Podcasts about jerry you

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, we sit down with Jerry Mooty, the CEO and Principal of @properties, Christie's International Real Estate in Dallas and Austin. Jerry takes us through his remarkable journey from managing partner at a law firm to heading a major real estate brokerage. He shares how resilience and adaptability allowed him to steer his business through the 2008 financial crisis and leverage opportunities arising from the pandemic. Jerry also provides insights into growing his firm through innovative hiring strategies and technological platforms that streamline agents' work. We explore lessons learned around overcoming adversity, strategic partnerships, and balancing operations with culture. His story offers a candid look inside one industry titan's challenges and triumphs in managing debt, acquisitions, and new ventures in sports and entertainment. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jerry Mooty shares his transition from being a managing partner at a law firm to creating and growing a real estate brokerage, including the challenges faced during the 2008 financial crisis and opportunities leveraged during the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss Jerry's innovative business model that hires agent-attorneys and how it differentiates his brokerage in a competitive real estate market. The episode covers the technological advances at @properties, such as the Platform, which incorporates AI and a suite of tools to increase agent productivity. Jerry reflects on managing $60 million in personally guaranteed debt and the strategy behind transitioning to a debt-free business structure. Strategic partnerships and the process of acquisitions, especially in the technology sector, are explored along with Jerry's experience in due diligence and venture capital dynamics. Jerry discusses the significance of cultivating a company culture focused on employee well-being and the shift in his leadership style from operations to creating an enjoyable work environment. We touch on the importance of friendships in Jerry's professional journey and how they've influenced his career decisions and leadership approach. Challenges facing traditional real estate agencies like Remax are considered, with a focus on adapting to technological advancements and market changes. Jerry provides insights into his personal preferences, revealing his fondness for barbecue over tex-mex, adding a personal element to the conversation. The conversation highlights Jerry's efforts in expanding his business, including the recent launch of a sports and entertainment division and developer services to cater to specific client needs in the real estate market. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About @properties,Christie's International Real Estate GUESTS Jerry MootyAbout Jerry TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Jerry Mooty, ceo and principal of App Properties, christy's International Real Estate in Dallas and Austin. Jerry, by anyone's definition, is a serial entrepreneur, having started a law firm, credit card processing company, real estate development company and now a real estate brokerage firm. And Jerry tells aspiring entrepreneurs expect the unexpected. Jerry, I want to thank you for taking the time to come on and welcome you to building Texas business. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me. Good to see you too. It's been a while. Let's just start. You know you've done a number of things and we'll get into some of that, but currently, what's the business that you've started and you're currently today? Jerry: So Jerry Mooty from Dallas have a business now in the residential real estate brokerage industry. So I compete with Compass and some big national brands that most of the listeners will know about. Chris: And that company's called App Properties right. Jerry: Yes, sir, it's called App Properties Christy's International Real Estate. So we kind of have a working on that. Chris: And I know you're kind of got the Dallas area covered, but I think you've also recently expanded into Austin. Jerry: Yeah, so we started in Dallas proper with our headquarters, and then we opened a second office in Frisco, texas, and then we just recently, in the fall of 2023, opened up Austin, texas. Chris: So you know, as a recovering attorney, what was it that inspired you to get into the residential brokerage real estate business? Jerry: So, interesting enough, you kind of know my history, but I founded a law firm when I was 28 and I grew that into about 60 lawyers in four cities. As the managing partner, I started doing a lot of deals for the partners as opposed to practicing law, and I went down several paths. I had a litigation support company that I founded and grew that for the partners and then, you know, ironically got into a real estate development a little startup where I had a home building division building spec homes and I had a commercial division where I was doing some commercial projects. Raw land development had a resort under contract in Bernie, but, like a lot of people in real estate, 2009, 2010 came and that was the end of my glory days in real estate. All right. Chris: So then, what led you to? You know, get involved with app properties and then take this down, go down this rabbit trail. Jerry: Sure. So in 2012, I sold my interest in the law firm back to the partnerships. I didn't want to go back to practicing full time and then did quite a few different entrepreneurial things from about 2013 to about 2019. Any you know, I had a credit card processing company, backed by the Jones family, called Blue Star Payments that merged in with a tech company and we rebranded Blue Star Sports. We were backed by some pretty large VC firms Bain Capital and GenStar partners and Providence Equity and then obviously, the Jones family. So we acquired about 27 companies in about three years and then we sold that company in 2017. Then I was kind of looking for the next thing and I became the chief business and legal officer for a Silicon Valley tech company for a couple of years. They were in a big money raise and it wasn't going so well and I was deferring comp. So I started looking at what I was going to do next. One of the people in my network is a ex litigation real estate litigator. She had gone on and got married, had kids, got a real estate license and had a brokerage here in Dallas and her model was she was going and convincing unhappy lawyers to get the real estate license. So she had about 10 agents slash attorneys as her brokerage and she approached me to come in and run her brokerage for kind of like I did the law firm. So that piqued my interest enough so we went down that path. Sadly we didn't get to execute our documentation because they ended up having a divorce situation. And then two weeks later COVID hits and so I'm waiting to take my real estate license and not sure what I'm going to do after that. Come out of the first 90 days of COVID, the market's red hot, so I hang my license, I start doing deals for my network friends and start marketing myself as an agent. All the meanwhile I'm looking for something to buy or to own or start, and so that led me through developer relationship here in Dallas to the ownership group of at properties out of Chicago. They made that introduction, flew up and met with them and really fell in love with not only the brand and the culture but also the technology that they had built. Chris: Amazing story. There's a lot to dive into there. I may definitely want to go back some, but let's stay with that properties for now. And yeah, so you that's a. It's born out of COVID, I guess. Tell us, though you know, because I know just from you, know keeping up with you and then reading on the website you've experienced some like amazing growth in the last, I guess, three and a half years. Let's talk a little bit about that. And in talking about what you've done that you think has helped accelerate it, let's talk also about the maybe the pains with growing so fast. Jerry: Sure. So as I was looking to own something and this opportunity came up, I negotiated to purchase, you know, the North Texas territory. But I wasn't really prepared to launch because it was just me and I hadn't done a whole lot of recruiting. But I had some real estate deals in the pipeline that I needed to leave the current brokerage I was at before I papered those up. So I ended up launching at properties by myself just one agent, and got temporary space and, you know, true entrepreneurial spirit started recruiting, putting in my support team, landed a pretty big compass team right out of the gate and that kind of helped accelerate the visibility. And so the first, you know, six months we grew to 10 agents by Christmas. So it wasn't, we weren't a big brokerage, but we were putting things in place. By the next year we were about just under 40 agents. So we had a really good, successful year and, you know, quadrupling our size and then last year 2023, we doubled again to about 80 agents in Dallas. So we've been kind of there's been some faster growth brokerages, but we're very we're considered more luxurious. Our agents are more high producing agents and they take a little longer to transfer from one brokerage to another based on their pipeline and their restrictions. So now that we're three and a half years into this and Austin's really kind of been a little bit of a catalyst in the last six months because initially that territory wasn't available there was a Christie's affiliate there my corporate partner asked me if I wanted Austin about a year and a half ago. I said yes and so I started putting the play pieces in place and we launched that in September. We've added quite a few agents in the first 120 days over 70 something agents there. So all in we got about a hundred agents in Dallas, about 70 in Austin. So that's the good side of the business. The headaches, as you know as an entrepreneur, are several and many. Too many to list, but we'll cover a few. My most recent success story is I just hired a controller after three and a half years. So I've been doing the books, reporting to corporate, paying the royalties, paying the checks, paying the agents. So those are the things. As an entrepreneur, you really you put your blood, sweat and tears into these businesses and then you have to get to a certain level, to where you could start to relieve yourself of some of these pains. Chris: Yeah, that's so true, jerry. A lot of the people that I've had on before say exactly that that it's one when you're starting out, you're not big enough to outsource it or to hire for it, so you got to do it. But then it's getting to that point when you even when you are big enough and can afford it the level of trust and hiring the right person to hand off those key aspects of the business, so it frees you up to do the things as an entrepreneur or the visionary you want to be doing. So let's talk about that. What was it that you think helps get to a level of trust and comfort that it's time to hand off and it's the right person to hand off to? Jerry: Yeah, I think, based on my background of being an entrepreneur, you make a lot of friends and you kind of know. You learn the hard way. You hire the wrong person a few times and then, as you get older and more seasoned, you kind of know what to look for. In this instance, with that properties, I hired somebody I'd known for 35 years to come in and be my director of agents. I've known her since the SMU days, so the trust was already built in and then you're just very selective as you add the pieces to the puzzle to get those right people in place. So in half years we've let one or two people go, but we've been pretty successful in hitting the mark. Chris: That's great. So 70 agents or so you said. Have you started to implement any kind of processes that help with the integration process as you bring in these new people, so they understand kind of what the expectations are, what the benefits are for making the move? I mean, so where are you and what's the process you've gone through to kind of make that more institutionalized? Jerry: So the background for at properties and the corporate support we have is pretty important in how we've gotten here. They're a 25 year brokerage. They're the eighth largest in the country before acquiring the Christie's affiliate network, so they kind of had the processes in place. So it's buying. Whenever you buy a franchise and you wanna go down this path, you kind of get a little bit of assistance from and some help along the way on someone else putting the right pieces in place. I think what we've done a great job is integrate and implement those things that they've brought to the table, which I think revolves around a lot of our culture. You know, I think culture is so important in any business you have and so it's just we have fun things called at love, local events that came from corporate. So we'll pick a merchant somewhere in our geographical area, we'll partner with them, we'll send out a marketing campaign. Let's say it's a coffee shop and then whoever shows up at that coffee shop, our agents are there and we're running a tap for a coffee or a Danish in the morning. So that's kind of the community outreach piece. We use the word love strategically in all our marketing. So we say bringing the love to Dallas, bringing the love to Frisco and those types of things. So you know, recruiting is probably once you get the, once you get your overhead stabilized and your office space and those types of things. This is a business about relationships and recruiting. So I would say our two most important people outside of myself are our head of recruiting out of Frisco, head of recruiting out of the Dallas office, and so those have been very good hires. Chris: You know most, I think most businesses. It's hard to say they're not people, businesses or relationship, but certainly you know in the business you're in, where you're so customer facing right, you need good people that can go out and attract good customers, provide good service. But I have to imagine the last 18 months or so in residential real estate hasn't been the easiest. So can you talk a little bit about what you've done to help continue, promote one, promote the culture, to keep people positive and energized while managing through what has to have been a challenging time? Jerry: Yeah, absolutely so. Obviously we're all aware of how hot the market got, you know, a couple of years ago, you know, during COVID and post COVID. What that did in our industry is everybody wanted a real estate license because they saw all these transactions happen. So we had an influx of agents that came in that are young, inexperienced, but were here to make some money. And then, when the market turns, you kind of have the reverse effect. Those people were all eat what you kill, or 10, 9, 9 commissioned agents. They got to figure out how to pay the bills, and so we've had a pretty big exodus. Probably 15 to 20% of our agents across the nation have left the industry, and so that's been good for the sense of the people staying in it because you got less competition. But the ones that stayed in it most of them, have been through some of these ebbs and flows of the market, and so they kind of know how to prepare. And most of that revolves around when your transaction desk is slower, what are you ramping up to do? Are you ramping up your marketing, your postcard, social media content, are you revamping your website? And so those are all things that we, which the agents that work for us and part of our big, strong sales pitch based on the technology that we have. Chris: Got you Speaking of that on the marketing side, you know, are you seeing? I guess, one area or the other as far as marketing strategy work better, get more visibility or more return on investment. You see so much on social media, so it seems natural that that would be one, but I don't know if that's the leading one based on your experience or not. Jerry: Yeah, I think in pretty much every industry has been affected by the internet and no industry more so than real estate. I would say probably 10 years ago you saw a lot of print ads. You saw a lot of ads and you know business journals and those types of things trying to move property. But now it's really a digital world. We're using social media, we're using tools called AdWords, which is a retargeting tool to where it's essentially like if you went and looked at a pair of shoes at Nordstroms and then you left Nordstroms, those shoes are following you around. So we have the ability to target, geo track and geo target potential prospects and clients through our technology. Obviously, websites are important. Your collaboration tools that you're preparing a search for a prospect, like they're looking in this area for a certain price point. We have the ability to set those searches up and work with a prospect or a client on finding the home, ironically in the last price. I don't know when this started, but in the last year or so, almost 85% of buyers find the home they want before they hire an agent, or at least they zero it down based on how much information is on the internet. And so, really, as an agent, what you're trying to do is bring your expertise not only to get that transaction under contract, but then most of the work happens one second transactions under contract all the way through closing. Chris: Right, that is an amazing statistic 85%, but you're right. I mean, when everyone goes to the internet first, I think, to research or validate or do something. So it makes sense to me, but it's a big number. Sounds like you know here you use your work, technology and innovation and stuff quite a bit already since we started the interview. Some of this may have come from your franchise or some may have come from some things You're doing, but what are some of the things you believe are innovative in the way that you're operating the brokerage and helping your agents be successful? Jerry: Sure. So I think when you start understanding what different brokerages bring to the table in regards to support for their agent portfolio. Obviously marketing is a big one because they're pushing all the stuff out that we're talking about, but also the day-to-day operation of an agent is pretty important. Most brokerages large brokerages like Coldwell, banker, some of your biggest national brands are very antiquated when it comes to technology support. I would say there's two brokerages at the forefront. I'd say Compass is in second place and I think App Properties is in first place. And I say that because we've been building a technology stack called Platform, or our franchise or has, since 2003 and basically an agent logs in and does everything they need to do as an agent in one technology. When I interview agents and I show them the technology, they're blown away because they're in four or five, six different technologies throughout the day trying to get their social media posted or created, their transactions done over here, their docuSigns another technology they have to use, and we have everything in one place, and so that's been a real big selling point for us when we're recruiting these agents. Chris: Yeah, I mean anything to make your employees or, in your case, I guess, your contractor's life easier. Have you started to look into, or is this already incorporating any kind of versions of AI? Jerry: AI is already integrated. Nowadays, agents are always doing, as an easy example, they're doing descriptions of the properties. So now you can lean on AI to help you describe a $5 million house with five bedrooms, six baths by describing it into AI, and then it'll help you create that luxury description. So there's things like that. Obviously, our CRM has a lot of AI tied to it and so, yeah, that's the way of the future and it's getting more and more integrated and implemented into all our tools. Very nice, very nice yeah. Chris: All right. So I want to make you kind of reflect back. So yeah, this about, by your own description, not the first time you kind of started a new venture or stepped outside your comfort zone. So when you think about what you did I guess leaving, you know, maybe leaving the law firm or even some of the ventures you started while you were there, but going to credit card processing et cetera where are some of the lessons you learn through those ventures that you think prepared you for taking the step you did without properties and the steps you're taking now to grow so rapidly? Jerry: Yeah, I think if you're a serial entrepreneur like myself, I think the one thing you learn each time that you have an idea or you go down the path of starting something is you think you're going to get to the finish line a lot easier. It's your idea and you think you're going to do that. And I think probably in every instance including the law firm, including the credit card processing is one lesson is it just takes a lot to probably 10 times, 100 times more man hours and work and you got hurdles. That you're not expecting. But I think that's part of the reward too is why I'm built the way I am. You enjoy that when an obstacle comes and you get your way around it or over it. But I think you know frankly, it's probably what every entrepreneur says it's never as easy as you think it is. There's no get rich. You know we talked about most of what we do as lawyers and what I'm doing is a people game. You know you're hiring people and people disappoint, you know, and you're having to find different people sometimes, and so the lesson is just pride and expect the unexpected and you'll be okay and be able to sleep at night. Chris: I like that. Well, think about, is there a kind of a challenge or a failure setback that you can point to over the last, you know, 15 years, 20 years, whatever that you feel is maybe in some ways either a defining moment for you or one of the bigger learning moments that you got? You kind of got hit with a little headwind but you overcame it and because of that it's kind of helped propel you either in your own personal journey as a leader or, you know, in things you learned as an entrepreneur. Jerry: Yeah, I'd say you know, probably the biggest lesson learned of all time was me starting a real estate development company with a home builder and a commercial partner and, you know, diving into that with not a whole lot of experience, and so the challenge was obviously, in real estate, you're hoping to build something and sell it, and so the big challenges is if you build it and you borrow a bunch of money and you don't sell it. And so in 0809, 2010 is probably should have been my premier happiest days of my life. I'm on a law firm, I'm making some good you know coin on the law firm side, but I'm literally getting dragged through the mud financially on the real estate piece, and it's probably one of the reasons it's taken me 10 years to get back into it on the brokerage side, because I literally came out of that was some financial PSD. You know just could not sleep, you know got I mean health issues, depression, pretty much everything you can experience as an entrepreneur and so you figure out a lot about yourself when you're going through something like that, and you know you either stay in bed and talk about it or you pull up your socks and get out and try it again. Chris: That internal fortitude, you know I think any entrepreneurs got to have that or it's just not going to happen. I appreciate you sharing that. Were there some things that you did? You know that you know other than just I mean pure gutted out. You know, to help you kind of get through that. You know, leaning on family friends, I don't know. I mean I have to believe we've got some listeners and other people out there that you're going through the same thing. Jerry: Sure, I think where I lucked out was, you know, just to be frank, I was on about $60 million and personally guaranteed debt that was worth probably about 30 by the time I was trying to get out of it. So there wasn't going to be any family help. It was. It was hey with you, you know, in a loving way, of course. But when you dig a hole like that, you just got to figure out the best way out. And for me, where I benefited was I had a law degree and I was a lawyer and creditors could not touch the ownership interest in my law firm because it was tied to my license. So, through bankruptcy lawyers and all that stuff, I got educated on that and gave me the strategy to get through that situation and come out on the other end, which was one of the reasons I sold the interest of the law firm back to the partners, because that allowed me to have a little bit of a stream of income there in 2012, 13 and 14, while I got the credit card processing company going and getting these other things going. So there was, if there was, a silver lining, it was that fact, but it was still still pretty embarrassing financially and pretty embarrassing as a professional to really go through that over a three or four year period. Chris: You got to be hard but, like I said, I mean now that you've come through it, you know you can certainly appreciate the opportunities you have today and know that. You know I certainly probably learned some lessons of what to not do, going forward right. Jerry: Absolutely, I would say. The one lesson you learn in that scenario is you become a lot more frugal with your financial decisions and you know, especially in the banking industry, like one thing I'm proud of with that properties is we've never bought a bar to dollar. We got zero debt, and so those that's a probably a direct result of what I went through, you know, 15 years ago was I don't want to do another business where I got a bunch of debt and I'm trying to get that off and make money to live off of. Chris: That's great. So you mentioned earlier I think it was a credit card processing BlueStar, where you had some dealings with Bain Capital, and obviously you're dealing with a franchise or in this current business. So let's talk a little bit about maybe what you've learned through that. I kind of relate or maybe call those you know investors, partners, strategic partners. What have you learned as kind of some of the best ways to deal with them so you keep that relationship strong and healthy? And maybe it's something you know that happened that you're like I did this or they did. You know something that happened that soured the relationship, one they got to help our clients here at the firm you know, you know find themselves in those situations all the time, and so I'm curious you know what you know, what lessons you've learned through that process? Jerry: Yeah, so I would say getting involved in. And so when we had the credit card processing company, it was pretty a pretty simple model. We were going out and you know recruiting or or you know we're trying to sell merchants, you know restaurants Anybody who ran a credit card was it was a prospective client approached by a group who had an idea of buying up these technology companies in the youth sports space. So like, if you sign your kid up for soccer, you're there's usually a form and at the end of that form, whether it be the YMCA or anywhere else, you're paying a fee for your child to play that on that soccer team. So the model we had was take the credit card processing that we had built our own API and those types of things and bake it into a technology and go buy these companies. And interestingly, it was about how do you flip the model from a EBITDA and a multiple perspective. So these tech companies that weren't that large of companies because they were kind of geographically located, running different types of youth sports camps or whatnot, they weren't sophisticated enough and they were usually outsourcing their credit card processing to stripe or squares or something like that. So we would acquire these companies and bake in our own processing and from an ownership perspective, then that would change the multiple for maybe two times to 12 times because you have that reoccurring revenue stream coming into your business model. I literally probably learned more over that. First, 12 to 20 per month as we were acquiring these companies, doing due diligence on them, and I was the chief legal officer of the company, so I was in charge of all the due diligence. So we acquired 20 something companies and I bet I did due diligence on about 300 over two years. But it was really cool because I got to see what investors and power players in the venture capital market, how they looked at things and it's there's not a lot of emotion, it's numbers on paper and it's how do we make, how do we do this to this group of businesses, and then how do we sell it and make money. All about the return on investment, right. Chris: Exactly so. It's a. Jerry: It's very cutthroat which some businesses are, some aren't, but it was a great learning experience. I'd like to say I probably learned more in that two to three years Dealing with those big VC firms and listening to those meetings and kind of running point on due diligence than I probably learned in any other aspect of my life. Now, that's so, but that's so. Chris: Let's turn it back a little bit to app properties specifically. I know you've recently launched a new sports and entertainment division Tell us about that. What's going on behind that and what are you trying to accomplish so in the real estate brokerage? Jerry: world. There's different ways to market yourself right, and a lot of that boils down to your experience of your agent portfolio, and so some real estate brokerages are residential, some may just be commercial, but on our side we have, we've accumulated some agents that allowed us to create these divisions because of their experience levels. So land and ranch is one division, and then sports and entertainment is another division, and basically there's some criteria that we've put in place before an agent can say they're part of that team or that division dealing with professional athletes or celebrities on a number of occasions, some of the qualifications, but essentially, when somebody's moving like a professional athlete or a celebrity, there's a lot of sensitivity to that, or there's a lot of urgency, there's a lot more moving pieces, and so that specific division has agents who are, you know, experts in helping that transaction or that client Get from point A to B and solve a lot of problems along the way how to move their cars, how to move their kids into new schools, you know everything that comes along with kind of that type of transaction, as opposed to someone just buying a house and selling a house. So are we going to see? Chris: Super Bowl ads anytime soon, if I can at homecom I could afford it. Jerry: No, that's the goal is. We're really good because of how the clients affiliate network has come into play for us. I don't know if we mentioned this before the call or on the call, but you know our corporate partner ended up buying the Christie's affiliate network, which is a network of independently owned brokerages around the world. I think we have 900 offices in 54 countries, about 35,000 agents, and the reason Christie's the auction house, christie's the family who's owned that brand and that company for two hundred years. They sold the app properties because of the technology and we've been for two years bringing a worldwide global powerhouse network together into the technology to share referrals and data and information, and so that's been one of the one of the real keys to some credibility for us. Very cool. Chris: I think you just launched something else, maybe in the last week. Developer services Tell us about that. Jerry: So so again, we all know there's developers out here but we're not sure there's developers out here building multifamily building, you know, developing neighborhoods, multi-use, and so for a brokerage our size to have the ability to provide those services was kind of hard. So we ended up meeting a group of people out of Austin who came from Storybill and for those listeners who've heard about Storybill, that's a multi-billion dollar developer who went, ran out of money last summer. But we ended up negotiating their entire creative team to come over to Christie, our Christie's, and create this development services division. So starting with the chief marketing officer all the way down to their website development team, their on-site sales, so we've got a team of about 12 of superstars and they really fell in love with the Christie's brand to kind of move from Storybill into our umbrella, to kind of push those services out. So that'll be a huge win for us. Chris: So, as you sit there running all this, what is it that kind of triggers for you that this is an opportunity that makes sense, because not everybody can see that, and so there are things you're looking for. How do you go about making that decision and taking on the risk? Jerry: Yeah, so risk is a little less scary in our business because most everybody who works for our brokerage is a 1099 contractor. So we really have a pretty lean machine when it comes to we're running this right now with about seven full-time employees, three offices, so you got overhead from an office space perspective, but really you're kind of it's kind of a lean business model, which is one of the things that attracted me to it. And then obviously you have to have the people to be able to promote these different levels of services. So I think the thing that's been lucky for us is one our relationship and our network in Dallas to help get it started. And then obviously the people we've been able to add at such a young infancy of a company have given us the credibility and the numbers are reflecting that. Chris: Gotcha. So before I don't want to wrap this up without talking a little bit just about you and your leadership style, let's talk. You know, how would you describe your leadership style? How do you think that's evolved over time based on the scars and other lessons learned? Jerry: You know you work at a law firm, so you know running a law firm is you got a lot of smart people, a lot of egos, a lot of staff, a lot of overhead, and so I learned a lot about you know the operational side of a business in that seat. And then I think my ownership style has probably changed completely since I left the law firm. I'm a lot more interested in the well-being of my employees, a lot more sensitive to the culture. I think. When you talk about people coming to work and going home, in my mindset now I want that to be a great experience. I kind of use the word experience a lot in the last couple of years for some reason, and I think it's just. My evolution is like everything in our lives is an experience and you can make it a good one or you can make it a bad one, and so I think my leadership style is I want every experience to be a good one. At the best I can make it. Obviously you're going to have your headaches and your issues pop up, but we have the music on in our offices every day. We have happy hours on Thursdays. We built bars in both of our offices in Dallas and Frisco, and then we're putting one in our location in Austin so that we can have happy hours with our agents and our clients and our prospects. We hold a lot of events and I think our interaction with the community and the philanthropic stuff that we're doing is really cool. So I think where I've gotten is you know I'm 54 now and you know I started that law firm at 28 and I had a whole different picture in my mind at 28, right Till 35, of what life was going to be for me, and now I'm kind of trying to enjoy it a lot more. Chris: I love that man. Happy for you. You know clearly you're on the right track and couldn't agree more about how important culture is to any company. And I think I've said similar to you. I think life is about experiences. I think they're only really down to learning experiences good experiences and learning experiences as though, rather than bad, just learn from them and don't repeat them. Jerry: Yeah exactly right. Chris: So let's turn a little bit on the personal side of things and not as serious. What was your first job? Jerry: First job, I was a clerk in a law firm. Chris: Okay. Jerry: I was working in law school. Okay, my first job in high school. Like most of us, I grew up in Missouri in a small town. I had a yard. You know service with my best friend and we had our lawn mowers in the back of his truck and we mowed yards. So that was probably my first experience as a having a job. There you go, and first is an entrepreneur was leaving a 250 person firm to start a law firm with two other guys and being 28 years old and that was pretty exciting. We had metal chairs and you know fold up conference room table and laid out of the movie. Chris: Love it. Well, I can relate to the a little bit to that, but definitely relate to the mowing yards. That's what buddy of mine and I did in high school. So you know good money then I guess. Okay, personal preference, tex-mex or barbecue? Well, that's a tough one Probably barbecue. All right. And if you could, take a 30 day sabbatical. Where would you go? What would you do? Jerry: You know, this is my two sons who are a senior and sophomore at University of Texas right now. They called a year ago about this time and said, dad, we're going to go to Japan. And I was like, okay, and they got on a plane, just the two of them went to Japan for three weeks and after hearing that I kind of want to do that. Chris: How cool is that. The two of us went and did it on their own. Jerry: They did it on their own, traveled around on trains and backpack and love it. They're experienced when they told the stories and went through the pictures. I mean it's just a really cool culture. I'd like to go experience that. Chris: Okay, jerry, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come on. It's hard to believe that you know I don't. I might add the numbers we met at SMU and, as undergraduates, went to law school together, so we had a lot of years together. So it's great to see where you are today and what you're doing. So proud of you. Jerry: Man. I appreciate that. And the same back at you. I followed you your whole career and super, super proud of you. What kind of legal person you are and lawyer and leader and everything you're about. So appreciate having me on and proud of you too, my man. Chris: All right, we'll do it again. We'll find a reason to do it again sometime soon. Awesome Sounds good. Special Guest: Jerry Mooty.

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, we sit down with Jerry Mooty, the CEO and Principal of @properties, Christie's International Real Estate in Dallas and Austin. Jerry takes us through his remarkable journey from managing partner at a law firm to heading a major real estate brokerage. He shares how resilience and adaptability allowed him to steer his business through the 2008 financial crisis and leverage opportunities arising from the pandemic. Jerry also provides insights into growing his firm through innovative hiring strategies and technological platforms that streamline agents' work. We explore lessons learned around overcoming adversity, strategic partnerships, and balancing operations with culture. His story offers a candid look inside one industry titan's challenges and triumphs in managing debt, acquisitions, and new ventures in sports and entertainment. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jerry Mooty shares his transition from being a managing partner at a law firm to creating and growing a real estate brokerage, including the challenges faced during the 2008 financial crisis and opportunities leveraged during the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss Jerry's innovative business model that hires agent-attorneys and how it differentiates his brokerage in a competitive real estate market. The episode covers the technological advances at @properties, such as the Platform, which incorporates AI and a suite of tools to increase agent productivity. Jerry reflects on managing $60 million in personally guaranteed debt and the strategy behind transitioning to a debt-free business structure. Strategic partnerships and the process of acquisitions, especially in the technology sector, are explored along with Jerry's experience in due diligence and venture capital dynamics. Jerry discusses the significance of cultivating a company culture focused on employee well-being and the shift in his leadership style from operations to creating an enjoyable work environment. We touch on the importance of friendships in Jerry's professional journey and how they've influenced his career decisions and leadership approach. Challenges facing traditional real estate agencies like Remax are considered, with a focus on adapting to technological advancements and market changes. Jerry provides insights into his personal preferences, revealing his fondness for barbecue over tex-mex, adding a personal element to the conversation. The conversation highlights Jerry's efforts in expanding his business, including the recent launch of a sports and entertainment division and developer services to cater to specific client needs in the real estate market. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About @properties,Christie's International Real Estate GUESTS Jerry MootyAbout Jerry TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Jerry Mooty, ceo and principal of App Properties, christy's International Real Estate in Dallas and Austin. Jerry, by anyone's definition, is a serial entrepreneur, having started a law firm, credit card processing company, real estate development company and now a real estate brokerage firm. And Jerry tells aspiring entrepreneurs expect the unexpected. Jerry, I want to thank you for taking the time to come on and welcome you to building Texas business. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me. Good to see you too. It's been a while. Let's just start. You know you've done a number of things and we'll get into some of that, but currently, what's the business that you've started and you're currently today? Jerry: So Jerry Mooty from Dallas have a business now in the residential real estate brokerage industry. So I compete with Compass and some big national brands that most of the listeners will know about. Chris: And that company's called App Properties right. Jerry: Yes, sir, it's called App Properties Christy's International Real Estate. So we kind of have a working on that. Chris: And I know you're kind of got the Dallas area covered, but I think you've also recently expanded into Austin. Jerry: Yeah, so we started in Dallas proper with our headquarters, and then we opened a second office in Frisco, texas, and then we just recently, in the fall of 2023, opened up Austin, texas. Chris: So you know, as a recovering attorney, what was it that inspired you to get into the residential brokerage real estate business? Jerry: So, interesting enough, you kind of know my history, but I founded a law firm when I was 28 and I grew that into about 60 lawyers in four cities. As the managing partner, I started doing a lot of deals for the partners as opposed to practicing law, and I went down several paths. I had a litigation support company that I founded and grew that for the partners and then, you know, ironically got into a real estate development a little startup where I had a home building division building spec homes and I had a commercial division where I was doing some commercial projects. Raw land development had a resort under contract in Bernie, but, like a lot of people in real estate, 2009, 2010 came and that was the end of my glory days in real estate. All right. Chris: So then, what led you to? You know, get involved with app properties and then take this down, go down this rabbit trail. Jerry: Sure. So in 2012, I sold my interest in the law firm back to the partnerships. I didn't want to go back to practicing full time and then did quite a few different entrepreneurial things from about 2013 to about 2019. Any you know, I had a credit card processing company, backed by the Jones family, called Blue Star Payments that merged in with a tech company and we rebranded Blue Star Sports. We were backed by some pretty large VC firms Bain Capital and GenStar partners and Providence Equity and then obviously, the Jones family. So we acquired about 27 companies in about three years and then we sold that company in 2017. Then I was kind of looking for the next thing and I became the chief business and legal officer for a Silicon Valley tech company for a couple of years. They were in a big money raise and it wasn't going so well and I was deferring comp. So I started looking at what I was going to do next. One of the people in my network is a ex litigation real estate litigator. She had gone on and got married, had kids, got a real estate license and had a brokerage here in Dallas and her model was she was going and convincing unhappy lawyers to get the real estate license. So she had about 10 agents slash attorneys as her brokerage and she approached me to come in and run her brokerage for kind of like I did the law firm. So that piqued my interest enough so we went down that path. Sadly we didn't get to execute our documentation because they ended up having a divorce situation. And then two weeks later COVID hits and so I'm waiting to take my real estate license and not sure what I'm going to do after that. Come out of the first 90 days of COVID, the market's red hot, so I hang my license, I start doing deals for my network friends and start marketing myself as an agent. All the meanwhile I'm looking for something to buy or to own or start, and so that led me through developer relationship here in Dallas to the ownership group of at properties out of Chicago. They made that introduction, flew up and met with them and really fell in love with not only the brand and the culture but also the technology that they had built. Chris: Amazing story. There's a lot to dive into there. I may definitely want to go back some, but let's stay with that properties for now. And yeah, so you that's a. It's born out of COVID, I guess. Tell us, though you know, because I know just from you, know keeping up with you and then reading on the website you've experienced some like amazing growth in the last, I guess, three and a half years. Let's talk a little bit about that. And in talking about what you've done that you think has helped accelerate it, let's talk also about the maybe the pains with growing so fast. Jerry: Sure. So as I was looking to own something and this opportunity came up, I negotiated to purchase, you know, the North Texas territory. But I wasn't really prepared to launch because it was just me and I hadn't done a whole lot of recruiting. But I had some real estate deals in the pipeline that I needed to leave the current brokerage I was at before I papered those up. So I ended up launching at properties by myself just one agent, and got temporary space and, you know, true entrepreneurial spirit started recruiting, putting in my support team, landed a pretty big compass team right out of the gate and that kind of helped accelerate the visibility. And so the first, you know, six months we grew to 10 agents by Christmas. So it wasn't, we weren't a big brokerage, but we were putting things in place. By the next year we were about just under 40 agents. So we had a really good, successful year and, you know, quadrupling our size and then last year 2023, we doubled again to about 80 agents in Dallas. So we've been kind of there's been some faster growth brokerages, but we're very we're considered more luxurious. Our agents are more high producing agents and they take a little longer to transfer from one brokerage to another based on their pipeline and their restrictions. So now that we're three and a half years into this and Austin's really kind of been a little bit of a catalyst in the last six months because initially that territory wasn't available there was a Christie's affiliate there my corporate partner asked me if I wanted Austin about a year and a half ago. I said yes and so I started putting the play pieces in place and we launched that in September. We've added quite a few agents in the first 120 days over 70 something agents there. So all in we got about a hundred agents in Dallas, about 70 in Austin. So that's the good side of the business. The headaches, as you know as an entrepreneur, are several and many. Too many to list, but we'll cover a few. My most recent success story is I just hired a controller after three and a half years. So I've been doing the books, reporting to corporate, paying the royalties, paying the checks, paying the agents. So those are the things. As an entrepreneur, you really you put your blood, sweat and tears into these businesses and then you have to get to a certain level, to where you could start to relieve yourself of some of these pains. Chris: Yeah, that's so true, jerry. A lot of the people that I've had on before say exactly that that it's one when you're starting out, you're not big enough to outsource it or to hire for it, so you got to do it. But then it's getting to that point when you even when you are big enough and can afford it the level of trust and hiring the right person to hand off those key aspects of the business, so it frees you up to do the things as an entrepreneur or the visionary you want to be doing. So let's talk about that. What was it that you think helps get to a level of trust and comfort that it's time to hand off and it's the right person to hand off to? Jerry: Yeah, I think, based on my background of being an entrepreneur, you make a lot of friends and you kind of know. You learn the hard way. You hire the wrong person a few times and then, as you get older and more seasoned, you kind of know what to look for. In this instance, with that properties, I hired somebody I'd known for 35 years to come in and be my director of agents. I've known her since the SMU days, so the trust was already built in and then you're just very selective as you add the pieces to the puzzle to get those right people in place. So in half years we've let one or two people go, but we've been pretty successful in hitting the mark. Chris: That's great. So 70 agents or so you said. Have you started to implement any kind of processes that help with the integration process as you bring in these new people, so they understand kind of what the expectations are, what the benefits are for making the move? I mean, so where are you and what's the process you've gone through to kind of make that more institutionalized? Jerry: So the background for at properties and the corporate support we have is pretty important in how we've gotten here. They're a 25 year brokerage. They're the eighth largest in the country before acquiring the Christie's affiliate network, so they kind of had the processes in place. So it's buying. Whenever you buy a franchise and you wanna go down this path, you kind of get a little bit of assistance from and some help along the way on someone else putting the right pieces in place. I think what we've done a great job is integrate and implement those things that they've brought to the table, which I think revolves around a lot of our culture. You know, I think culture is so important in any business you have and so it's just we have fun things called at love, local events that came from corporate. So we'll pick a merchant somewhere in our geographical area, we'll partner with them, we'll send out a marketing campaign. Let's say it's a coffee shop and then whoever shows up at that coffee shop, our agents are there and we're running a tap for a coffee or a Danish in the morning. So that's kind of the community outreach piece. We use the word love strategically in all our marketing. So we say bringing the love to Dallas, bringing the love to Frisco and those types of things. So you know, recruiting is probably once you get the, once you get your overhead stabilized and your office space and those types of things. This is a business about relationships and recruiting. So I would say our two most important people outside of myself are our head of recruiting out of Frisco, head of recruiting out of the Dallas office, and so those have been very good hires. Chris: You know most, I think most businesses. It's hard to say they're not people, businesses or relationship, but certainly you know in the business you're in, where you're so customer facing right, you need good people that can go out and attract good customers, provide good service. But I have to imagine the last 18 months or so in residential real estate hasn't been the easiest. So can you talk a little bit about what you've done to help continue, promote one, promote the culture, to keep people positive and energized while managing through what has to have been a challenging time? Jerry: Yeah, absolutely so. Obviously we're all aware of how hot the market got, you know, a couple of years ago, you know, during COVID and post COVID. What that did in our industry is everybody wanted a real estate license because they saw all these transactions happen. So we had an influx of agents that came in that are young, inexperienced, but were here to make some money. And then, when the market turns, you kind of have the reverse effect. Those people were all eat what you kill, or 10, 9, 9 commissioned agents. They got to figure out how to pay the bills, and so we've had a pretty big exodus. Probably 15 to 20% of our agents across the nation have left the industry, and so that's been good for the sense of the people staying in it because you got less competition. But the ones that stayed in it most of them, have been through some of these ebbs and flows of the market, and so they kind of know how to prepare. And most of that revolves around when your transaction desk is slower, what are you ramping up to do? Are you ramping up your marketing, your postcard, social media content, are you revamping your website? And so those are all things that we, which the agents that work for us and part of our big, strong sales pitch based on the technology that we have. Chris: Got you Speaking of that on the marketing side, you know, are you seeing? I guess, one area or the other as far as marketing strategy work better, get more visibility or more return on investment. You see so much on social media, so it seems natural that that would be one, but I don't know if that's the leading one based on your experience or not. Jerry: Yeah, I think in pretty much every industry has been affected by the internet and no industry more so than real estate. I would say probably 10 years ago you saw a lot of print ads. You saw a lot of ads and you know business journals and those types of things trying to move property. But now it's really a digital world. We're using social media, we're using tools called AdWords, which is a retargeting tool to where it's essentially like if you went and looked at a pair of shoes at Nordstroms and then you left Nordstroms, those shoes are following you around. So we have the ability to target, geo track and geo target potential prospects and clients through our technology. Obviously, websites are important. Your collaboration tools that you're preparing a search for a prospect, like they're looking in this area for a certain price point. We have the ability to set those searches up and work with a prospect or a client on finding the home, ironically in the last price. I don't know when this started, but in the last year or so, almost 85% of buyers find the home they want before they hire an agent, or at least they zero it down based on how much information is on the internet. And so, really, as an agent, what you're trying to do is bring your expertise not only to get that transaction under contract, but then most of the work happens one second transactions under contract all the way through closing. Chris: Right, that is an amazing statistic 85%, but you're right. I mean, when everyone goes to the internet first, I think, to research or validate or do something. So it makes sense to me, but it's a big number. Sounds like you know here you use your work, technology and innovation and stuff quite a bit already since we started the interview. Some of this may have come from your franchise or some may have come from some things You're doing, but what are some of the things you believe are innovative in the way that you're operating the brokerage and helping your agents be successful? Jerry: Sure. So I think when you start understanding what different brokerages bring to the table in regards to support for their agent portfolio. Obviously marketing is a big one because they're pushing all the stuff out that we're talking about, but also the day-to-day operation of an agent is pretty important. Most brokerages large brokerages like Coldwell, banker, some of your biggest national brands are very antiquated when it comes to technology support. I would say there's two brokerages at the forefront. I'd say Compass is in second place and I think App Properties is in first place. And I say that because we've been building a technology stack called Platform, or our franchise or has, since 2003 and basically an agent logs in and does everything they need to do as an agent in one technology. When I interview agents and I show them the technology, they're blown away because they're in four or five, six different technologies throughout the day trying to get their social media posted or created, their transactions done over here, their docuSigns another technology they have to use, and we have everything in one place, and so that's been a real big selling point for us when we're recruiting these agents. Chris: Yeah, I mean anything to make your employees or, in your case, I guess, your contractor's life easier. Have you started to look into, or is this already incorporating any kind of versions of AI? Jerry: AI is already integrated. Nowadays, agents are always doing, as an easy example, they're doing descriptions of the properties. So now you can lean on AI to help you describe a $5 million house with five bedrooms, six baths by describing it into AI, and then it'll help you create that luxury description. So there's things like that. Obviously, our CRM has a lot of AI tied to it and so, yeah, that's the way of the future and it's getting more and more integrated and implemented into all our tools. Very nice, very nice yeah. Chris: All right. So I want to make you kind of reflect back. So yeah, this about, by your own description, not the first time you kind of started a new venture or stepped outside your comfort zone. So when you think about what you did I guess leaving, you know, maybe leaving the law firm or even some of the ventures you started while you were there, but going to credit card processing et cetera where are some of the lessons you learn through those ventures that you think prepared you for taking the step you did without properties and the steps you're taking now to grow so rapidly? Jerry: Yeah, I think if you're a serial entrepreneur like myself, I think the one thing you learn each time that you have an idea or you go down the path of starting something is you think you're going to get to the finish line a lot easier. It's your idea and you think you're going to do that. And I think probably in every instance including the law firm, including the credit card processing is one lesson is it just takes a lot to probably 10 times, 100 times more man hours and work and you got hurdles. That you're not expecting. But I think that's part of the reward too is why I'm built the way I am. You enjoy that when an obstacle comes and you get your way around it or over it. But I think you know frankly, it's probably what every entrepreneur says it's never as easy as you think it is. There's no get rich. You know we talked about most of what we do as lawyers and what I'm doing is a people game. You know you're hiring people and people disappoint, you know, and you're having to find different people sometimes, and so the lesson is just pride and expect the unexpected and you'll be okay and be able to sleep at night. Chris: I like that. Well, think about, is there a kind of a challenge or a failure setback that you can point to over the last, you know, 15 years, 20 years, whatever that you feel is maybe in some ways either a defining moment for you or one of the bigger learning moments that you got? You kind of got hit with a little headwind but you overcame it and because of that it's kind of helped propel you either in your own personal journey as a leader or, you know, in things you learned as an entrepreneur. Jerry: Yeah, I'd say you know, probably the biggest lesson learned of all time was me starting a real estate development company with a home builder and a commercial partner and, you know, diving into that with not a whole lot of experience, and so the challenge was obviously, in real estate, you're hoping to build something and sell it, and so the big challenges is if you build it and you borrow a bunch of money and you don't sell it. And so in 0809, 2010 is probably should have been my premier happiest days of my life. I'm on a law firm, I'm making some good you know coin on the law firm side, but I'm literally getting dragged through the mud financially on the real estate piece, and it's probably one of the reasons it's taken me 10 years to get back into it on the brokerage side, because I literally came out of that was some financial PSD. You know just could not sleep, you know got I mean health issues, depression, pretty much everything you can experience as an entrepreneur and so you figure out a lot about yourself when you're going through something like that, and you know you either stay in bed and talk about it or you pull up your socks and get out and try it again. Chris: That internal fortitude, you know I think any entrepreneurs got to have that or it's just not going to happen. I appreciate you sharing that. Were there some things that you did? You know that you know other than just I mean pure gutted out. You know, to help you kind of get through that. You know, leaning on family friends, I don't know. I mean I have to believe we've got some listeners and other people out there that you're going through the same thing. Jerry: Sure, I think where I lucked out was, you know, just to be frank, I was on about $60 million and personally guaranteed debt that was worth probably about 30 by the time I was trying to get out of it. So there wasn't going to be any family help. It was. It was hey with you, you know, in a loving way, of course. But when you dig a hole like that, you just got to figure out the best way out. And for me, where I benefited was I had a law degree and I was a lawyer and creditors could not touch the ownership interest in my law firm because it was tied to my license. So, through bankruptcy lawyers and all that stuff, I got educated on that and gave me the strategy to get through that situation and come out on the other end, which was one of the reasons I sold the interest of the law firm back to the partners, because that allowed me to have a little bit of a stream of income there in 2012, 13 and 14, while I got the credit card processing company going and getting these other things going. So there was, if there was, a silver lining, it was that fact, but it was still still pretty embarrassing financially and pretty embarrassing as a professional to really go through that over a three or four year period. Chris: You got to be hard but, like I said, I mean now that you've come through it, you know you can certainly appreciate the opportunities you have today and know that. You know I certainly probably learned some lessons of what to not do, going forward right. Jerry: Absolutely, I would say. The one lesson you learn in that scenario is you become a lot more frugal with your financial decisions and you know, especially in the banking industry, like one thing I'm proud of with that properties is we've never bought a bar to dollar. We got zero debt, and so those that's a probably a direct result of what I went through, you know, 15 years ago was I don't want to do another business where I got a bunch of debt and I'm trying to get that off and make money to live off of. Chris: That's great. So you mentioned earlier I think it was a credit card processing BlueStar, where you had some dealings with Bain Capital, and obviously you're dealing with a franchise or in this current business. So let's talk a little bit about maybe what you've learned through that. I kind of relate or maybe call those you know investors, partners, strategic partners. What have you learned as kind of some of the best ways to deal with them so you keep that relationship strong and healthy? And maybe it's something you know that happened that you're like I did this or they did. You know something that happened that soured the relationship, one they got to help our clients here at the firm you know, you know find themselves in those situations all the time, and so I'm curious you know what you know, what lessons you've learned through that process? Jerry: Yeah, so I would say getting involved in. And so when we had the credit card processing company, it was pretty a pretty simple model. We were going out and you know recruiting or or you know we're trying to sell merchants, you know restaurants Anybody who ran a credit card was it was a prospective client approached by a group who had an idea of buying up these technology companies in the youth sports space. So like, if you sign your kid up for soccer, you're there's usually a form and at the end of that form, whether it be the YMCA or anywhere else, you're paying a fee for your child to play that on that soccer team. So the model we had was take the credit card processing that we had built our own API and those types of things and bake it into a technology and go buy these companies. And interestingly, it was about how do you flip the model from a EBITDA and a multiple perspective. So these tech companies that weren't that large of companies because they were kind of geographically located, running different types of youth sports camps or whatnot, they weren't sophisticated enough and they were usually outsourcing their credit card processing to stripe or squares or something like that. So we would acquire these companies and bake in our own processing and from an ownership perspective, then that would change the multiple for maybe two times to 12 times because you have that reoccurring revenue stream coming into your business model. I literally probably learned more over that. First, 12 to 20 per month as we were acquiring these companies, doing due diligence on them, and I was the chief legal officer of the company, so I was in charge of all the due diligence. So we acquired 20 something companies and I bet I did due diligence on about 300 over two years. But it was really cool because I got to see what investors and power players in the venture capital market, how they looked at things and it's there's not a lot of emotion, it's numbers on paper and it's how do we make, how do we do this to this group of businesses, and then how do we sell it and make money. All about the return on investment, right. Chris: Exactly so. It's a. Jerry: It's very cutthroat which some businesses are, some aren't, but it was a great learning experience. I'd like to say I probably learned more in that two to three years Dealing with those big VC firms and listening to those meetings and kind of running point on due diligence than I probably learned in any other aspect of my life. Now, that's so, but that's so. Chris: Let's turn it back a little bit to app properties specifically. I know you've recently launched a new sports and entertainment division Tell us about that. What's going on behind that and what are you trying to accomplish so in the real estate brokerage? Jerry: world. There's different ways to market yourself right, and a lot of that boils down to your experience of your agent portfolio, and so some real estate brokerages are residential, some may just be commercial, but on our side we have, we've accumulated some agents that allowed us to create these divisions because of their experience levels. So land and ranch is one division, and then sports and entertainment is another division, and basically there's some criteria that we've put in place before an agent can say they're part of that team or that division dealing with professional athletes or celebrities on a number of occasions, some of the qualifications, but essentially, when somebody's moving like a professional athlete or a celebrity, there's a lot of sensitivity to that, or there's a lot of urgency, there's a lot more moving pieces, and so that specific division has agents who are, you know, experts in helping that transaction or that client Get from point A to B and solve a lot of problems along the way how to move their cars, how to move their kids into new schools, you know everything that comes along with kind of that type of transaction, as opposed to someone just buying a house and selling a house. So are we going to see? Chris: Super Bowl ads anytime soon, if I can at homecom I could afford it. Jerry: No, that's the goal is. We're really good because of how the clients affiliate network has come into play for us. I don't know if we mentioned this before the call or on the call, but you know our corporate partner ended up buying the Christie's affiliate network, which is a network of independently owned brokerages around the world. I think we have 900 offices in 54 countries, about 35,000 agents, and the reason Christie's the auction house, christie's the family who's owned that brand and that company for two hundred years. They sold the app properties because of the technology and we've been for two years bringing a worldwide global powerhouse network together into the technology to share referrals and data and information, and so that's been one of the one of the real keys to some credibility for us. Very cool. Chris: I think you just launched something else, maybe in the last week. Developer services Tell us about that. Jerry: So so again, we all know there's developers out here but we're not sure there's developers out here building multifamily building, you know, developing neighborhoods, multi-use, and so for a brokerage our size to have the ability to provide those services was kind of hard. So we ended up meeting a group of people out of Austin who came from Storybill and for those listeners who've heard about Storybill, that's a multi-billion dollar developer who went, ran out of money last summer. But we ended up negotiating their entire creative team to come over to Christie, our Christie's, and create this development services division. So starting with the chief marketing officer all the way down to their website development team, their on-site sales, so we've got a team of about 12 of superstars and they really fell in love with the Christie's brand to kind of move from Storybill into our umbrella, to kind of push those services out. So that'll be a huge win for us. Chris: So, as you sit there running all this, what is it that kind of triggers for you that this is an opportunity that makes sense, because not everybody can see that, and so there are things you're looking for. How do you go about making that decision and taking on the risk? Jerry: Yeah, so risk is a little less scary in our business because most everybody who works for our brokerage is a 1099 contractor. So we really have a pretty lean machine when it comes to we're running this right now with about seven full-time employees, three offices, so you got overhead from an office space perspective, but really you're kind of it's kind of a lean business model, which is one of the things that attracted me to it. And then obviously you have to have the people to be able to promote these different levels of services. So I think the thing that's been lucky for us is one our relationship and our network in Dallas to help get it started. And then obviously the people we've been able to add at such a young infancy of a company have given us the credibility and the numbers are reflecting that. Chris: Gotcha. So before I don't want to wrap this up without talking a little bit just about you and your leadership style, let's talk. You know, how would you describe your leadership style? How do you think that's evolved over time based on the scars and other lessons learned? Jerry: You know you work at a law firm, so you know running a law firm is you got a lot of smart people, a lot of egos, a lot of staff, a lot of overhead, and so I learned a lot about you know the operational side of a business in that seat. And then I think my ownership style has probably changed completely since I left the law firm. I'm a lot more interested in the well-being of my employees, a lot more sensitive to the culture. I think. When you talk about people coming to work and going home, in my mindset now I want that to be a great experience. I kind of use the word experience a lot in the last couple of years for some reason, and I think it's just. My evolution is like everything in our lives is an experience and you can make it a good one or you can make it a bad one, and so I think my leadership style is I want every experience to be a good one. At the best I can make it. Obviously you're going to have your headaches and your issues pop up, but we have the music on in our offices every day. We have happy hours on Thursdays. We built bars in both of our offices in Dallas and Frisco, and then we're putting one in our location in Austin so that we can have happy hours with our agents and our clients and our prospects. We hold a lot of events and I think our interaction with the community and the philanthropic stuff that we're doing is really cool. So I think where I've gotten is you know I'm 54 now and you know I started that law firm at 28 and I had a whole different picture in my mind at 28, right Till 35, of what life was going to be for me, and now I'm kind of trying to enjoy it a lot more. Chris: I love that man. Happy for you. You know clearly you're on the right track and couldn't agree more about how important culture is to any company. And I think I've said similar to you. I think life is about experiences. I think they're only really down to learning experiences good experiences and learning experiences as though, rather than bad, just learn from them and don't repeat them. Jerry: Yeah exactly right. Chris: So let's turn a little bit on the personal side of things and not as serious. What was your first job? Jerry: First job, I was a clerk in a law firm. Chris: Okay. Jerry: I was working in law school. Okay, my first job in high school. Like most of us, I grew up in Missouri in a small town. I had a yard. You know service with my best friend and we had our lawn mowers in the back of his truck and we mowed yards. So that was probably my first experience as a having a job. There you go, and first is an entrepreneur was leaving a 250 person firm to start a law firm with two other guys and being 28 years old and that was pretty exciting. We had metal chairs and you know fold up conference room table and laid out of the movie. Chris: Love it. Well, I can relate to the a little bit to that, but definitely relate to the mowing yards. That's what buddy of mine and I did in high school. So you know good money then I guess. Okay, personal preference, tex-mex or barbecue? Well, that's a tough one Probably barbecue. All right. And if you could, take a 30 day sabbatical. Where would you go? What would you do? Jerry: You know, this is my two sons who are a senior and sophomore at University of Texas right now. They called a year ago about this time and said, dad, we're going to go to Japan. And I was like, okay, and they got on a plane, just the two of them went to Japan for three weeks and after hearing that I kind of want to do that. Chris: How cool is that. The two of us went and did it on their own. Jerry: They did it on their own, traveled around on trains and backpack and love it. They're experienced when they told the stories and went through the pictures. I mean it's just a really cool culture. I'd like to go experience that. Chris: Okay, jerry, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come on. It's hard to believe that you know I don't. I might add the numbers we met at SMU and, as undergraduates, went to law school together, so we had a lot of years together. So it's great to see where you are today and what you're doing. So proud of you. Jerry: Man. I appreciate that. And the same back at you. I followed you your whole career and super, super proud of you. What kind of legal person you are and lawyer and leader and everything you're about. So appreciate having me on and proud of you too, my man. Chris: All right, we'll do it again. We'll find a reason to do it again sometime soon. Awesome Sounds good. Special Guest: Jerry Mooty.

Want to help define the AI Engineer stack? >800 folks have weighed in on the top tools, communities and builders for the first State of AI Engineering survey, which we will present for the first time at next week's AI Engineer Summit. Join us online!This post had robust discussion on HN and Twitter.In October 2022, Robust Intelligence hosted an internal hackathon to play around with LLMs which led to the creation of two of the most important AI Engineering tools: LangChain

Key Takeaways • Everyone involved in wellness can have greater success by putting the patient/client first • Flip the script and ask the right questions to take back control over your healthcare • Stop deciding your healthcare solutions based solely on who takes your insurance   “You owe yourself the same questions, the same process, whether you're calling the chiro office, a massage therapist, or a personal trainer. Any of these things can be a solution for you if you take the reins back from them,” explains Jerry Durham, physical therapist and owner of The Client Experience Company. Today, Jerry joins host Andrew to talk about the healthcare solution and the importance of putting the focus back on finding out the patient's actual needs.   Everyone has different needs and there can be multiple potential solutions for similar health concerns. Unfortunately, the healthcare industry has the wrong focus most of the time, and when a patient calls the focus is entirely on scheduling, asking for insurance information, or selling something. In order to actually get to a true solution, you have to ask the right questions. Otherwise, you will end up wasting your time, money, and energy going to providers who cannot actually help. Asking the right questions to qualify a potential patient is also important on the provider's side otherwise you will end up scheduling someone who is a bad fit when that time could have been better spent on someone else.    Many healthcare workers are suffering from burnout, but this should not be an excuse for them to be unhelpful. If you call someone looking for a healthcare solution, you owe it to yourself to advocate for your health by asking the right questions. Ideally, the people answering the phone would ask the right questions of you, but if that does not happen then it is up to you to take back control.     Quotes • “We can have greater success in healthcare, in physiotherapy, in wellness, by focusing on the people we serve.” (3:40-3:48 | Jerry) • “Where this journey should really start for you is what you're looking at online, what you're reading, what questions you're asking, and what questions are asked of you from this so-called solution.” (11:34-11:48 | Jerry) • “You owe yourself the same questions, the same process, whether you're calling the chiro office, a massage therapist, or a personal trainer. Any of these things can be a solution for you if you take the reins back from them.” (31:13-31:29 | Jerry) • “Quit basing your health and wellness on if they take your insurance.” (47:06-47:09 | Jerry) Social Media   Links Connect with Jerry Durham: Website | https://www.clientexperiencecompany.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/jerrydurhampt/?hl=en Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/JerryDurhamPT/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/Jerry_DurhamPT?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor  LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-durham-5383711/   Connect with Physio Room:  Website | ​​https://physioroomco.com/  Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/physioroomco/ Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/physioroomco Andrew's Personal Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/dr.andrewfix/  Andrew's Personal Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/andrew.fix.9/   Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

主播：Jerry | 翩翩歌曲 : Hero今天依然是美国的大学系列节目。Jerry 在杜克大学学的是数学和经济双专业，已经两年了，见识了很多美国的教授。他将结合自己在杜克大学的学习经历，现身说法，跟大家聊聊，教授和学生之间的关系，在东西文化中的巨大不同（the big disparity）。*disparity /dɪˈspærəti/ n. 悬殊1. 美国的大学，本科生和教授是什么关系l close 亲密美国的大学的一个普遍目标，就是能创建一个 friendly environment（友好的环境），让教授和学生之间能更亲密（become closer）。为了能够provide opportunities（创造机会），让教授和学生能在教室之外可以interact（交流），美国很多大学会encourage students to grab lunch with professors（鼓励学生跟教授一起吃午餐）。在杜克大学，they have this system called Flunch. 并且， the university pays for the meal（学校报销餐费）。*interact /ˌɪntərˈækt/ v. 交流，互动*grab lunch 吃午饭Jerry has been on a few flunches with his professors. Jerry就和教授们吃过几次这样的午饭。Jerry对经济学更感兴趣，并且在经济学方面，考虑going to graduate school（读研究生），所以，he grabbed lunch with his economics professor（是和经济学的教授一起吃的午饭）。在餐桌上，教授聊的是：what he was working on all day（他整天都在研究什么）。一聊起自己热爱的研究，这位教授就变得super excited。这位经济学教授的研究关于carbon footprint（碳排放量）。他研究的出发点并非仅是环保，而是carbon footprint（碳排放量）对于modern factory production（现代工厂生产力）的影响，因为碳排量直接影响到consumers（消费者）和investors（投资者）如何view（看待）相关的工厂。像这种把环保因素考虑进去的投资，叫做ESG investing（环境、社会和治理投资）。Many companies are on a race to find ways to reduce carbon emission. 许多公司正在争相寻找减少碳排放的方法，因为，carbon footprint是很多公司能否招来投资的重要指标。*carbon /ˈkɑ:rbən/ n. 碳*footprint /ˈfʊtprɪnt/ n. 脚印*carbon footprint 碳排放*emission /ɪˈmɪʃ(ə)n/ n. 排放除此以外，这位教授还有一个非常amazing and creative的研究。他发现，非洲的大象和某种树的相互作用，可以decreased carbon level（降低碳含量）。所以，他试图将大象对碳排量的影响和企业减低碳排量结合起来。*decrease /dɪˈkri:s/ v. （使）减少，（使）降低l flexible灵活(1) 学生上课灵活。在美国的大学，上课不叫go to the class, 而是go to the lectures。Jerry甚至说，“You don't have to go to any lectures”（不用去听课）。教授上课也不会take attendance（点名）。他们根本就不care if you don't show up to class，你只要do great on the exams and projects（考试考好，项目做好）就可以了。Jerry身边还真有这样的同学。这位同学，很不喜欢某位教授的课，所以，he chose not to show up to the lectures at all（不去上课），除非是有exams。He did great and got good grades.（但他考试成绩很好。）(2) 教授上课灵活。Professors don't really stick to a schedule.教授不会严格按时间表/课程表来上课。比如，Jerry的教授有一次就说：“I don't feel like teaching today. I will talk to you guys about my past research.” 今天不想讲课，想跟大家聊聊自己的上一项研究。并且还说，“Any students who didn't want to listen may leave now.”不想听的学生可以回去啦。*stick to 遵守*schedule /ˈskedʒu:l/ n. 时间表；课程表他一说完，就有around 10% of the students left the lecture hall（10%的学生就会离开），但教授并不会觉得尴尬。学生听着有不对的地方，可以challenge the professors（可以直接反驳）。教授们并不会生气。相反地，they really appreciate it and love get some students involved. 教授们非常喜欢能听到学生不一样的声音，希望学生能参与到讨论中。尽管教授有时don't really stick to a schedule，但everyone really respects them。教授们想跟学生on an equal level（平等），让自己更加approachable（容易亲近）。*approachable /əˈproʊtʃəbl/ adj. 可亲近的；可接近的2. 美国的大学，研究生和教授是什么关系首先要说明的是，most top graduate schools in America are free! 美国的大多数顶级研究生院都是免费的！不仅不用交tuition（学费），而且，研究生还可以serve as teacher assistant (TA) （做助教），grade homework for few undergraduate classes（给本科生批作业）等，可以get around $40,000 of stipend（得到4万美金的津贴）。而且，像高昂的housing insurance，学校也会免费提供。但亚洲的很多研究生院，学生就会很惨，要给导师干活，甚至sometimes many professors take your credit（有时候很多教授会抢你的功劳）。*tuition /tuˈɪʃn/ n. 学费*assistant /əˈsɪstənt/ n. 助理*undergraduate /ˌʌndərˈɡrædʒuət/ n. 本科生*stipend /ˈstaɪpend/ 助学津贴*take one's credit 抢……的功劳在美国，教授对于研究生来说，不是老师，不是老板，是supervisor（导师）的角色。They never teach you something directly.导师并不是直接教你知识。而更多的是give you the general direction（给你指引方向），告诉你该找谁去帮忙。所以，graduate school in America is more like an independent journey（在美国，研究生更像是进行独立的旅程）, 在你自己喜欢的领域里探索。*independent /ˌɪndɪˈpendənt/ 独立的欢迎留言告诉我们：你们在大学时，跟你们的professors都有什么样的故事呢？读研究生的朋友，你们跟supervisors都是什么样的关系呢？

Jerry Hoepner, a faculty member in the department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, interviewed six very bright students about their experiences at the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit. Today, Dr. Hoepner is joined by Robin Pollens, from Western Michigan University to discuss their contributions and chat about student learning. So, get ready to kick back and enjoy these fabulous conversations.   As the title implies, we heard from six students from Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, and California. They all attended the 2021 Aphasia Access Leadership Summit. Today, they will share a bit about their experiences and highlight why it is so important to engage students in Aphasia Access and teach them about the LPAA. I am joined by Robin Pollens, who many of you know as a wise teacher and mentor. She shares her perspectives on teaching and mentoring LPAA and some of the lessons she has learned from students. You're in for a treat! Abby Joski is a first-year graduate student at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire who served as a student ambassador at the Leadership Summit. She has served as a student clinician for the Blugold Aphasia Group and Chippewa Valley Aphasia Group.  Summer Marske is an undergraduate student, senior, at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire who also served as a student ambassador at the Leadership Summit. She helped compose many of the daily summaries at the summit.  Raveena Birdie is now a clinical fellow, formerly a graduate student at Cal State East Bay under the mentorship of Ellen Bernstein-Ellis. She and her peers gave a wonderful presentation on aphasia choirs and were awarded the inaugural Aphasia Access Student Presentation Award.  Nick Malendowski is a student at Central Michigan University who participated in the Strong Story Lab and collaborated on a project with Dr. Katie Strong and Dr. Jackie Hinkley on stakeholder engaged research.  Brandon Nguy is an undergraduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, mentored by Dr. Will Evans. Brandon gave a wonderful presentation on a scoping review of gender representation in aphasia research at the summit.  Clarisse El Khouri Faieta is a graduate student at Nova Southeastern University. She collaborated on a project with Dr. Jackie Hinkley and Dr. Katie Strong within the Project Bridge program on stakeholder engaged research.  We know that there are many more student voices and we value each and every one of them. For now, listen in on these fantastic students and you can refer to interview transcripts to see their wonderful definitions of the LPAA highlighted in yellow within the transcript.  Take aways: Learn from Robin Pollens examples of teaching and mentorship in the LPAA. Be buoyed by the hope inspired by this next generation of LPAA practitioners. Consider why it is so important to offer learning opportunities like the Leadership Summit, other Aphasia Access resources, and teaching/mentorship in LPAA principles.  Be inspired by the knowledge, insights, and accomplishments of future LPAA practitioners represented within this podcast, knowing that you have great next generation practitioners learning from each of you, at your universities, aphasia groups, and aphasia programming.  You are all teachers whether you are a professor, a group leader, a clinical supervisor, a partner of someone with aphasia, or a person with aphasia. Our students are forever grateful.  Interview Transcripts:  Robin Pollens' segment Jerry Hoepner: Hi Robin, so good to see you today. Robin Pollens: Good to see you today, Jerry. Jerry: Yeah, happy to have a conversation about student learning with you, as I know, that's something that's really important to you and your previous work has certainly inspired me in terms of mentoring, students and teaching students so, really, a pleasure to have this conversation. Robin: Thank you, I'm glad to be here. Jerry: So, I proposed a couple of big questions to you about our student experiences at the aphasia access leadership summit and thought, maybe that would be a good way to start you know the fall semester talking about student learning and mentoring students in the LPAA. So, I'm going to start you with the first big question which is from your perspective, why is it so important to teach and mentor students in the LPAA approach? Robin: I think a couple reasons. I think this is just the direction our field, thankfully, has moved into, not just for aphasia but, hopefully in general, where we no longer are thinking about what we're doing is just changing. Their speech in the room that they're in with us, but they were really thinking about it more holistically and how it impacts their life and students, I think they appreciate taking that approach once they get the hang of it, and I find that if we give them the tools to help them think about the bigger picture of somebody communication they get it right away, and if we start them out in the beginning of their clinical skill development. Thinking about people's impairment level and their participation level and their barriers in their environments, the wonderful World Health Organization, I see a framework that is thankfully part of our field now. If we model there for them right in the beginning and structure how they're thinking about meeting new clients, they can do it in a way. I feel like we ask a lot of the students because they're brand new and they're having to just think about how you say something to them, and you try to have them do something back and you write down what they're doing, and you keep track of a goal. I mean it's a lot of nitty gritty part of just doing therapy and yet we're asking them at the same time to think of a bigger picture. Jerry: I'm so glad you started with that because I think you're right, it's easy to get kind of hung up on the building blocks of what speech therapy is right with. You've got to understand what the person's impairments are and then you got to understand what the assessment tools are and how to deliver those and then think about the intervention pieces and thinking more broadly, from the start is a good place to begin right as, or I would say begin with the end in mind right, so thinking of that bigger picture, so I bet you have some personal experiences of how kind of that plays out in a in a learning context. Robin: Yeah, I have. I have several semesters that the end of the time had the students write a reflection thinking about the therapy that they just did and I framed it, I went back to the original LPAA statement back in 2000 where they were talking about how the clinician role is expanded beyond that of being a teacher or a therapist but they're also being a communication partner. To help them engage in conversation about their goals and their concerns as one thing, and the second new role is being a culture problem solver. So, if I provide that framework, these are the two different kinds of roles, you may have done, think about what you did this semester, how does it fit in? I find that the students get it that they're able to write down ways that their involvement in conversational interaction led to meaningful ideas, as well as how they ended up being a coach and a problem solver. It's interesting how we have to give them permission, in a way to just have conversation that that's an important thing it's not getting away from therapy that it's actually a part of therapy, so I'll just give you one example, one person was saying that when they were talking throughout the Semester. She was discussing all the barriers that the stroke could place and her ability to physically do her activities to do her work to do her, cooking things like that, and her concerns about coven and how that was impacting her ability to be with your family. And the same person later in terms of the problem solving and the coaching she said that the person was having trouble writing checks, and so it led to a new therapy goal of having a developing a format, where she would be able to write checks so from the conversation of meaningful life exchange comes real participation goals. And again, I believe that if we frame this from the beginning that this is what we're ever intention, I have found that the students are able to realize that that's actually what they're doing. Jerry: But that's just a really elegant eloquent way of connecting the importance of real conversation and investing time in that not thinking it's something different than therapy, but as a part of therapy and as a really crucial part of therapy to get at things that matter to that individual your examples were just spot on with if you approach that in a traditional manner, you might never have known those things even happened to that individual correct. Robin: Now I'd like to add one more thing on this part. Jerry, I think, using the life participation approach to a facial or any therapy makes for more meaningful work life. I think that the students, all of us if we're engaging this kind of work, we see the impact of our efforts, we receive from the clients from the patients from the people with aphasia we receive from them. The kind of relationship centered care interaction and it makes it so that I can then say to the students see how what a wonderful field you're engaging in it's so meaningful and they do by the end often. I'm sure all students do whether you're teaching for LPAA, our students at the end kind of feel sad or some connection when they're finishing up with their clients, I mean we all do, but I think if you have this kind of approach it adds to the possibility that that will happen for the students, and I like to model that awesome. Jerry: Yeah, such an important piece, and I think it does make it, you know, make therapy more rewarding and invaluable to us as well, makes our everyday work more rewarding just doing something that has a lasting effect on that person's life. I remember my very first. From well my clinical externship supervisor always asked me at the end of each day to reflect on what I did that really made a difference in that person's life, and it was a hard thing to do, initially when you're like I spent 15 minutes with this person feeding them, I know. But it's a really important self-check to think about what you're doing, is it really making a meaningful impact and all of those things can, if you set them up the right way and if you go into that intentionally as you're describing. Robin: I like that Jerry, never thought of it in those terms, but I've carried that with me to now. Jerry: But it's certainly been a lesson for me, and we've spoken to my mentor in a previous podcast, Mary Beth Clark, and that's always an impression that she has left on me to be sure. So, additional thoughts that you have about the importance of teaching LPAA or should we talk a little bit about experiential learning and what students gain from that type of a of an approach. Robin: Yeah, I think we can move on to the other topic. LPAA, what we haven't spoken about is the importance in the impact for the clients for people but that's not what this is all about so yeah, I think we could talk a little bit about that other topic about the hands-on experience. And I know there's all different kinds of hands-on experiences, ranging from full immersion, your wonderful aphasia camps that you do, I mean how much more hands on full can you have done that but there's lots of ways in between, also where the person has some awareness and understanding of how they aphasia is impacting them in their daily life. I was just reading back when I knew I was going to be speaking with you today one of the students' reflections and this was a student that. Clearly, had understood LPAA and had worked with a young man who's in his 30s have a stroke and aphasia clearly knew that the students wanted to return to work. And so, the therapy goals were very directed at work related skills very, very clearly. It wasn't until the very last week we had an a day which was like a semester day and all the clients were to go there and all the students and each of the groups had something the newsletter group printed the newsletter in the music group led some singing and it was you know, an interactive day and this student wrote in her reflection that she realized that that the client was off to the side of the room by himself and she went and spoke with them and found out he had anxiety about being with other people. And what she realized is even though she knew about her client's ability to interact based on his communication disorder. And she knew about his absence of physical barriers to participating she had no idea that he had some other emotional barriers that were limiting his ability to participate, so it really wasn't until she had an opportunity to see him in an actual hands on type of an activity that she appreciated the fuller sense of what was challenging to him and had a sense of she had known this there might have been an additional focus of a therapy. But still, for her we're thinking about students, it was a valuable lesson oh. What can happen in us with people in in a natural type of environment. Jerry: Yeah, I think that emphasizes the reason that we do things in in natural environments and environments that that person needs to communicate in because those are one of those moments, you could never predict come up and you have the opportunity to address them. I mean that's a big lesson that we've had at aphasia camp, you know when you're seeing someone from 6:30 in the morning till 10:30 at night there's a lot of things that happen, and you know you. Experiences you wouldn't have right walking to the restroom with someone or you know after they're exhausted after an activity right Those are the kinds of things that you wouldn't experience, unless you had that opportunity to interact with them, and in that authentic context so yeah so important. Were there other thoughts, you were thinking about in terms of hands-on learning. Robin: I was, I was thinking of an example of again because everybody all different university programs don't have the opportunity to do some more extensive types of in person hands on but many people are doing in groups, and so I was thinking back to a poster that several of students did for our state conference when I hear them think about, they lead living with aphasia groups couple different kinds. One focused on the clients might have to know more about aphasia the other one had to do with how it is impacting their life, what happens when they go the store what happens with their family so different kinds of living with aphasia groups. And then afterwards I had them, I asked them a question kind of like Jerry what you asked to your students in this I after the face to access it was a pretty open-ended question, I just asked them how to facilitating a living with aphasia group impact you. And they answered. And I went and looked up somebody your Yo and Yah published an analysis of learning outcomes from service-learning experiences. And came up with three themes and I realized wow I think having them lead the living with aphasia group was like a service learning. With this paradigm, and so some of the things that came up with one of the themes, has to do with cognitive development. And so, he asked the student said they learned how to use alternative modalities and learn how to teach word fangs strategies so Those are the things you'd hope they learn from any speech communication to ask. But they also said, one person said it helped me learn how to effectively navigate difficult emotions. And then, one of the other themes is understanding social issues and the student wrote this increase my sense of advocacy seeing how strong and determine these people are and how hard they work to communicate was incredible. And the third thing that you're going you talked about was personal insight and so they said things like wow some of my problems seem insignificant in comparison to what my clients deal with day to day, so there were all these layers of understanding and insight that the students learned other than the speech therapy tasks skills. And I think that um in terms of growing student clinicians I think that are those are helpful. Jerry: Absolutely and those are the same kinds of outcomes that we're seeing with camps, I think, whenever you have that opportunity to have that authentic and on experience in groups are a great example of where to get that to learn about the lived experience to learn about. Using strategies directly within a real context and so forth. yeah, that's the place to do it and it's interesting how consistent those outcomes are across those types of experiences so really powerful. So, Robin you've been so good as to listen to some segments from students who participated in this past year's Aphasia Access Leadership Summit and you got to hear some of the wonderful things that those students shared in terms of their understanding of the LPAA perspective and the projects that they were involved in that they presented at the summit. So, I know I'm really anxious to listen to those students' stories and to kind of hear some of your thoughts along the way. My big takeaway and listening to these students is that the future is bright, their understanding of the importance of the LPAA framework is really solid. And their definitions could be right there in any textbook. Robin: I think you should gather up those definitions and put them somewhere, I think that was great at how to take this big concept and place it into a sentence. Jerry: Yeah, they sure did a remarkable job, so let's spend a little bit of time listening to them and enjoying the next generation of students. Robin: Okay, thank you, yep.   Abby Joski's segment Jerry: Okay well hi, Abby. Thank you for joining us for this conversation really excited to talk with you about the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit and your experiences there. Abby Joski: Yeah absolutely. Thanks for asking me to join. Jerry: Absolutely. So, I thought I'd start with just finding out how you would describe the life participation approach. Abby Joski: Yeah, so this is- I took an aphasia course this past semester, and that was the first I've ever heard about it and I'm a huge fan of it personally, because it does take all the different aspects of the person into consideration when doing an aphasia intervention, instead of looking at just their language and how to fix that. It's also keeping in mind the things they enjoy doing their identity, their family members and it incorporates it all into a really holistic approach to aphasia. Jerry: Terrific so tell me a little bit about how you got involved in the Leadership Summit? Abby Joski: Yeah well, I'm really glad I did. I'm a GA through our CSD department, and so I got an email from I'm pretty sure you Dr. Hoepner that you're asking for students to volunteer to be ambassadors and at first, I was really kind of hesitant to do it because it sounded like such a big deal, it's such as huge Conference, and it was intimidating to a student but getting into it and learning about like the the Board of Directors and all the people putting it together. They were so welcoming and so nice and so they really took us students in and made sure that while we were volunteering to help, we also got a lot of really great experiences out of it. Jerry: Oh, that's great to hear, can you share a little bit about your experience? Abby Joski: Yeah definitely. So, my biggest role was I would attend the sessions and write in a in an friendly way. A newsletter for the day to catch up, maybe people who missed the sessions, or who want to kind of jog their memory about what that particular segment was about. So I really didn't have a lot of interactions with the Community Members with aphasia as much as I did with the people organizing the event but still the communication was really great and while I was watching. These different sessions and presentations just their interactions with the Community and the questions that came up from the people with aphasia, it was a really great community that I got to observe and be a little bit of a part of. Jerry: Terrific. Do you have a favorite moment from the summit? Abby Joski: I was there for the closing part. Oh hang on a sec, I got to remember her name. Can pause for a second here? Who is the woman oh Audrey Holland, yes. So my favorite part of the whole conference is at the very end where Audrey Holland came on to give some final remarks. Really send us out with some words of wisdom some inspirations and she really just opened the floor to questions. She's like, “Well what kind of questions do you have? Let's hear them.” And so, even then she really wanted to make sure that she wasn't lecturing as she wanted the Community to be a huge part of even this ending wrapping everything up making sure there are no final questions. So, I think that really speaks to how interactive and how supportive this whole process organization and community is. Jerry: Terrific, I couldn't agree more. Was there something in specific or something specific that you learned that you'll use in the future? Abby Joski: Yeah, what I know is really reiterated by so many of the sessions is that people with aphasia they are experts at aphasia at their life and we can't ignore that in being SLPs. So, whether it's the intervention process or assessment, they need to be a part of that and so collaborating with them, their family, and really making those goals functional to them needs to be the focus of everything we do. Jerry: Absolutely, those are great lessons to take away for sure. Why should other students get involved in Aphasia Access? Abby Joski: Well, I think, with Aphasia Access as a student there's so many different ways you can be involved in it, so you don't need to be just writing newsletters you can also be the person directing people to where they need to be. You know this year was a little bit different over Zoom, but as students, we do have the tech skills that we can bring to the table. But yeah, with students so much of what we learn is out of textbooks in class and very few of us have those real life opportunities to apply our skills and our knowledge, so I think it's just another opportunity where we can get involved and meet people with aphasia so that can just better give us tools and experiences and knowledge to help them and grow. Jerry: Yeah, that's terrific. Anything else you want to share about your experience? Abby Joski: Just some more students to do it. Jerry: Okay terrific. Well, thank you again Abby for having this conversation and hope to see you at another Aphasia Access in the future. Abby Joski: Yeah, absolutely. That'd be great. Abby Joski: Yeah absolutely. I do really appreciate it, Dr. Hoepner. You bring this like opportunity to students' attention and really bring us in and making us feel welcome. Even looking back at that very first meeting, where it was you, and like the big names of this conference I didn't feel out of place, and so I think that just speaks to how nice and welcoming everyone knows Jerry: That's terrific. Yeah, I'm always thrilled to have these opportunities. When I was just a new clinician and just getting started I had great mentors who connected with me with people like Audrey Holland and Roberta Elman and I just kind of thought it was something that everyone got to do so, I think it's just a great way to kind of level the playing field and see that you know, these people are regular human beings, like all of us, and we can approach them and we can collaborate with them all of those things. So glad I could share the opportunity. Abby Joski: Yeah, and if it's back in person next year I would love to make it. Jerry: Very cool.   Raveena Birdee's segment  Jerry Hoepner: Hi, Raveena. Good to see you today. Raveena Birdee: Hi, Dr. Hoepner, very good to see you. Thank you for having me. Jerry Hoepner: You are welcome. Nice to see you again after the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit. I'm happy to talk to you today about your experience at the Summit I'm wondering if we can start out by me asking you how you would describe the Life Participation Approach. Raveena Birdee: Excellent question and something that over my years as a graduate student and now as a clinical fellow I've thought a lot about and I think to me life participation approach, excuse me, is about making sure that a person with aphasia or someone with any kind of communication deficit feels like they can be connected to the things that they enjoy doing. You know if someone really enjoys gardening and they had a gardening club. How can we as speech therapists facilitate that for them, how can we be that bridge of supportive communication for them. So, to me, I think participate participation approach is about just making sure that the clients that we work with have access to the things that they enjoy doing. It's a huge change in we're lucky enough to be a support system for them and also teach their communication partners how best to communicate with them, I feel like that's such a huge part of what we do, yeah. Jerry Hoepner: I think that's a great point. That's a terrific description and I know there's a lot of people in Aphasia Access that will be excited to hear these fabulous definitions that students are providing and no longer a student now clinical fellow so I'm excited to talk about your experience at the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved? I know you did a presentation and I know that went pretty well but tell us your story.   Raveena Birdee: Absolutely it did go very well and I think the Committee and I think everybody who made it possible, it was such a wonderful opportunity for us as a team. I was a graduate student at CSU East Bay and my mentor Ellen Bernstein Ellis, she told us about this opportunity and us being the aphasia tones choir team it's easy to East Bay. And she said, you know there's this really wonderful opportunity with aphasia access and we had heard of Aphasia Access, I think we are all you know, we really had our head in the books. I was, I think, studying for my comprehensive exams at the time. And so we thought, “Sure like we'll try we'll put something together that we're proud of” and that we feel like can be of help and if they want the student perspective we're more than happy to share, and you know meet some people and see what we can try to do and when we got accepted it was like such a party for us wow I didn't think we could do this, so it felt like just one really exciting step after the other yeah. Jerry Hoepner: That's terrific, can you tell us a little tidbit or kind of elevator pitch, excuse me, about your presentation at the summit. Raveena Birdee: Absolutely, and so I previously was something called Co-Director for the Aphasia Tones, which is a choir and aphasia choir for people with aphasia and this started at CSU East Bay about 11 years ago now, so it's acquired with a long-standing history and usually, you know, pre-covid, we would meet in person. We had about 25 to 30 members, and this is a part of a larger aphasia treatment program at CSU East Bay, so the choir is a small part of it but it was one of our most loved programs. It was so exciting to be a part of it was just wonderful to be in the same room together and making music and providing those communications supports and really making our Members feel seen and feel a part of a community and when covid hit, you know, for everyone life really just stopped and the choir team, which consisted of me and then my teammates Lucy and Megan Cleopatra and Christy, we thought how can we keep this going online? How can we figure this out via Zoom? And so, the presentation was all about us figuring out how to do an online aphasia choir and it was very tricky and we ended up observing a virtual connections choir session and that really helped guide us and also shout out to Dr. Tom Sather for giving us some guidelines. And so, we really took some of those guidelines and then we transitioned Aphasia Tones online and the presentation. I don't want to get too technical about it now I suppose, but it was very much about what are the technical tips and tricks to run and aphasia choir what are our core purposes, what are the principles that guide us? Is it learning something new, is it communities that engagement and it ended up being about all of it it's all important and the connection, I think the most important thing that connection between us and our Members with each other. The last thing I'll say about it is that and it was such a wonderful experience to do Aphasia Tones online, because I feel like our members and people with aphasia are already potentially socially isolated because of aphasia and because of those barriers to communication, and so it was an honor for us to be able to bring together our little community in a time of extreme social isolation during the covid pandemic and I think that was one of the best experiences of my whole graduate career just to have that and then present at Aphasia Access. It was wonderful. Jerry Hoepner: That's terrific. It's clear that you were really intentional and thoughtful about the process and that you had great mentorship like you said and that resulted in you receiving you and your team receiving the first Aphasia Access Student Award which was really exciting to be a part of so kudos to you and your team. I did get to see you in action a little bit as I joined one of your group meetings, one of your patient group meetings, and that was fabulous so it's clear you have a lot of investment in this. Raveena Birdee: Thank you, and I mean truly thank you to Aphasia Access. Thank you to you for that wonderful award we had no idea during the Leadership Summit, we had no idea what was happening in regards to the award and we were all just so grateful and so thankful, and I do want to be or not want to be necessarily, but I do want to say thank you for coming to Aphasia Tones rehearsal and I would like to give Dr. Hoepner a huge shout out because during the service this is still in the beginning stages of when we were still really perfecting the process and we were doing something called a call and response, and my group members, we had broken out into a small breakout room and I, I asked my group members if any of them wanted to sing a particular stanza and I think they were all feeling shy, and it was a new format, and so I called on Dr. Hoepner to sing a little bit of a song in front of you know 10 or so people and he did it so well, and I'll never forget that moment. It was so special. So, thank you, Dr. Hoepner. Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely, you're welcome. Always willing to help out, but the listeners couldn't hear that I was laughing because I muted my MIC for just a moment but yeah that was that was a good moment for sure. Do you have a favorite moment from the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit you want to share? It might have already been talked about but go ahead. Raveena Birdee: That is a good question because the good thing about the Summit is that it was a week long and I was just beginning my Clinical Fellowship. I'm currently a clinical fellow in the Oakland School District here in California and so I was working full time and then kind of popping into the Summit as I could but what was really nice about is that everything's recorded, and so I found myself when I had some more time to go back and listen to the prerecorded session or go back and look at the posters because I found that while I was really enjoying kind of popping into different breakout rooms and seeing and hearing people talk about their field and the amazing minds that were at this conference, you know as a student you hear these names and then being able to see them talk about their craft is so wonderful but I think my favorite part was hearing oh goodness it was Dr. Ellis and he was talking he was speaking about disparities in health care and, as a young person of color in this SLP field, that was something that was really, really interesting to me and it's a talk that I've kind of gone back to a couple of times on the recording on YouTube just to try to wrap my head around it. That was a really, really cool really cool talk. Jerry Hoepner: I've gotta agree and I, like you, I've gone back to that a couple of times, in addition to the live stream, because just such an important and powerful presentation so yeah completely agree. So, in addition to that, what's something from the summit that you learn that you'll use in your future? Raveena Birdee: Oh, goodness let haven't died um it's such a good experience, I mean I think it's I'm in a kind of an interesting place right now, because I really thought I would be working with adults in that population and working with people with aphasia for my clinical fellow fellowship, excuse me, but you know I ended up going in a different direction, and so now and working with elementary school children it's really interesting to me to see how the- trying to think of how to phrase this - but the principles that we use for different kinds of therapy apply everywhere. Yeah a lot of times I end up speaking a lot to parents about how to support their child's communication and it's not just direct therapy with my client but it's therapy and consultation and materials and assessing the environment and figuring out how to best connect my client with the things that are enjoyable to them, and I feel like that's life participation in a nutshell, of how do we, how do we make this functional, how do we make this work so that they're able- my client can feel comfortable and do the things that they want to do.   Jerry Hoepner: Raveena I'm so glad you said that and just a great opportunity, as we think about you know, the role of Aphasia Access in the life participation approach for other students and for other professionals, for that matter, it is a very universal principle and you can draw upon its kind of regardless of what setting you're in. Those are the priorities of helping another human being, through difficult time so really well said, and a great connection. So, with that in mind, that's a perfect segue to my final question for you, which is why should other students get to get involved in Aphasia Access? Raveena Birdee: Oh, I have lots of reasons why there are so many resources at Aphasia Access and even if you think that you'll be only working with children are only working with a specific population. Our field is so huge that there are so many different ways to interact with our clients like you were just saying and the other thing I think is so important is that, as a student we hear all of these names, we hear about these publications, we hear about people at other universities you know, doing research which is so important in our field and making these publications and giving these talks, and you know, giving really great evidence based practice, and you know changing our field, and I feel like Aphasia Access does such a great job of putting these people together, and I feel like for a student to kind of see what is happening currently in the field and then where we can go and how we can also further the field, because I feel like sometimes our jobs can be a little bit isolating even though all we do is talk about communication and connecting with people, but I think it's important for us as speech pathologists to connect within our field as well and I would also like to shout up Elena Bernstein Ellis who she gifted me with a membership to Aphasia Access when I graduated. It was just the sweetest and kindest and you know just very, very sweet thing that she did, and I appreciate it every day because I get those emails from Aphasia Access and even if I don't have the time in one particular day to like really look at the email or really look at the events coming up, they're in the back of my head and there's still something that I'm like, “Oh that's interesting I should look into that” and I feel like a long winded way of saying Aphasia Access is such a good way to keep on furthering ourselves in the field and not saying staying stagnant like there's so much out there and now we have the access to free dissipated is what I'm saying. Jerry Hoepner: Well, what a what a great takeaway or takeaways I should say for students and I gotta agree Ellen is one of the kindest people out there, so really a good shout out there. It's been fun talking, anything else you want to share before we end our conversation today? Raveena Birdee: Just that I am so grateful for this opportunity and I wanted to thank everybody at Aphasia Access and everyone who made the Leadership Summit possible it was again just such a great experience, one of the greatest experiences so far in my career and you know I want to speak for the Aphasia Tones as a team and say that we were all grateful for the opportunity and it was yeah it was just such a great experience and I highly encourage other students to get involved and see what's out there, I think sometimes as students, we feel like we just don't know enough yet, but these are the opportunities for us to learn to do it from such distinguished people like Dr. Hoepner. Never in a million years would I think I'd be sitting down with a one-on-one conversation with you. So, again just the opportunity is great you guys everyone really inspires us as students to keep learning and I think that's the biggest thing. Jerry Hoepner: Well, the future is certainly looking bright with all of you new students and now professionals out there, so thank you again, Raveena, have a terrific day. Raveena Birdee: Thank you, you too.   Summer Marske's segment  Jerry: Hi, Summer. How are you doing today? Summer Marske: Good, how are you doing? Jerry: I'm doing really well. I'm excited to talk about the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit and your experiences there. Summer Marske: Yeah, happy to share. Jerry: Say, I have a question for you. How would you describe the Life Participation Approach? Summer Marske: So, the Life Participation Approach I kind of see it as kind of a way to help patients with aphasia get back to doing the things that they love and focusing on things that are meaningful and functional. So basically, prioritizing their life goals and maybe that means incorporating their family members or changing their environment, to help make that possible. Jerry: That sounds terrific. That's a great description. Jerry: So, can you tell me a little bit about how you got involved in the 2021 Aphasia Access Leadership Summit? Summer Marske: Yeah, so I participated as a student Ambassador so basically what that means is I attended the presentations and then I collaborated with the other student ambassadors and we wrote newsletters after each session, which would be then later sent out the next day for the attendees to look through. Jerry: Very cool and I know that people really appreciated those daily updates and recap so thank you for your yeah, thank you for your contributions there. Do you have like a favorite moment from the summit that you want to talk about. Summer Marske: Yeah, so two things kind of come to mind, one of them was Gather Town, which was the virtual conventions ending and that was really cool to be a part of because I got to see and interact and watch different connections get formed between professionals from different parts of the world and I also really enjoyed the yoga session. I myself really like yoga so that was cool to hear from a stroke survivor and see how yoga played an important role in his post stroke aphasia recovery. Jerry: Absolutely That was really cool to see that directly from him agreed and the whole team did a really remarkable job kind of walking through the yoga together. That was pretty helpful in the moment as well in the middle of a conference where we're sitting a lot, so that's terrific. So, what was something that you learned at the Summit that you will kind of take and use in your future? Summer Marske: Yeah, one thing in particular that sticks out to me was the presentation on health care disparities and aphasia and all the different factors that go into stroke and aphasia outcomes. Having this knowledge will be useful in working as an SLP because I'll be treating a variety of culturally and linguistically diverse patients, so knowing how to give them optimal services will be necessary. Jerry: Yeah, I think that has to be one of the favorite talks from the week for me as well. Charles Ellis has so many insights into that and real practical thinking about how we approach that so agreed, I appreciate that as well. Just from your perspective, why should other students get involved in Aphasia Access? Summer Marske: I think other students should get involved because this is a very unique experience to have the opportunity to hear from professionals all over the world and specializing on their areas of interest and different topics regarding aphasia. Jerry: Yeah, agreed. What an opportunity to connect and kind of rub shoulders with some of the most brilliant minds, I think one of the great things I like about Aphasia Access is that everyone is so accessible and you know, no one is kind of at a different level where you can have a conversation with them. I think that is perfect for students to see this community of people all working towards the same goal so yeah, I really appreciate that as well. Mm hmm yeah anything else that you want to share in terms of your experience? Summer Marske: I'm mostly just really grateful to have had this experience it's unlike anything that I've done before. So, I definitely will take all this knowledge with me into Grad school and when working as an SLP. Jerry: That's terrific. Thank you again, Summer, for sharing and hope you'll make it to another Aphasia Access in the future. Summer Marske: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Jerry: You're welcome.   Brandon Nguy's segment Jerry Hoepner: Hi, Brandon. How are you doing? Nguy, Brandon: Good. Jerry Hoepner: Good, nice to see you today. Nguy, Brandon: Nice to see you, too. Jerry Hoepner: Well, I'm really happy to follow up with you after the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit to learn a little bit about your experience. Before we get started talking about the Summit, can you just talk a little bit about how you would describe the life participation approach? Nguy, Brandon: So for me, the life participation approach I would believe really wants to focus to help to improve the quality of life of people with aphasia right by helping improve the things that they want to improve in or they might be afraid to do because they may have aphasia and to really overall give them their independence back to live their lives again really. Jerry Hoepner: Excellent that's a great description. Well terrific. Say Brandon, I know you did a presentation, a really nice presentation at the Summit, can you talk a little bit about how you got involved and maybe a little bit of a nutshell of your presentation? Nguy, Brandon: Yeah sure. So last summer, I got a summer fellowship through my university and I was able to conduct my own research project during the summer, through the support of my fellow lab and research colleagues. And so, at the end, I really wanted to share this new information with others, I felt like it was really important and my colleagues recommended me to share it at a conference and they know that that Aphasia Access Leadership Summit this year really matched the theme of my study and then from there on yeah happened. Jerry Hoepner: Terrific. Can you share a little bit of an elevator pitch about what your research was about? Nguy, Brandon: Yeah sure. So, my study focused on issue of representation in the aphasia literature. And so, through a scoping review we extracted the demographic data of over 300 efficient articles from the last decade and we compared those particular data with the true demographics of stroke survivors. And so we found out that certain variables in aphasia literature are underreported such as race as like only roughly 30% of articles noted race in the first place and there were some demographic differences between the efficient literature and the general population who have aphasia, for instance, man and Caucasians were over represented. And females African Americans has been Latinos and Asians others were underrepresented. And so, overall, I know that the field of speech language pathology is emphasizing more diversity in students' faculties, but I feel like we also need to put that same our focus into representation in research. Jerry Hoepner: Oh, that's terrific. What a terrific nutshell version of that and what an important topic say, Brandon. I've got to ask, where are you in your academic program what level? Nguy, Brandon: I'm currently in incoming senior. Jerry Hoepner: That's terrific I really wanted to emphasize that to our listeners let them know you're an undergraduate student you just did a scoping review of 300 plus papers and came up with these really important findings that are relevant to the work that we do, day in and day out, as at least those of us who are in academics and research so wow Thank you so much, and what a terrific opportunity. I know you worked with Dr. Will Evans on that project and just want to emphasize how fabulous that is. Nguy, Brandon: Welcome, thank you. Jerry Hoepner: Okay, well, can you share a little bit about your other experiences outside of your presentation your experience kind of listening in and joining sessions at the Summit this year? Nguy, Brandon: And so, though I guess I you might have I just described my experience with like the poster. Jerry Hoepner: Oh, absolutely you bet. Nguy, Brandon: So, like, I guess, like do you want to restart or like? Jerry Hoepner: Sure yep. Nguy, Brandon: Okay. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, we can do that. I'll do a lead in I got a little bit maybe more specific. Okay Brandon so, can you share a little bit about your experience at the Summit? Nguy, Brandon: Yeah, sure. So, throughout preparation for the poster, this being my first time you know at a conference and presenting research firsthand. They were just many things that I was just not aware of, and so through the help of my colleagues, I just asked a lot of questions. To step two things, step by step, and really tried to know the perspective of a researcher, I guess, and so, when beginning or on the first day of Aphasia Access, I was pretty nervous, but after watching a few keynote presenters and some of the events, I guess, a lot of nerves just went away and I felt really excited for it and so through watching a lot of the Aphasia Access, I really got a great understanding of how important evasion researches the people and how much passion, people have about this topic, how much people really, really care about it. Yeah. Jerry Hoepner: That's terrific. Do you have a favorite moment from the Summit? Nguy, Brandon: I guess my favorite moment was probably around the end with the award ceremonies and just how I mean just tell supportive people are. How just happy people were how supportive each other, they were in just how excited people were to keep continuing to do like these great things and I felt like man I can't wait for me to be on that stage and to be more in depth within research. Jerry Hoepner: Wow that's terrific. I have to agree just such a great family of researchers and clinicians and people with Aphasia Access. Very accessible as the name implies to talk with each other. So what's something from the Summit that you learn that you'll take with you and use in your future? Nguy, Brandon: So, through I guess the summit, I really got a great understanding of the value of research, where it's not just something that just happens on a whim it's a long process, but the results that come out of it like outweighs the hard work like it's at the end, like it's worth it and it really gave me a way understanding that everyone's in the same boat everyone's working hard, everyone is pursuing this great passion and there's really no easy way to conduct meaningful research and so that is something I just really took to heart. Jerry Hoepner: And that's a great lesson, terrific lesson. So as a student, what would you say why should other students get involved in Aphasia Access? Nguy, Brandon: So Aphasia Access is really meant to get to meet many people that I probably would not been able to meet in you know just in general, like I met so many professors and so many researchers from literally across the world, and that is just unbelievable for me, and it really gives you a creek perspective on if you're interested in research, like what you have to look forward that down the road. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah, that's terrific well thanks for having a conversation with me. Is there anything else you want to share with our listeners? Nguy, Brandon: I'm just you know, I feel like patience and ambition really works out at the end and it's just been a great honor and pleasure for me to present at Aphasia Access and for speaking today on this podcast. Jerry Hoepner: Alright, well, thank you so much, Brandon and look forward to seeing you again at a future Aphasia Access, maybe. Thank you. All right, take care. Nguy, Brandon: You too.   Nick Malendowski's segment Jerry Hoepner: Good morning, Nick how are you today? Nick Malendowski (He/Him): I'm doing well, how are you? Jerry Hoepner: I'm very good, thank you for joining us today. I'm excited to hear a little bit about your experience at the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit. Nick Malendowski (He/Him): Awesome, sounds good. Jerry Hoepner: Before we jump into that can you describe how you would just, excuse me, let me do that one over. Can you talk a little bit about how you would describe the life participation approach? Nick Malendowski (He/Him): Yeah definitely. So, when I think about the life participation approach, I often think about how it's helping people get back to what they're passionate about. This isn't necessarily about like what a researcher or clinician wants their client to do, it's about getting that person back to what they want to do. It's like when someone with aphasia has a stroke, or something that like, you know really impairs that part of their life. They definitely have the capability to do the things that they love and that can often really decrease that person's quality of life which can really just put a damper on a lot of things for them. So taking this type of approach with someone can bring back someone to what they love, which I think, as someone in speech sciences, that's really important because you want to help this person do the things that they really enjoy. And I've always been like super passionate about helping others find their passions. It's like, whether that be like finding their passion for what they're doing or finding their passion for something new, I think this approach really aligns with that. So that's why I just think it's really important to take that life participation approach with patients. Jerry Hoepner: All that's a great description and a great summary of what the life participation approach means for sure. Nick, tell me a little bit about how you got involved in the. Aphasia Access Leadership Summit. I know you did a presentation so maybe you can talk a little bit about that as well. Nick Malendowski (He/Him): Yeah definitely. So, I attended Central Michigan University and just graduated in May and I was also a member of the honors program there, so one of the requirements for being in the honors program at Central is that you have to complete an honors capstone project, which is pretty similar to like an undergraduate thesis. So, when I was thinking about what I wanted to do for that project, I knew I wanted to do something to better the lives of other people. Something that wasn't just gonna like benefit me in the long run, but also help other people with whatever that looks like and as a communication disorders major obviously I wanted to do something that was focused in communication disorders as well. I've been working in Dr. Katie Strong's story lab, but prior to approaching her about this project, I knew I wanted to do it with her. She actually is one that offered me the idea of working with Dr. Jackie Hinckley to work on a project that focused on the experience of stakeholders and research. So, prior to that, I really didn't know what that meant. I wasn't sure like what stakeholders were I didn't know what stakeholder engaged research was but it's something I was interested in learning more about which kind of how I got started on that project. Which ended up focusing on like the perceptions of researchers and stakeholders engaged research. So, when we are finishing up that project and began talking about like where we wanted to present the material at Dr. Strong and people suggested the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit and we all agreed it's kind of like the perfect space to present this research at so that's kind of how I got involved and then ever since then I've just been really taking part in all the different like things that we could do, as members of Aphasia Access. Jerry Hoepner: That's terrific. Can you give me just a little bit of a nutshell, these are what we found in terms of that stakeholder engaged research? Nick Malendowski (He/Him): Yeah definitely. So, when we were looking at the different kind of results kind of how we did it is we interviewed a few researchers to kind of hear about their experiences with a stakeholder and each research conference and there were four themes that we kind of got out of that. So it's a new way of thinking so kind of how this conference changed their perceptions and view of working with other people barriers that they experience kind of hearing about like you know, this is what happened this how things played out roles was another one so kind of hearing about like you know this, how my role has changed, these are the things that really were impacted and then the last one, And then the last thing that we found was motivations and so kind of hearing about like what motivated researchers to get involved with stakeholder engaged research because you know oftentimes we hear about top down research endeavors and kind of hearing about how researchers take that ownership and then have other people below them working with them but this is kind of hearing about like why they were motivated to attend a conference that was focused on bringing more people into research. Jerry Hoepner: Oh, that's terrific and what an opportunity to work with both Dr. Strong and Dr. Hinkley on something like this is just terrific. Nick Malendowski (He/Him): It was amazing. Jerry Hoepner: Absolutely. Can you share a little bit about your experience at the Summit outside of your presentation as well? Nick Malendowski (He/Him): So, unfortunately, I wasn't really able to attend to a lot of the conference, just because I was doing a lot of graduate interviews that we had a lot of finals preparation and things like that, but like I said, I was able to participate during the student poster sessions. So, I love really being able to connect with like the other professionals in a live session. I feel like I did miss out on a lot of networking over the past year just because of the pandemic, which makes sense. So, I just really appreciated how this conference was synchronous and I was able to connect with a lot of other people. Jerry Hoepner: That's excellent. Anything in particular that you learned that you'll take with you in your future? Nick Malendowski (He/Him): Oh yeah definitely. I learned so much just about like the research presentation styles and things like that. During other like asynchronous conferences that I attended, I felt that a lot of things were more scripted and weren't as like you know live and having conversations with other people. So, I'm planning on going to academia, so this really helped me gain a lot of skills and how to effectively engage with other professionals in those conversations. Just because I wasn't really able to do that with my other conferences so having this kind of informal conversation-based residence table to talk to other people was really beneficial for me. Jerry Hoepner: Well, that's excellent and you're right, that'll be great preparation. Why would you encourage other students to get involved in Aphasia Access? Nick Malendowski (He/Him): Yeah, you know I would encourage everybody to get involved with Aphasia Access. I feel like aphasia is so misunderstood. Especially to like the general public but also even to some communication disorders and speech pathology students and I think a lot of people don't necessarily know exactly what it is. So, having more students and even professionals get involved with Aphasia Access, more advocacy can take place and more connections can be made. I'm someone who really is passionate about making connections with other people, so I think that's a great way to do that. There's also just so many amazing resources for students to take part in like there's a lot of speakers and networking and just adding a lot to his students' skill set. So I would just absolutely recommend, whether it be just like a single experience or whether getting fully involved like Aphasia Access, I would absolutely recommend anyone to get involved. Jerry Hoepner: That's excellent. Well, it's been fun talking with you this morning, Nick. Is there anything else that you want to share? Nick Malendowski (He/Him): I just think I'm really excited to see what Aphasia Access is able to do in the future as well. You know I've never heard of Aphasia Access before this year so I'm excited to see all the new things that come out and excited to see all the different resources that are available to students and I'm just really glad that more advocacy is taking place for people with aphasia. Jerry Hoepner: Oh, that's terrific and we hope to see you again at other Aphasia Access events. Nick Malendowski (He/Him): Thank you so much. Jerry Hoepner: You bet have a great day. Nick Malendowski (He/Him): You as well.   Clarisse El Khouri Faieta's segment Jerry Hoepner: Well, good morning, Clarice. How are you today? Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: I'm doing well and yourself? Jerry Hoepner: I'm doing well. I'm excited to talk to you this morning. Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: I'm happy to be here. Jerry Hoepner: So, Clarisse, I've been asking other students a little bit about their experience at the Summit and I've started out with a question about how would you describe the life participation approach? Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: Well, to me, I think that it's extremely important to put quality of life over anything, especially with people with aphasia. So, I think that the life participation approach does a really amazing job of helping people with aphasia come back into society, so you know when you have a communication disorder. For a lot of these patients it's really difficult for them to kind of integrate themselves into society into even their families close contacts, and so this approach to therapy help centers to kind of give them a push or give them tools to be able to come back to be able to be comfortable with others talking with others, amidst their condition. Jerry Hoepner: That's a terrific description. So it sounds like you're well on your way to learning more about helping people with aphasia for sure. Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: Yeah, I do want to use that in my therapy. Jerry Hoepner: Excellent how did you get involved with the Aphasia Access Leadership Summit? Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: So, I am a graduate assistant for project bridge, so I work alongside Dr. Hinckley and she and Dr. Strong and Nick Malinowski, a student from Central Michigan University, we were working on a project about stakeholder engaged research and perceptions of researchers on stakeholder engagement research on so I did two presentations at the officially Aphasia Access. So one presentation was working directly with Dr. Strong, Dr. Hinckley, and this undergraduate student Nick Malinowski from Central Michigan University on researchers perspectives of stakeholder engage research and then another poster presentation, I did with Dr. Hinckley about survey responses based on what researchers people with aphasia their families thought about the Bridge Conference. So I did two poster presentations. Jerry Hoepner: Very cool, can you tell me a little bit more about that second one the stakeholder perspectives? Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: So the second one, with regard to the survey responses. Right yeah so um there were there was a Bridge Conference meaning the it's like a research incubator that links researchers people with aphasia clinicians and their family. The family of people with aphasia they link them together on like research teams, and so they held a conference in St. Petersburg and so we had a survey before the conference that we sent out and then a survey after the Conference, and so what we did was that we kind of looked at we analyzed what their perceptions on stakeholder engagement research was before the conference and how their perceptions changed after the Conference. So we looked at- we designed surveys, for example, for people with aphasia in a very aphasia friendly manner, we had videos of US narrating the questions to them, we change the font size all of that, and then for the researchers, you know, we had a list of questions like, “What is your thought of stakeholders engaged research?” all of that, so what we got in response to that was that a lot of their views have changed on stakeholder engage research after the 2018 Bridge Conference in a positive manner. So a lot of them or more knowledgeable about SCR and how to specifically help people with aphasia and their families contribute better in the research process. Jerry Hoepner: Oh, what a terrific program the Project Bridges and what a terrific measure of that you know the outcomes at the conference. Wow, that's terrific. Just such an important thing to collaborate directly with those individuals with aphasia about you know what what's going to help them the most in the long haul so terrific and great to hear those researchers' perspectives change to in terms of that collaboration. Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: Yes. Jerry Hoepner: Oh, that's terrific. I'm so glad that was part of your experience at the Summit. Can you tell me a little bit more about your experience outside of the presentations that you gave? Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: So, I was able to participate in some cases conference presentation, so we actually saw one presentation, that is the fruit of Project Bridge with that which I thought was interesting, which was the aphasia and games. Jerry Hoepner: Presentation and I thought that was fascinating. Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: And just to see what Project Bridge can help with to be able to bring people with aphasia and researchers together to be able to present and I just thought they did such an amazing job and I learned so much with regard to how else you know people with aphasia can contribute, and you know, the fact that they made a game for people to face with aphasia to be able to use that's also in a that's also functional you know so that was really interesting. Jerry Hoepner: Yeah agreed. Willis Evans and crew did a great job it was really awesome to see them all present together and yeah and the games themselves were really interesting and fun. So yeah, terrific. Jerry Hoepner: Do you have a favorite moment from the Summit that sounds like it might be one of them? Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: Yeah, definitely that's one of them. I also was able to participate in the presentation of the awards at the very end of the summit and Dr Hinckley actually got an award as well. And, just to be able to hear all the accomplishments of these researchers and these clinicians. You know it helped me to realize that this is such an important field. And it's a little underdeveloped, you know, in the sense that there's not many people that go into this field it's a very niche field. But just all the strides that people have made within this field to help people with aphasia. Especially to be able to you know help them with not only their communication disorder, but also help them reintegrate back into society and give them counseling and all that and make like foundations and clinics and this and that I think just hearing those accomplishments helped me to realize how important this this field is and how rewarding it is as well you know, to hear people's testimonies and all that. Jerry Hoepner: 100% agree, you talked a little bit about some things you'll carry into your future. Anything specific that you want to share that you'll definitely take into your future from this experience? Clarisse El Khouri Faieta: I just think that it's important to definitely put the patient first, before all interest and to also listen to them and their families, because we ha

In this episode, I answer a bunch of questions from Jerry Anzalone about the whacky strategies I have for testing in the A&P course. I discuss open online tests with multiple attempts, cumulative testing, pre-tests, test integrity, and much more. A virtual roundup of oddities! 0:00:00 | Introduction 0:00:54 | Quizzed About Tests 0:05:45 | Retaking Tests 0:29:37 | More on Retaking Tests 0:36:33 | Sponsored by AAA 0:38:27 | High Stakes and Low Stakes 0:46:06 | Sponsored by HAPI 0:47:30 | Open Book Tests 0:56:24 | Sponsored by HAPS 0:57:25 | Academic Integrity 1:06:17 | Final Thoughts 1:11:27 | Staying Connected   ★ If you cannot see or activate the audio player, go to: theAPprofessor.org/podcast-episode-99.html

Jerry Seinfeld: Just talk? What's the show about? George Costanza: It's about nothing. Jerry: No story? George: Forget the story. Jerry: You have to have a story. George: Who says you gotta have a story? Jerry: right George: Everybody's doing something. We'll do nothing. Jerry: I think you may have something here. Program: Biblically Speaking Aired: July 4, 2015

In this episode, Adam and Eric interview Lisa Mende. Lisa played Carol, who first appeared in “The Boyfriend,”and kept telling Jerry “You gotta see the baby!”. She would go on to appear in three more episodes of Seinfeld, including: “The Soul Mate,” “The English Patient,” and, of course, “The Hamptons” with Adam the ugly baby. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email us at: theplacetobeseinfeld@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Facebook at The Place to Be: A Seinfeld Podcast, Twitter @tptbseinfeld, and Instagram: @theplacetobe.podcast

The Shattuck homeschool adventure is getting real and Tim Scott is becoming a star in the GOP. Also, wine bar bullies are terrorizing diners and Kenosha is the latest city to destroy itself. Follow Tom on Twitter: @Tomshattuck More Tom stuff at www.tomshattuck.com Tom's "Insta" as the zillenials say: www.instagram.com/calvincaspian/ The opening theme music is called Divine Intervention by Matthew Sweet. The closing theme music to this podcast C'est La Vie by Derek Clegg. George: Severance package...The Yankees are giving me three months full pay for doing nothing. Jerry: They did it for three years. What's another few months. George: I'm really going to do something with these three months. Jerry: Like what? George: I'm gonna read a book. From beginning to end. In that order. Jerry: I've always wanted to do that... George: I'm gonna play frolf. Jerry: You mean golf? George: Frolf, frisbee golf Jerry. Golf with a frisbee. This is gonna be my time. Time to taste the fruits and let the juices drip down my chin. I proclaim this: The Summer of George! Excelsior!

Regardless of whether you are just starting your business or have been in business for awhile, one thing that will always remain is that you will have to deal with your business taxes. California licensed tax preparer and IRS Enrolled Agent, Mike Ball of Sequoia Tax is sharing the importance of setting up your finances, what you can expect regarding quarterly tax payments, what exactly are write-offs, and why you shouldn’t fear the IRS. When I think of write-offs, I always think of Seinfeld and it makes me chuckle. We’re keeping up the banter, but Mike is also sharing some invaluable information on what you can and need to do to be IRS ready!    Your next tax payment is due in just over a month...are you ready for it? What we’re talking about  Setting Up Your Finances In Your Small Business What Are Quarterly Tax Payments? The 411 On Write-Offs and Audits Setting Up Your Finances In Your Small Business Small businesses are defined by the IRS as any business that has less than $25M in gross receipts. As a small business, Mike recommends you save 15% of your gross receipts for self-employment tax, which is the equivalent of social security holdings. You should keep track of what you’re doing in your business with income and expenses and track it either online on a platform such as QuickBooks or manually. If you decide to incorporate yourself in the state of California (because that’s where Mike and I are), or get an LLC, you need to ensure you keep your personal finances separate from your business finances. You also need to keep copies of everything, such as your form SS-4 when you become incorporated. Mike suggests keeping these finances at a handshake’s distance.  All small businesses should have a tax preparer and not attempt to DIY things when it comes to taxes. An important reminder is that if you file an extension on your tax return, it’s not an extension on paying your taxes! Penalties will be assessed if you don’t pay them on time.  What Are Quarterly Tax Payments? Quarterly tax payments are actually estimates on what you will owe for your taxes. If you aren’t sure what to pay, there’s a safe harbor which covers you if you pay at least 100% of what you paid in the previous year. You won’t be assessed penalties if you make such payments and end up owing more. Since quarterly payments are dynamic, you should regularly talk to your tax professional to determine how much you should pay and these payments shouldn’t come as a surprise to you.  Remember that even if you aren’t aware of a compliance issue, such as a county tax, you’re still subject to it and ignorance is not an excuse!  The 411 On Write-Offs & Audits Kramer : It's just a write-off for them. Jerry : How is it a write-off? Kramer : They just write it off.  Jerry : Write it off what? Kramer : Jerry, all these big companies they write-off everything. Jerry : You don't even know what a write-off is. Kramer : Do you? Jerry : No. I don't.  Kramer : But they do and they are the ones writing it off. Are you like Jerry Seinfeld and wondering what you can write-off? Mike says that for many people, write-offs make them feel guilty or they’re simply hesitant to take a deduction. Don’t be! If there’s a business purpose that isn’t frivolous, then it’s a write-off and you should take it.  There is a bonus depreciation default which is 100% for things such as buying a new computer. Whether you have income or not, you can take the deduction, even if it puts you in a negative situation. That negative number can also be carried into the next year. A word of caution though, if you show no net income for 3 out of 5 years, then the IRS may refute your deductions and tell you that you have a hobby and not a business. If you truly have losses and can prove it, then you should be ok.  If you’re working from home, which we all are right now, then you can take the home office deduction. This is much more beneficial if you rent your home because you aren’t already taking deductions for your property tax and mortgage interested in a Schedule A.  Mike says one of the most important things you can be is audit proof. Keep track of everything and if you receive a “friendly letter,” otherwise known as an audit, then deal with it and respond in a timely manner.  Are you audit proof in your business?  LINKS MENTIONED Sequoia Tax www.sequoiatax.com  Sequoia Tax's Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Sequoia-Tax-110682507238219/  Sequoia Tax’s LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/sequoia-tax-associates-inc/  Mike Ball's Email michael@sequoiatax.com  Mike Ball’s Phone Number: 669-293-0593 Quickbooks Online  http://fbuy.me/ob3r3

How do you build a successful eCommerce business that has attracted nearly 5 million visitors in a month? For Jerry Hum, it took a few failures and a couple of stumbles out of the gate with his cofounders before finding the winning combination of users, demand, and products all in one. Jerry is a co-founder and the Executive Chairman of Touch of Modern, a members-only e-commerce website and app focused on selling lifestyle products, fashion, and accessories to men. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jerry takes us through his early struggles and how he found the secret sauce to making his eCommerce platform one of the most popular among male shoppers. Plus he explains what metrics other eCommerce pros should be looking at, and gives some advice to other entrepreneurs. Key Takeaways: For a multi-brand company, customer retention and lifetime value is the critical metric to look at Build the primary platform where your primary customer prefers to buy Combine marketing engagement and transactional data to prevent high engagement high cost marketing yielding low sales volume --- 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: Hey everyone. This is Stephanie, your host of Up Next In Commerce. Today we have Jerry Hum. The co-founder and executive chairman of Touch Of Modern. Jerry, how's it going? Jerry: Pretty good. How are you? Thanks for- Stephanie: [crosstalk] good. Yeah, how's it going? So you're in a loft right now, right? In SF, living the quarantine life. Jerry: Yeah, in San Francisco. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: Yep. Stephanie: How- Jerry: [crosstalk] for a little longer than most other folks. Stephanie: Yeah. So what's your day look like with being sheltered in place and... I think San Francisco is even stricter than Palo Alto where you guys [inaudible] allowed to do even more than we are. Jerry: Yeah. Well, we actually started preparing for it a little bit earlier actually, just as it was making news headlines and most companies were still up and running. We were planning kind of contingencies and all that planning and seeing how work from home would be like if we had to do it. Luckily we came up with a plan just in time. We actually went into it before even California started making statements about it. So I think we are kind of in a pretty decent groove in terms of keeping the business running smoothly and all that. In terms of a day to day, I'm actually surprised as to maybe how engaged people have remained. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Being that we have to do it all through technology. I actually started thinking about it, why is it that work from home is almost a little bit easier now than it was in the past. And I think it's because when it's the only option then you just do it. Right? Stephanie: You have to make it work. Jerry: Yeah. It's not like if half the office is doing one thing and then... Or not like half the office. If most of the office is at work and a few people are work from home then it's actually more difficult because the people in the office are like, "Oh, I'll just wait for that person to get in or something." But if this is the only way that every one is communicating then it's actually fairly smooth. Obviously everything takes a little bit more time and all that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] day is actually longer than usual. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: All things considered, I think it's working pretty well. Stephanie: Good. Yeah. Hopefully it will all come to a close soon. How have you all handled... I mean has there been any struggles, I'm imagining taking photos of your products and things like that? That's probably a very in-person type of thing that [inaudible] people have perspectives on and all want to help. How are you handling things like that with your business that seem pretty hard to do virtually? Jerry: Yeah. So luckily, some of our folks have set-ups at home. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: Yeah. Because usually, photographers, this is not just a job. It's also a passion and a hobby. Right. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we've been able to make due... Obviously at a reduced capacity. Yeah. Stephanie: Yeah. Well, good. So maybe that's a good point to dive into what is Touch of Modern. If you were to explain it to the listeners and give us some background. Jerry: Touch of Modern is the only shopping destination that men visit daily. And we offer a [inaudible] mix of remarkable products across all categories and that you can use everyday.This could be anything from a flame thrower you can strap to your wrist, or the newest exercise gadget, or anything in between. Stephanie: Are women allowed? Because I was on there and I was like, "I want to buy some of this stuff." I would buy... Maybe not a flame thrower but there was some good stuff on there that I'm like, "I want this." Jerry: Of course, women are allowed. It's just kind of more... A little bit more of our differentiator. Because most E-commerce sights out there are catered toward women. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] we're not the only one but one of a few that really cater to men. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah. It looks awesome. A lot of the products. I was afraid to hit buys right away. How did you come to create the idea of Touch of Modern? And I think I read it was the third... The third times a charm. That you had done three other things, or two other things before that until you got to Touch of Modern. What was that like? What was that journey like? Jerry: Yeah. I'll give you the long story here, maybe. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: [Four] founders, guys from New York. The business actually was a peer-to-peer experienced market place. And this is kind of similar to what Airbnb has now. Obviously they built that on top of their existing business but we were trying to start from scratch at the time. That was extremely difficult because you're telling folks to change their lifestyle. Right? If you need to suddenly offer a cooking class, that's not a easy thing to do if you don't have the customers for it. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Or the time for it. And then we're telling customers to come on this platform and book stuff. But if you don't have the activities, what is there to book? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So it becomes this chicken and egg problem. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: It came out of our own need because we were guys from New York, you're kind of looking for interesting things to do all the time, just in the city. Right? The second business was called Raven. Well, the first one was called [Scarra 00:05:24]. I don't know if I mentioned that. Second one was called Raven. That was a slight variation on the first. And that was we took out half of the equation because we realized, double sided marketplace, super hard. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: We started offering activities that already existed. This could be like hang gliding. This could be sky diving. This could also be day at the spa. Right. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We also layered on a recommendation algorithm where you could like stuff. And based on your activity, we would offer you a daily feed of different activities and things that were new to discover in your area. We got a lot of engagement out of that. People found really cool things. If you look at my feed versus somebody else's, it would be really different based on what we like. When we looked at it, it was like, oh this is a pretty accurate description of things I'm interested in and my hobbies and such. Right? Jerry: And that was difficult because people would then discover stuff but they wouldn't actually book it with us. They would just call directly [crosstalk 00:06:29]. Stephanie: Wow. Jerry: What we learned from that was, well, we need reason for people to transact. Right? And we need maybe something to make us relevant for right now. So the second generation of that business was actually arranging events where we built a mobile app as the early days of... Not the iPhone but when apps started getting the more complicated... Better than just the kind of beer pouring app. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Those simple things. Right? So we used Geofencing to create this thing where if you went within a certain perimeter of something going on, we would tell you about it. We'll alert you and be like, "Hey, like... Street fair over here or something over there." And that was really cool because there wasn't another app like that. At least that we know of... That we knew of at the time that was doing that. Also at the time, a lot of folks were moving to San Francisco. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Probably even more so than they are today. A ton of messages from people saying, "Wow, you're really helping me discover the city. Every weekend we pull this out and, you know, see what's going on." Especially because San Francisco is the type of city that always has something going on. Stephanie: Yeah. Like on the side streets, you're like, "There's a whole festival going on right now." Jerry: Yeah. So that was really cool but again, a lot of these things were free. So it wasn't there wasn't a real business model there. There's just a ton of engagement. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It seems like you guys are kind of ahead of your time with that. Because even when I'm hearing about that now, I'm like, oh, if you would have kept going with that one, Airbnb probably would have acquired you. Jerry: Yeah. Right. Stephanie: Oh, if you kept going with the Geofencing thing, Google would acquired you because I worked for Google Maps before this. Jerry: Oh, yeah. Stephanie: They're still trying to figure out how to show you where the festivals are, where the farmers markets are based on your location. So maybe you guys are just ahead of your time with everything. Jerry: Maybe. That would be the positive view of it. So I think the lesson we learned from that was... Incredibly hard to scale location based things. because you could sell out all the tickets to this one show or a certain percentage of it but there's unlimited margin and you're constricted by the location and therefore we couldn't justify the kind of business mechanics that were necessary to actually make that sustainable. I mean, it raised a ton of money. Right? And so this isn't going to get like... Where it wasn't like, hey, we're going to get to a billion people and then it's going to work. It's not like that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we were like, what were we good at and what were we not good at? We were really good at getting people engaged. Really good at discovery aspect of things. We just needed something more scalable to be the thing that we featured. And realized that, hey, products... You get scale with products. Right? Mass distribution and all that. There's real margin there because that's kind of built into the modal that [inaudible] already exists. Jerry: We had always kind of liked products, just as the people that we were. But we didn't want to touch it because we didn't want to deal with real world problems of moving things around, shipping, [crosstalk 00:09:46]- Stephanie: Yeah. Logistics. Jerry: Yeah. Logistics. Right? After going through the struggles of the first two business, we realized that things are not really... It's not rocket science. Right? This has been done. We started thinking about what kind of unique angle we could take at it. I remember we were in the living room and we're talking about speakers for some reason and who made the best speakers. Dennis had his idea. Jon had his idea. And then Steven, who's real audio files, was like, no, these are the best speakers. He knew all these brands that we didn't even know about. We knew the mass market brands but not the kind of stuff that he was into. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: He had all this knowledge. Okay, you win that debate. Right? And we realized that we have this thing that we geek out on. Right? Jon was really into cooking and he had these really expensive knives that he would keep in this [inaudible] that he would have to take out and show us. Dennis was really into outdoor activities and all the gear that's associated with that. I use to be an architect when I was in New York so I spent way too much money on furniture. So that was my thing. Right? And so everyone had our own thing. No one out there was catering to this desire or whatever it was that ties all these things together. Right? Jerry: So we just started sourcing things that we thought were cool. Hey, if we think it's cool, other people are going to think it's cool too. Right? It wasn't like a men thing. It wasn't even necessarily a discovery thing. It was just these were the things that we thought were cool. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Through that process, right away it kind of hit in a way that the other two businesses did not hit at all in two years. Right? Where day one we started getting real transactions and kind of buying activity. Right? Stephanie: How? How did you get buying on day one? How did people even find your website or know where to go? Jerry: We did not even have a website on the very first day. We actually... What happened was Dennis, who ran marketing, would just start running ads and would go to a landing- Stephanie: Okay. Facebook? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Or what kind of ads? Okay. Jerry: Facebook. Earlier in the days of Facebook too. I think a lot of what we did, now, can't be exactly replicated but there's probably some learnings to take from it. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So we basically just collected emails and say, "Hey, there's this thing that's coming soon." Right? I think [inaudible] probably remember years ago there was tons of these types of things that are just coming soon and you're like wow [crosstalk 00:12:39]. Stephanie: Yeah. That was the strategy back then of just like just put up a landing page and see if people want that fake product that you could create. I remember books where they would suggest that and I'm like, that's a good idea. Jerry: [crosstalk] that is more less of a pit. I mean, we were creating it. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: I'm not talking about like, let's just run ads and see if people like it. We were just building it at the time, that same time we were running ads against it. And basically we had an idea of what that metrics needed to look like in order for a business to work. Right? We just made assumptions down the whole funnel. Right? If we acquire an email for this much, and if this percent of folks convert, and assume a certain order value, and certain repeat rate then this is what our business would look like. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: And no data for anything outside of what it would cost to acquire an email. Basically, we knew the cost of that. Then we started sourcing products and building the website behind it. Then we just went down the funnel and firmed our assumptions. Sometimes they were better and sometimes they were just different. We kind of just proved it out from the top down. Stephanie: Got it. That's really cool. Has it always been a member's only platform? Has there ever been a time where people could just go to the website, the app, and just see the products without inputting their email? Jerry: Yeah. So, we require folks to input the email for the upfront reason that we are talking to... And this is also maybe one of our differentiators, is that we are not a clearance channel per se. We talk to vendors who have products that are new to market. Right? So they may have endeavors to go to traditional retail or something else, and they may not want their prices shown necessarily to everybody. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So that's one [inaudible] been the case. Stephanie: Got it. Okay. Cool. So when I was looking at your catalog and just seeing everything that you have, how do you go about curating something like that? I mean, it sounds easy in the early days of, oh, so and so likes knives so he pulled in his favorite knives. But I saw how many products you have on that page. Maybe it's like... How many a day do you release? Jerry: It's about 300 a day. It's quite a bit. Stephanie: How do you find 300, even a month, cool products that are so unique like that and keep up the level of quality that's on there? Jerry: We have a team of about 30 or so folks on the sources and buying team and they're out just looking for what's cool and unique. And obviously we have our standards and things that we look for and they just go out and try to find things that meet those standards. And they also try to find things that are... that we've just never seen or heard of before. Right? Then we bring it back, it goes through an approval process, and then we put it up and run it. It's fairly simple. Stephanie: Does it still go through you to approve of every single product? Jerry: Not every single product. Stephanie: No. Jerry: In the early days it was and now we have a team of folks that can do it. Stephanie: Got it. And you also have an app that people can buy from. Is it the same functionality? Does the website mimic the app or how did you think about expanding to mobile? Jerry: It's mostly the same functionality. We expanded to mobile fairly early on. Like I said, our previous companies were... We were already experimenting with mobile back then. I don't think we had one on Scarra but Raven, we definitely did. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: That was a core part of it. So we went to mobile pretty early on and I don't think we knew this per se, but it was interesting because men tend to be more comfortable buying on mobile too. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: And maybe that influenced part of our strategy or vice versa. It seems to actually be the more popular platform for us. Both in terms of actual use engagement and revenue as well. Stephanie: Okay. And do you see different customer profiles when it comes to the mobile user versus the website users? And do you cater to them differently based on that? Or personalize things different? Jerry: No. The experiences are pretty congruent on both sides. The mobile users tend to have a little bit of a higher value. But that could also be because you kind of have to self select into mobile. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: You go on to the website and then you're all, hey, we're really into it. And then you go on the app. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: It's kind of hard to say what's [inaudible 00:17:21]. Stephanie: Go it. Very cool. So in the early days you were doing Facebook ads. And I think I read that you were doing TV ads as well at a certain point. How has your marketing strategy evolved over... since you started? Jerry: Yeah. So in the early days of Facebook it was like a wild, wild west. Right. Big brands weren't really on it. So it was a great time for companies like us. And this is why I say a lot of it can't really be replicated today exactly the same way we did it back then. So when a lot of competition started moving in, in order to compete, we kept broadening our category just... I mean, just becoming a stronger business. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So it would be a lot harder to start with just a handful of products the same way we did. When we started, I think we launched with 12 products and that was it. It was like 12 individual products, not twelve vendors, just 12 [inaudible] things you could buy. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: That was enough to make it work. Probably impossible now to do that. As the business grew we could support more channels. We went into Google and then eventually got to the size where we can actually start experimenting with TV. I think also, TV has evolved over time as well because of visual advertising. Because so many brands see the benefits of digital advertising. You can track things and kind of go after a more specific audiences. That TV now kind of has changed to have some of those properties as well. So we use them both kind of together and they enhance each other. You can tell when, if you're spending too much on TV and not enough on digital, then TV starts to suffer. If you spend too much on digital and not enough on TV then the opposite happens. Stephanie: Got it. How do you find that ROI of the campaigns? Then decide, okay let's scale back on TV and increase mobile ads or something. What metrics are you looking for? Jerry: We actually have the exact same metrics on TV as we do on digital. Right? And this is just... cost acquired customer and lifetime value and all that. The way we track it is now you can know exactly when your spot airs and basically we have a baseline of traffic that we know that, hey, if nothing is airing, this is what are organic traffic looks like. Right. So when we air a spot, we can see that spike. We do a [inaudible] analysis to say this much of the traffic following that airing is probably through the TV. Stephanie: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So when it comes to metrics, when you think about E-commerce, what metrics do you think are most important to keep track of? Or how do you define success when it comes to E-commerce? Jerry: Yeah. There's a ton of stuff. I mean, it really depends... It depends a lot on what kind of product you're selling. Right? I'll give you two extremes. One extreme is like us, and for us we are a multi-brand retailer. Right? You can buy a number of things and also we change our selection everyday. So you can keep coming back to keep buying different things. Right? Jerry: So what's important to us is lifetime value and retention. Right? How fast do you break even on the cost to acquire a customer? At the end of the day, that's kind of like the most basic thing for any kind of company in our space. But the products that you're selling may influence how you look at it. Right? If you're selling cars or mattresses or something that you just don't buy very often, then you may think about it very differently because it's just not feasible to thing that the retention rate is going to be nearly what ours is. Right. Or at least not be frequent enough for you to be able to plan your marketing spin around. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Go it. How do you keep your customers... How do you retain them and keep them coming back? Versus acquiring new customers. How do you think about that mix? Jerry: I mean, you always have to acquire new customers. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: I think [inaudible] is just like a natural part of business. You can't deny that it's there. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: [inaudible] you can be great but there's going to be some folks that it's not for. Right? It's not like 100 percent of your folks are going to stay with you forever. Even the folks that do eventually they may change taste or things like that may happen. So in terms of splits, I think that also varies on performance for us. For us we care about kind of a payback on the spend that we're doing and pending on where we see better performances kind of where we'll weight it. And also kind of seasonally because I would say for retail there's holiday season and all that, you may want to do one thing versus another. But that's going to be really specific to the kind of company that you're running. Stephanie: Yeah. So when it comes to changes in spending pattern, what have you seen with everything from COVID-19 going on? Like what kind of differences? I saw you have a... I think a stay-at-home section or something similar like that. Shelter in place, on your website. How have you seen things change since that started? Jerry: People's priorities definitely change very quickly. Luckily for us because we can change our assortment everyday, we were actually able to adapt really quickly. We got that store up from... From when we said we were going to do it to when it was up was a matter of... Like the morning to that afternoon. Stephanie: That's impressive. How did you line up all the vendors? I mean, to me that's like a long process of picking the vendors and picking out the product and making sure they can ship enough, depending on demand. How did you get all that lined up so quickly? Jerry: The thing is... I mean, when this first started happening especially. And we need to agree now still, it seemed as if time had just sped up suddenly. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: Things that would take an entire quarter could happen now in like a day. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. It has to. Jerry: Everyone was wondering what would be different? All of our vendors, suddenly their retail channels dried up. Right? And they had to move things around. So we just called them up and said, "Hey, this is what we're doing." Obviously most of the folks that were on there, day one, were folks we've worked with already in the past. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Or coincidentally we were talking to and hey, this fits, kind of thing. Right? It was tapping existing relationships. And parallel, the design and engineering teams were building up the store. We were using some existing infrastructure that we could repurpose and re-skin for the store. It was an amazing feeling. I didn't think we were going to do it in a day but it happened. Stephanie: Yeah. And are you changing that catalog? Like each day or week or... Jerry: [crosstalk] as well. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephanie: Got it. Does it... How do you think now your company is going to change based on now you know how quick things can move if it has to? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Do you think that your internal policies and all that stuff could change going forward based on how quickly you can see thing go through? And maybe seeing things aren't a priority or approval for certain things might not be as high priority as you thought they were or... What's your view on that? Jerry: Yeah. I mean, in terms of policies first... I think in more so than anything it was like validation of a lot of policies that we had in place. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: It was confirmation that we could move quickly. Because we always thought we could. I think that's always been our thing. One of the questions people always ask is how does a company that sells premium products, how does that respond in a recession? Right? This isn't a recession but it's a time when people's priorities are going to shift maybe away from things that were... seems more frivolous to things that are now more essential. Right? For us, we always said, well you know, we can respond quickly but it's never been proven. And now it's been proven to an extent that we can respond quickly. And we can move to things that are more essential. It's still essential with a twist. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: It's still within our brand. And it's going to bring a bit of uniqueness and delight into people's lives that are staying at home. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: I think it's validation that the modal can move quickly. The way we thought. And that our brand can extend to the different categories. And address people's needs as they change. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you think these buying behaviors are going to last for a while? And if so, are you shifting maybe your thoughts on what Touch of Modern looks like in 2025, 2030? Is it kind of having you re-think things a bit? Jerry: I think that people's buying behaviors will change because I don't think it's going to go back to exactly the way it was. You know. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I agree. Jerry: Yeah. People are going to be much more... And I hope they're going to be much more health conscience. I hope that this introduces some good habits. Right? I think people take a bit of time to reflect and think about things like self improvement. Maybe they didn't have the time to do before because I think some people staying home are going to realize like, "Hey, there's this new hobby that I've always been wanting to do that I can do now." Or, "Maybe I should drink less." Whatever it is that they discover when they change their lifestyle, that there's actually parts of this that are good, that they can take away and keep with them. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Except for the drinking lessening. I think that one's going the wrong way. Jerry: Wait. I don't know. I don't know how some people are- Stephanie: Happy hour time keeps getting earlier and earlier. I'm like, I need to set up rules around this house. Oh my gosh. It's only like two o'clock, what am I doing? Jerry: Well, I mean, another silver lining here is that I think people now have actually seen how quickly the environment can actually improve just with... And in a short period of time. Right? Because in the past I think it always seemed like this insurmountable thing to certain folks where it's like, "Yeah, you know, we can recycle and do this, but we've been doing that for a long time and nothing has really changed. It's actually been getting worse." Right? Jerry: And then suddenly you take a step back and it's like, hey, things change quickly. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So maybe it's not as impossible as we thought. We just have to be deliberate about habits that we have and maybe where we spend our energy. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I think sometimes a little shake up like that can be good for people and the economy. And good things could come from it. Even though there's a lot of bad going on as well. I think, yeah, it depends where you're looking, I guess. So when... Oh, go ahead. Jerry: Yeah, I mean, [inaudible] other wise it's just all bad. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. No, everything can't be all bad. There has to be something good out there. That's what I'm hoping for anyways. So when it comes to outside of Touch of Modern, and more of the E-commerce industry as a whole, what destructions do you see are coming? Especially with COVID-19 now. We're seeing some of that already happening. But what are you betting on in the future... Yeah, coming? Jerry: Well, I'm going to bet probably more on E-commerce. Right? I think people are going to build habits from shopping at home that are not going to go away. Right? I think certain things that maybe people use to only buy in person are like, hey, I can buy this at home. It's actually a pretty decent experience, probably going to keep that habit even after this. And I think people are going to maybe focus a little more on preparedness for things than they have in the past. I think human nature is that you never think that these kind of outlier type of situations can happen, but they do. Be that once... Once in a century, I'd never think about it. But a person lives a long time. Right? Jerry: You may see a once in a century thing in your life. That's probably going to happen for a lot of people. Right? And this is that thing for us. Stephanie: Yeah. Agree. It seems like there's going to be a lot of new people coming online who never were online before. And it brings me to a point I saw on your website that I liked a lot is kind of meeting a consumer where they're at. There's two things I saw on your website that I thought would be perfect for a new consumer who doesn't normally buy online. The first one was you have a toggle button on your homepage that says, "View as." And you're about to actually change how you view products on the page, depending on what you prefer. Stephanie: So I thought that was genius. Any insight behind that? Or any thoughts when you were creating that? Because I haven't seen many websites allow you to toggle that view to what you prefer. Jerry: Yeah. It's just like a preference thing. Right? Our experience on the landing page is we just drop you right into our offering. Right? It's not like a landing page where you then click in and search and do all this other stuff. Mostly E-commerce is catered to search. Right? You just go on the page and automatically thing is you type in what you're looking for. Right? That's not really our experience. It's there but it's kind of secondary. It's mostly a browse and kind of meander your way through our offering. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We let people maybe pick the way they want to meander. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). How do people meander through 300 hundred things? Because I was going through and I wanted to look at all of them but after a little I'm like, oh, this is too many. And I kind of wished maybe like... What did I see? There was this screen that extended your screen. So you have your MacBook or something and you plug in a little cord and you have an extension of your screen, which is awesome. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: I'm like, that should have been shown to me first because I want to buy that right now. Whereas, what was the second thing? It was showing maybe like an expensive bottle of wine, which I'm like, oh, push that down some because I'm not fancy like that. How do you think about helping people get through these products each day? Jerry: Well, I think your first time experience is going to ne a little bit different than your second and your third time. About almost half of our users, and I'm not talking about customers but just people that visit, will actually come back at least once a week. And so- Stephanie: Wow. Jerry: Yeah. And so if you're doing that and then our most frequent visitors are coming back every single day, then it's not as hard to browse through everything. Because then you can browse through it and then you'll hit a point where, okay, now I'm looking at yesterday's stuff. Right? And so, if you keep up with it everyday then it's not actually a ton of stuff. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: But for your first time, you're looking at all the days that have accumulated in the past five days. And certain events will also extend beyond that. I think the first time experience is like, wow, this is a ton of stuff. And also because you probably want to click through every single thing. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: But after awhile you're probably just looking for the things that catch your eyes. Or you're just going to scan and be like, okay, that's really cool. That's really cool. But you're not necessarily going to check out every single thing. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. [inaudible] Jerry: Also, on the mobile app, the scrolling screen is just much slicker and smoother too. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: I think you might just browse there. A lot of folks also will tell us that it's just something that they peruse through when they're waiting for something or commercial break or something like that. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). The second thing I saw that I really liked, which I also haven't seen... Maybe I'm just not on enough websites. I don't know. But I was looking through... It was an about shipping section. And it showed a visual of what does your shipping status mean. Jerry: Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: And it just... It showed everything from like, we place our PO, and than it goes to the supplier, and here's what it means if you see... I don't know the whole... I can't remember the whole layout. But I thought that was genius showing it in a visual format. And I'm sure that probably brings down a lot of customer support emails. But tell me how you all are thinking about giving that transparency to the customer. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: And hopefully prevent a million a emails of, hey, where's my product. Jerry: This is another product of our business modal. Or kind of what differentiates us a bit. We sell across all categories. Right? Meaning that we have to be able to accommodate all the categories. So it's not like, a company that just sells furniture ships one way. A company that just sells clothing ships another way. Right? And so their customers go there expecting a certain experience. A company that sells everything needs to ship all the different ways. Right? So a customer might not know exactly what this shipping process is going to look like when you buy something because they may not realize... I mean it's obvious now when I talk about it but if your company goes on a site, you're going to expect shipping experience to be generally consistent. But for us it's like, we're going to ship furniture differently, then we're going to ship clothing differently, and then we're going to ship, you know, this cup, right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: And so for us it's just more like informing the customer, this is what's going to happen. This is what it's going to look like. And this is what the different steps mean. For us, we found that more so than anything, they just want to know what's going on. That it's moving and... like internal. Yeah.   Stephanie: How about when it comes to relaying the value of the product? How do you convince someone that something is really good? Because I don't think I saw reviews on the website. Unless I missed them.   How do you... That's usually the first thing I look for. Is it five stars? You know, I want to see if someone has the same kind of experience that I'm looking for. How do you tell someone something's valuable without that? Jerry: Yeah. I mean, a lot of what we do is educating the customer. Right? Because a lot of these things they never heard of, they didn't know it exist. I wish we could say we do an awesome job at it and we provide all these reviewed stuff but... And we vet the product. We'll go and look at the reviews and we'll test the product and all that. But it does take a leap of faith in the first purchase and maybe you get a learned trust after some time, that like we've done the research. Jerry: Because if you go and research these products you're going to find that they're pretty highly regarded. Stephanie: Yep. Which I think actually might be the modal that it's headed is just show me one or two people at your company that I trust to review product, and I trust them. Because a lot of reviews, I mean, at least on other places... Marketplaces and things like that. They're paid reviews. And so you go through and you're like, well, I can't trust 90 percent of these anyways. So I think it is kind of shifting towards just give me the one person that I can trust. Or the one company that I can trust to curate something for me. And I know if it's coming from them, it's going to be quality and good. Stephanie: Are there any big transformations that are going to be on your plate after the environment kind calms down? Or any big projects that you plan on starting or changing within your strategy? Jerry: Yeah. We're working on shipping things a lot quicker. The reason being that a lot of our products do take a little bit longer because we have these various modals that we work with. And we found that when we can ship things more quickly people are generally way more happy and more likely to come back and purchase. Stephanie: Got it. How can you speed up the shipping for... when it's a bunch of different, I'm guessing, retailers who all their own different practices? How can you kind of know that you can speed that up and make it all pretty uniform? Jerry: Consign the product. Right? So they will house it in our warehouse and we essentially act as their distribution center. Stephanie: Oh. Okay, cool. Tell me a little bit about that. Do you have to buy warehouses in different parts of California? Or how is that modal set up? Jerry: Right now our warehouse actually has a good amount of space. And we've actually developed our distribution system to fit with our model, right, which is that we run things in these short spurts. Right? And what's cool about that is that things come in and they go out really quickly so we're not sitting on mountains of inventory. I mean, we're nearly inventory-less. We're very inventory light. We don't actually require that much space to run a lot of products. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So right now, for the foreseeable future, it's to keep it within our distribution center. It's a long winded way of saying... Stephanie: Okay. Got it. How did you learn to do that? When I even think about shipping products to a warehouse and making sure everything goes well, how did you learn best practices around... Yeah, around all that? Jerry: Yeah. This is interesting because when we first started we were shipping our own products from day one. And so- Stephanie: From your house? Or from where? Jerry: From the house. [inaudible 00:41:45]. Stephanie: That's awesome. Jerry: ... of just tons of boxes in the living room. And then when the FedEx guy came we would... The first day we just piled it in the lobby and our neighbors got really pissed at us for doing that. Stephanie: I can imagine. Jerry: So the second day, we knew when the person was coming and we just did like bucket brigade style where we just passed packages from our living room down to the... Basically we had our four founders there. And we would just pass it down, bucket brigade style, down the stairs as quickly as the guy could load it into the truck. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Jerry: And then the first day we finally opened the office, we set aside half of it for fulfillment. And the reason why we did that was because we realized our model is just very different than a traditional pick and pack modal, which is what most 3PLs... What's called a third party logistics provider. At least back then, they were mostly doing pick and pack type operations. And it didn't really fit our modal and we realized that at a certain scale we'd have to bring it in house. It's better to learn it now than to try to take it in when it's already at scale and have huge disruptions in customer experience. So basically, we just started doing it at a really small scale and built our operations all custom to that. So our, kind of, back office technology is all custom. Right? So everything ties together and it suits us in a way that... If you went with a just a third party provider, it probably wouldn't work as well. Stephanie: Very cool. Well, definitely have to get that picture from you so you can post it somewhere to show people because that's... Yeah, a really fun story of starting out. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: What do you see for new people starting out, building their stores and all that? What is some advise that you give them? Or best practices or things that you did that you're like, don't do that, that actually worked out really bad. Jerry: So this probably goes back to your first question about the two businesses that we had before. We made some classic mistakes. Right? Which is, I think the big one is you build the whole thing and you spend like a year building it and then you think that one day you're going to open and people are just going to come in. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Then you start thinking, hey, maybe we just keep tweaking the product and eventually people will come. Right? Really all you're doing is staying busy. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Because if the demand is not there, it's not going to suddenly show up, almost like the world changes, right? And you would be at the right place at the right time. So it's prove out the demand first. And then when the demand is there, you can take your time with the product. Right? It's like, you don't want to be in a place where you're convincing yourself that the reason you're not succeeding is because the product is not quite right. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: If there's a real need for it you can come out with something that's pretty minimal and just addresses the core need. And it doesn't even have to run perfectly and be totally ironed out. And that will give you enough signal that there's something there that people want. And then you can find it down the road and keep expanding your market to... [inaudible] but this is now more mass market. And so on and so forth. Right? Because the early folks, they want your service, whatever it is, so much that they're going to put up a little bit with you in the early days of like not having it all totally together. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). [crosstalk] Jerry: And so... Yeah. Yeah. You got to prove out the demand first before you totally refine the product. Stephanie: Cool. And what about when it comes to technology? How do you think about... It sounds like you guys did a lot of just in-house... everything. In-house logistics. In-house website stuff. What would you tell someone right now? Should they try and build things in-house? Or... Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Jerry: It's easier now to build anything in-house than it use to be. Right? Back then it was actually a little more difficult because a lot of the frameworks that are being used today were really fresh back then. Right? So people weren't learning it in school. They had to teach themselves. There weren't the coding bootcamps back then either. So engineers were still a little bit hard to come by. Now, resources are there and everything. Jerry: We were lucky because we did our own coding in the first versions of the site. It was me and Steven, our CTO. More him than me but we built the early versions of that and didn't hire engineers for a long time. Maybe longer than... we probably should have hired engineers a little bit earlier than we did. But we got by with just two folks building stuff. Right? But you also learn a lot. You are kind of like more intimate with the product, even today, just because we have that history with it. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: And I think one of the things that's really important to us early on was the data ownership. Right? We don't want to have all these different things talking to each other and not have a clear picture of what's going on. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We don't want any black boxes. There's things that if we don't have access to all the data then we're just going to cut that service and we're going to build it ourselves. Stephanie: Got it. Very cool. Yeah. Great advice. So with a couple minutes left, we're going to move on to... it's called the lightning round. Brought to you by [Sales Force Commerce Cloud 00:47:37]. Sales Force Commerce Cloud. This is when I shoot a question over your way and you have a minute or less to say the first answer that comes to mind. Jerry: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephanie: Are you ready? Jerry: Okay. Stephanie: Dun, dun, dun, dun. We'll start with the easy ones first and then we'll end with the harder one. Sound good? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: All right. What's up next for dinner? Jerry: Left-over Chinese food. Some more. Stephanie: Yep. What's up next that you're buying from Touch of Modern? Jerry: What am I buying next? Well, I'll have to see what comes up next. It changes everyday so I don't know yet. Stephanie: All right. Well, what did you just buy recently? Or what's your most recent purchase? Jerry: My most recent purchase was, funny enough, it is a cast-iron rice pot from [Le Creuset 00:48:22]. Stephanie: Okay. Have you tried it out yet? Jerry: No, it hasn't gotten here yet. It was very recent. This was probably... couple days ago. Stephanie: Cool. What's up next on Netflix or Hulu queue? Jerry: I actually don't have either. I don't even own [inaudible] TV. I don't watch a whole lot of stuff, actually. Stephanie: Okay. Hey, that's an answer. What's up next in your travel destinations after the environment calms down a bit? Jerry: I think an easy one from California would be Hawaii. I like to go there to relax and it's a relatively short trip. So I like to go there [inaudible 00:49:05]. Yeah. Stephanie: What's your favorite island there? Have you been? Jerry: Yeah. I go to Oahu fairly frequently. I really like Kauai, I've been there once to do a hike. Stephanie: Yeah. That's my favorite island with all the waterfalls there and the crazy hikes that- Jerry: [crosstalk] been to the weeping walls? Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Yep. Oh, yeah. I want to go back though. We were only there for a couple days and I feel like there's so many different hikes and waterfalls and just things to see there. I mean, it's... Yeah, like a jungle. It's awesome. On to the hard question. What's up next for E-commerce pros? Jerry: E-commerce pros. Hmm. Man. What's next for the pros? I think, I mean, it's going to be adapting to the changes in customer behavior that are coming out of this. Whatever that is. I don't have a crystal ball for that one. Stephanie: Got it. Hey, that's an answer. All right, Jerry. Well, this has been a fun interview. For everyone who hasn't gone and checked out Touch of Modern, you should. It has really fun products on there. And yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Jerry: Thanks for having me.    

On this week's podcast, Marcus sits down with Jerry Carl from the Mobile County Commission. Listen to this week's podcast to hear from Jerry about his journey in sales and local government.  Jerry: Well, my name is Jerry Carl. I'm actually the county commissioner here in Mobile County in District 3, and just glad to be a part of this. Marcus: That's awesome. You came highly recommended by a couple of people, so I'm glad to actually get a chance to sit down with you. Jerry: Well, Bradley's one of them, and I've raised Bradley. So he knows where all my secrets lie. Marcus: Uh-oh. Well, we'll have to give him a couple of drinks and figure out what's going on there. Jerry: Yeah. Good. Marcus: But I know that besides your role as county commissioner that you also have a number of business ventures that ... So I feel like some of the questions that we have will definitely apply. But one of the things that we always do is we want to get the backstory of the person that we're talking to. So give us some of that information. Where are you from? Where'd you go to high school? College? Are you married? How did you end up here if you're not from here? That kind of thing. Jerry: Well, I was actually born in Mobile a number of years ago when Mobile was still just a very small city. My parents got a divorce, so we actually ... I moved from here when I was seven years old. I grew up in a small town called Sylacauga, which is up in central Alabama. It's a great place to raise a family. Marcus: As weird as it is, I've heard of Sylacauga before. Jerry: Yeah. Well, it's the hometown of Jim Nabors. There's an incredible private golf course up there if you're a golfer. Anyway, I grew up in that small community and went to high school there, graduated from there and went to a very small college in Florida. My focus was going to be forestry, which ... That didn't last as long as I had hoped it would. I saw my time in college as a waste. It wasn't required. So I actually came out, went to work for Alabama Power. Shoveled coal for Alabama Power up on their belt line for about a year. An old man I was working with told me, he says, "Son, you need to learn how to use your mind and not your back," although I do appreciate Alabama Power. They're great folks to work for and work with. I came out of that, moved back to Mobile because my dad was still here at the time, and one business has led to the other. I've always been extremely interested in businesses, and my mother has really fertilized that idea growing up. I grew up in a family-owned fabric store, so buying something at 25 cents a yard and selling it for a dollar a yard is not rocket science how you get there. Just you gotta make sure you've got enough of a margin there to pay the bills. So that's kind of my business background. I learned fractions pretty easy. I learned- Marcus: That's a fabric store joke, folks. Jerry: Yeah, it's a fabric store. Yeah. Well, I mean, you did. You learn your fractions. So I'm real good with fractions Marcus: I only know that because we built a website for a company that sold a lot of fabric, and one of the hardest things for us as programmers was to figure out how to do all the fractions of a yard that they may want and then calculate price on the back end of that. Jerry: Well, growing up in that business in the '60s and '70s, everybody made their clothes. You may have bought blue jeans and sweatshirts, but especially all the ladies clothes, they were all- Marcus: Dresses and shirts and dress pants and stuff like that. Jerry: Yeah, buttons ... So when someone would come in and pick out a pattern, you would obviously help them pick out the fabric. And then the ancillary stuff came along, which really made your money in the side stuff, which was the buttons and the zippers and the hooks. So you learn what these add-ons are, and people say, "Well, I don't quite understand that." Well, you drive through Florida and you see this big sign that says "Pecans: 99 cents a pound." Well, they probably paid a dollar a pound. That's their loss leader to get them in the door. It's the other stuff you buy around those pecans and that orange juice that make the profits. Marcus: For the longest time, people didn't believe me when I said that Home Depot and Lowe's actually lost money on their 2 x 4s. Jerry: Oh, sure. Marcus: Yeah. They sell 2 x 4s at cost or maybe even less. Jerry: It's a loss leader. Marcus: Yeah. It's a loss leader because they know when you come in that you need nails or screws, and you need shingles, and you may need some power tools or paint or whatever. You're going to pick up all this other stuff there, and those are the higher-dollar, higher-margin items. Jerry: Well, from that, I've always looked for niche markets. My businesses have always been based on niche markets, and some of them pretty broad, some of them pretty narrow. Marcus: For those that don't know you ... because we've met a couple of times, but I don't know a whole lot about your business ventures. What types of businesses are you currently involved in? Jerry: Primarily right now, a pharmacy. We do blood products. We deal with hemophilia patients and HIV patients. It's a high-risk business. It's a very small business. There's probably 350 patients total statewide. So for a pharmacy business, their focus is on the number of scripts that they make or they can generate per day. Ours is much different than that. Our average script will run about 50,000 per script, so there's high risk there. If something happens and we're not able to collect our payment on it, obviously we're going to- Marcus: You're going to feel that. Jerry: We're going to take a $35,000 hit. Right. Not to mention our overhead. So it's a high risk. Again, it's one of those niches. The real estate business that I'm involved in now ... In West Mobile, there were no office spaces with parking. You could buy an old shopping center, obviously, that had a lot of parking, but the office spaces had very limited parking. So I actually built an office complex based on the parking lot. It's a niche. Marcus: That's great. Jerry: Well, this was my focus. And I recruited a company that had 60 employees. They needed small cubicles, but they needed a parking lot for 60 cars. Marcus: They've grown. Jerry: Well, they have. They've gone on. They're a national company, and I've still got the building. I'm in the rental business. I rent office space, and one of my draws is the parking lot, well-lit parking lot. So it is still a niche. Marcus: That is so funny. I've never heard anybody say, "I built a commercial space around a parking lot." Usually, it's build the commercial space and the parking lot is an afterthought. But it makes sense because if you can't- Jerry: Yeah, if you have a lot of employees. Marcus: Yeah, or even customers that are coming in or something like that. Jerry: Well, in that case, a retail spot would work better. Mine never works as a retail spot. I didn't design in that way, but that's the way it is. I'm looking at high volumes of employees, and then you look after their safety. And the people that rent from you, that's some concerns of theirs. But in the early days, I actually got started in the funeral home business selling funeral supplies, the needles and the sutures and the packings and the waxes and everything except for embalming fluids and caskets. Needless to say, I was hungry. That's a business. It's a very niche business, but I made a fair margin on it. So I got started with that and also sold church furniture. I figured funeral homes need church pews, and church pews ... They kind of had a little bit of correlation there. So I got into the church furniture business and did quite well in church furniture. That was really my big start. So I went from that to healthcare. I thought healthcare was just such a unique market. If a salesman can sell one thing, he can sell anything. If he learns how to develop a base of customers, he can develop a base of customers in anything. Of course, you've got your fly-by nights. I've never been that flash in the pan that's been able to come in and sell you everything you want. But I'm that continuous guy that keeps coming back and forth you develop that relationship with. I'm a relationship type of salesman. So I got in the healthcare field, and I was selling primarily home healthcare equipment, hospital beds, oxygen, incontinent supplies. I represented about 60 different companies. I was teaching these small people, small investors, how to start a DME company because it was a real art because you have to bill Medicare. You have to understand the secondary insurance. You have to understand the insurance business also. The investors may have had the heart and the cash, but they didn't have the knowledge. So I was teaching them how to set up their billing cycle, too. One day, I woke up and I said, "Hey, I'm tired of all this traveling. I'm traveling from Arkansas to Orlando, Florida, by car." No flying because most of my clients are in small cities at the time. So I decided I would just start my own DME company, durable medical equipment, DME. I did, and that was very successful. I figured out how I could set up a bunch of them and develop the clientele through sales and marketing and then turn around and sell those to national companies. So that's where we really prospered, and again, it's a niche market at the time. Now, we kind of take it for granted. Our grandparents are on oxygen or something. But when I got into it, it was they were rolling big, green cylinders into a room in your home, and they had to basically set up a hospital bed. In a hospital environment now, it's much more user friendly. They came out with these things called concentrators, which I got in early on those. We were talking about Colorado earlier. One of the first companies was in Denver, Colorado, a company called Mountain Medical. And they figured out how to take molecular ... Or NASA discovered how to take molecular material and pressure oxygen room air through that and turn it into 99% oxygen. We got that smaller form, so it replaced the green cylinders. We're still in a niche market, but the COPD, the oxygen market, is really quite large. A lot of people you know personally are probably on oxygen, primarily at night. Marcus: Yeah. So you're talking about being in a niche market. It's been very interesting to me over the years that I've always gravitated towards not the mainstream of what just anybody is doing, but these products that are specialty products. For instance, when I was in Washington, DC, and I was doing a lot of consulting, I was a specialist and was speaking at conferences and stuff like that for a line or products that was ultimately bought by IBM. But Rational Software was the name of the company. But I always found that those were more lucrative because there weren't a whole lot of people that knew how to operate within that realm. But it's interesting that even with products that staying ahead of the curve or staying in the margins, that there's more margin and probably less competition than what you would find if you were dealing with the same stuff that everybody was dealing with. Jerry: I got in the pharmacy business because we were dealing with patients with respiratory issues, and these patients would get into some type of bad situation that had to be taken to the emergency room. And all they were doing in the emergency room was giving them a breathing treatment, as we know it now. So myself and a group of guys got to looking at that, and we figured out how Medicare could save money by paying for that drug for that patient to use it at home versus going to the emergency room. We did some lobbying. I did not get involved in the lobbying, but I was involved with the guys that did the lobbying. We got the medicine approved through Medicare, which was the only drug that was paid for by Medicare. But we convinced them that we could save them money by doing that in the field. So we literally set up a line, and we were dealing with about 1,600 to 3,000 patients at any given time that were taking the four treatments a day of this breathing medication. It was saving hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars from keeping these patients from going into the emergency room. But, again, it's still a niche. You understand what the needs are, and you just got to figure out how to back into it. In the healthcare field, it's always a coast factor. Marcus: I was just thinking it's interesting. If you're out there and you're listening to this as an audience member, don't be afraid of going into those smaller markets- Jerry: Oh, gosh no. Marcus: Yeah, because there's definitely some lucrative aspects to it. Now, do you remember your first job? I mean your first, first job. Jerry: Other than working for my mother? Marcus: Yeah. I mean your first real job, like flipping burgers, scrubbing toilets, that kind of thing. Jerry: Shining shoes in a drugstore. Marcus: Shining shoes. Okay. Jerry: Yeah. Yeah. Marcus: Were there any lessons that you still remember from that? Jerry: Be very careful of the guys wearing white socks. I had to pay for a pair of white socks and really got discouraged from that job. But I've had so many jobs doing so many things. People say, "What was the best job you've ever had?" I'd probably say scrubbing toilets for Alabama Power. Marcus: Really? Jerry: I got off that coal belt line, and I had 36 toilets in a line, and you learn a lot. I've never had a job that I didn't learn something from that took me to another level. When I try to work with young people ... And I try to give as much time as I can back to the community. But there's not a job that you perform that will not take you to another level. It may be 10 years down the road, but you'll look back and you'll view that. Marcus: Yeah. There are lessons to be learned at every step of the way. Jerry: Well, one of the worst guys I ever worked for was right here in town. I worked for Caterpillar Parts sweeping floors, and that guy that I worked for was probably the rudest, loudest, cussingest, worst-smelling-breath human that I knew in my life. Marcus: Somebody you really cared for, huh? Jerry: Well, no, I learned to love him. I did. I did learn to love him. Not at first. I was too hungry, though. I was scared. But I learned from him, and I think about him every day. "What would Smoky do? What would Smoky say?" Because he was trying to teach me. That was his way of teaching me. He was like an old drill sergeant. But I learned from that. I didn't take it personal. I took it as that was his job. His methods probably wouldn't work now. Marcus: Well, yeah. I can understand that. But it's funny that you mention methods because sometimes we get hung up on how things are being communicated. But if you look through how it's being communicated to what is being communicated, oftentimes there's some truth or some gold in that. Jerry: Well, even in my life now when things don't go my way, I tell myself, "Hey, you're not that important." Don't think it's about you. The big picture does ... You may be a part of it, but it's not about you. So don't take it personal. Just move on. Marcus: Do you remember the first business that you went into, maybe even the first sale that you made where you thought, "Man, maybe there is something to this life as a business owner"? Jerry: I do. My mother had these heavy-duty zippers, and I've told this story numerous times. So I know exactly how to answer this one. Marcus: Sure. No, that's good. Jerry: My mother had these heavy-duty zippers that she could not sell, and she wanted to get rid of them. So she was going to teach ... And I aggravated her. I wanted to sell those zippers. So she sold those zippers to me for a penny apiece. There was a bunch of them. She financed this deal. So I got up under the counter, and as the ladies would walk by, I'd reach out and grab them by the ankle and say, "Hey, you want to buy a zipper?" I don't know if it was out of sympathy. I don't know if I was that great of a salesman. But they would wind up buying a zipper. So I started getting into my mother's zipper sales, and she didn't like it. She wanted to buy me out of the zipper business, which I did. I sold them back to her for a nickel. So I made four cents a zipper. All this was in about a week and a half, and I was a rich man after that. It's not rocket science. Marcus: That's too funny. Jerry: You buy it for a penny and sell it for a nickel. Marcus: So funny. I just have this vision of a little kid scaring the crap out of these women. Jerry: Well, that's exactly what I did. I would be sitting up under the counter waiting for somebody to walk by to try to sell them a zipper. Jerry: That was my first taste of profits. I sold fruit that way. I went door to door selling peaches. I would ride with my mother to Atlanta, Georgia, and she would buy materials and I would buy a case of peaches and bring them back. I wouldn't sell a whole box of peaches. I sold peaches each and go door to door, because that one peach, you had to tell the story about where that peach was from and add value to it so somebody was willing to pay more for it. Marcus: It's all about a story, even with a peach. Jerry: It is. People can appreciate a good salesman. Not pressure, but a good story about how I got that peach. Marcus: You've said that twice now. What is your definition of a good salesman? Jerry: A good salesman is somebody that invests in your business that's willing to help you grow. They're willing to share their knowledge. They invest in your business. The growth of your business, you understand, feeds their family. So you're a very important part of their business. The flash in the pans that come in the door and they've got this great deal that's a one-time offer I'm very leery of. I am. But I always look. I've got one guy I've been buying cars from for probably 25 years, and most of the cars, I never see them before I buy them. I just call and say, "Hey, Ted. This is what I need. This is what I'm looking for." And I know I'm going to get a great deal. It may not be the best I can possibly get, but I understand Ted's got to feed his family. Marcus: Well, and there's also- Jerry: And I trust him. Marcus: Yeah. I mean, it's very interesting because I've always taken a consultant's approach to sales. So there's an educational aspect to it of helping somebody understand ... especially because we deal with some very technical stuff. So helping them understand the technical aspects of it, helping them understand the benefits and features and things of that nature, but then also just letting them know, "Hey, we want to prove ourselves to you and what it is that we're doing," because ultimately I'm not an idiot. If I prove myself to them, they're going to continue to spend money with us and continue to support our business. We've had clients that we've worked with, at least one client, since 2008, 2009. So they've been around for quite a long time, and that person that I'm thinking of has owned five different businesses in that time. And every time he goes into a new venture, one of his first calls is always to me. Jerry: As a salesman, you want them to call you for everything. You may sell medical equipment, but I wanted them to call me if it was floor-cleaning supplies because I would get them hooked ... I want them in the habit of calling me. I never want them to feel like it's bothering me. I use that same approach in position I'm in now as county commissioner. People call me for things that have nothing to do with my job, but I find the person for them to talk to. I want them to feel like they can ... It's the same mentality applied to the public service industry, and that's the business we're in as salesmen, too. We're there for a service. Marcus: Yeah. If you were talking to someone that wanted to get started in running their own business, what's the one bit of wisdom that you would impart to them? Jerry: Follow your dream, but be willing to make changes. Life is all about hitting a curve ball. Things will hit you and change, but continue with your dream, knowing that it's going to change at some point/place in time. But just keep following it. Most people fail because they give up too early. If you don't give up, that doesn't mean be hard-headed and try to change it to be your way. You have to make those changes and adapt to the situation. I call it being a chameleon. You gotta be able to walk into a room and become part of the room to be accepted in sales. But you've got to ... You can't just give up. That requires getting up and talking to yourself in the mirror every morning, too. Marcus: Giving up is the ultimate failure. You may have little setbacks along the way, and everybody's always afraid when they go into business of failure. Failure, failure. It's the big F-word. But the truth is the biggest failure that you can make is stopping too soon. There is a number of people that are prevalent on social media and stuff like that that they talk about the successes that they've had, and they've truly built businesses, like hundred-million-dollar businesses, that are worth listening to these people because they have something valuable to say, not these people that pop up and have not really accomplished anything. The one guy in particular, Andy Frisella, that I'm thinking of, he tells the story of really not making any money for like a decade. But then it was like years 10 through 15 ... He's a multimillionaire now and has Lamborghinis and nice houses and stuff like that because he invested ... all those years kept investing back in the business and back in the business and back in the business. And then, finally, he experienced the kind of growth that would be necessary for him to have that kind of lifestyle. But yeah, it's just, don't stop too soon. Jerry: Yeah. You gotta surround yourself with positive people. You gotta surround yourself with people that have somewhat of a focus for that ambition that you're pushing, and bring people with you. When I got out of the home healthcare community, the majority of the people that are in it here I financed. I've done something to get them in the business. They worked for me. I've helped them financially with equipment. You have to bring people along with you. It's no fun by yourself. Marcus: Yeah. Is there someone in the business world, the larger business world, not just Mobile, that motivates you, that you look to and think, "Man, that guy is ..." Jerry: Yeah. Well, I've got a gentleman up in Sylacauga that has always invested in my life, Mr. [Purcell]. He's just always been someone I could pick up the phone and call. He's certainly one of those quiet fellows that's made a tremendous amount of money, and he's back in the local community up there and I like that. I like that much more than the guy that buys him an NFL football team and stands out on the field with them. We need some of both. Don't get me wrong. But I've got some solid people that I've always watched and respected that way. Marcus: It's that millionaire next door, right? Jerry: Yeah. And he's very humble. He's very humble about it, and he can pick up the phone and do anything he wants to do. We have several here in Mobile the same way. They've really made a lot of money, and they came from nowhere. They've done well and they've invested back in their community. That's what it's about at the end of the day. We get old, and we're sitting in a wheelchair somewhere. We look around and we can say we helped start that or do that. And that's- Marcus: Yeah. It's about that legacy, isn't it? Jerry: That's the true value in life to me because I haven't seen anybody get buried yet with hearse full of money. Marcus: Yeah. Preach. Sell. Are there any books, podcasts, people, or organizations that have been helpful to you in your business life? Jerry: Not really. I think I've tried them all. I think I've listened to them all. I've always trusted my gut more than I have somebody that I feel like is trying to sell a book. Not to say that they don't have a lot to add, but you've really got to just get out there and get your nose busted a few times. You learn when to duck and when to stand up. That's just part of the process. Marcus: There's some good wisdom in that statement. Jerry: Well, I call it street survival. You gotta learn it. Marcus: Yep. Very much so. What's the most important thing that you've learned about running a business? Jerry: You've got to focus on your employees because you're only as good as the people that are taking care of things. At one time, I had all my companies set on cruise control. Before I ran for public office, I would hunt and fish every day. I would show up at a boardroom a couple times a year. I may take care of a few things over the phone. But I could go fishing for ... I traveled the world playing in a very small way. But I didn't worry about it because I had great people. I made sure they were taken care of. I invested in their families. It's a very simple cycle. You take care of the people take care of you, and it works. Marcus: Absolutely. This is usually the hardest question. How do you like to unwind? Jerry: I don't unwind very well. Marcus: Come on. Jerry: I love to hunt and fish, but I'm a reader. I like to just read various stuff. I'm working on Sidney Phillips' book, Dr. Phillips' book. It's a very simple book to read, but I read his heart in everything that he's written. I do a lot of reading. I do very little TV watching. I hate to watch the news, but I have to from time to time. But I guess reading, hunting and fishing. I enjoy my grandkids. I enjoy my family. Just the other day, I got a fire started, and we ran a fire for 24 hours at our house. I sat by the fire reading all day. Marcus: That's cool. That's very cool. Jerry: Grandkids crawling all over me and doing the things that they're supposed to do. But as I get older, I appreciate more stuff. Marcus: Yeah. We haven't talked about your role in local politics, but what made you decide to go down that path? Jerry: My son ... I've always been successful. Not at everything, but financially I've been successful and our family is taken care of. My son joined the Marine Corps, went off to active duty, to Afghanistan, and I'm sitting there. Every parent that sends a child into active combat, they're watching that driveway, afraid that car's going to turn in and bring them the bad news. I'm sitting there watching the driveway, and I knew he would be over there for eight months. So about four months into it, I got to thinking, "What have I ever done? Here I've raised a child that's willing to go to Afghanistan ..." Pardon me. I get a little emotional at this part. But he's willing to go over there and do what he's doing. So many kids are. What have I ever done? So I tried to join the Marine Corps. They told me I was too old. Marcus: I can see. Jerry: This is the truth. This is the truth. Marcus: How old were you when you tried to join the Marine- Jerry: I think I was 50-something. Marcus: That's great. Jerry: I said, "I may be over the hill, but I can drive a truck. I can do something. I can give back." Marcus: Oh, that's perfect. Jerry: They laughed at me just like you are. Jerry: Hey, in World War II, I would have been in high demand. But I got to looking, and I told my wife. I said, "We're going to pray about this, and we'll figure out what I can do to give back." I'm reading the newspaper when we had the Press-Register. There was an article about a local elected official that was holding permits up to prove to this company who was in control. Marcus: Come on. Jerry: I told my wife. I said, "That's exactly what government should not do. The people should be in control." I said, "We're going to run for that position." She said, "What is it?" I said, "Well, it's county commissioner." She says, "What is that?" I go, "I don't know. Let's Google it." Marcus: I don't know either. Jerry: So we Googled county commissioner, and that's how I got involved in politics. I really feel I love what I do. I enjoy serving people. I enjoy serving people at my church. I enjoy opening the door for the ladies. I enjoy serving. So it works well with my public service life. Marcus: That's just such an amazing story. I just love that at 50 years old, you called the Marine Corps and were like- Jerry: No, I went to a recruiting office. Marcus: Yeah. No, that's great. Jerry: Yeah. So I was there. All I had to do was pull the paperwork out, and the guy laughed at me. He goes, "How old are you?" I don't remember exactly. I'd have to go back and do the math. I said, "I'm like 51." He goes, "You just missed it. The cutoff is 50." He thought it was humorous, too. Marcus: That's perfect, man. Jerry: But I was sincere. Marcus: Well, Jerry, I really want to thank you again for coming on my podcast. Jerry: Oh, my pleasure. Marcus: Any final thoughts or comments you'd like to share? Jerry: No. Young people, especially wanting to get in business, don't get distracted by the billionaires and the millionaires. You may be the next one, but you know what? You may wind up just like me, being able to feed your family, take care of your family in a very comfortable fashion. That's important. And it's extremely important that we have younger people with newer ideas that want to do things better, come up in behind it, and take the places of us older people. I mean, that's just the cycle. I get excited listening to somebody trying to chase their dreams. I talk to young people all the time about it. Don't give up. Don't let somebody else set the target for you. You set it. You move towards it. Marcus: Get out and hustle and make it happen. Jerry: Yeah. Marcus: We actually ... Today, because we're actually recording this on ... What's today? The 22nd or something like that? January 23rd. So Bill Sisson's episode of the podcast was released today, and one of the things that we discussed in that was Mobile has 28,000 ... if I remember correctly, 28,000 micro-businesses. When he first said that in an update that he was giving as part of an executive round table or something along those lines, I was really struck by that. Mobile is open for business. There are a lot of people that are really hungry and wanting to take that chance. This is fertile ground for business owners. So I love what you're saying about get out there. You may not make a billion dollars, but if you can feed your family and do it on your own terms, then that's beautiful. That's a wonderful thing. Jerry: That's success. That person's just as successful as the founder of Amazon, which started very meekly. Now he's got 157 billion dollars he's trying to figure out how to- Marcus: It's a completely different problem, but yeah. He didn't get there overnight. Jerry: Yeah. It's a totally different problem. But you're in America. Anything's possible. Anything's possible. I don't care who you are. This is the greatest country in the world. This is the greatest time to be alive. Marcus: Absolutely. Jerry: And they talk about the millennials. They're running things now. The press talks about them in a negative way. No way. Look around you. They're taking over. I love it. And that's their job is to take over. Marcus: Yeah. It is going to be very exciting to see where we go in the next 5 to 10 years. Jerry: In my short life, I can remember when there were no computers. I can remember when telephone consisted of a party line. Now I send out messages to a half a dozen people at the stroke of a key. Where are we going to be 50 years from now? It's impossible for somebody like me to vision that. I just hang on for the ride. All I want to do is go into space. I'm pretty simple. I tell my wife all the time, "Just send me into space while I'm alive and leave me." I'll be happy with that. I'll die out there floating around. Marcus: Well, that's funny. You're one of the ... I've not met somebody that actually wanted to do the Virgin ride, the- Jerry: Yeah, for the 100 grand? I've been thinking about it. I'll do it in a heartbeat. Marcus: Yeah. That's interesting. I don't know that I would, quite honestly. I don't have that much interest. I mean, I grew up watching the space shuttle go into space and stuff like that. It was a very big deal for those of us that grew up during that time period. But for whatever reason, just going to space just has never been an interesting thing to me. I like terra forma. Jerry: No, no, no. I mean, I've always wanted to go to Africa and spend time on the plains. I've done that. My bucket is empty. I need some new things. Marcus: So space it is. Jerry: Space is it. I'm good with it. Send me up. Marcus: That's great. Jerry, I appreciate your willingness to sit with me and share your journey as a business owner. Jerry: I've enjoyed this. Thank you very much. Marcus: Yeah. It's been great talking with you. Jerry: All right. Take care. Produced by Blue Fish in Mobile, Alabama

Busy (by Jerry)You know you're probably too busy when you have a conversation that goes like this.Me: How are you?You: Busy! (or "Crazy busy!" if being just regular busy is not enough.)Over recent years, we seem to have changed the response to "How are you?" from "Fine" to "Busy".Being busy is a strange badge of courage. I just read a Facebook post of a friend who complained about coming down with a cold to kick off the Summer. It caught my attention that she finished the post complaining, or bragging, about how she still needed to get up early and prep lunches for her son for the next four weeks. No rest for the weary, I suppose. At a time when her body needs rest and she could use some encouragement, the author of the post lets us all know that the cold can wait because she's a fast-paced super-mom.Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed because of a promotion you received. Everyone seems to need your attention right now, and you're just trying to figure out how to be there for your child's event. It looks like the office is going to prevail again in this battle.A few weeks ago, I found myself feeling tired and burdened by everything going on in life. Thanks to my lovely wife, I was able to walk through a process to acknowledge all I have going on and choose what was most important and what could go away at least for a season.Check out this episode as we cover some of the following: My own struggle with feeling too busy How to recognize what is most important What to do once you identify what is taking up all your time and energyComment BelowHow are you feeling overwhelmed or too busy?What are you doing to prevent yourself from getting to "too busy"?Resources and LinksBtR 131 - Suzy Rosenstein: Woman in the MiddleBtR 132 - Regret-Proof Your Life and Reduce Busy-ness with Suzy RosensteinThe Downside of No Downtime: America's Culture of Busy,  Louisiana's Health & Fitness Magazine, HealthFitnessMag.comHarvard Business Review - Research: Why Americans Are So Impressed by BusynessBusy Lifestyles Versus Health and Wellness by RutgersToo Busy to Read This? Then You Probably Should. from Psychology Today writer Sherry Bourg Carter, Psy.D.Connect with UsEmail: info@beyondtherut.comVoicemail: 361-596-3788Twitter: Twitter.com/beyondtherutFacebook: Beyond the Rut