us today. Thanks for listening to this episode of Job Insights Extra and be sure to check Job Insights on the Blind Abilities Network. We hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye bye. [Music] [Multiple voices] When we share what we see through each other's eyes, we can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations and the realities of blind abilities. Jeff: For more podcasts with the blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at Blind Abilities, download our app from the app store, Blind Abilities, that is two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening!
Job Insights Extra Meet Ivan Delgado: Being Your Own Boss Is Hard Work and Worth It All (Transcript Provided) Welcome to Job Insights Extra, part of the Job Insights Podcast with Serina Gilbert and Jeff Thompson, a podcast focused on the world of employment, career pathways and gainful and meaningful employment. The Job Insights Extra podcasts are success stories, interviews and demos that enhance the experience of reaching that career you want. On this Job Insights Extra we talk to Ivan Delgado, a Business Enterprise Program Operator from Las Vegas. How he got his start into the BEP and what being a business owner has done for him. We hope you enjoy and if you have any questions for Ivan, you can send him an email. If you are interested in becoming your own boss and want to run your own business, contact your state services, your Devision of Vocational Rehabilitation and see what opportunities they have for you. Full Transcript Below Thank you for listening. 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. Transcript [Music] Jeff: Welcome to a job insights extra where we will be talking to business enterprise program operator Ivan Delgado. [Music] He's from Las Vegas and that's where the Blind Abilities team went to get this interview at the Randolph Sheppard Vendors of America Sagebrush convention. What is the business enterprise program? It is a operation part of the Randolph Sheppard act that allows you to own an operate your own business. Check out your State Services, your DVR, and find out more about the business enterprise program. [Music] Job Insights is a podcast that is helping you find careers and gainful employment through innovations and opportunities and you can find the Job Insights podcast on Blindabilities.com, part of the Blind Abilities network, and as part of the Job Insights podcast, we will be bringing you the job insights extra, consisting of interviews, demonstrations, and news surrounding employment, careers, and jobs, with hosts, Serina Gilbert, and myself Jeff Thompson, and you can contact us by email at jobinsights@blindabilities.com. Leave us some feedback, or suggest some topics that we cover. You can also follow us on Twitter at JobInsightsVIP. Right now, please welcome Ivan Delgado. Welcome to Blind Abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson, and I am at the Sagebrush convention in Las Vegas and I ran into a fairly new vendor here amongst the senior vendors. I'm talking to Ivan Delgado. How are you dong? Ivan: Alright man, how about yourself? Jeff: Good, good, just enjoying the convention and all of the busy lights and stuff, and noises I should say out there. Ivan: Nice city huh? Jeff: Yeah, and you're from Vegas? Ivan: Yeah man, welcome to Las Vegas, if anybody is listening, come and enjoy Vegas, we love your guy's money. [laughter] Jeff: I noticed that! [laughter] So what got you interested the business enterprise program? Ivan: So about 3 or 4 years ago man, finishing up, not finishing, taking a break from college for certain reasons, whether it was lack of assistive technology or books not being ready for me, I decided to take a break and my lady actually told me about this program. She had a few friends that have done it in California and other states, and she told me, you like to boss me around so you might as well boss people around and try to make money. Yep, a couple years later man, I have been fortunate enough to finally get my own site and I started, originally I started the program. I got my BEP license about 2 years ago. My first site opened February 1st of last year, we just had our one year anniversary, before that we had vending machines at the location I am in. We just, it took a while for the location, the actual location to open up. Jeff: Is there training involved when you first join? Ivan: Yeah, when I first joined, now it's a lot different man, but when I first joined it was pretty intense, what I think is intense man. It was, I want to say 9 months man, and don't quote me on that. Classes started in March and the first three months were strictly just books and learning bi-laws, and how to do PNL's, and marketing, it was pretty awesome man, for someone like me that, you know never had a business, don't have an idea, i was just used to working 9 to 5s. It was very helpful. We did a couple of course through Hadley, Hadley School for the Blind online. We did that and then we did a couple of ServSafe tests here, customer service exams that we had to get. I am fortunate and I could brag about it man, because again, I am blessed man, and I think I am one of the only vendors here in Nevada that does his own profit and loss statement. You have vendors that are paying 200 to 300 dollars to, for people to input simple numbers and again, thanks to those classes, thanks to those three months of actually putting in work man, and understanding PNL's, and little Bi-laws, and stuff like that is definitely helpful man. Jeff: You are your own accountant. Ivan: Yes sir, thank God man! Jeff: You gotta keep the profits up right? Ivan: Right right, that is one way of doing it man, saving money man, all you gotta know is how to work. We know how to work man, it doesn't matter if you are disabled or not man, it's ambition, as humans we hunger for that ambition man. We have it, it is just a matter of if we want it or not man, and a lot of the times we don't want it man, and that sucks, but we are our own worst enemies and our own best friends man, and only we can get what we want man. Jeff: So what suggestions would you have for someone who is interested in getting into the business enterprise program? Ivan: A lot of patience. A lot of patience, hard work. Here in Nevada the process is a little longer due to the lack of operators we have, you know we kind of have to prove ourselves and that is fair I think. But a lot of patience and , just because you're disabled doesn't mean that stuff is going to be handed to us, especially here in the business world man, we have just as much of a responsibility as anybody else. Just keep your head up and be strong. That's it, just stay positive and stuff could be worse and if we are here and you are listening to this podcast, obviously we have gotten this far and the sky is the limit after here. Jeff: So what does Sagebrush bring to you? Ivan: A lot of a lot of information. A lot of people like Mr. Jeff, sorry if, I am bad at names, I think that's your name [laughter] Jeff, but yeah, this man, that working, as a blind community we have to become close man and I'm, the best example man, I don't go out a lot and I don't network but it hasn't changed man, I don't believe in NFB's, and NCB's, and ACB's, I wish there was only one. I don't see for this separation between organizations when really we're all just one, and that's blind. We're all blind so I would love for us to stick together and become one. I think if we become one a lot of people would be aware of both our disabilities, of our business and the Randolph Sheppard Act, again if we advocate be strong, stay positive and network, go out to these kinds of meetings, kind of conferences, I think this could very well be accomplished. There is a lot of older gentleman and ladies that are in the program and it's time for younger generations to step up and I think this is the time. Jeff: There is a lot of wealth of information, they have been in it, they have seen it change, and that is the bigger thing that things have changed and now here you are paving your way, you know, you're two years in, pretty soon you'll probably be leading the show here. Ivan: Absolutely, and those are the plans man, and absolutely, we always have to be grateful to the people that have, that started this man you know, and we've gotten a long ways man, I mean from selling newspapers at Post Offices to you know, having places at Hoover Dam's or at airports, you know that's a huge accomplishment, and that couldn't have been done without the people that you know, are moving on or retiring now. And that is a huge gratitude to you guys, we thank you. Jeff: Well, Ivan Delgado thank you very much for taking your time away from the karaoke. You gonna sing out there? Ivan: No we already did man, I need two more shots, I think these last two shots were on you. [laughter] Jeff: Do you have an email? Ivan: Yeah man, that's ivan.delvilla@gmail.com. Jeff: Alright, well thank you very much for taking the time and just speaking on Blind Abilities. Ivan: Yes sir, have a good day! [Music] Jeff: So if you are interested in the business enterprise program, becoming your own business owner, entrepreneur, check it out with your division of vocational rehab, your State Services for the Blind and see what they can do for you. If you want to find out first hand from Ivan what it is like to be 2 years in, in the business enterprise program, shoot him an email, check it out. Links are in the show notes. So we hope you enjoyed this Job Insights extra, thanks for listening, and until next time, bye bye. [Music] [Multiple voices] When we share what we see through each other's eyes, we can then begin to bridge the Gap between the limited expectations and the realities of Blind Abilities. For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at 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.
Take Full Advantage of Transition Services: Enhancing Opportunities for Success - Meet Kylee Jungbauer (Transcript Provided) Kylee Jungbauer is a rehabilitation counselor at state services for the blind. Her concentration is transition age students. We talked to Kylie about what services they provide for students. Transitioning from high school to college and to the workplace. State services for the blind has a Transition Unit that facilitates a path for students, providing guidance and opportunities for success. From assessments to training, the transition Team offers as much or as little help as needed while promoting self advocacy and independence along the way. Kylee talks about the importance of Summer Programs and how the Transition Team provides opportunities with employment, career exploration and access to training on the tools that will help bring about a successful transition. Full Transcript Below Check out below for a list of Summer opportunities and programs. Check out your State Services by searching the Services Directory on the AFB.org web site. State Services for the Blind of Minnesota We offer tools and training for employment and for helping seniors remain independent and active. As Minnesota’s accessible reading source we also transcribe books and other materials into alternative formats, including audio and braille. We assist Minnesotans who are blind, DeafBlind, losing vision, or who have another disability that makes it difficult to read print. I hope you find what you need here. We've also created a Tips for Using Our New Website page. If you’d like to apply for services, learn more, or have more questions, just give us a call. You’ll find contact information for all of our offices on our contact page, or you can call our main office at 651-539-2300. 2018 Summer Opportunities for Teens Learning skills related to blindness, low vision, and DeafBlindness The programs listed below are of varying lengths during the summer. They offer training in independent living and job readiness skills. The program descriptions that follow are taken from each organization’s website. If you’d like to pursue any of these opportunities, please speak with your SSB counselor: BLIND Incorporated (Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions) offers an 8-week Post-secondary, Readiness, Empowerment Program (PREP) designed to prepare students for academic, employment, and social success. The PREP curriculum is designed to empower blind youth with the alternative techniques of blindness they will need to be successful in the college and the career fields they choose, and to give them the confidence and belief in themselves they need to find and keep a job. Additionally there are three one-week summer programs focusing on independent living, post-secondary success, and navigating the world of work. Career Ventures, Inc . offers resources in: Job Seeking Skills training, Volunteer opportunities, Paid-work experiences, Job Shadows, Internships (on a case by case basis), Job Placement, and Job Coaching. Contact Wendy DeVore at wdevore@careerventuresinc.com for more information. Courage Kenny SHARE Program is a resource that provides people of all ages and abilities the opportunity to achieve physical and emotional fitness - and just have some fun. SHARE is a service of Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute, part of Allina Health, but our list of services includes those offered by other organizations. It's a one-stop shop for activity listings and registration details in Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Duluth Center for Vision Loss offers summer camps designed to sharpen skills needed for success, including Workforce Readiness, College Readiness, Self-advocacy, Mobility, Technology, Independent living, and much more. Students will learn core workforce readiness and adjustment to blindness skills. They will also be given the opportunity to socialize with peers from across the state and to participate in a wide array of recreational activities. The Lighthouse Transition Program is built on the understanding that “now is the time” that youth need to be developing certain core skills that are essential for their future Helen Keller National Center offers programs to students who are DeafBlind which enable each person who is deaf-blind to live and work in his or her community of choice. HKNC offers individualized evaluation and training which will assist students in achieving their own definition of success. The emphasis for the student in the program is to participate in learning opportunities which will lead to successful employment and a full, enriched and independent life in the community. The philosophy of the Center is one of self-determination for all. Minnesota State Academy for the Blind (MSAB) offers Summer School programming for elementary, Middle school and high school age students. Elementary School programs focus on elementary level academics as well as individual goals identified in student IEP’s. Middle and High school students will participate in activities encompassing the three areas of transition (postsecondary, employment, and independent living). National Federation of the Blind offers of variety of local and national opportunities. The NFB BELL Academy is designed to provide intensive Braille instruction to blind and low-vision children during the summer months. EQ is a week-long learning opportunity that gets blind students excited about STEM by offering hands-on learning experiences. Visit www.nfb.org and www.nfbmn.org for more information. Stone Arch Employment Solutions, Inc. Email Cori Giles at cori.giles@comcast.net for information. Summer Transition Program (STP) provides experiences to address the specific transition needs of students who are Blind, Visually impaired or DeafBlind. STP complements each student’s core curriculum at their local school by providing individualized opportunities in the three transition areas identified in their Individualized Education Program (IEP). These unique transition activities, as part of the Expanded Core Curriculum, give each student the opportunity to increase independence in their school, home, community and work environments. Dates for 2018 are June 13-25. Email Julie Kochevar at julie.kochevar@ahschools.us for information. Thank you for listening. 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. Transcript Take Full Advantage of Transition Services: Enhancing Opportunities for Success - Meet Kylee Jungbauer (Transcript Provided) Kylee: State Services for the Blind can be included in on that plan but then we will also have an employment plan for the students as well. Jeff: Kylee Jungbauer, Rehabilitation Counselor for Transition Age Students. Kylee: We like to keep our students busy during the summer, that's what I tell all of my students so yep, if you're working with us we expect that you're working your plan and obtain that job goal. Jeff: Voices from the success stories of transition age students. Student 1: State Services for the Blind played a role in helping me figure out, for one thing what I wanted to do after high school, and then where I wanted to go to college, and then also they assisted me with helping me find a job. Student 2: Training in stuff relating to technology and all your use of computers and phones, what's the best way that works for you. Student 3: So I was very lucky to have an IEP team that was familiar with working with a blind student. Jeff: Learn about the transition unit at State Services for the Blind. Kylee: I think another way a parent can be involved is just to have that expectation of their student that they will work, and have that expectation that okay yes, they need to learn how to cook, how to do their own laundry, how to clean because the parents aren't gonna be around forever right. Jeff: Kylee is part of a team at State Services for the Blind in their transition unit. Be sure to contact your State Services and find out what their transition team can do for you, and for more podcasts with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter at Blind Abilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the app store, that's two words, Blind Abilities. Kylee: But I think more importantly, is taking a step back and saying, okay, do you have the skills to actually go to college, do you have you know, the advocacy skills, do you have the technology skills, do you have the technology that you actually need? Jeff: Kylee Jungbauer. Kylee: Yep. Jeff: Is that right? Kylee: Yep, yep. Jeff: Welcome to Blind Abilities, I'm Jeff Thompson. Transitioning from high school to college to the workplace, it's a journey that most of us have taken, or some of us are looking forward to, and we'll be talking to Kylee Jungbauer. She's a transition counselor at State Services for the Blind. Kylee is going to talk about the services that you can receive to enhance your opportunities whether in college or gaining employment in the workplace. She's going to talk about the transition unit at State Services which will help you navigate your transition journey and make available all the resources, training, and skills, and confidence that you'll need for the journey. Kylee welcome to Blind Abilities how are you doing? Kylee: I'm great, how are you? Jeff: I'm doing good thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to come down to the studios to share with us what you do for clients of State Services for the Blind. Kylee: Yes of course. Jeff: So Kylee, what is the transition unit at State Services for the Blind? Kylee: We work with youth about 14 to all the way up to 24, so college students as well, and we help them move through their transition from high school to either college or high school to just starting off with their first couple of jobs, we look at what their job goal is, or if they don't have a job goal, bringing them to that, with looking at different interest, inventories, or getting different work experiences so they can try different jobs and see what they really like. Jeff: When you say 14 to 24, so 14 you're talking about students who are in high school? Kylee: Correct yep, so when they're in high school we work with in conjunction with their schools and their TBVI's to supplement what they're already getting or maybe give suggestions, expose them to some different technology, and things that maybe they aren't getting in their school. Some schools provide a lot of adjustment to blindness training, and some schools do little, so we like to supplement especially during the summer when they're out of school. Jeff: And why is that? Kylee: Just to get them prepared for life, like I said transitioning out of education, you know high school, a lot of the services are provided for them, they aren't really having to advocate hopefully too hard for those services versus when they're an adult, they're kind of on their own and they have to learn how to do those things and advocate either in college or in their first jobs. Jeff: And what kind of options are there for the summer? Kylee: We have a lot of summer programming that some of it we provide, a lot of it the various vendors provides anywhere from more social to adjustment to blindness training, where, you know learning Braille, learning orientation mobility skills, a lot of Technology in Duluth, since it's so far away they have some online courses where you can work with them remotely I guess from anywhere in within Minnesota, so there's a lot of different options. Jeff: When you were talking about the TVI's teachers for the visually impaired, you're talking about the district teachers? Kylee: I don't know if they're considered district teachers or not but the district's hire them, yeah the schools provide that service. Jeff: And that's where they start their individual educational plan. Kylee: Yep yep, the TBVI's, they're included in it, the students will also have a case manager that kind of runs the whole thing and makes sure that the goals that are written on the education plan are being obtained or maintained or changed as needed, and State Services for the Blind can be included in on that plan but then we will also have an employment plan for the students as well with their job goal, or if there isn't a job goal then we, we just put something generic while we're exploring different careers. Jeff: So they actually have a simultaneous education plan segueing into a employment plan? Kylee: Correct yep, they'll have an education plan and an employment plan at the same time up until graduation of course, and then it will just be an employment plan with State Services for the Blind, and that will bring them through either their first job or college. Jeff: Well that's a good segue. Kylee: Yeah. Jeff: How does State Services or the transition work with the districts or the Department of Education in Minnesota? Kylee: We like to be invited to all of the IEP meetings so please invite us, that doesn't always happen, just because sometimes they get thrown together really last minute and as long as the parent and the student can make it they kind of just go on with it but, it's good for us to be there so we can see what the school is providing and maybe advocate for more, maybe make suggestions, or see where we can supplement in during this school year, you know sometimes students have time on weekends or after school, or especially during the summer time when they're on break. We like to keep our students busy during the summer that's what I tell all of my students, so yep if you're working with us we expect that you're working your plan and obtain that job goal throughout the school year and then especially during the summer when you're on break and you have that extra time, Jeff: Are there internship programs available to transition-age students in the summer? Kylee: Yes definitely we can work with a vendor but we also have our work opportunity navigator, Tou Yang, and he works with a lot of the students that I'm working with to get them internships, paid summer jobs, if they're interested in working during the school year that's great too, or doing Job Shadows so they can check out different jobs. Some students have this career goal, they know they want to do it but they haven't really talked to somebody who's in the work field actually doing that job, and they may find that oh it looks like it's a lot more data entry and paperwork versus client contact and so maybe they don't want to do that, or maybe they want to be a photographer but they don't want to have to figure out their own taxes or anything like that, so they'll look into working for a company versus going out on their own. So different things that they just don't know because they haven't had that experience. Jeff: Experience that will help them formulate their career goals. Kylee: Right exactly, yep so each career goal on our end has to be looked at, explored, and we have to determine if it's feasible, so if we have a student who wants to be a dolphin trainer for instance but doesn't want to leave Minnesota, that's probably not going to be something that SSB will support just because once they graduate you know, they won't be able to find a job here in Minnesota, so yep. Jeff: Maybe moose training or something but not dolphin training. Kylee: Yes. [Whoosh Sound Effect] Jeff: So if someone wants to explore a career, is there a resource here to help them do that? Kylee: Yep work with Tou, and also we've got a couple different websites that we can either send to our students or sit with them and work one-on-one with them to do some exploration that way, and hopefully the student are getting that in their school as well, hopefully. Jeff: So Tou, you say he's the employment navigator, he actually contacts companies, works with companies to know what they want and educate them on what to expect probably, and then brings people in for opportunities? Kylee: Yep, yep he has a background in working and doing job placement for other companies in the past so he has those employer connections which is great as well, but yep he brings students out to look at people out doing the actual job that they may be interested in so they can see the intricacies of it and still interested in that after learning the ins and outs or if maybe it's not for them and they want to explore other options. Jeff: So Kylee, how do parents get involved, do you have contact with parents of transition students? Kylee: Definitely, parents can be as involved as they want to be of course if their student is a minor, they have to be there for any signing of documentation, but after that they can be as involved as they want to be, kind of feel that out with both the student and the parents. Sometimes I just meet with my students one-on-one during the school day or whatever is convenient for them, but sometimes the parents want to be there, sometimes I can send an email to the parents after a meeting just giving them a recap. If I'm sending internship opportunities or things that need to be filled out with the student and maybe the student isn't the most responsive, I'll just CC the parents on the email just to make sure that everybody saw that it needs to be sent back. But I think another way that parents can be involved is just to have that expectation of their student that they will work, and have that expectation that, okay yes they need to learn how to cook, how to do their own laundry, how to clean, because the parents aren't gonna be around forever right, and they also hopefully won't be following their student to college, so if they need those skills just like any other person. But on the flip side of that, we understand that for a college student, or college bound student it is normal for them not to have those skills. I think college bound students kind of figure out how to do their own laundry once they show up and they dye a white shirt red for the first time and then they're like, okay maybe I need to figure this out, so that's totally normal but I think yeah, for parents to have that expectation that their students work and most people I know had to have a summer job so they could pay for their gas, pay for their the clothes that they want, or the new phone, or you know what have you, so yeah just having that expectation that their student will go on in transition just like any other visual person, so yeah. Jeff: You brought up a good point about you know, the parents are probably their first advocate that they have coming along in life, and there's comes a point in that transition process where a student has to start considering taking over that advocacy, advocating for themselves, like when they don't get a book on time that they can't always depend on their TBI or disability services, they get to a point where they start to have take responsibility for laundry like you said, all that stuff. Kylee: Yep yep, we have a whole Student Handbook that we go through and it has expectations of you know all the documentation that we need before semester starts, but I think more importantly is taking a step back and saying, okay do you have the skills to actually go to college, do you have you know the advocacy skills, do you have the technology skills, do you have the technology that you actually need, the knowledge of the different apps, you know to get your books online, right now it's Jesse that's working with all of our students, but getting our transition tech involved and they come in for a tech assessment to see what they have right now and what they'll need with both technology and technology training. So I have a student right now we're getting her tech package in but also we're planning for the training that she'll need in preparation for going off to college because surprisingly, her typing skills aren't that great, so that's something she knows she really needs to work on because all of those papers that she's gonna be writing, she's gonna need those skills, yeah super exciting, skills that you'll need right. [Whoosh Sound Effect] Jeff: I've seen reports where like colleges said that people are coming in and they're not prepared, and I've also seen where people come in but they end up being like a week or two behind because they're just trying to use this new technology that they don't understand yet and you have to be able to hit the ground running when you enter college. Kylee: Right yes, I talk a lot about that you know, college is high school times ten, you know you don't have a whole week to learn about one chapter in a book, and then have a test on it maybe a week later, it's like five chapters in one week, so you have, yeah right exactly, you have to be able to hit the ground running. So making sure that they're connected with the disability services at their college and they know the ins and outs of how they ask for accommodations, if they need extra time with test taking, anything like that, knowing how to get all that stuff before they go into college. I talked to my students about how some teachers are fabulous with accommodations and some just don't want to deal with it, or they haven't really had to deal with it in the past, so having those advocacy skills are huge. Jeff: Yeah I always suggested when I went in, I learned right away that, send in an email to each teacher, each professor, six weeks in advance if you get that opportunity, to start setting up that communications, and get that underway, rather than trying to set something, because everyone's busy that first week. Kylee: Definitely yeah. I know when I went off to college for the first time, I was terrified to talk to any of my professors, but you don't have that you know option when you need accommodations, you just have to go for it, and feel you know, be comfortable, or maybe you don't have to be comfortable with it, but you have to be able to at least do it, so yeah having those skills is huge. Jeff: Yeah and it does get more comfortable, and as long as you do get comfortable with it, it just puts it back, you just move forward from there. Kylee: Right exactly. Jeff: What words of advice for someone who is transitioning from high school to college to the workplace? Kylee: I would say make sure that you have all of your technology training down, your orientation and mobility, make sure that you're comfortable with that. I think a lot of students are comfortable in their school settings, so some that have some vision may not even use their cane, but I think it's important when you're out in public especially when you're learning new locations to have those orientation mobility skills down, because yeah you will need them. Advocacy skills as well because you need to be able to talk to your employer and let them know what you need and feel comfortable with that, yeah it's very important. Jeff: Yeah because most colleges aren't that one building school. Kylee: Exactly yep, and a lot of the students that I work with we offer orientation mobility skills, multiple semesters so they can learn their new path, you know each time. After a student's been on campus for a couple of years they pretty much know the layout but, I have no problem each semester bringing in orientation mobility, you, just right away so they feel comfortable with where they're going. Jeff: Well that's great, Kylee how does someone get in contact with State Services for the Blind for the first time? Kylee: The best way to do it is to contact, if you're in the metro to contact our St. Paul office, and they will get you connected with Meredith Larsen, and Meredith does all of our orientation and intakes, and orientation is provided twice a month at different times, so you can come in, learn about all of our services and decide if this is the right program for you. If so then she'll meet with you one-on-one and do an intake and have you sign an application at that point and that kind of, your signing saying yes I'm dedicated to this program, and then from there you'll start working with a counselor. If your you're in the metro it'll be either me or Ashlyn, and if you're in Greater Minnesota there's different counselors out in those areas that also work with our transition youth. Jeff: That's perfect, well Kylee, once again thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come down to the studios here and sharing with us, believe me it's been a wealth of information, so thank you very much. Kylee: Yep, thank you. Jeff: It was a real pleasure talking to Kylee and be sure to check out the show notes where you can find out how to contact State Services for the Blind, and you can find the summer programs that are listed, and some job opportunities you could have for helping out at the summer programs, and to contact State Services in your state be sure to check out AFB.org where they have resources where you can find the services offered in your state. This podcast is produced in part by State Services for the Blind, live, learn, work, and play. [Music] And a big thanks goes out to Chi Chow for his beautiful music, and that's LChiChow on Twitter. Thank You Chi Chow. Once again, thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye-bye. [Music] [Multiple voices] When we share what we see through each other's eyes, we can then begin to bridge the Gap between the limited expectations and the realities of Blind Abilities. For more podcast with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on twitter at 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.
MediaVillage's Insider InSites podcast on Media, Marketing and Advertising
E. B. Moss: Hey, it's E.B. Moss from MediaVillage and this is Episode 12, basically live from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I’m with MediaVillage Journalist David Polinchock who’s an expert at CES. So... We're mic’d up together and we're going to walk around, enjoy the ambient sounds of CES 2018, and I'm going to tap your brain... a Vulcan mind meld!, appropriately for CES. We're going to ask you to give us some insights. INTRO: Ready for some insights from those inside the media, marketing and advertising industry? Welcome to Insider Insight from MediaVillage. MediaVillage.com is the home for exclusive thought leadership with content by, for and about agencies and networks. From digital experts and add tech providers to CMO's and CRO's. With villages of content focused on everything from Wall Street reports to women in media. Now let's get some insights. David: First stop? We're here at the Google Home gallery. They've put together a kind of cool exhibit of what you can do with Google Home and how it's changing how we all live. E. B. Moss: Wow, great. Google has been sponsoring everything including the city monorail where they even piped in some pretty compelling audio. So when you're a captive audience on the monorail it's instructing you to learn how to utilize Google Home like saying, "Hey Google play me some soothing music" - which is good for when you're trapped on the monorail to hear little bubbling brook sounds. They really have done a good job in their convention sponsorship presence. David: This kind of new audio assistant is what we're getting in homes and in the rest of our lives. One of the AR head manufacturers announced a partnership with Alexa so you get voice control in your heads-up display now so you can see how this is changing how people are really doing things at home. One person on my last tour had one of the voice connection systems all throughout their house and realized they had to take it out of the kids room because the kids were doing their homework by asking it all the questions and just getting all the answers. You know, there's good and bad with everything. But this ability to ask a simple question, or check my schedule works because if I already have "Hey Google" phone I can use it and I get information there but now I can move it around from thing to thing. I think what people are looking for at large is a connection of all their things so it's not "I have this list over here and this list over here". So the fact that I can ask Hey Google on my phone but when I get home at night I can follow up the conversation with my Google Home Assistant because it's all connected. E. B. Moss: Oh, so the connectivity. Got it. David: The other thing they've been working on are ear buds that translate something like 70 languages. It literally is the communicator that we saw for 20 years on Star Trek. E. B. Moss: So, I can date a person who doesn't speak English! David: That's correct. And, if you look over here we also have it in air conditioners and washing machines and a variety of things now. So that's what, to me, becomes really exciting about this: you're seeing Hey Google as you're seeing Alexa and other products leave the single device and being incorporated into all of our lives. E. B. Moss: Google Home really was everywhere at CES; trying to connect the dots with audio and smart speakers and voice assistants. The other thing that was everywhere was Audio. I spoke to Tom Webster of Edison Research, as well as the head of marketing for Audio-Technica who had some unique ways to use headphones. E. B. Moss: Tom Webster was on the panel on the smart speaker research that just came out from Edison Research in conjunction with NPR. So I grabbed him afterwards. ...Hey Tom... That was fascinating. I know that you're going to be sharing some more of this information though MediaVillage in general, but specifically, a couple of things jumped out at me today were the fact that gifting over the 2017 holiday season really should've exponentially upped ownership of smart speakers. So that was good? Tom: Yeah, we've seen the initial adoption of smart speakers grow at a clip more than we saw smart phone adoption grow when we first started tracking. It's certainly both Amazon and Google coming out with $29 units had a lot to do with that but I think eventually we're going to stop caring about the devices themselves because that technology is going to just be baked into everything. E. B. Moss: So, that's an interesting point because Google is all over the show and promoting their digital assistant, Hey Google, but it's still only about 70% in devices own versus Alexa. What do you think it needs to do to compete more? By the way I think you said we're at about 16% ownership in America right now, so there's still plenty of growth opportunity there. What do you see the differences being and how do you see it competing more? Tom: I think, first of all I have no doubt that they're both going to be very competitive devices for a long time to come and for a lot of people it's just learning the use cases. We do know from the previous iterations of Smart Audio Report that we found with NPR 88% of the people who have an Alexa are Amazon Prime members. So there is a natural connection there. They're already being marketed to, in a way that is contextual for them. I think the more that Google educates listeners about what these devices can do and just more devices. Again the technology is just going to start being baked into everything and by the way it's already on your phone. One of the interesting things we found in our research is that 44% of smart speaker users tell us they're using the audio assistants on their phone more as a result of using the smart speaker. So it's just learning education and getting people context. E. B. Moss: And a brand that has good social media followers will do a service to those followers and enhances its own position by teaching them how to use smart speaker skills that they've created, right? Tom: Absolutely. I think we used to ask ten years ago "What's your mobile strategy?" Now I think it's a valid question to ask what your audio strategy is because people want to communicate with brands. They want to communicate with brands that they care about and they want to have those kinds of relationships and those kinds of experiences. E. B. Moss: So last question.... You mentioned a couple of the obstacles that we still have to continue to overcome: the perception of trust and the perception of security. What do you see happening? Tom: Well, those are valid concerns. First of all far be it from me to poo poo them because they are in fact valid concerns and when we interviewed people who don't own a smart speaker but who are interested in the category; three of their top concerns were all related to security, privacy, insuring their data, having the government listen in on their data. These are all valid concerns and all of the makers of this technology are going to have to find ways to address them because it's one thing to say "O.K. Google or Alexa play some Fleetwood Mac" it's another to start reciting your credit card number into it or something and those concerns are going to have to be addressed. E. B. Moss: ...So now I'm heading to Audio-Technica. You might know them for their turntables and headphones. They are giving me a welcome treat of a chair massage...I'm going to put my noise-canceling headphones on right now.... Speaker 5: "Let's begin by centering on the breath. ... slowly exhale and imagine your breath moving out through your ears as well. Cleansing them, forcing out all the toxic noise you've observed from the show floor and setting it a flame to burn off like so much painful gas..." E. B. Moss: That was one of the funnest ideas on the show floor. It was practical and sort of like a forced pre-roll listen in a good way. So I'm speaking to Director of Marketing Communications for Audio-Technica, Jeff Simcox. Jeff: Hi. How are you doing? Are you relaxed? E. B. Moss: I'm so much more relaxed. How did you come up with the idea? Jeff: Well, what's one of the reasons for wearing noise-canceling headphones? You want to relax, knock out all the annoying sounds and get into yourself, into the music. We just thought on the CES show floor we'd add that little extra thing to help you relax and lose yourself and have a massage while you're enjoying the headphones. My boss is like "You've got them in the chair so give them a sales pitch." And I'm like "who wants to lay there and just hear a dry sales pitch"? So it was our way of saying "Okay, you know, [inaudible 00:11:30] in that we can give you a little bit of entertainment, give you a little bit of a laugh. Now feel the tension escape from your ears like so much painful gas." It was one of my favorite lines. E. B. Moss: As we made our way though CES you couldn't help notice autonomy everywhere. From autonomous cars to the super sonic Hyperloop; also autonomous public transportation helping the lesser abled. E. B. Moss: Initiating autonomous drive. I'm about to experience it, in 90 seconds. What it's like to be on the road and not in control. I'm at the Intel booth right now. Very cool. But I think it might drive me a little bit nuts if I had to hear all of the play by play of the autonomous driver. Pedestrian detected, anomaly detected, slow down. E. B. Moss: Now we're at Hyperloop and I'm talking to the Director of Marketing Ryan Kelly. Ryan, It looks like a long monorail pod from the future. What is it? Ryan: Elon Musk in 2013 had a vision for a new form of transportation. A bunch of VCs at Silicon Valley got together and founded Hyperloop One. Now we are actually Virgin Hyperloop One, three years later, which is very exciting. So now Richard Branson is now our chairman. Ryan: I'll tell you a little bit about the technology. Hyperloop basically the pod that you're looking at just broke a speed record, which is really exciting. We went 240 miles per hour in 300 meters at our test site 40 miles outside of Las Vegas. We're really excited about. So how does that work, how did we get there and why do we think it's the future of transportation? Hyperloop is in a tube so this pod was in a tube, we suck out almost all the air out of the tube to almost zero atmospheric pressure. It's not a full vacuum but very, very close. What that does is it provides frictionless travel. What does that mean? That means we can reach higher speeds than Maglev trains that you might see in Japan, in niche markets. It also means that it's more energy efficient and effective because we're using passive magnetic levitation. So that means once we start and accelerate at that point we're floating. So this actually levitates above a track, which is pretty unbelievable. From a cost perspective that's huge cost saving, not only for energy efficiency but also for building track, et cetera. E. B. Moss: I know the sustainability aspect is very important to Mr. Branson. Ryan: Huge. Yeah, it's absolutely. So sustainability is definitely something that we're looking towards. We'd like to get something up and running by 2021 and if you think about where we're going to be in 2021 with autonomous vehicles, with cleaner energy and we're completely energy agnostic solution, which we're really excited about. Not only going fast but thinking about how the future of transportation works. David: Right, so being both New Yorkers I know you've gotten some approval for New York track, from discussions. Ryan: Well, there's discussions. We are a very ... even though some people might see this as a cry in the sky opportunity a lot of our executives have worked in government before. We know how the system works in the United States. You have to go through a regulatory and safety process. We don't want to be seen as a paperwork company that's going to disappear in two years faking all these different things. Ryan: So we have directors of policy here that are working with the federal government. We've made headway in places like Colorado where legislature has signed a memorandum of understanding to look at these. That's actually started already but you have to remember that we need to make sure that it's safe for passengers and we need to go though our safety process. So we kind of understand that but I think it's really interesting because we kind of have a VC type philosophy and coming and working with government. Those are some of the slowest movers. So kind of working that out, working for structure has historically been or seen as a slower moving process. Merchants of VC digital world and then combining this with structure is a really interesting combination. Not only have we seen progress in the United States, we've seen progress in the UN [inaudible 00:16:52] road and transit authority there, we have a proposal to them. The Netherlands and some Scandinavian countries. Started to talk about the UK as well. So we've made some groundwork. David: So, if I'm inside what's my experience? Ryan: Sure. Actually we're partnering with Here Technologies and this is the booth that we're outside of right now. This is the first time that we're talking about the passenger experience in public. 2017 for us was what we call our kitty hawk moment, prove the technology works. Now 2018 is about lets get real, how do we commercialize, what's the experience going to look like, how we work with regulators, et cetera. In the same way that in the digital space we expect fast on demand and we expect a personalized, customized experience we're trying to bring that into the infrastructure mind frame, which hasn't necessarily been the case because this is one of the first new forms of transportation over 100 years, We're trying to incorporate this thing. Ryan: Let's say I book a ticket for the Hyperloop. I want that experience to be one, for example, where I'm here in Las Vegas I have turn by turn walking directions so if I'm inside this crazy convention center I see yes I know I have to walk down the stairs and to the right of the Starbucks to go get my Uber, which will already be there because they know that it takes ten minutes for me to walk out of this craziness. Take my Uber to the Hyperloop get in the Hyperloop, they know that I'm having a meeting with three other people that I met at CES so they're going to give me a customized pod with meeting table et cetera. Versus I've had enough of CES and I don't want to talk to anyone I know and I just want a silent pod and then when I get off the Hyperloop powered by Here Technologies in the future when we get this thing up and running. My Uber's already there and potentially maybe there are other apps like Seamless, et cetera, that by the time I get home my pizza is there. E. B. Moss: Will this exercise for us also because you just eliminated all of the walking that we do. Ryan: Well, I don't think it's there. All the pieces are there so I don't think it's that far of a stretch to get there. Imagine all the pieces and components are there we just got to put it together. E. B. Moss: Yeah, a much different experience than trying to get on the monorail with 5000 other people all crammed into one car, which took me 40 minutes. Ryan: Let's talk about that because that brings up a really good point. So what we'd like to do with the Hyperloop is have pods leaving, seconds; fast, fast, fast. When you have a train that has certain point A to B stops everyone is crammed on the train and then pushes out at the same time. Here we're aiming for consistency so that the other modes of transportation that we're connecting with create more of a flat traffic environment versus these waves where they're not ready. E. B. Moss: I love it. Ryan, thank you so much. Ryan: Thank you so much. E. B. Moss: So we stopped at the booth called Accessible Olli and I'm speaking with Brittany Stotler of Local Motors. So tell me what the connection is Brittany. Brittany: So we are here to show a new project that was announced last CES with CTA Foundation, IBM, and Local Motors. Talking about what it means for people with disabilities or that may not have the function that everyone else has and then as well as the aging community. Trying to make vehicles that are going to be pulling the drivers and age out of them because they're self driving vehicles. Trying to figure out how these people are going to start interacting with the vehicle, making it easier for them and ideally providing them more freedom. We based this on personaes, such as Eric who, though blind legally, he did not start out blind; he's actually an engineer from IBM and was one of the big people behind trying to help us figure out how to make a vehicle and make an Olli stop accessible for somebody who is visually impaired. Another persona is wheelchair bound but doesn't like to call attention to that aspect. So having the accessible Olli be able to communicate with them and use these vehicles allows them the freedom to be going out without someone else there to continually load them because they would roll onto Olli themselves and it automatically secures their wheelchair. Push a button to release them, they can roll back out of the Olli stop and they're all set to go. So ideally you'll have an app on your phone requesting to get on the next Olli that's coming into the station with your preferences set, so if you are in a wheelchair, if you visually have issues or maybe it's your hearing Olli can actually sign back and forth to you though the stop and through the actual vehicle. We’ve got a couple of different options that we're working with so ultrahaptics - a really neat technology system which, for those who can't see or have limited mobility they can actually ... rather than having to press a button ... can just wave their hand in front of it and you feel it and it creates like a virtual button for them. But there's also extendable to some vibrations that can actually drive them to an open seat so they don't have that awkward moment they maybe have to deal with on a daily basis of maybe actually sitting on somebody that's already there but they couldn't see them. E. B. Moss: What's the revenue model for this? Brittany: We are selling Olli and Ollie stops to cities - master planned communities, which is where a lot of the elderly will come into play - and then into large campuses and theme parks. Everybody across the board is thinking about how to integrate Ollie because it helps pull down costs: they can move people out of a bus driver position and turn them into another position, gives them a few new skill sets hopefully. E. B. Moss: Is there an opportunity or a plan to take advantage of some of the data capture via the app? Brittany: There is potential. Currently we would own all of that data though our app but depending on the partnership it could potentially be a white label for a city’s Olli. They can wrap it however they want on the exterior. There's potential for glassine products, you can put text, you can have a video playing, and it'll go on any of our windows so it turns into almost mobile advertising. David: For our readers and our listeners in this case, I think, this is an opportunity to reach this new audience in a very compelling way. Brittany: Right. You're just the only [crosstalk 00:24:35]. So you're on a university campus and you have all these students that are getting on, they're going from their parking structures to a certain place on campus but they're going to go by Pete's Coffee every single morning and as they're rolling up or they're getting ready to go up to that stop Pete's Coffee advertising comes up on the app or it comes up within the bus to show come inside tell us you were just on Olli and here's your code and you get a discount. It starts driving traffic and then that's another way that the whoever's purchasing to actually operate the vehicles they can start recuperating and making money on the advertising piece. E. B. Moss: So a traffic driver driving traffic. Brittany: We're trying to get rid of traffic. E. B. Moss: Thank you so much for your time [inaudible 00:25:21] Beautifully stated and a very important application for all members of our community to be able to be more mobile ... Brittany: More freedom for them so thank you to all of our partners. E. B. Moss: For a less autonomous but very elevating experience we spoke to the Head of Marketing for Workhorse. He described their octocoper. E. B. Moss: So what are we officially calling this? This is experimental [crosstalk 00:25:54] Workhorse: That's a good question. We've just been calling it personal electric octocopter. Octocopter, eight things octo. David: What's the range on it? Workhorse: 70 miles. David: That's pretty good, that many miles. Workhorse: Gasoline generator that powers it so once you go 70 miles toward hop you gas up ready for the next hop. Not waiting for the lithium-ion battery for hours to charge up and all that stuff. You can just keep going. Normal helicopter you have to have pedals and those handles. This doesn't have any pedals or any of that stuff. We fly like a drone. So it'd be, you know ... David: You don't fly it like a drone. Workhorse: I mean we had this on display in Paris and all the kids that came in 15 they could jump in there, let's go, let's take it up because they're so familiar with the video game and all that stuff. So that's the way this flies. E. B. Moss: So what's the flying experience like? I mean I've been in a glider and I've been in a helicopter, somewhere in the middle? Workhorse: Yeah, I would say so. It wouldn't be as much as a glider, which is just pretty basic but it is also not as complicated as the helicopter. See this only has a ceiling height of flying of 4000 feet. Okay, so it's just enough that you're up and you're flying. So, it's meant to be like a different method of transportation. In America the helicopter's been here for 78 years, last year in America they sold 1000 of them new, that's not that big of a market. So we're not really planning on taking market share from commission on helicopter. We're kind of planning on creating a new category. So you've got to think of it as a new way of transportation, like we were kidding around about the New York City and all that stuff. David: And what's the price point on it or what will it be? Workhorse: We have price point at 200,000 dollars and at this show we can take your name and ... E. B. Moss: Take Credit Cards? Workhorse: $1,000 and your place is saved in line and then we would probably start delivering them in 2020. E. B. Moss: It looks like a Workhorse experimental aircraft. Workhorse: The name of the craft is Surefly. So it's Surefly with safety and that and background. E. B. Moss: David and I saw AR, audio, autonomy, everything at CES and we talked about how it all came together. David: So one of the trends we just to look at in general is we just saw with Olli and what they're doing. There's a huge population growing old. E. B. Moss: Yes. David: And it's a key population that has a certain expectation level of service and experience and technology and that's only getting bigger. You're seeing a lot of brands really trying to figure out how do we deal with population that's having vision problems and mobility problems and hearing problems. All the things people my age are starting to think about. E. B. Moss: The 25 year olds. David: The 25 year olds. Again, when ... as we joked ... but when you think about the 25 year olds they are very tech savvy. They're the Hyperloop audience, they don't want to be waiting on the street corner for the M35 without having any idea, in the rain, when it's coming, when was the last time it was here, did I just miss it. You know, the stuff we do every day. So you're seeing mobility things like Olli and transportation systems and whole ecosystems. You're seeing companion bots. You're seeing machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision coming into play to do things like my mom lives far away it's hard for me to necessarily be on top of her. And I don't know if she wants me to be on top of her; all that family dynamic. E. B. Moss: So, we actually have a theme here and it kind of wraps things up beautifully because we've seen the connected appliances, connected home. We've seen the connectivity between devices and how to make things easier in life and not having to pick up one device to do one thing and one device to do another. We've seen the continuity between I want to get some place and how do I get there. So everything is connecting us whether it's virtually or physically like with Olli, like with the experimental aircraft, like everything we've seen today is all about connectivity. David: It really is and the big thing is it's connectivity that has value to you and me not connectivity that has value to some corporation. That's where people really get the difference. I'm excited about a technology that will help my life be better and in the course of my life being better the company makes money off of that, that's great. E. B. Moss: Like the last example with Olli. Where there is branding opportunities on and within it but it's giving me something of value. David: That's correct. There equates down when the consumer feels there's no value it's changed for them. Gen Zs might say, "We get that brands trap us every day and we're okay with that, that's the world and we're fine. But what they're not okay with is that you track me every day and then you don't know who I am, if you're going to watch everything I buy you should know what I buy. You should know what I've bought and stop telling me what I've already bought.” E. B. Moss: So if you're going to connect with me, connect in a meaningful way, connect in a valuable way and ... David: Imagine you have a friend who asks you the same question over and over and over again. Right, then eventually you stop hanging out with that friend. So that's where this connectivity has great value to us as human beings. Great value. E. B. Moss: David thank you so much. This was invaluable to have a guide like you. This is Insider Insight live from the Consumer Electronics Show. I'm E. B. Moss, Managing Editor for MediaVillage. Check us out MediaVillage.com and thanks for listening.
Jeff Vane is the Bowhunting Savage So Bowhunting Savage. Come, we gotta talk about this. What’s going on? Jeff: Well, last summer I was trying to figure out what I want to do with this. And I just took a few things that I was really interested in. One was bowhunting. I just started in…
Jeff Vane is the Bowhunting Savage So Bowhunting Savage. Come, we gotta talk about this. What’s going on? Jeff: Well, last summer I was trying to figure out what I want to do with this. And I just took a few things that I was really interested in. One was bowhunting. I just started in…
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