Podcast appearances and mentions of john i'm

After people got big mad online for John saying the Habs had no chance against Vegas, the Knights won 4-1 in Game 1, and John is doubling down on his take. Also, taking a look at the TBL/NYI game, including the Point penalty and too many men on the ice for Tampa.

Hugo Egon Balder erzählt Geschichten und Anekdoten rund um einen Lieblingshit und seine Entstehung: "I'm still standing" von Elton John. Von Hugo Egon Balder.

Uma música que ressurgiu das cinzas depois do sucesso de Rocketman, filme musical biográfico de 2019 baseado na vida do músico Elton John. Nesta edição do Resumo do Som eu conto pra você como foi que surgiu o hit I’m Still Standing, de 1983.  Capa do compacto de I'm Still StandingBlooper das filmagens do videoclipe de I'm Still Standing, com o diretor Russell Mulcahy errando a coreografia e Elton caindo na gargalhada. I'm Still Standing está disponível em:       I'm Still Standing foi escrita por Elton John & Bernie Taupin℗ & © 1983 The Rocket Record Company  Músicas utilizadas nesta edição: YouTube Music LibraryRKVC - FusedUnicorn Heads - Get in the Car and GoUnicorn Heads - Serial Dream Rock Agradecimentos aos produtores virtuais pelo apoio:Fabiano F. M. Cordeiro Ricardo Bunnyman (AutoRadio Podcast)Tiago Rosas (Kit de Releituras Musicais)Marcos ColuciMarcelo Machado (Podcast de Garagem)Danilo de Almeida (Doublecast, Já Ouviu Esse Disco) Gostaria de apoiar o 80 WATTS? É só escolher a plataforma de sua preferência.    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Background vector created by freepik - www.freepik.com

Last week we covered the basics of the traditional IRA and today we will shift our focus to the Roth IRA. John and Nick will once again explain the basics to this investment vehicle. We will also compare and contrast the Roth IRA to the traditional IRA.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comFor a transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/Transcript of Today's Show:----more----Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Welcome back in to Retirement Planning Redefined. Thanks for tuning into the podcast. We appreciate it. Maybe you've received this podcast through the team's newsletters or email blast. Or maybe you found us online on various different podcast outlets like Apple or Google or Spotify. Either way we appreciate your time. And we're going to spend a few minutes with John and Nick talking some more about IRAs. And this go round we're going to spend some time on the Roths. But first guys, what's going on? How are you?John: I'm good. So my one year old is sleeping through the night very well, so I feel like a new man.Speaker 1: That goes a long way that's for sure. Well kudos on that. And Nick, how you doing, buddy?Nick: I'm pretty good. My 15 year old dog is not sleeping through the night.I'm okay.Speaker 1: Yeah, getting up there. I've got a 13 year old dog and she's a pistol. I got a 22 year old daughter and I can't tell which one's a bigger pain in the butt, the dog or the daughter. But they're both doing pretty well. The kid's actually graduating from nuclear engineering school. Actually I get to go see her Friday, and she's now a petty officer. She ranked up in the Navy. So we're all proud of her.Nick: Congrats.Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate that. I'll tell you what, let's not talk about babies, dogs or the Navy for just a minute. Let's talk about the Roth IRAs as I mentioned. So if you happened to catch the last podcast, we wanted to go through and talk about IRAs, about the vehicle. And we spent some time on the traditional side. So guys, do me a favor first, let's just do a recap, a little bit, of the traditional IRA before we switch over to the Roth so people have some context on that.Nick: So one of the biggest benefits for any sort of IRA account are some of the tax benefits. But one of the things that we wanted to remind everybody of, and this helps with IRA accounts, but also just really any investment account. Sometimes the feedback we've gotten is it's helpful for people to think about the different types of accounts in three phases of taxation. There's as the money goes in, is it taxed, is it not taxed. As the money grows, is it taxed, is it not taxed. And then when it comes out so that you can use it, is it taxed or not taxed. So for traditional IRA, you know the first one, as it goes in, in the last session we talked a little bit about it. Most of the time for most people it's not going to be taxed. But there will be some rules on when that's after tax money, it's going to grow tax deferred. So you're not going to get 1099 on it each year as it grows. And then when it comes out, it's going to be ordinary income tax.Nick: And then for the Roth IRA, which is what we're going to get into today, it is money that's already been taxed is going to go in. It's going to grow tax deferred. So [inaudible 00:02:43] 1099s, and then on the backside it's tax free. That's the comparison as you go through.Speaker 1: Okay. Since you brought it up, let's go ahead and just jump right into it. So John, give us a few things to think about on the Roth side. He already mentioned the tax deferred part. What are some other limitations and things of that nature we talked about like with the traditional, some numbers or some things we need to know?John: Yeah, so like the traditional IRA, the contributions are based off of earned income. So again, that does not count real estate state income, any interest, income like that, but earned income. And as far as the limits go, if you're below 50, [inaudible 00:03:20] 6,000. Anyone above 50 can do 1,000 catch-up, which gives you a 7,000 total. And just to again reiterate some mistakes we've seen where you can only contribute 7,000 between the two of you. You can't contribute 7,000 each. Okay, so 7,000 total.John: And something that some people aren't aware of is that even if, let's say one spouse is not working and is staying home for whatever reason. They are eligible to make a spousal contribution to an IRA, whether that's Roth or traditional, which is a nice feature because that does come up quite a bit. So to talk about the contributions of a Roth, we gave the example of traditional IRA as far as making a pre tax contribution. As Nick mentioned, the Roth is after tax dollars. So example of that, 100,000 of income for somebody, they make a $5,000 contribution to a Roth, their taxable income stays at 100,000 in that given year. So there's no tax benefit up front with the Roth IRA versus a traditional IRA, you could have a tax savings up front when you make the contribution if it's deductible.Nick: So from an eligibility standpoint, for a single person, somebody that makes under 122,000 can make a full contribution. If their income is between 122,000 and 137,000, there is a partial that can be made. If their income is over 137,000, they are not able to make a contribution to a Roth IRA. For married filing jointly, if their income is below 193,000, they can make contributions for both of them and their spouse. If the income is between 193 and 203,000, it's a partial. And if the household or the married filing jointly income is above or greater than 203,000, then they are not eligible to make the contribution.Speaker 1: Gotcha. Okay. All right, so we've covered some of the contributions, some of the eligibility you mentioned already in the tax deferred growth part. What about access? Did we cover some things there?John: So one thing the eligibility and it's becoming more popular now with Roth 401k. So if you're not eligible to make a Roth IRA contribution, one thing to do is check with your employer and see if they offer a Roth 401k, which actually has no income limits for you to be able to participate in it, which is a nice [inaudible 00:05:37]Speaker 1: Okay, that's good to know. Yeah, absolutely. All right, that's a Roth 401k. Maybe we'll do another show about that another time. What about the access side, anything there? Is it the same 59 and a half, all that kind of stuff?John: So rules are fairly similar, where you as far as access getting to the account, there is the 59 and a half rule. And if you do draw early there's a 10% penalty on your earnings. And I stress earnings on that, because with a Roth IRA and I say this, consult with your tax preparer, tax advisor, we don't give tax advice. But with a Roth IRA, you can actually access what we call cost basis prior to 59 and a half without any penalty. I've seen a couple of people do it where basically let's say if you've put in 30,000 into your Roth in your account at 50. So 20,000 earnings, 30,000 is what you've put in, which is considered your cost basis. You can pull that 30,000 out without paying a penalty. It's just you have to keep very good records of your contribution amounts. And if you do pull it out, you have to work with your tax preparer to go ahead and let the IRS know that you pulled out a portion of your tax basis. And that's would avoid any type of a penalty on that.Speaker 1: All right, so we've covered several things on the Roth side, so the access, the eligibility, contributions, all that good kind of stuff. So let's just get into the fact that it's been hugely popular. It's been a very hot button issue for the last really couple of years. Obviously one of the reasons, we mentioned earlier that it's tax deferred. Really, the taxes are low, right? We're in a historically low tax rate. So one of the reasons that a Roth might be a good place to go, or a Roth conversion I guess I should say, is because of the tax thing. So what are some other reasons why the Roth is just really popular?Nick: You pointed to one of the biggest reasons from the standpoint of we are in historical low tax brackets. And one of the things that we talk about with clients and it really became evident towards the end of 2019 is, the thing that might be the quote unquote best strategy today, it may not be the best strategy five years down the road, 10 years down the road. So for most of the clients that we meet with, they're substantially overweight on pre-tax money and maybe only recently have started to build up Roth money. And we think it's really important to have balance and to have options in retirement. Your ability to be able to pivot and adjust to law changes, rule changes, market conditions, etc. are really important. And then part of that is not having to be forced to take out a required minimum distribution on a Roth helps you maintain that balance and maintain the nest egg, those tax free [inaudible 00:08:18] roles help give you flexibility and balance, the ability to be able to pass on funds to beneficiaries, Roth dollars.Nick: Especially if you have... Maybe your kids are high-income, you've done a good job planning. We go through the numbers, we built the plan and there's a pretty high probability that you're going to be passing on money to the kids. The rub, money is usually much better to plan or to pass down, because of the fact that it will be tax-free to them as well. So the ability to really create flexibility in your planning and strategies is one of the reasons that we think the Roths are a really important piece of the pie.John: Just to jump in. One thing, just backtracking to accessing it tax-free. Just a couple of rules with it is you have to be above 59 and a half. And you actually have to have had a Roth IRA account for at least five years. So an example would be, let's say I open one up at age 60. I'm above 59 and a half. The person cannot actually withdraw tax free until basically 65. So I have to wait five years and that's from the first Roth I ever started up. So one thing that we typically will work with clients is if they're eligible, we might just go ahead and start a Roth IRA just to start that five year window.Speaker 1: Okay. All right. That's good. Yeah. Good information to know on that. Now with the beneficiary thing and passing things along, is the change in the SECURE act, does that make a difference in the Roth as well? Is there anything there that would pertain to people if they're thinking about it that they should definitely be checking with you guys on before doing a conversion or something like that?John: Yeah, so I believe we're doing a four part session to this. We're going to talk about conversions, but yeah, that makes conversions a little more appealing where you have to pull the money out over a 10 year period now. Where basically at least if you have to pull it over 10 years, there's actually no tax hit. So as your IRA gets bigger, if you're pulling out of a $1 million IRA over a 10 year period, that's going to really affect your tax rate. If it was all Roth money, it would have no bearing on your taxes.Speaker 1: Gotcha. Okay. All right. Yeah, and we are going to continue on with this conversation on a future podcast about which one might be right for you and all those good kinds of things. Nick, anything else that we may have overlooked in there we need to throw in?Nick: No, I just can't really say it enough from the standpoint of building in flexibility is key. Most of the people that listen to the podcasts are going to have pretax money, but if they don't have any Roth money then just getting started can be really important to build that up. Because even if they're within a few years of retirement, just remember that we're still planning for 30, 40 years down the road. Having money that compounds over a long period of time and then has tax free withdrawals on the backside is a pretty significant leverage point and benefit.Speaker 1: Okay, one final question I'm going to ask you guys is you sometimes hear people say, if I'm still working, can I contribute or should I contribute to both kinds, the traditional or the Roth? What do you say when someone asks that type of question? Should someone do both the traditional for the tax reasons and then the Roth for the non-tax? What's your answer?John: We'll answer that in the next session.Speaker 1: Nicely done. Look at him teeing that up. There you go, folks. All right, I'll tell you what. We will take care of that on the next session and that way you have a reason to come back. A cliffhanger if you will. So if you've got questions about the Roth IRA, make sure you talk with your advisor about that. If you're not working with an advisor, you certainly should be. Reach out to John and Nick and give them a call at PFG Private Wealth. And you can reach them at 813-286-7776. That's the number to dial. 813-286-7776 here in the Tampa Bay area or go to their website, check them out online at pfgprivatewealth.com. That is pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you can get those next episodes as they come out. Nick, John, thanks for your time this week.Speaker 1: I hope everybody has a great week and you guys enjoy yourself and continue to get some good sleep while that baby's resting, all right?John: Hopefully it continues. I think it will.Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. Nick, appreciate your time, buddy. Take care.Nick: Thanks. Have a good one.Speaker 1: We'll see you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined with the guys from PFG Private Wealth, John and Nick.

Today is part 5 of our social security series and we will focus on the survivor benefit option. We will talk about a few situations that can arise and share a couple of client stories that have revolved around this topic.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comTranscript of Today's Show:----more----Speaker 1: Back here with us for another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined, the podcast with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. Gentlemen, how's it going? Nick, how are you today, my friend?Nick: Doing pretty well. How about yourself?Speaker 1: I'm hanging in there. Not doing too bad. We are into December. Moving along nicely on this. John, how are you doing? You doing all right?John: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. No complaints. It's a getting a little cooler here in Florida, which is nice. It's been been hot, so it's nice to get a little a cool, no more humidity.Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Now, as planners, you guys plan a lot of things, but are you the same way when it comes to holiday shopping? Have you kind of gotten some of this knocked out? We're at about the middle of the month here now in December. So you guys ready to roll for Christmas or are you last minute?John: I'll take that one first. No, I do a lot of Amazon shopping [crosstalk 00:00:49].Speaker 1: Me and you both. But how about you, Nick?Nick: Anything I can do to avoid going to a store, I do, so the majority of my shopping [crosstalk 00:00:59].Speaker 1: I think so many of us are that way, right, which obviously we can see in the death of brick and mortar, for sure. But yeah, absolutely. I agree with you there. Well, hopefully, folks, you're out there getting your shopping done. Maybe you're checking out this podcast while you're driving around doing some shopping or walking around in the malls or whatever the case might be. That is kind of the beauty of podcasting. It's not like traditional radio obviously, so you have more options, and hopefully you're subscribed to the podcast Retirement Planning Redefined. Do it at Apple, Google or Spotify, and a couple others as well, and you can find the links if you want, and podcast episodes on their website at PFGPrivateWealth.com. That's PFGPrivateWealth.com.Speaker 1: All right, part five. I think this is going to probably wrap it up, too, for our series on social security. We're going to talk about survivor benefits. Guys, give us some things to think about here. Survivor benefits are available to children and surviving spouses, correct?John: Yeah, so it is available to children and surviving spouses. For today's session, we're going to focus more on surviving spouses because that comes into play more when we're doing retirement planning.Speaker 1: Okay.John: So we always like to actually joke around with the survivor benefit. Not many people are aware, but they get a nice $255 lump sum death benefit if the spouse were to pass away.Nick: Obviously has not been adjusted for inflation.Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that doesn't cover much of anything, does it?John: No, no it doesn't. But they do get a monthly benefit as survivor and when it comes to planning, that does help out quite a bit when we're talking about strategies and trying to figure out a plan for a survivor. Kind of some rules that go with that. A survivor can actually start drawing social security at age 60 versus 62, which is kind of the normal first spouse, which we discussed last week.Nick: It is important to note that as a reminder, even though they're eligible to draw at 60, there are still the income tests from the standpoint of reductions. So if that person is working, then it may not make a whole lot of sense to get that early.John: Yeah. What Nick's referencing, we talked about the earnings penalty if you start taking social security before your full retirement age. That does still apply age 60, so if you're still working, most likely that will wipe out any social security benefit you're going to get as a survivor.John: Some other things to consider, and I'll kind of give some examples of this. Survivor benefit is not available if someone remarries before age 60, okay, unless of course that marriage ends. So we've had situations where we were planning for clients and we were talking about doing some survivor strategies and they actually ... Let's just give an example. They were 57 and were considering getting married and actually deferred their marriage until age 61 to be safe, which I don't think the spouse is too happy with us on that because it deferred the marriage, but it made sense because we actually get some pretty easy strategies, which we'll talk about later, to maximize the social security.Nick: For the widow to the eligible for those survivor benefits, they had to have been married for at least nine months. There's a caveat to that where the death was an accident, that could come into play. So essentially, that's pretty lenient, but it is important to understand the nine month rule as well.John: Yeah. And we stress a lot on just understanding what your situation is. Just kind of give you an example of that, I had a client that thought she's eligible for social security because she was married, but he passed away when they were within eight months of marriage. And she was shocked [inaudible 00:04:23] the whole time, let's say the last seven years, she was planning on it and then didn't qualify for it. So it was shocking, and unfortunately for her, she was hitting 62 so it made a big difference to her overall plan.Speaker 1: Gotcha. Okay. So good information there. Surviving spouse's benefit is based on what?Nick: So essentially kind of the caveat to this is whether or not people have been collecting. So if both spouses are receiving their benefits and there is death, then the surviving spouse receives the higher of the two.John: Not both.Nick: Correct. Not both, which some people will be surprised about how that works. But it's important to understand that they receive the higher of the two, not both. And one of the big factors that gets calculated into the firm calculation of the amount of money that the widow will receive takes into account when the deceased spouse originally claimed their benefit. And it gets a little bit confusing, quite frankly, for most people, but it factors in essentially whether or not they took it before or after their full retirement age. So John will walk us through an example on that. But it is important to understand how this works.John: Yeah. Again, we like to do everything in the realm of planning. So this is where doing the social security maximization strategy is very important. Social security is a big part of someone's retirement income. So you want to make sure that you're making the best decisions available to you, because the last thing you is to look back 10 years ago, it's like, "Oh, I wish I did this. I could have had X amount of dollars or really been enjoying my [inaudible 00:06:05] a little bit more."John: So just going to touch on an example of that. We'll call them Jack and Jill. We talked about some survivor strategies last week, but let's say Jack's up for retirement benefits, 2,400. Doesn't take it [inaudible 00:06:20] 70. Basically, Jill can jump on and actually take ... Let's increase it to 2,976 increases. That will be her new basically benefit for social security, so she gets a nice increase and that's where we talked about really trying to protect the spouse and giving them more income for life. And if she tries to draw early, let's say she takes it at 62, which anytime you draw early, you get reduction of benefit or a reduction based off of now the higher amount that he deferred, which is a nice little caveat. We have to really do some planning for a spouse.Nick: And one of the things too from a comparison standpoint is when we discuss the spousal benefits and how the spousal benefits do not grow past full retirement age, the death benefits does, or the widow benefit, survivor benefit does grow past [inaudible 00:07:15] age, so another reason why that's really a big factor.John: Yeah. And one thing that we'll always do, if we're incorporating strategies, you always typically want to delay the higher benefit. So if you're looking at an opportunity to take a widow's benefit or my own, rule of thumb, and everyone's different, but rule of thumb is defer the higher ones. I'll give my family as an example. My father-in-law, his wife passed away young and basically age 60, he was able to actually draw her social security benefit at 60, which a reduced amount. Most of his income is from real estate and investment income, so an earnings penalty didn't apply to him. So the plan is he's taking the widow benefit at 60 and he's deferring his, and then at full retirement age, he's going to switch over to his and get his full retirement benefit. So from 60 to 66, he was actually able to get some type of benefit and then at 66, will jump to his own and he gets the full amount.Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's some good strategies, some good things to think about, good information here when we're talking about these survivor benefits. So a couple of final key points or key takeaways, guys, just to think about?John: Things to consider is a reminder that basically when the person passes away, their social security benefits stop. And if the surviving spouse is going to take one, they'll take either their own or the deceased spouse, whatever one's higher, just making sure that it's important to plan and make sure the strategy is best for you based on your situation. Social security ... This is everything, not just survivors ... it's very confusing, and there's a lot of different things you can do, so if you're working with an advisor, just make sure that they have the capabilities to stress test your decisions, to make sure you're making the correct decision based on your situation and not your neighbors or as Nick likes to say, up north, his clients, they've talked to their plumber.Nick: Yeah. Everybody likes to get an opinion from somebody else. We will talk about opinions. But so anyways, I think the biggest kind of overlying thing, and we talk about it a lot, but we can't emphasize it enough, and even when we do overemphasize it, people still ask, but this is not a decision to be made in a vacuum. So many other factors tie into this decision.Nick: And even when we plan ... As an example, I was walking somebody through a plan this week, and they are three or four years out from retirement, and even though we have a strategy set up for social security in the plan on what we plan to do from a baseline standpoint, they asked and I really had to emphasize that realistically this decision doesn't really get made until maybe three, six months before their retirement.Nick: So we may plan for a certain strategy for four or five years, but the importance of planning and updating your plan every single year cannot be understated, because especially with social security, if we're in the midst of a recession, if we're in the midst of a 2008, we're not going to have somebody take a bunch of money out of their nest egg even though over the last five years we planned to do that. We're probably going to have at least one of them take social security, protect the value of the nest egg, give it time to bounce back and then adjust accordingly. The planning is via kind of a living, breathing thing and we always have to adapt and adjust.Speaker 1: Nope, I think that's a great point. We've said that many times here on the podcast that you've got to have a plan and then you have to realize that that plan needs to evolve much like your life's going to. A lot of times we kind of get a collection of things. We have some investments, we have some insurance vehicles, we think about social security. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a pension and you say, "Okay. Well, I've got this collection of things. I'm good to go. I have a retirement plan." No, you have a collection of things. So pulling them all together in a full retirement plan is really important.Speaker 1: That's what John and Nick do every day at PFG Private Wealth, so give them a call if you've got questions or concerns. Get on the calendar at 813-286-7776. That's 813-286-7776. Don't forget to go to the website, PFGPrivateWealth.com. You can always subscribe to the podcast and get new episodes, check out past episodes, things of that nature on Apple or Google or Spotify. So check them out online as well@pfgprivatewealth.com and also share the podcast with folks that you think might benefit from it as well.Speaker 1: This has been Retirement Planning Redefined. Thanks so much for staying tuned into the show. John. Nick, thanks for your time, as always. I hope you have a happy and safe holiday and we'll talk actually I think in 2020.Nick: Sounds good.John: All right.Speaker 1: You guys-Nick: Thank you.Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Take care and enjoy the holidays, everybody, and we'll see you next time right here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

Today's show is part 4 of our social security discussion. Our topic today is spousal benefit options. John and Nick will walk us through the ins and outs of this facet of social security and offer their advice.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comTranscript of Today's Show:----more----Mark: Hey everybody, welcome into another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined. Thanks as always for checking out and tuning into the podcast with John and Nick, financial advisors at PFG Private wealth. Gents, what's going on? John, I'll start with you. How are you buddy?John: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. How are you doing Mark?Mark: I'm hanging in there. How's the little one's doing? I know they, you had some cold running through the house. Everybody getting better?John: They're getting much better, which is good. No more getting coughed in my face a lot less this week, so yeah, that's a good thing.Mark: And Nick, how are you my friend?Nick: Good, good. Looking forward to the holidays coming up here and all kinds of good food.Mark: Oh yeah, yeah. Are you a Thanksgiving kind of guy?Nick: I have become more so after my brother started deep frying turkeys a couple of years ago.Mark: Okay, good. So no YouTube videos of that now, so just be careful. We don't want to see any flying turkeys.Nick: He's got it all under control.Mark: Fantastic. Awesome. Yeah. At the time of this podcast taping it is just about Thanksgiving. It's just about here on us. And so we're going to continue on with our a multi-part series we've been doing about Social Security. So hopefully you've been checking these out and if you have, great, if you have not, make sure you go to the podcast page, you can find it on their website at pfgprivatewealth.com that's P F G private wealth.com and you'll find the podcast page. You can subscribe to it on Apple or Google or Spotify. I think there's other couple of choices there as well.Mark: So make sure you do, a lot of good content that we're discussing. This is a multi-part series all around Social Security and part four here is going to be on Social Security, spousal benefits, not deep frying turkeys that'll come another day, but a Social Security spousal benefits. So guys, let's get into this and just kind of break down some information for us on, I guess, what we're entitled to or how this whole thing kind of works.Nick: Sure. So just kind of a recap on, you know, how eligibility wears for Social Security. Essentially somebody needs to work, you know, for 40 quarters, pay payroll taxes for those 40 quarters and they become eligible for their own benefit. However, you know, one of the common questions that we may get is one spouse stayed at home, one spouse worked. The spouse that stayed at home didn't get their 40 quarters. And they want to know are they eligible for any sort of benefit.Nick: So it's important to understand that, you know, as long as the couple is married, the person that has not qualified for the benefit is eligible for a spousal benefit. And that spousal benefit is essentially calculated by looking at the full retirement amount benefit for the spouse that was working and multiplying by 50%. So, that's the starting line. That's kind of how you understand how they calculate that. And the reason that they did create that was understanding that households, you know, it's not always cut and dry from the standpoint of one spouse is working. There's obviously value to the other spouse staying home, helping to raise a family and they want to protect that spouse in situations like divorce or other sorts of scenarios by providing them with this kind of caveat for how the benefits work.Mark: Okay. And yeah, so the simple way to break it down. So give us some more, John, give us some more things to think about here when we're talking about the eligibility of spouses, maybe some rules, things of that nature.John: Yeah. So basically, some of the rules before you can collect a spousal benefit, the primary worker must have filed. So wait until the spouse actually draws and then you can go ahead and take your spousal benefit. Spouses can actually start taking it at age 62, that's the soonest that you can start taking.Nick: So a kind of a good example of that is, so let's say, Mr. Smith has been the worker and Mrs. Smith stayed at home with the family and raised a family. And a couple of years ago, two years ago, she started working, you know, so she's not eligible for her own benefit. So Mr. Smith is going to continue to work and Mrs. Smith is trying to figure out, "Hey, I'm also 62, can I file for benefits?" So the answer is not until Mr. Smith essentially retires and fights for his benefit. So that's where the restrictions on the ages kind of come to play.Nick: And when John referred to that primary worker must filed for their benefits, there used to be some other rules in play where you can kind of navigate around, but they really cut down and things are a lot more restricted than they used to be.John: Yeah. And just to kind of give some numbers to that, let's say Mr Smith's full retirement benefit was 2,400, Mrs Smith's spousal benefit would be, as Nick mentioned, 50% of that sort of 1200. And again, so her spousal benefit is based off of his full retirement amount benefit and not what he actually gets. So example of that would be, you know, when she goes to draw, let's say if he'd started taking early and he get his full 2,400, she's not penalize by that. Her 50% is still the 1200, assuming she draws at her full retirement age.John: If she decides to take early at 62 she will actually have a reduction of her spousal benefit.Nick: It is important for people to understand that, you know, there's the dates on when people start to receive the benefits are calculated, or factored in I should say, for each person. Though it factored in potentially when Mr. Smith files and starts collecting and it's also factored in when Mrs. Smith files and starts collecting. And so there's a lot of different variations on how that works. And because there are some different variations, we typically recommend to people that, you know, I was helping you kind of walk through the different, let's test out different scenarios and figure which one makes the most sense because there are so many factors that go into the decision.Nick: We understand a lot of people like to just, you know, they want a cut and dry answer and unfortunately or fortunately, the positive to there not being a cut and dry answer is that, you know, oftentimes they can be strategic and find something that works better for them and if it were cut and dry. But it does take a factoring in a lot of other things to make the right decision.John: Yeah. At first the answers to certain questions are, it depends.Mark: Yeah, that's the case a lot of times I think.John: One question we actually get a lot and we talked about in the last sessions was, you know, if you draw Social Security after full retirement age, you actually get a percent increase in your benefit. That does not work for spousal benefits. So if the spouse didn't want to take or they want to defer their spousal benefit, they do not get the 8% increase on it.Nick: Yeah. So, we have seen that mistake happen, you know, the primary person has decided, "Hey, let's wait to collect the benefit" because they are under the assumption that not only will their benefit grow by 8%, but the spousal benefit that their spouse will take will grow, but that's not the case. Only their benefit grows, the spousal benefit does not. So when we run kind of break even calculations, it can often makes sense to just have them start collecting so that they can get both of them.John: Yeah. And then, you know, it's important understand also for to be eligible for spousal benefits, you have to be married at least one year. So can't be a just getting married and after six months started drawing on Social Security for a spouse.Mark: They're not going to just make it too easy for you anyway. All right, so that's some good rules. That's some good basic information there. What are some strategies? Give us a few things to think about when it comes to the spousal benefit options.John: Yeah. And like we said, everyone's situation is different. It really depends and it's important to customize what works for you. And I think we offered in the last session, but if anyone wants it, we actually are working on a Social Security machination strategy, which we're happy to do so. But one thing that we'll do with some spousal strategies, depending on the situation, we might have one spouse claim early and the other spouse, depending on the situation, you know example of that would be, let's say we have a high earner and they want to protect the spouse in case of a premature death. So we might go ahead and have the high earner, who's Social Security benefit is higher, actually delay theirs. So, if they were to pass away prematurely, that spouse can actually jump onto a higher amount, high Social Security benefit, which is nice strategy to protect the surviving spouse.John: I've used that a couple of times when there's an age gap on the spouses or if I'm there, you know, sometimes clients will come in and they're just concerned saying, "Hey, I'm really concerned something could happen to me. Is my spouse going to be okay?" We'll go ahead and implement some strategies like that.Nick: Another time where that can be used is if the primary earner has worked at in an occupation where they're eligible for a pension and they're going to receive a pension and they, you know, kind of through planning or whatever it may be. Or like the example of John mentioned where on of the spouses is maybe quite a bit younger, so when the other spouse is quite a bit younger, it pulls down the pension amount that the primary person would receive. So to offset that a little bit, we might recommend, "Well, hey, instead of doing a hundred percent survivor benefit on the pension, let's do a 50% so that you can have a higher pay out. But to offset that, what we'll do is we'll have you wait to take Social Security until 70." So the pension amount that the spouse would receive would be less, but we can offset that waiting on Social Security a little bit and still have more income coming in the household.Mark: Gotcha. Okay. All right. So a couple of different strategies there to consider and I think a lot of times people sometimes don't plan ahead for that part. It's like we're sitting there talking about different, when you're getting your retirement plan done, I think sometimes we look at it overall and say, "Well, we want to turn Social Security on as soon as we can and yada, yada yada." Instead of saying, "Okay, how can we most maximize our Social Security for both of us in an overall inclusive retirement plan?"Mark: So it's certainly important to do. And as John mentioned, you know, they can run that Social Security maximization if you have some questions on that. If you want to get that done or have a chat with them, give them a call at (813) 286-7776 that's (813) 286-7776 and you can also check them out online at pfgprivatewealth.com.Mark: As I mentioned before, there are financial advisors here in the Tampa Bay area, so if you have some questions about that, again, as always when you're listening to this show or any other show before you take any action, always check with a qualified professional about your specific situation because everybody's, it can be so different, so make sure you have that chat.Mark: All right guys, I think in the interest of time we can probably squeeze in a couple more things. Can you give us a few things to think about on divorced spousal situations?John: Yeah, so it is important for people to understand that they are still eligible for a spousal benefit if they were married for 10 years and they are not remarried. So a scenario that we may see with that is they were previously married to a high earner, maybe they worked a lower paying job, they were married for 25 years, became divorced, they went back to work to cover expenses, et cetera. They may be in a relationship currently, but they're not officially married and we kind of go through calculations and we determined that, "Hey, the spousal benefit that you could receive from you former spouse would be higher than the benefit that you would receive on your own and or higher than the benefit that you would receive if you were to marry your current partner." And obviously a lot of other factors go into that.John: But, from a purely financial decision, that could work out really well because again, you cannot collect that spousal benefit from a former spouse if you are remarried. We have had questions along the lines of, you know, "Hey, I was married twice. Both were over 10 years. Am I restricted to choose just the most recent one?" And the answer is no, you can pick the higher. We had a nice young lady one time that had four different ten year marriages and she asked if she could add them all up together and unfortunately you can't, it's just the higher.Nick: But she had a lot of options.John: Yeah. It's good to have options.Mark: Like window shopping apparently.John: So, yeah. So those are a couple of things to keep in mind.Nick: Yeah. And one question we get a lot with divorced clients, they say, "How soon can I draw on the ex-spouse's Social Security?" And really you can draw on an ex-spouse once that ex-spouse hits age 62. Unlike a kind of a normal situation, when we wait until the spouse draws Social Security. They put this rule in really to protect the ex spouse because we've seen scenarios where certain people might delay drawing to intentionally hurt the other spouse and so they can't draw on them. So basically the rule is once the ex-spouse hits over 62, you can actually start drawing on the spousal benefits for divorcees.John: Yeah. It does not matter whether or not they're collecting. And also some people are happy about this, some people are not. But when you do get that benefit from a former spouse, again it does not affect their own benefit. There is no negative impact to doing that to them.Mark: They don't even know about it.Nick: They would have no idea. And it actually wouldn't affect any new spouse for somebody. So we get that question quite a bit where it says, "Hey, an ex-spouse draws on my Social Security. Does that affect my new wife or husband?" The answer is no.Mark: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's interesting on the time period on that, it's funny that you kind of brought that up. My mother, who's 78, actually was given that information and did a refile with the Social Security for her first husband. She was married twice as well. And so yes, she was able to do that and they hadn't been married in like 40 years, but they were married over 10 years. So they were like, "Yep, that's something you can do." So I was like, "Okay, well knock yourself out."Mark: So yeah, it's interesting. There's definitely some few things to consider in there. Different kinds of a spousal benefit options, divorce spousal benefit options. So again, a lot of it comes down to having a conversation about your specific situation with your advisor when it comes to Social Security, because there are a lot of things in Social Security obviously, which is why we're on a four part series, going to be a five part series actually around this.Mark: So with that said, I think we're going to depart this week on the program. I'll say John and Nick, thanks for your time. As always, we appreciate it. Folks, make sure you reach out to them, give them a call if you've got some questions at (813) 286-7776. (813) 286-7776, again, that number to call. And as always, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Retirement Planning Redefined. You can find it on Apple, Google or Spotify.Mark: You can also just find it on their website at pfgprivatewealth.com and as I said at the beginning of this, that it was prior to Thanksgiving when we were taping this. Now we'll actually air it after Thanksgiving. So we certainly hope that everybody had a great holiday season. And we'll see you for more of our conversation around Social Security through the month of December, right here on Retirement Planning Redefined. For John, for Nick, we'll see you next time.

How do you market a company that is selling something fundamentally new and different? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, John Rougeux of Flag & Frontier talks about category design. It's not a tactic for every company, but when used strategically, category design can drive truly remarkable marketing results. John digs into who category design is right for, how long it takes, what a category design go-to-market plan looks like, and how to gain organizational support. He also shares examples of companies and marketers who've successfully created new categories. Highlights from my conversation with John include: John is an experienced category designer who has also owned and exited a business. He says that compared to traditional inbound marketing strategies, category design requires a much larger lift when it comes to educating the market. Every business has a choice to either compete in an existing market or create a new market.  If you're creating a new category, you have three choices: 1) try to fit your product within an existing category; 2) ignore category in your marketing and focus on the product's features and benefits; or 3) create a new category. John says options 1 and 2 don't work. When considering whether category design is right for you, you need to honestly evaluate your product and determine whether its simply a niche within an existing category or something that has truly never been offered before. If its the latter, then category design is really the only logical solution. Category design takes time. John says you should expect to spend six to nine months just designing the category behind the scenes, and then once you roll that out publicly, it can take another few years before it really takes hold. Category design needs to be a business initiative, not simply a marketing strategy, because it affects product roadmaps, sales and more. When executing a category design strategy, it is critical to focus marketing messaging on the problem that your audience is experiencing and the outcomes that they will experience as a result of your solution rather than how the product itself actually works. The companies that have been most successful at category design have evangelists whose job it is to go to market and talk about the problem and why there is a new solution. Its also important to build a consistent conversation around your new category. That might mean holding a big event (like HubSpot's INBOUND or Drift's HYPERGROWTH) or building a community, like Terminus's FlipMyFunnel.  If your company is venture-backed, it is also important to get your investors on board with the idea of category creation so that you have the funding to support the strategy. There are examples of category design all around us. Some of the bigger and more visible ones are minivans and music streaming services. The category wasn't created overnight, and in many cases, people don't even realize its a new category, but we see it is as fundamentally different from the status quo, and that is what successful category design looks like.  Resources from this episode: Visit the Flag & Frontier website Email John at John@FlagandFrontier.com  Visit John's personal website Purchase a copy of Play Bigger Listen to the podcast to learn more about category design, when it makes sense, and how you can use it to dramatically improve your marketing results. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is John Rougeux, who is the founder at Flag & Frontier. Welcome, John. John Rougeux (Guest): Hey, Kathleen. Thanks for having me on. John and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: Yeah. I'm really excited to have you here for completely selfish reasons. I am deep, deep into the weeds, trying to learn everything I can right now about category creation because it's something that I'm kind of working on for a little project at work. And I stumbled across your name. I think it was in a LinkedIn post mentioned by Sangram Vajre at Terminus, and he mentioned you as somebody who's doing a lot of work on category creation. And I immediately thought, oh, I need to have him in on the podcast. And here you are. I am so excited, so welcome. John: Thanks. Thanks. I actually want to come back to something that you said a minute ago. You mentioned this was a little project for you, so I'm going to pick your brains about why it's not a big project. Kathleen: I think I might just be downplaying it. John: Okay, all right. Kathleen: It's a huge project. John: All right. Kathleen: Yes, yes. It is a giant. In fact, it's probably bigger than I think it is. No, it's- John: Well, Sangram told me a few weeks ago. He said, "If you're not doing something that scares you a little bit, then you're not setting your sights high enough." So I think you're on the right track there. Kathleen: Yeah, no, I think my whole career has been a succession of choices that consistently terrify me. So hopefully, that means I'm on the right track to somewhere. So you have an interesting story. You started out or your career really grew in B2B tech, and you worked in some companies that were looking at category creation as a potential strategy and it seems that that wet your appetite and led you to where you are today. Can you just talk a little bit about your background and how it got you to where you are now and what you're doing now with Flag & Frontier? About John Rougeux and Flag & Frontier John: Yeah. Yeah, happy to. So the thing that I like to tell people is that I always wish that I knew about category design earlier in my marketing career. I think it would have helped me be more successful and make better choices and think through the strategy of what I was working on at the time a lot more thoroughly. So the reason I say that is in 2013, I co-founded a company called Causely. And I won't get too far down into the weeds of what Causely does and the business model, but we were basically using cause marketing as a way to incentivize people to take action. And specifically, we were looking at incentivizing referrals on social media. And at the time, I was looking at marketing through a fairly narrow lens, like a lot of people do maybe when they are kind of earlier in the middle of their marketing careers. We were looking at things like you know how do you improve the performance of an advertising campaign? How can you write a better better blog post? All of those kind of tactical things. And I didn't realize at the time that what we were doing was something categorically new. People didn't have context for what that meant, what they should compare it to, what value they should expect, what things should it replace or not replace? And so we had a reasonable trajectory. We scaled the business to a few thousand locations. It was acquired. But when looking back on it, I know that if we had had this lens of category design of how do you describe something when it's different than anything else out there, I think we could have gone even further. And so when I joined a company called Skyfii in 2018, I had started to kind of understand what that meant, so I had read Play Bigger. I read some, the works by Al Ries and Jack Trout that talk about how if you can't be first in a category, design any category you can be first in. And at Skyfii, that business, it's a publicly-traded SaaS company out of Australia and they found that they were participating in a fairly commoditized space. Or I guess to be more accurate, the perception was that they were a competitor in a fairly commoditized space. And their business had evolved past that and the product did all sorts of other things that were much bigger than the category the market thought they participated in, but they didn't really have a framework for talking about that. And so we went through a repositioning exercise where we defined a new category that better reflected what they were all about and and how people should kind of relate to that. And that was a really, I think, powerful and challenging exercise to think through.We've got something new in the market, but how do we describe that? How do we tell the right story? How do we tell the right narrative so that people know how to relate to it? Why category design is a fundamentally different approach to marketing Kathleen: This is so interesting to me. There's so much I want to unpack here. I guess, starting with something that you kind of started with, which is that there is this typical marketer's playbook, right, where people come in and they think, "Oh, we need to top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. We need to create content and attract people," this and that. And when it comes to category creation or trying to market something that is different than anything else people are used to, that playbook doesn't really work. Because as I'm quickly learning, especially looking just at the top of the funnel, traditional top of the funnel marketing, it's like well what is that problem that people are having and they start to look for a solution. And the challenge you have is that if the solution you're offering is something they've never heard of, it's such a steeper climb to try and gain their attention. It's like they don't know the right questions to ask even, if that makes sense. John: No, that's absolutely right. And I always like to mention a really thoughtful post that Mike Volpe, the founding CMO of HubSpot wrote a few years ago because it lays such a great groundwork for any discussion around category design. And the blog post simply says that look, every marketer has two choices on their strategy. They can pick an existing category and try to carve out a niche within that category. Maybe they can dominate that category. But basically, they have to pick a space and then do the best they can within that space. Or they can try to design a new category. And when you look at kind of the underlying product or business model and you really take a close examination of what it is and whether it's different or whether it's something better, you almost don't have a choice. If you're doing something that is new that people don't have a framework for, you really have three choices. So I want to pack these for you. So choice number one is you can try to shoehorn this new thing you've built into an existing category. And we'll come back to why that doesn't work in a second. Number two is you can just talk about the products, like features and benefits but not really think about a more underlying narrative for that. And then number three is you can design a new language, a new framework, which is called category design. And so here's why number one and number two don't work. So again, number one is if you try to shoehorn something new into an existing category. The reason that works against you is that people will make the wrong comparisons for what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to be priced, how you deliver value. That just works against you. Secondly, if you just try to talk about the product itself but don't provide a larger context, you're not giving people, you're not giving them really any framework, and it makes it difficult to understand what you're all about and why they should be interested in you. I'll give you a great example. A friend of mine works at a company and I won't mention the name of the company, but they combine two different categories kind of in an existing platform. So one of these is VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol communication software, very established, known space. The other thing they do is they have these marketing automation functions that they add to their software to at least in my view very disparate types of software, but they combine them together. And so far, they haven't really given their buyers a context, a category for what this thing means. And so they're basically letting people to their own devices to understand and come up with their own conclusions about what that is. And that just puts a lot of work on your buyers when they have to think about who they should compare you to when they need to think about what department is this even for, or what products does this replace or not replace? That's generally too much work for people when they're trying to understand something new. And like you said, Kathleen, if you're not telling them what questions they should ask, then chances are they're just going to be too confused before they'll even really be interested in having a conversation with you. Kathleen: Yeah, and there's two other aspects to what you just said that I think are really interesting, which I'm beginning to appreciate more with the work that I'm doing. One is that human nature is such that people want to slot you into something that they already understand. They don't want to have to think outside the box. So when people hear about something new, that their natural inclination is to try and categorize it in with things that they already know. And that's a hard thing to battle because you are literally battling human nature. And the second thing is if you do allow yourself to be put into a category that already exists that maybe isn't really truly what you're doing and you are actually successful in selling your product, you will wind up having a lot of problems with churn once you do sell it because people are still going to be thinking that you are like that other thing that you're not actually like. And they're going to be looking for your product or your service or whatever it is to solve for them in the same way that other thing does, when in reality your thing does not solve those problems. So it's like you're setting yourself up for a very long horizon of failures that you might not see at the outset, but it's kind of a you're failing before you've even begun. John: Yeah, that's a great point. And yeah, people do... They tend to... The world is so complicated, and there's so many things that we have to deal with and try to understand that we use this rule of thumb of categorizing things. Sometimes we do it explicitly, like smartphones are a great example of a category we all know about and buy them and we know why they're different than a mobile phone. Sometimes we just do it implicitly. We don't necessarily have the language or the terms to describe that category, but we know that we try to group likes things together because it makes it easier to understand the world. Kathleen: Yeah or we use analogies. So many times, you hear things like, "Well, that's just the Uber of," and then they list a different industry. Or, "That's the Airbnb of something else." John: Yeah, that's right. Kathleen: And so we're constantly trying to put these things into comfortable mental frameworks, which I think is fascinating. So you mentioned there were three things. The first two, I think you covered. And then the third is really designing a new category. John: The third is designing a new category. That's right. That's right. When does category design make sense? Kathleen: So how do you know... I guess the first question is how do you know when that's the path you should be taking? John: That's a great question because I've heard from some people that they have this idea that every company should try to design a category, and that's really not the case. It applies to some companies. But for many other companies, like if you're developing a CRM, a better version of a CRM, don't try to build a new category around that. So yes, so the way you would look at that is there's no formula you can put into Excel and calculate and churn all this out, but it really comes down to does the thing that you've built, does it solve a problem that has not been solved before? Or does it do so in a way that the world isn't familiar with? So is there a new business model behind that? Is there a new delivery mechanism behind that? It really comes down to those two things. And maybe if you want to look at it at a more fundamental level, you could ask yourself do the existing categories that my market is familiar with, do they accurately capture the type of thing that I'm offering? If they do, then one of the reasons you may want to choose to carve out a niche in an existing category is that people are looking for established products in established categories. People are looking for marketing automation software, they're looking for smartphones, they're looking for video communications tools like Zoom, like we're using today. And so, if you say, "Hey, we have the right tool within this category for this specific market or for this specific need," that can be very powerful. And arbitrarily forcing yourself out of that category just because you like that idea of category design is going to work against you. Now, that being said, again to kind of flip it around, if you find that the categories and the language that are used to describe existing products your market is familiar with just don't capture what you're doing or they limit it in some way, then ultimately you need to find a way to break out from that and that's what the process of category design is all about. What does it take to create a new category? Kathleen: Now, one of the things that I've come to appreciate just the more I look at this is what a big lift creating a category is. As you said in the beginning, this isn't a little project, right? I would love it if you could just talk a little bit about sort of expectation setting. If somebody is listening to this and they're thinking this really sounds like it could make sense for me, from your experience and what you've seen and you've talked to people who've been involved in category design, how long does it take before you can really expect that the market will recognize a new category? John: Yeah. It's a pretty long-time horizon. And so I mentioned Mike Volpe at the beginning of the call and I'll mention him again and Kipp Bodnar, the following CMO of HubSpot mentioned the same thing I'm about to tell you. And they told me that when they first started talking about inbound marketing, it was like standing in the middle of a town square on a soapbox just shouting into the wind with nobody paying attention. And that was the case for two to three years before that phrase really started to work its way into the lexicon of marketers. Salesforce, they pioneered, not so much CRM but cloud-based software. And even today, they still talk about other applications to cloud-based software that's 20 years later. And another example might be... So at Terminus, they talk about the account-based marketing gospel. And maybe this kind of hints to the challenge of how difficult it is to build a category. Sangram used to be there, I think he was their head of marketing if I'm not mistaken. He's definitely a co-founder, but his role is chief evangelist. And so they recognize that to really get people to be aware of and to understand and use this terminology around account-based marketing, they've had to invest very heavily in evangelizing that market or that message out in the market. Kathleen: Yeah. The other story that I've always found interesting... I followed all the ones you just mentioned really closely. And then the other one that's been fascinating to me is Drift because they came on the scene. And if they're listening, they may take issue with what I'm about to say, but look. A big piece of what their product does is live chat, website live chat, and then they have chatbots. Well, those things have been around for a while. That was not anything new, but they were really smart and they coined it as conversational marketing and they really focused more on, not so much the how and what the technology does, as what it enables the business to do, and kind of wrapped a methodology around existing technology in a way that made it feel fresh and new. And it was pretty genius. And I feel like they actually moved really quickly by comparison to a lot of the other examples I've seen. So it's interesting to me why in some cases, businesses are able to gain traction faster than others. John: Yeah. I would have to think that a lot of it has to do with the culture and how quickly or rapidly that business has gone through change in the past. And the other thing we should probably discuss is just the timeline of everything that happens before you share your new category with the world. I was talking with... There's an interview I did with, let's see, Anna and Cassidy at a company called Narrative Science. And they expected just the category design process itself to take about six to nine months. This is before they released language out publicly. And at Skyfii, that was our experience as well. And for that situation, that company, I think they were founded in 2012 or 2013. So they were five, six years into the business and there had already been a lot of discussion around the space that they started in, which was Wi-Fi marketing or Wi-Fi analytics. And so anytime that you're going into a space where the culture already kind of thinks and has a mental model for what their business is, the process of reworking all of that and getting everyone on board, especially the leadership team and perhaps even investors, getting them on board with that new message in a new way of thinking about the business, it takes time. And I would argue it should take time. Because if you rush the process and you ask your team to start using maybe even radically different language about what you do, people need time to really think through that and maybe they need to push back or challenge you a little bit or ask questions or provide suggestions. There's just this change management process you have to go through. And if you rush through that, people are not going to feel like they're a part of that process. And then ultimately, that's going to undermine your efforts in years one, two, three and further as you're asking your team to help you share that message. And at Skyfii, Skyfii is publicly traded in the Australian market and so they have investors and they have a public... They're very thoughtful about the message they put out into the market. And so they really wanted to take the time to make sure that message was right and that it made sense. And so, yeah, it took us, I don't know exactly how many months, but yeah, around six to nine months to really start that discussion and then get to a point where we were comfortable with the category name and the underlying narrative to support it. Why category design needs to be a company-wide effort Kathleen: Yeah, and I think there's... To me, one of the most important things is consistency because you kind of said if everybody is not on board and everybody isn't speaking from the same playbook, all it takes is one or two people to diverge and talk about your thing and language and terms that puts it squarely back in with all of the other things out there that... And it destroys your effort. John: Yeah. Well, and this is probably a great segue into another really important point about category design, which is that it's not a marketing project. Sometimes, it can be spearheaded by marketing, and marketing will often do a lot of the legwork, but it's not something that's relegated or exclusive to marketing. It has to be something that that CEO is involved in. It affects the company vision and is affected by the company vision. They kind of play off of each other. It affects the product roadmap. It affects what the sales team says. It affects what you might tell investors. So if your CFO is in charge of investor relations, he or she, they have to be on board and educated on the message. That's another misconception I heard a few times and it was... Personally, I thought it was a marketing initiative when I first read about it. But the more I dove deep into it and the more people I talked to, I realized it's actually a bit more of a business initiative, more so than a marketing one. Kathleen: Yeah, that's a great point. Having that buy-in top to bottom, it's really important. John: Yeah. What's been your experience at Prevailion in kind of leading your team in that discussion? Kathleen: So it was interesting because I came in really excited to make this a category design play. And shortly after I came in, we hired a head of sales, who also had some experience with category design and saw that that was a really strong play for us. He and I had both read Play Bigger, and we just kept talking about it until we basically beat the rest of our leadership team down into buying copies of the book. They've all now read it. They're all super excited about it, and it's great because it's given us a common language and framework around which to talk about what it is we're doing. So we're still really early stage, but I think we have that excitement and that buy-in in principle at least is there. And now, we're at the stage where we have to figure out our plan. What does a category design strategy look like? Kathleen: So along those lines, let's talk a little bit about somebody who's listening and they think, "Yep, this makes sense for me. Okay, I'm going to set my expectations. I understand I need to get top to bottom buy-in." What are the elements that you've seen in your experience from the companies that you've studied that have done this that contribute to successful category design efforts. In other words, what would be a part of a company's plan if they were looking to move forward with this? John: Yeah. So I'll mention two things that come to mind. So one I touched on a moment ago, but it's making sure that the CEO and the leadership team are involved and to the extent that they feel like they have a stake in the success of the project. What I mean is it's not enough for them to say, "Sure, that sounds great. Category sounds great, Mr. or Mrs. CMO. Go for it. Let me know how it turns out." That's not sufficient for getting buy-in. So getting them to be a stakeholder and have a real level of participation, that's absolutely key. And there's an interview I did with Chris Orlob of Gong.io, where we talk about that in more depth. So if you want to link to that, I'm happy to- Kathleen: Yeah, that would be great. I would love that. John: Yeah. The second thing is category design, it's all about talking about a problem that you're solving and less about the product. And so one thing I always like to say is that problem... Let's see, so your solution, your product. Solutions don't exist without problems, right? And then problems don't exist without people. And so you have to go back and understand the people that you're trying to work with and serve, and understand the problem you're trying to solve and the language they use to describe that problem, and the context for which they're trying to solve that problem or maybe they're not even aware that it is a problem or they think it's unsolvable. The point is you have to really understand the problem first and use that to lead your messaging. If your category is all around, here's why this specific product is so great and it's called this category, you're kind of missing the point. When you look at the language and the marketing that companies like Drift, for example, do, 80% of it is on the problem. Drift likes to talk about how the buying process has changed. Buyers are not interested in waiting hours or days or weeks for someone to respond to them. They want a response now. And you even see that word, "now", used.  Kathleen: Yes. That word, that one word... I went to HYPERGROWTH. I think it was not this year, but the year before. I went this year too. John: Okay. Kathleen: The year before, their whole keynote at HYPERGROWTH was all about the one word, "now." And it was so powerful, the way they distilled that down I thought, really, really simple but effective. John: Yeah, yeah. And they've written a book around conversational marketing. If you've used Drift products, you can kind of see some tie-ins but it's really about the problem that they're trying to solve. And people smarter than me have said lots of times that if you can articulate that you understand the problem better than anyone else, then people will assume you have the best solution. You don't have to work so hard to talk about every single little feature or benefit that you offer. Showing that you understand the problem creates empathy with your audience, and then again, they'll assume that you have the best solution to address that problem. Kathleen: Yeah, that's interesting that you talk about that because I think that's a really easy mistake for marketers to make, which is to say that, especially when you talk about B2B technology, it's really easy to fall into the trap of talking a lot about what the product does, how the product works. And I think many times, that's facilitated or even encouraged sometimes by the customer asking, "What does the product do? How does it work?" John: Right. Kathleen: And yet, I think the challenge as a marketer is to try to really get ahead of that and take control of the conversation and steer it towards not only the problems as you say and really deeply understanding them, but the outcomes that come from the use of the products. There's problems, and then there are what is the outcome for the user? How does it make their life better? How does it change them for the better? If you think of those as two different poles, and in the middle, lies the product and all the stuff it does, if you can keep the conversation more at the periphery on those poles, then I think you can be really successful. But that's tough. John: No, I've never heard it described that way, but that's a really clear way of describing that. And it's funny you mention that because I was having the opposite experience just this week. I was there was looking for a new email client for my computer. And that's a pretty established category. There's a million email clients. And in that context, you don't need to talk about the problem of communicating with people. Kathleen: Right. John: You know what email is. You don't need to talk about the outcome so much. There were a few features I was looking for and I was trying to find a client that had those features. And so you can talk about that a little bit more upfront when the category is established and people know what the category is, what it isn't, what it's supposed to do. But to your point, Kathleen, if that category doesn't exist and you're really trying to sell a vision around solving a problem, emphasizing what the problem is and then emphasizing the outcomes are really what's necessary to get people interested in just having a discussion around this new idea. And then from there, they're probably going to ask, "Okay, this sounds really good. Tell me about that product itself. What does it actually do?" Then you're in a perfect position to go into those details because they're ready for it. And they get the larger idea. Kathleen: Yeah, and that's where I think the traditional framework of top, middle, and bottom of the funnel comes back into the discussion, right? When you do get towards that middle to bottom of funnel stage, you can get into the weeds of how it works. And I know in our case, for example, it might not even be the same person we're having the conversation with. Our ultimate buyer isn't going to ever care so much how it works. They're going to hand that part of the decision off to somebody on their team and say, "Validate this for me." And it's almost like we've talked about it. We just need a spec sheet, but that... It's kind of like when you're going to a conference and you get the convince your boss letter, but in reverse. We're selling to the boss and the boss needs a convince their engineer letter that they can just hand to them and say, "Here, take this. It's in your language. It'll answer all your questions." Right? To me, that's the steps that we need to go through, but if we get too stuck in the weeds of convincing the engineer early, we're never going to get to convince the boss. John: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Building your category design go-to-market plan Kathleen: Yeah. Well, have you seen... So there are those foundational elements of how you talk about what it is you're doing, how you talk about the category, how you begin to gain share of mind. And then there's the actual go to market. And I've seen a lot of information written. For example, in the book, Play Bigger, which we've mentioned a few times, which is kind of like the Bible for category creation and other places. They talk about the concept of a lightning strike, which is just really a big kind of splashy go to market. It could be an event. It could be some other, something else that really makes an impression on the market and gets it talking about your thing. What have you seen or have you seen anything that has worked really well as far as like quick, well, I don't know if quick is the right word, but very high impact kind of strategies for really making an impression on the market? John: That's a great question. I'm not sure that I've seen a ton of really great examples beyond the few that we've discussed. So back to HubSpot, I don't recall a big... They have their INBOUND event, right? I don't recall that having a huge kind of blow up the world moment at the time when that conference first came out, but they've certainly been consistent and they made it a very conscious decision not to call it the HubSpot User Conference or even put the word HubSpot in there. It was about inbound, something bigger than themselves. I've seen Terminus, they have focused on this idea of a community of people who are interested in account-based marketing. Sangram told me they started with a fairly small event, relatively small event. And they've kind of built it from there. But that's more of an ongoing exercise, I guess, an ongoing process. Drift has their HYPERGROWTH conference. They came out with a book called Conversational Marketing. That's probably the biggest kind of high profile thing they did that was explicitly around that category. I think one of the things around lightning strikes is that, at least the way they're described in the book, is that they feel like they could be appropriate for a VC-backed company, or maybe a publicly traded company who's launching a new category and wants to really make that big splash and can afford to do that. I would say if you're earlier on and you don't have millions to drop on a big event or a massive campaign of another nature, it seems like other companies can can be successful with more of a process-driven approach of who are we trying to get to care about this category? What are they interested in? Where do they spend their time? And how can we just have these conversations with them on a repeatable basis? Because, like we were talking about earlier, it's not like once you name your category, the whole world suddenly cares about it and there's all these... Gartner doesn't give you a ring and say, "Hey, I guess we're going to create a Magic Quadrant because we saw your lightning strike. That's good. This is so great." Everyone who I've talked to anyway, who's done it well, has had to dedicate consistent resources over time to really get people to understand it and think about it. Kathleen: Yeah. You're talking about something that strikes very close to home for me because I've looked at those examples too and I had an opportunity... I've interviewed Kipp Bodnar. I've interviewed Nikki Nixon, who was one of the first leaders of the FlipMyFunnel community for Terminus. I interviewed Dave Gerhardt at Drift. So I've had a little bit of an inside peek into some of those companies. We didn't talk about this topic specifically, but what did strike me about all of those conversations and all of those examples is, as you say, consistency but also not just consistency, volume. There's a difference between, "Hey, we're going to consistently blog once a week, and it's going to be a great blog," and that's just an example. All of these companies not only have been super consistent, but they have turned the volume dial way up in terms of the amount of content they're creating around their category. I think every one of them has written a book actually, because Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah wrote the book, Inbound Marketing. You mentioned the book that Drift wrote. Sangram has written a couple of books. I don't know if that's a requirement or it's just a coincidence, but I think it certainly has helped. But it's also a reflection of that turning up the volume. We're not just going to write a bunch of blogs and use this keyword on them. We're going to write the book on our topic and really own it. And to me, there's something to that. If you're going to do a category creation play, you don't necessarily have to have the biggest budget in the world. Maybe you're not going to throw a HYPERGROWTH type conference, which is a cool conference. But you are going to need to really be prepared to just saturate the market with content, flood people with educational content around what is that problem you're solving, why it matters, why it's new, and why the new approach is better than the old one. John: Yeah. And that comes down to having patience and the right time horizon. And like you were asking about earlier, if your expectation is that category design is something maybe you can do for a few months and then you can go about business as usual, that's a wrong time horizon. And it will take months or probably years for people to really get what you do and talk about it, independent of conversations with you. And you have to have the content to support that, whether that's an event or a blog or a book or a podcast. And I think you also have to make sure that your investors understand that vision. They understand that you want to create something big, you want to create a category that you can dominate and design to your favor. And then if you do that, five to 10 years from now, you will be in a very good position. But also understanding that the first few years will have a different trajectory than someone who's just really trying to scale growth right off the bat at a very high level. Kathleen: Yeah, I feel like you just brought the conversation perfectly full circle because we started talking about how important buy-in was, top to bottom. And you can think of top to bottom as like CEO to the bottom of the organization. But honestly, if you have investors, that's really the top. Your board has to be totally bought-in because you'll get a ton of pressure. I mean we do have investors. We just got a series A round, so I'm dealing with this right now. And we're very fortunate that we have a really bought-in board, but I completely agree with you. It's also fascinating, you mentioned earlier analysts. That's another thing. If you're working with the analysts, what are the expectations you should have there? Because I recently read a quote that was like, "Gartner will never create a new market if there's only one player in it." Right? Because what's in it for them to build a Magic Quadrant for one company? They're not going to do it. So by definition, if you truly, truly are creating a new category, your thing is new and different and not like anything else and you "don't have any competition" which is like the bad words to ever say... Because even if you don't have competition, you have perceived competition. There's nothing in it for an analyst to say, "Well, this is a new category because a lot of work to produce a Magic Quadrant or a Forrester Wave." They're not going to do it for one company. So that goes back again to the conversation around time horizon. So it's such an interesting play and not for everyone certainly. You mentioned a couple of really good examples from the marketing world, Drift, HubSpot, Terminus. Can you think of any examples from outside of the marketing technology world that are really great examples of category creation? So if somebody is listening and they want to kind of look out in the wild and see who's doing this well, who would you point to? Examples of category creators John: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. Once you understand what category design actually means, you start to see new categories all over the place. So I'll mention two. So in high school, Kathleen, I drove a minivan. It had wood siding, I hated it, and it was just the dorkiest car you could drive. But at the time, I didn't know- Kathleen: We have to come back and have a conversation about that in a minute. John: So at the time, I didn't know that minivans were actually representative of a new category in the market. And I can't remember when they first came out. I think it was maybe the mid-80s, and I mean there were these full-size work vans, but people didn't conceive of this van that you would use to haul your family around. It was a completely new category. And it continues to be... I've come full circle. We've got a minivan today, another one. And so anyway, that's kind of a great example. You see that in automotive all the time, so hybrid cars. The Prius was a great example of designing that category. Tesla now for electric cars, SUVs as well. So that's one. And then another one is, I was actually thinking about this on the way to work this morning, the way that Apple and Spotify have really created, I guess, a new category around how music is distributed, I think, is another interesting example. And I think it's a... The reason I bring it up is category design isn't so much about a specific name or a specific taxonomy or a word that Gartner has capitalized. It more has to do with the business model and the way people look at a space. So when Apple launched iTunes, they completely changed the way music was distributed from buying a full album to buying individual songs and to needing to have the physical copy of the media to having a digital copy you could take anywhere. And now, I would argue that maybe Apple or iTunes created that category. They are the first to do that. But I would also argue that it's really Spotify, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think their user number is larger than Apple's for Apple Music, they're the ones who have actually designed the category. They're the ones who said, "This is what streaming music looks like. This is what you're supposed to pay. This is about how many artists or songs we're supposed to have available. This is how we're going to curate music to you." And that's a completely new way of using music or listening to music. I don't know what the official name for that category is. Maybe it's just called streaming music. It's not something I'm an expert on, but that was a very long answer to your question but those I think are two that come to mind for me. Kathleen: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I do feel like we're surrounded by category creation. And it's happening even faster than I think it used to because of the pace of technological change. We just don't necessarily recognize it as such. But when you have that framework through which to think about it, you do start to see it everywhere and it's really interesting to watch. And I think it's kind of like the whole frog that boiled in the water analogy, which is actually a terrible analogy when you really think about what you're talking about. But the notion that- John: Who's actually tried that by the way? Do you know anyone? Kathleen: No, God, I hope not. That's like, don't they say serial killers start by torturing animals? No, no, no. Do not boil any frogs. But the whole idea being it's happening to us. We are experiencing category creation. It's just that it's happening at a pace that we don't like see it. It's not like a yesterday it didn't exist, and today it does. That by the time the category has happened and has become commonplace, it just feels like it's been there all along kind of. It's really interesting. I think there's probably a whole psychological aspect to this that hasn't even been mined in a way that it could. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: But all right, shifting gears because I could talk about category creation forever, but we don't have forever. Inbound marketing. We talked about really what the podcast is about, and I love talking about category creation as part of it. Because when you talked about consistency and HubSpot and Drift and Terminus, really they were all phenomenal examples of companies that really did inbound marketing well. So when you think about inbound marketing as it is today, is there a particular individual or company that you really think is killing it? John: I'm going to say that it's really like a style of inbound marketing that I think is starting to get a lot of attention and it's this idea of having an evangelist be a voice for the company. And the reason I think this is so interesting is because, like our world is, there's so many messages we get from brands today, both on the consumer side and on the B2B side, that I think people have a real... They started to see that you can have a brand say anything, right? It's a construct. But when you have a person who's a real human being talking about the vision and the values and what their brand represents and how it might be able to help, to me, that's a much more authentic way and it's just very relevant in the world today because I feel like people just crave more human-to-human interaction. So a three examples of that. We've mentioned a couple already, so Sangram and Terminus does that very well. Dave Gerhardt does that. He doesn't have the title of evangelist, but he's much more of the face of the company I think even than David Cancel or others. And then, Ethan Beute at BombBomb is doing that really well. Kathleen: Yeah. John: I know you had him on a previous episode, and yeah. I know there's others out there, but those are the three that come to mind. I see their content very regularly. They all do a different job. They have their own styles. They have their own voice, but they're very authentic. And I think they're adding a lot of value for the respective companies through what they do. Kathleen: I totally agree. Those are three great examples. And picking the right person or settling on the right person to fill that role is such a critical decision for the company. It has to be somebody that truly, deeply understands, as you said, the problem that the audience is experiencing, but that also can come across as charismatically and passionately believing in that shift that needs to occur to create that new category. So it's an interesting mix of skills that you look for when you try to find your evangelist. John: Right, right. So does this mean you're going to step up and be the evangelist at Prevailion? Kathleen: I don't know. We actually... I'm really lucky. And one of the reasons I joined the company is that we have this amazing team of really smart people, who are also very invested in participating in marketing. So our CEO is unbelievable. He could sell ice to the Eskimos, not that he would. That makes him sound like he's a smarmy sales guy. He is so smart and he really has been in the market a long time and knows it, and he's also incredibly well-spoken. So while I would love to get up and talk about it, I think I'm really lucky that I have an executive team that is full of people who could probably fill that role better than I could. John: And you know what? I don't think it's entirely an either or situation. Some of those companies I've mentioned, they have someone who's maybe has the largest following or the loudest voice, but there's others on the team who can contribute to that. And I think that's what's really exciting, is it's not just one person, but you can have a whole series of people on your team evangelize for the company. And I don't know about you, there's something about when I just see the people behind a product that I'm thinking about using. I feel so much more comfortable having that conversation and and exploring what they do than I would if I was just reading pure brand messages. Kathleen: Absolutely. It all comes down to trust, right? And if you feel like you can trust that person who is the chief spokesperson, somehow or another there's a halo effect from that that shines down on the brand. And it really saturates the brand with that feeling of trustworthiness, that makes you want to buy from them. John: Yeah, that's right. Kathleen: Yeah. I love it. Well, digital marketing is changing so quickly. This topic of category creation is so fascinating because conceptually it seems like something that will stand the test of time, but then how you implement it obviously will change over time. With everything changing so quickly, how do you personally stay up to date and stay educated on all things marketing-related? John: Yeah. For me, both listening to and hosting podcasts has been a big driver of my growth. And so conversations like this one with you are really helpful because you and I could swap ideas. The episodes I've done... So I co-host a series on the B2B Growth show around category creation. I also did a series on FlipMyFunnel. That's given me the chance to talk to people who have done more category design work than I have and learn from them in the process. And for me, that's been so much more valuable than anything I could read or stumble across in a newsletter, not that those things aren't valuable. But having one-to-one access to experts, there's few things that are... I'm not sure if anything is going to beat that. Some of those conversations have led to ongoing relationships, where I've been able to ask questions and dive deeper into other topics. And so that's where I found the most valuable use of time, is just having conversations. I love to read, love to listen to podcasts, but anytime I could just talk to people and listen to them and then talk through my own ideas, man, I'd do that every day if I could. Kathleen: Amen. I just filmed a LinkedIn video about this, about how I learn. And the number one way I learn is through hosting this podcast, which when I say that to people, I know that that's not something that's going to be feasible for everyone. Let me just spin up a podcast so that I can learn. But it is the most amazing vehicle because you get to meet such incredible people like yourself, pick their brains, really get into detail that you can't get into in other ways. And it's amazing how much I take away from it. Second for me is I love to listen to Audible business books on 2X speed as I do my commute. John: What are you listening to right now? Kathleen: I am finishing Crossing the Chasm. And then before that, it was Play Bigger, From Impossible to Inevitable, and I come back. I'll listen multiple times to books because I feel like you absorb more the second time. John: Right. Kathleen: So yeah, lots of good ones. There's never too many books to read or never too few books, I should say. I always have more. John: Right, no shortage of content, yeah. How to connect with John Kathleen: Thank you. That's what I was trying to say. Well, if somebody has questions about category design and they want to reach out, learn more about what you're doing, or ask you a question, what's the best way for them to get in touch? John: Sure. So you could email me at John@FlagandFrontier.com. So that's J-O-H-N@FlagandFrontier.com. You can also just put in John.Marketing in your browser, and it'll bring up a really simple page with just my contact info. Sometimes that's easier to remember. Kathleen: So smart. That's great. I love that. John: I can't believe no one bought that domain, but it was there so why not? Kathleen: Genius. John: It's easier than spelling my last name. And then you can find me on LinkedIn as well. I won't attempt to spell my name here, but if you want to link to it in your episode- Kathleen: I'll put that in the show notes, absolutely. John: Yeah. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Great. Well, I have really enjoyed this. I've learned so much. I feel like I probably could have made this podcast three hours long, but nobody wants to listen for that long. If you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learned something new, I would really appreciate it if you would take a minute, go to Apple podcasts, and leave the podcast a five-star review. That is how other people discover us, and that is how we get in front of a bigger audience. So take a minute and do that. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Thank you so much, John. This has been fun. John: Yeah, my pleasure, Kathleen. And hopefully, we can have another conversation later on as you go further into your own category design process. Kathleen: Yes, about that and also about the minivan that you drove in high school. John: All right, sounds good.

We continue our discussion on social security this week. Today's show will focus on how you can integrate social security in your retirement plan and some variables you may need to look out for when doing so.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com----more----Transcript of today's show:Speaker 1: Thanks for coming back in with us. As we talk here on retirement planning redefined, we always appreciate you joining us here on the podcast. With John and Nick, financial advisors at PFG Private Wealth, and we're going to continue our multi-part series on social security. We talked about a few things last go around on the podcast, and we're going to continue that on this time as well. John, how you doing buddy? How's things going?John: I'm doing good. How are you doing?Speaker 1: I'm hanging in there. Doing pretty well. I think I'm doing about the same as Nick. At the time as podcast, our teams did not fare well this past weekend in football. How are you doing, Nick?Nick: Good. While we lost, I'm still cautiously optimistic.Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. That's good.Nick: I'm okay.Speaker 1: That's how fans do it, right? You still stay optimistic even when they break your heart over and over. We'll save that for another time, but I do want to continue on our conversation about social security. We had some good chat the last time. We has some good conversation about things to consider, so we're going to continue this piece on. As we teased the last time, and if you didn't listen to it, make sure you go and check out the prior episode. You can go to PFGPrivateWealth.com. That is PFGPrivateWealth.com, and you can subscribe to the podcast, Retirement Planning Redefined, you can subscribe to that and listen to past episodes as well as future episodes. Let's get into this part. We're going to talk about how to integrate, really, social security into your retirement plan. So what's a few steps to start and start thinking about when it comes to the integration of it?John: Yeah, you know, one thing we wanted to touch on with social security is just how important it is in someone's retirement plan. A lot of people don't realize it really equates to almost 30 to 40% of their retirement income, and a big factor of why it's important, it's actually inflation protected. On average, historically, social security is average about 2.6%. So it's really nice to have a set of income that's actually going to be going up with cost of living adjustments. It makes a big difference.John: Just kind of give a quick example. Let's say if you're starting social security now, it's $2,000 per month. Within 20 years at 2.6%, that'll be about $3,340 or so, which is a big jump in income. It's important to understand how valuable that is in how much that really does help out someone's retirement plan.Speaker 1: All right, so let's talk about some taxation and some benefits there. Nick, what are some things to think about when it comes to the benefits of the taxation?Nick: From the standpoint of I guess making sure that people understand how social security works. From conversations that we've had, a lot of people are under the impression that because social security was funded via the payroll taxes that we talked about in the last session, they're under the impression that there's not going to be any sort of income tax when you start to receive it.Speaker 1: Right.Nick: As many people do know, that is incorrect. The formula that they use to calculate how much of the benefit is taxable to somebody is a little bit convoluted. Essentially what they do is they look at a modified adjusted gross income number, which includes your adjusted gross income, half of the amount that you receive from social security, and then a tax exempt interest, aka, interest from municipal bonds. They add that together, and then they really kind of look at a chart. And then dependent upon if you are single or married, it's going to determine what percentage of your benefit is going to be includable in your taxable income.Nick: If we were to say that your benefit amount was 2,000 a month, and your combined, that income formula that we kind of talked about, puts your income over about $38,000. 85% of your benefit, or about 1,700 of the 2,000, is going to be added to the other income sources that you have to determine how much you're going to pay in tax. We just like to make sure that people understand that although that benefit is coming in, oftentimes they look at the gross amount, and they don't necessarily understand that, hey, once you're on Medicare, your Medicare, it gets deducted out of that. You're probably going to want to have some sort of federal income tax withheld from it. That benefits starts to drop down. So that's something that we always make sure we focus on and make sure that people understand.John: When we're doing planning, and people find out that the social security is taxed, they are not happy.Nick: Yeah, and sometimes we get asked when did that happen or how did that happen? It really happened in the 80s, during the Reagan administration, is when it took place. Realistically, for most of the people that we're working with, they've been in the working world for 30 years, and that's been in place. It's not something that's necessarily very new or anything like that. There's really minimal ways that you can actually reduce the impact on taxes. Realistically, the only other sort of income that's not includable in that is any withdrawals that you'll take out of a Roth IRA. So dependent upon their overall situation, and dependent upon the structure of what they're going to have to take out, required minimum distributions and those sorts of things, we may look at different strategies, like converting traditional money to Roth money, and determining if that makes sense.Nick: I'll say this, that people do tend to hate taxes, and I know that sounds kind of funny, but the point being is that sometimes they'll try to make irrational decisions just to try to deal with maybe a tax issue without figuring out that hey, you know, they may only be paying an effective tax rate of 12 or 13% on their income, which in the scheme of things is really low. And so making sure that they understand that, and that they don't need to make rash decisions with how they structure their decisions is an important kind of thing. Social security just kind of factors in, it's important for people to understand how it works and how it's taxed. It's more of just kind of an FYI sort of thing.Speaker 1: Well, really good information here. We're talking about how to integrate social security in a retirement plan. John, did you have another point about the taxes here on this?John: Yeah, so one thing that we do in planning is we really start to map out someone's taxes into retirement, and a big chunk of that is their required minimum distribution age 70 and a half. If we can see how much taxes they're going to pay, we can really make some strategies for someone's social security based on that. But again, the plan kind of gives you the roadmap so you can make the right decision based on your situation.Nick: And to kind of add on to that. More specifically, when we map that out and we look at it, what we're looking to see is when those required minimum distributions are due at 70 and a half, because people, by default, like to put them off as long as they can. Sometimes it will actually make sense to start taking money out of their IRAs first and wait on social security. Whereas the default for most people is take social security first, and then take out the money for the required minimum distributions. Structuring those decisions together as one is a really important way that you can kind of add in some tax planning into your overall retirement planning.Speaker 1: All right, so we're going to continue our conversation on the next podcast as well, part three if you will, about social security. But before we get out of here for this particular episode. Any other thoughts about some of the things we've covered today, gents?John: Yeah, so it's kind of going back to what we first talked about with social security being important in someone's plan and inflation. The reason that is is when you have a portion of your retirement income that's guaranteed, it really helps us kind of map out how we should invest or basically implement a distribution strategy from the rest of the assets. So having that base of, let's say, 30,000 guaranteed income coming in, that's going up with cost of living, helps us really map out the rest of the investments and how we should strategize behind that.Nick: I think another good tool or, you know... Because as an example, my father has a pension, he's a retired fireman, and I have to constantly remind my mother what kind of the equivalent of a lump sum of dollars would be if he would have a lump sum versus the amount that he gets every single month through the pension. If we're saying on average the social security benefit amount for somebody that's been working for their full life, and waits until their full retirement age to take it, is around 2,000 per month. Let's say it's a dual family household, so we're talking about 4,000 per year. That's really the equivalent of a safe withdrawal rate and a million bucks.Nick: One of the super common questions that people ask us is how much can I take out of my retirement account each year? The safe withdrawal rates around 4%, so 4% on a million, $40,000 a year. 2,000 a month times two is closer to $48,000 a year. So we're talking about one plus million bucks. If that money was sitting in an account at least generating income, even though you couldn't invade principle, that sometimes gives people some perspective on how valuable that social security income really is to them in our overall planning.Speaker 1: Well again, we are talking about social security. We've gone through a couple of pieces the last couple of podcasts. We're going to do another one coming up in just a couple of weeks here, and continue on with our conversation with John and Nick, financial advisors at PFG Private Wealth, around social security. If you have questions and concerns, and you probably do because social security can be quite confusing to a lot of us who don't deal with this every day. Well then reach out to the guys, give them a call and let him know, because they do obviously work in this arena every day. Having a conversation, getting a second opinion if you've already got one, maybe you have no plan at all, or maybe you've had no conversations around it,. Well, just reach out and let them know that you'd like to talk.Speaker 1: 813-286-7776 is how you can reach out to them if you'd like. here in the Tampa Bay area. 813-286-7776. And of course, you can also just go to the website, PFGPrivateWealth.com. That is PFGPrivateWealth.com. Check out the team on the website there as well. You can also subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you choose, Apple or Google, or so on and so forth, and listen to past episodes as well as future episodes. So guys, I'm going to say bye this week for you, and we'll be back next time here on the podcast, so make sure you tune in for more Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. We'll see you next time.

Today is the start of a multiple part series on social security. We'll be discussing topics such as the state of the fund and reforms that are aimed to help the program and more, so tune in and catch up on social security.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com----more----Transcript of today's show:Mark: Hey gang, welcome into another edition of retirement planning redefined with the boys from PFG Private Wealth Financial Advisors, John and Nick, once again here on the program with me as we talk about investing, finance and retirement. Always go to the website and check them out at pfgprivatewealth.com that is pfgprivatewealth.com. While you're there, subscribe to the podcast. Give us a like and check us out and all that good stuff. Subscribe to it for past episodes as well as future episodes. And of course anytime you hear anything, you've got a question or concern, give them a call before you take any action. 813-286-7776 is the number to call. If you hear a useful nugget of information and you want to learn more, again, reach out to them at (813)-286-7776. Guys, I hope you're doing well this week. Nick, what's going on man?Nick: Yeah, we're doing well. Staying busy for sure. Today what we wanted to do is kick off a multi session on social security.Mark: Okay. Cool.Nick: And we just want to let everybody know. We know that some of the people that'll be listening to this will have become familiar with us through either the more comprehensive classes that we put on around town or via a financial wellness workshop. And social security has been one of the hot topics for a long time and it continues to be as it is more in the news with the different pressures and some of the funding issues and those sorts of things. And then obviously with everybody, so many people and so many baby boomers getting closer to retirement, although we will be getting into it fairly comprehensively in this session, we just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that if they were interested in having us come in, whether it's some sort of association or an employer based kind of program, we like to do the lunch and learns or some sort of financial wellness workshop.Nick: And we've got about a 50 minute session that we'll do on social security. And from the feedback that we've gotten, it's been one of the most positively embraced sessions that we've done. So we just want to let people know that if they wanted a more comprehensive overview on this or they thought it might be beneficial for their employer or fellow employees or coworkers, that that's something that's available.Mark: Awesome. Yeah. When we get into that we'll have this multi-part series on the podcast regarding social security. And again, as Nick mentioned, if you want to talk with them, (813)-286-7776, (813)-286-7776.Mark: John, how are you man? You doing all right?John: I'm doing great. How are you doing?Mark: I'm doing very well. Thank you for asking. And you know, Nick got us all set up there for the conversation. So what do you say we dive into it? How does it work? I mean, what's the crux of the whole social security situation here we're looking at?Nick: Most people are obviously familiar with the fact that they are eligible for social security and they pay into the system, but not a lot of people are familiar with how it all works and ties together. We always like to start off in explaining people how the program is funded. A lot of people have seen on their pay stub where it might say FICA and they're not really quite sure what that is. But out of that 7.62 that comes out of your paycheck for those FICA tax is 6.2% of that is for social security. And one of the things that we have found over the years is that many people are not familiar with the fact that the employer also pays in 6.2%. Some people have this idea that the program is fully funded by the government and really it's fully funded by them and their employer.Nick: Letting them know that about 12.5% of their income each year is going into the program towards them is something that is important for them to understand. And for some of the higher income earners, they may have noticed at a certain point of the year that their paycheck gets a little bit bigger. And usually that's because payroll tax is capped, so people no longer pay in on earnings over ... In 2019 on earnings over $132,900. And as we talk a little bit about some of the things that'll change over time with the program, one of the things that's in the news the most is that cap and removing that cap so that it's similar to Medicare where people will pay on, no matter what their earnings are, they will continue to pay into the system.John: That cap's actually been going up aggressively. You know, I think a few years ago it was $112 Nick, and I think now they've jumped it up to one $132.Nick: Yeah, yeah. They've definitely been indexing it up faster than inflation, that's for sure.Mark: Yeah. And depending on what happens in the elections coming up next year, you know, depending on who gets in, there's conversations that that 6.2 could be raised as well. So if you're still working, so that could go up substantially as well.Mark: How much can somebody expect guys? I imagine that's a big question that always comes up is, what are we looking at? I know you can get your estimates, obviously, from the website. They don't even send those little papers out anymore I don't think. They used to send them out every year, then it went to every five years. I'm not sure if they even still do that.John: They do occasionally, and I'm not sure the exact how often, but I know that from our classes we're starting to have guests say, yeah they're getting the statements. But it's based off of your earnings record. And one thing that's important to understand, it's actually your highest 35 years. So a lot of people when I first started working, I think the first year I was 18 I made like $12,000.Mark: That's pretty good for 18.John: You're [crosstalk 00:05:20]. Yeah, exactly. Your highest earning years are really later in life, once you hit your 50s and 60s. So that's important to understand if someone's thinking about retiring early to make sure that they look on the statement and see, Hey, what years do I have that are significant in here? Because if I stop working my last seven years, you know the benefit that I'm seeing on my statement's actually going to be less.John: Because when you get your statement, what it shows if you continue to work up until that age, not if you stopped. So that's important. Another thing we tell our clients and anyone that comes to our classes is to make sure that you look at it, see if there's any zeros in there. Because if you do have zeros in your highest 35 that will actually bring down your benefit and that's something you may want to consider maybe working a couple of extra years to make sure that you maximize your social security retirement benefit as best you can.John: And you're right, you can go on social security.gov and pull up your statement. They'll ask you a lot of funny questions. What was the color of your first car? Most likely most people get locked out unfortunately, but it's good to go check it out if you haven't done that in awhile.Nick: Yeah. Another thing to just make sure that people know from the standpoint of those highest 35 years is that's in relation to the cap. And so you know that cap that we mentioned earlier, that $132,900, it's in relation to that. Just because there may have been a period of time, we've seen it in some circumstances, where maybe somebody took some time off to stay home with the kids and then they're returning to work and before they took time off they were making a higher income. And although, from a pure dollar standpoint they may be making more dollars now as in relation to the cap, that may not necessarily be the case.Nick: That highest 35 earning years is in relation to that cap. And with how social security date change the mailing out of the [inaudible 00:07:04] and that sort of thing, we absolutely recommend that people, although it can be a little bit of a pain from the process, to really get logged into the site, make sure they understand how to access that statement, make sure they understand how to read that statement. Especially from the standpoint of people that we have that are self employed. We have them double check their statements to make sure that their income is being correctly recorded because they may be paying in their self employment tax, which is essentially payroll tax. Making sure that that's recorded properly so they're going to get the benefits that they're entitled to down the road.Mark: Yeah. Now guys, I've heard through the years that if you see those zeros on there like John mentioned that that's not really on the social security to fix that. That falls back on you in trying to follow up possibly with past and employers. Like if you know you earned something in a given year and you're seeing a zero, is that still how it is? Is that the way that it goes? Do you need to talk with the social security office about that or do you need to track down that past employer?John: You do need to reach out to them and Nick's, I believe, grandfather did that and Nick can share that story.Mark: Oh, all right.Nick: And this was years ago, so I don't know any details on it, but my grandfather was from Cuba and so he had a natural distrust for the government. And when he was a professor at the University of Rochester and when he went to retire and file for social security, he did not agree with the amount. And due to his non-trusting nature, he happened to have every pay stub that he ever had in the basement. And so he was able to figure that out. Luckily now we have things that are more electronic and we do have people try to keep some sort of record and haven't had anybody recently deal with that in any sort of deeper way.Mark: That's good.Nick: But usually a tax return will help. And tax returns are one of the things that we have people ... We've got a portal for clients and we have them upload those tax returns so that they can be a really good resource down the road in case there's any issues.Mark: Well that's cool. Yeah. I mean I'm 48 and I think about myself and I think God, if I had to go back and figure out who I worked for when I was 20 and what they owed me or whatever, or what I paid in, I don't know where I'd start. So that was awesome that your grandfather actually kept all that stuff. Because I know that for a lot of people that would be definitely a challenge. But that's just something I thought about and I wanted to bring that up and get your guys' opinion on that.Mark: So if you're talking about things that are really important to people, obviously a big question for boomers, and I'm sure you get this at the wellness events that you do and just in general is the constant question of the health of the fund. Is it going to be around?John: Yeah, that is a 100% the main question we get at the workshops and also when we're doing planning for clients. But as it states today there's actually a surplus and the fund is actually growing. There's roughly $2.9 trillion in it and when you say trillion it doesn't really in reality mean much, we have no idea what that actually equates to.Mark: It sounds like a lot.John: [crosstalk 00:09:56] Surplus, it is a lot. But the surplus is about $3 billion a year between money that's coming into it through the payroll taxes and also the interest earned on the balance. Just to kind of give some people some numbers because they're always asking. In 2023, 2024 that surplus actually will stop. So it's actually going to be going into a deficit and then in 2034 the fund's basically exhausted and then it's just going to be paid through basically money coming in through payroll taxes and then the money's going to come out. An then in 2034 when that happens, based on the numbers, the estimates, is looking like there's going to be a 21% reduction of benefits. So you're going to get 79% of the benefit owed to you. And again, that's if no changes happen, which we'll we're going to go into shortly. Nick will start it up where we're talking about some of the reforms that already have been happening and that will continue to happen.Nick: And we do tend to ... Some of these will probably be repeated throughout the series about social security. And earlier I mentioned the increase in max earnings, removing that cap. That's probably one of the lowest hanging fruit from the standpoint of people getting on board with making higher income earners continue to pay into the system. Right now, the earliest retirement age that somebody can collect benefits from is 62. So that's an age, especially with the longevity of people's lives and people just living longer overall, that 62 will probably start to increase. I'm sure people will be grandfathered in at a certain age or certain, your worth and before it will be grandfathered in, but-Mark: It seems like that's a really-Nick: John and I suspect that our-Mark: Yeah, that seems like the easiest one too for a lot of things. Right? Just push it back for people under a certain age, like 50 and under or something, just push it back.Nick: Yeah. And social security ... The trickiest thing and probably one of the biggest reasons that not much has been done with it is because, frankly politicians are worried about not getting voted back into office, so-Mark: Yeah, it's a political poker chip for sure.Nick: They [inaudible 00:11:53] can down the road and try not to tick people off at least to a certain extent. So raising that initial retirement age from 62 probably upwards of ... They'll probably ease it in, but I wouldn't be surprised if John and I, our initial retirement age is closer to 65 or higher.Nick: They've talked about doing means testing from the standpoint of if people have a certain amount of income on that they wouldn't collect their social security. I think that one will probably be a little bit more difficult because usually that's income focused and honestly there's a lot of ways around that.Nick: But another thing would be that cost of living adjustment, and that's been tinkered with a little bit really over the last decade as inflation stayed low for a little while and interest rates were really low. But that could be something that they adjust. But realistically what we think will be the easiest things to do will be to take up on the payroll tax, potentially have employers put in a slightly larger percentage than the actual employee. It's something that they can do. Increasing that cap or the earning cap or removing the cap in general, and bumping back that initial retirement age, are all things that we think will be a big deal.Nick: The other thing could be the, really the increases, the percentage increases that social security provides for people that defer taking their benefits. So if they wait, any year after full retirement age, there's an 8% increase. And so that's something that'll probably drop as well.Nick: The good news is that this is pretty actuarial and really all you have to do is math to figure it out. It's just going to take people being willing, people being the government, being willing to make the changes.John: Yeah. And they've already, in 2015 they actually closed some of the loopholes which we've been seeing a lot of in planning some strategies that people were using are going away, which helped the program out. They're already doing some things. And the big thing that ... One of the things Nick talked about was the cost of living adjustments. To me that's one of the ones we need to keep an eye on because when we're doing planning, it really helps out the plan when you have some type of guaranteed income that actually goes up with inflation.John: Historically, social security has gone up about 2.6%. It's been low over the last five or six years due to inflation, but that's actually a pretty nice benefit when you look at what you start with at let's say 66 and what you end up with that age 85. It's a big amount. When you look over that 20 year period.Nick: Probably the one people want to fight for the most to maintain from the standpoint of anybody that's likes to be active or have a vested interest in the topic, that cost of living adjustment's really, really important for them.Mark: Absolutely. Well, let's take that point and segue into an offer for you guys. If you're listening and you want a free maximization strategy and the social security guide to anyone who emails in, just email john@pfgprivatewealth.com that's john@pfgprivatewealth.com. Again to get that free maximization strategy and social security guide here on the program.Mark: And I that's going to do it for us this week on the podcast guys. Really good information to start this week, talking about social security here on the show. We're going to continue on, as Nick mentioned earlier on, and do a multi-part series on this next time here on the program. We're going to talk about integrating social security into your retirement plan, making that part of the plan and some things to look for and think about in regards to that.Mark: You've been listening to retirement planning redefined with John and Nick financial advisors at PFG Private Wealth. Again, that's PFG Private Wealth and that you can find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com and subscribe to the podcast while you're there. Don't forget to email John if you'd like to get that social security maximization or give him a call at (813)-286-7776. If you've got some questions about your own social security, get on the horn with them. Come in for a consultation and a conversation. (813)-286-7776. This has been retirement planning redefined for John and Nick. I'm Mark and we'll see you next time.

Saffron in the SouksVibrant Recipes from the Heart of LebanonBy John Gregory-Smith Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors. John: I'm John Gregory-Smith, and my new cookery book is called Saffron in the Souks. It's packed with vibrant recipes from Lebanon. Suzy Chase: The first line in this cookbook says, “When I was writing my first cookbook in 2010, I went to work as a chef in Beirut.” Let's go back for a minute, and tell me how you got to that point in 2010, in Beirut? John: So, the landscape was very different then. Social media was a completely different beast back in 2010, I think. I don't even think Instagram was really a thing back then. I was more like Facebook and Twitter. I'd read an article on a restaurant, very old school, like in the newspaper, that was like a community kitchen. The guys set up this place called Tawlet in Beirut, where they had a really good front of house, really good chefs, and they would invite people from local regions of Lebanon to come and cook their local cuisine. The landscape there was a bit, let's say, challenging outside of the city. It was still a bit dangerous. A lot of the people with the money who were living in Beirut weren't traveling anywhere. What you wanted to do was encourage people to come and cook, they could take home a bit of cash. Just do good things via food. I thought it sounded incredible, and I also thought it sounded like a very smart way to go to one place and learn about all the regional cuisine of the country. Lebanon is not a huge country anyway, but it wasn't a great place to be traveling around. You could just go to the city and stay there. I emailed them and they got back to me and said, “Yeah, come out. That would be great, we'd love to have you.” I basically was there for a couple of weeks. I'd go in every morning and do the morning shifts, and help the guys prep for lunch service. The way they eat in this restaurant is just beautiful. You go and you pay a set price, I think it's about $30 or whatever. You have this ginormous banquet laid out for you of hot and cold [mezzes 00:02:21], and then amazing stews and meats, and amazing vegetarian food from the different regions. The ladies who would come in from the regions would spearhead what they wanted to cook, and then the chefs would help them prepare it. It was really quality food, really interesting menus, and it was changing all the time. The desserts, oh my God, they were so delicious! They'd have this huge counter laid out, with opulent desserts. It was just incredible. I learned so much. Really, really enjoyed the city as well. It was a very vibrant place to be, there was a lot happening, it felt like it was really exciting. I was very much advised to just stay in the city, for my own safety. I don't speak Arabic, and that was ... When the locals tell you to do something, you tend to do it, do you know what I mean? Suzy Chase: Yeah. John: So, I had this incredible time, kept in touch with everybody in the restaurant. They were saying, "Oh, you know, the country is changing, it's really opening up, it's a lot safer now. You should think about coming back." I did, I just decided that's what I wanted to do. I went back, hired a car, and drove around for a few months on my own. Tapped into these lovely ladies who'd helped me originally. It was so nice, going to revisit them, and going to stay in their homes. Spend time with them properly, and cook with them on their own terms. It was just phenomenal. Suzy Chase: Now, years later when you went back, did you go thinking about writing a cookbook, or did you just go back, just to revisit it? John: Absolutely writing a cookbook. I got the green light that I could ... Basically, I said to the guys I'd stayed in touch with in the restaurant, if I come back, the way I write books is I need to drive around, I need to be on my own, I need to soak things up. I need to feel that I can go anywhere, do everything, meet everyone. Is that doable? They were like, “Absolutely.” So, I spoke to my publisher. I felt if I could do it, go for it. They were quite supportive. Suzy Chase: Did you have a translator? John: Yes. My Arabic is dreadful. It's a really hard language. Suzy Chase: Yes. John: I'm very bad at languages, anyway. I can speak three words of French. Arabic is a very different beast. I can say hello, and thank you. Most of the times when I say that, people don't really understand what I'm saying. I would very much have a translator. Actually, what I found when I was there is that most of the guys would speak a bit of English. I could get around it quite easy. It was nice when I did have a translator, because I could get the beautiful stories, and the nuances of the food quite a lot better. Suzy Chase: Tell me about the title, Saffron in the Souks? It just rolls off the tongue. John: So, what I like to do is, when I go to these countries, I get incredibly overexcited. I'm quite an excitable person. I charge around, full of energy. I see everything, do everything, and I tend to just love it all. What I want to do is communicate that to everybody, really. It has to be through the recipes, through the writing, and the title. What I was trying to come up with was something really evocative, and beautiful, and that would inspire how the country had inspired me, really. Saffron in the Souks just felt like it had that lovely hint of something exotic. It felt perfect for it. Suzy Chase: It's nice. You could even name a restaurant Saffron in the Souks. John: Yeah, it's gorgeous. I love it. Suzy Chase: It's really pretty. John: Trademarked, by the way, so you can't. Suzy Chase: Oh, darn. I was going to do my new Twitter handle, Saffron in the Souks. John: Funny. Suzy Chase: What is typical Lebanese street food? John: So, the really good stuff would be kebabs. Amazing kebabs, they eat them meat over fire. You wouldn't cook it at home because you don't have a huge fire pit. That is served everywhere. Any town you go to will have a really good kebab shop. They make everything from chicken sheesh, which is the very basic marinated cubes of chicken, to more elaborate lamb kebabs, and ground meats. The other thing is, again, because they don't have ovens, you use communal bakers. Even in the tiny villages, they'll have a local baker. The baker will obviously cook the bread, but they also do these really wicked things called manouche, which is a flatbread that's cooked fresh with zaatar. Zaatar is a spice blend of different dried herbs. Sumac, which is a red berry that grows in dry areas. It's ground and it's got a very tart flavor. Then, finally, sesame seeds. It's quite a sucker punch of flavor. They drizzle oil and put the spice mix over the raw dough and bake it. You eat that as breakfast on the go, and it's just divine. Suzy Chase: Tell me about picking fresh zaatar in Nabatieh? How do you pronounce it? John: Nabatieh. Suzy Chase: Nabatieh. John: Yeah, that was really interesting. Actually, that was right in the south of Lebanon, by the Israeli border. I was advised not to go there. I think people just felt it could be a bit risky, basically. Anyway, I was with the guys who I'd been working with the whole time, who ran this kitchen. I was say I really want to go down there, but I've been told not to. They went, “Listen, we know this brilliant farmer there. He's really lovely. Let's call him and see what he says.” We called this guy, he's called Abu. Abu was so lovely. He went, “Look, it's completely fine at the moment, it's really safe. It feels like it's been safe for quite a while. Why don't you come down to the farm?” I went with a friend of mine, she actually drove me. Now, I did drive everywhere in Lebanon, and it was only out of laziness she decided to drive. It also meant that the journey, which probably would have taken me maybe four hours, because I drive so slowly, took about an hour because they drive ... She drove so fast. We went there, and it was exquisite. It was a really vibrant, green part of Lebanon. Beautiful, it was springtime. Wild flowers everywhere, and this herb called zaatar grows there. If you buy this blend called zaatar, say in America, it will probably have thyme or oregano in it as the herb. In Lebanon, they actually have a herb called zaatar. It's native to their country, and it's got this incredible perfume. Abu was this wonderful man. Really just so much energy and life, he was gorgeous, grew this herb commercially. When he first started growing it, everyone was like, you're insane. This just grows wild everywhere, we can just pick it. He basically knew that he had found the best zaatar plants. He had the last laugh, because now is zaatar is very coveted all over Lebanon and beyond. Suzy Chase: Mm-hmm (affirmative).John: I think he even stocks some restaurants in London now with it. He was just so lovely. We strolled around his farm, and he took me down to this incredible river that was in this gorge. It was just so beautiful. I was thinking I was so lost in the whimsical beauty of this place. I was like, my God, we're actually in a really dangerous part of the world. Who would have thought this kicks off here? It's just too beautiful. He developed ... He was such a canny old man. He developed this technology, this machine that could spin the herbs. He would dry it and spin it, and it would remove all the little bits of grit, and separate the lovely top bit of herb from the grit. I'm like ... the journalist in me was like, I want more information. Tell me about this? How does it work, what does it do? He was really funny, because it was all through a translator. I could just see his face, he was very serious while she was talking. Then, he'd just roared laughing. I even understood what he was saying. He was like, “There's absolutely no way that I'm telling you how this works. This is my trade secret. Back on your horse.” It was just so wonderful, it was such a lovely experience. I'm really glad that I went down there. I felt completely safe, and it's great for me to be able to report back on it. I'm not saying everyone should run down there immediately, but if you choose to and it's right for you, it's pretty fabulous. Suzy Chase: I love the photo of him on page 139. John: Yeah, it's amazing. Suzy Chase: There's just so many stories in that face of his. John: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's amazing. Suzy Chase: Describe the Lebanese seven spice? John: Lebanese, they do use a lot of spices, but actually it tends to be, in general, quite herb heavy and fresh. It's more the old, Arabic dishes that they use spices in. One of the blends is called seven spice. It's typically more than seven spices, that's what I came to realize when I was there. I was like, that's not seven, that's about 12. People would just look at me, very blankly. It tends to be quite heavy, woody spices. Cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, those sorts of things. They add in this incredible spice called mahleb. Mahleb is actually cherry stones, so the pits or the seeds from a cherry, and they're ground, which sounds disgusting. You'd just be thinking, why would you want to grind a gross old stone after you've eaten it? But it has the most incredible sweet perfume. Actually, in Syrian cuisine, they use it a lot in desserts. Lots of pastries and baklava, they'll add it too. It goes into some seven spice mixes, and you can smell the ones that have it. It can be quite hard to find. I think America is very similar to the UK, in if you order it, you get it, but that can be a bit of a faff. I think you can get a mix called [baharat 00:12:17]. I know, for example, in Whole Foods, you can buy baharat. That's a sort of similar style blend. I've tried to put that in. Everywhere I've said seven spice, I've put that in, just so you can stay on top of the cooking. Suzy Chase: How do you spell that, if we want to look for it at Whole Foods? John: Oh, let's try. I'm quite dyslexic, but I'll give it a go. Suzy Chase: Okay. John: I think it's B-A-H-A-R-A-T.Suzy Chase: Okay.John: That's it. Suzy Chase: So, it's spelled like it sounds? John: Yes. I think so. Maybe check on Google just in case-Suzy Chase: Yeah. John: -I've got it completely wrong. Suzy Chase: Well, just look in the Bs. John: Yeah, exactly. Suzy Chase: I found it interesting that Beirut used to be called The Paris of the East. John: Yes. Suzy Chase: Talk a bit about that? John: So, Beirut was originally a very Liberal city, a coastal city. Beautiful beaches, beautiful people, beautiful drinks, beautiful food. It was a French doctorate for quite a long time, Lebanon. It had a massive French hangover, almost. The architecture there was very Parisian, beautiful wide streets, very unlike typical Arabic. It would have wide balconies, beautiful French windows. Things were very open on the facade, whereas if you go to a very Arabic city, everything's very closed because they like to do things behind closed doors. So, it had this beautiful architecture, really good art scene, and it was known as being a quite decadent city. There's a city outside of Beirut called Baalbek, which is an extraordinary city near Syria. Baalbek used to have ... It's famous for Roman ruins, actually. It's got the most incredible Roman ruins. The temples look like the Acropolis. It's the Temple to Dionysus, which is the God of Booze. They used to do these incredible festivals there in the forties, where all the Hollywood greats would go. It was a real roaring place to be. Unfortunately, just because of politics, and religion, and strife, it took a massive turn for the worst. The people who live there remember that, and they hold onto that, and they treasure that. What's really lovely now is that people are like, “We want that back, and we're going to get it back.” You really feel that when you're there now. Beirut has so much energy when you're there. Really amazing, all along the coast, really rocking beach bars where you just hang out all day. Really creative artsy side of the city as well, so lots of poets, and musicians, and artists, and they're really injecting life back into it. Fingers crossed that they can do it, because it's certainly a cool place to be. Suzy Chase: Speaking of Dionysus, when you think about an Arabic country, you would assume no one drinks or parties. John: Exactly. Boy, do they drink and party there. Lebanon is a very small country. It's near, obviously, Jerusalem, so it has ... During the Crusades, it was always quite a hot spot. That coast was very dominant. That whole area has always been ... What's a nice way to put it? A slight tussle between the different religions, let's say. Suzy Chase: A tussle. John: Yeah, really top line way of saying it. When you're there, there's obviously a massive Christian community still there. In this small country, you've got big Christian community, there's a big Arabic community. They've got Drus, they've got Jews, they've got loads of different communities there. A lot of those communities are very happy. Arabs do party, but they just party in a very different way. There's a lot of them there who certainly like to party with a good drink in hand. The interesting thing about Lebanon is they have, to the east valley called Becker Valley. Becker Valley is the wine region, so it's filled with vineyards. They make some exquisite wines there. Suzy Chase: So, describe the sour tang that the Lebanese palette is so partial to? John: Yeah, right. It's extraordinary. They love sour. When you're cooking with Lebanese, there're certain ingredients that their eyes light up, and they love the taste of sour. Pomegranate molasses, which is essentially just pomegranate, which we know are full of those pits with that lovely bejeweled bit of fruit around each one. They just squeeze the juice out and simmer it down. The natural sweetness turns it into this very sticky molasses. They will shove that in salads, stews. They'll make vinegarette and sauces out of it. It gives this very sweet sour tang. The lemons there are incredible. They are tart, but they're not like really horrid, bitter lemons that make you wince. They're more like Amalfi lemons. They're huge, slightly sweet flavored. They're gorgeous, and they will really go for it with that. The other ingredient, I think I mentioned earlier, is the sumac, which is the ground red berry. Quite often, they'll use all three. For example, when they make fattoush, which is a classic Lebanese salad, which is essentially chopped ingredients with bits of crispy fried bread. Just deeply pleasing. They'll make the dressing with pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, and sumac, and then they put in their gorgeous olive oil. It's very, very sour. It's interesting when you're cooking with someone who's palette's a bit more developed in that direction than you. I'd be like, oh, just a little hint. They're like, "What are you doing? Keep going, keep going." Actually, it does work. When you're using really lovely fresh ingredients, they can quite often take a sour that's lovely. Suzy Chase: When I think about Lebanon, I don't think about exciting produce. Talk a bit about that? John: Yeah. It's a funny old place. Again, for such a small country, it's got the most incredible different terrain. You've obviously got the Mediterranean Sea to one side, so you get all the coastal food. Then, you've got the mountains in the North and the South. Really, you've got a band of band mountains in the middle, and then a valley on the other side. It's very fertile, it's incredibly fertile country. They grow everything from fruit and vegetables to amazing herbs. Really, really amazing herbs. Rice grains, everything grows there. They get really good seasons. You get really long, hot summers. You get good autumn, good spring, where it's a lot cooler. Then, cold winters so things can regenerate. You do get this incredible, incredible turnaround of produce there. What's lovely is they don't have a culture like, say, mine or yours, where we're so used to going into the supermarket and you get whatever you want, whenever you want. There, they do have supermarkets in the cities, but everything is just seasonal. You just get what you get, and it is really lovely. They'll be certain things at certain times of the year. For example, strawberries. Well, they'll just go bad for it. Or, in the spring, when the green beans come, farva beans. They just love it. You see little stalls popping up everywhere, selling just one ingredient. The farmers will come, we've got a glut of them. Everybody gets really excited about it, it's so sweet. They may only be around for a couple of months. I don't have that. I've just grown up in London where you go to the supermarket and get what you want. I just love being around that excitement over something so simple. It's really gorgeous. Suzy Chase: One recipe that was surprising in this cookbook is the Garlicky Douma Dumplings. Is it Douma? John: Oh! Yes! They're so good. Suzy Chase: Tell me about those. John: Douma is this beautiful little Christian village. It looks like you're in Tuscany, it's in the hills before you get to the mountains. It is so beautiful. Really, it's extraordinary. I took my parents there, and they couldn't believe it. You've got these little villages with huge churches in. Everything is dome, tiled roofs. It really looks like Italy, it's really weird. All the olive trees going around. In the villages there, they make these dumplings. They almost make a pasta dough, and they fill them with meat. They actually look even like little tortellini. They serve them in a yogurt sauce. When I first got given this bowl of joy, I was so overexcited. Because I'm such a geek, the first thing I wanted to do was take a photo. The light was really bad. I was in this beautiful old house, with this amazing kitchen, and these lovely women cooking and chatting. I got given this bowl of food and yelped, and made a run for what had been the door to go outside. I hadn't realized that someone had actually closed the glass door, so I just ran into it, into the glass door. Suzy Chase: No!John: Luckily, nothing bad happened, but the whole bowl of food just flew all over me. I was like, turned around covered in these dumplings dripping down my face. They were all just in utter hysterics. Suzy Chase: Oh, my. John: They thought I was weird enough anyway, and that was definitely the cherry on top. Suzy Chase: Just pushed you over the top. John: It was so funny. They are absolutely dreamy. They're quite easy to make, because the dough is ... There's actually no egg in it. Unlike pasta, there's no egg in that dough, so it's super easy to work with. They are delicious. Suzy Chase: Last weekend, I made your recipe for Beirut meatballs on page 111.John: I saw! Suzy Chase: Now, this is a traditional recipe named after an Ottoman name Daout BashaJohn: Yeah. Suzy Chase: How have you adapted this recipe, and how did this guy get a dish named after him? John: So, funnily enough, the woman who told me this story, it was really funny. She was this incredible woman, she was so glamorous and cool. I met her in the restaurant in Beirut. I didn't meet her 10 years ago, I met her this time around because I kept going to the restaurant for lunch. Whenever I was in the city, I'd always pop in to say hi to everyone. I met her. We got on like a house on fire, and actually went to her house. She showed me how to cook these. She was like ... You know how when you meet some people, you're just naturally drawn to them? Suzy Chase: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. John: They've just got something about them. She'd been through really bad cancer. She was so full of life and energy. Her son was an opera singer. They were just really cool. I'm a bit obsessed with pasta and meatballs, and for some reason we were talking about that. She was like, “Oh my goodness. There's this dish that I've got to teach you.” She showed me how to make them. They're sort of like sour meatballs in a ... There's a lot of onions, and pomegranate, and it's very perfumed. I was asking her, where is this recipe from? She gave me that story, that this Turkish guy had come. This was named after him. I said, why? She just went, “Well, it just is.” That was the end of the story. Suzy Chase: Okay. John: I was like, oh. Can you give me any more detail than that? She's like, “No, they're just named after him.” I've Googled it, and spoken to other people, and they all said the same thing. Whoever he was, came over, and left this dish. That's it. Regardless of the slightly stunted story, they are delicious. They're really, really nice. Suzy Chase: I even made my own pomegranate molasses, which was so easy. John: Wow. That's really top marks. You win. That's amazing. I would never do that. Suzy Chase: It was really easy.John: Really? How long did it take to cook down? Suzy Chase: About eight minutes. Not that long. John: That's so good, that's amazing. Suzy Chase: I didn't need that much. John: Is that because you couldn't find a bottle? Suzy Chase: Yeah, I couldn't find-John: Oh. Suzy Chase: I used pomegranate juice. John: Oh, that's great. How intuitive of you. Suzy Chase: Yeah, look at that.John: Look at you. Suzy Chase: Look at me cooking. I also made the recipe for roasted carrots with tahini and black sesame seeds on page 51. John: Yeah, that's nice. Suzy Chase: Describe this dish. John: Obviously I said earlier about the way the produce works, and the way things are just eaten in season. They have an innate love of vegetable. They just love veggies. They do them really, really well. Most meals you go to, actually, will have ... Actually, quite a lot of people will eat vegetarian food quite a lot of the time, certainly in the more rural areas where they've not got so much cash. Even if you eat a big meal, it will tend to be a little meat or fish, then loads of veg. This was just one of those dishes that was very simple, and it makes the vegetables sing. What you want is ... Do you have the word ... You do have the word heritage for vegetables in America, don't you? Suzy Chase: Yes. We call them heirloom. John: Okay, so heirloom carrots. Suzy Chase: Mm-hmm (affirmative).John: You want the nicest carrots that you can get. All different colors, all different flavors. You just roast them up with a bit of cumin. The lovely bit is the tahini. Carrots have that deep sweetness that you get from a root veg. Tahini is almost like a peanut butter, but it's made with sesame seeds. It's a ground sesame seed paste, and it has a wonderful, rich sweetness that just compliments the carrots. It's just two ingredients that work so well together, and I just love it. Suzy Chase: I also made the Akra smashed Lemon Chickpeas on page 16. John: Whoa. Suzy Chase: How is this different from hummus? John: Okay, hummus is chickpeas, tahini, garlic, and lemon. That's how you make classic hummus. This recipe, it's called Akra Smashed. Akra is the name of the restaurant in Tripoli. Tripoli is this fabulous, old Venetian city on the coast, north of Beirut. It really is buzzing, it's brilliant. I think, actually the best street food in Lebanon is in Tripoli. There's this ginormous restaurant called Akra. It opens really early in the morning, like six o'clock, maybe even earlier, and it stays open until about two. All they serve is hummus. It's got about 350 covers, it's packed the whole time. The point being, you basically get a whole bowl of hummus for yourself, with a little bowl of pickles, veg, and some pitas. That's a snack or a light meal. Actually, it's not that light because you eat so much of it. They serve the classic hummus. They serve a thing called hummus ful, spelled F-U-L. That's made with fava beans. It's quite an acquired taste, actually. Then they make this other style of hummus that I copied in this book. It's basically the same ingredients. You've got your chickpeas, your lemon, your garlic, and your tahini, but it's blended so that it has a bit more texture. It's more lemon juice than you would normally serve, so it tastes a bit fresher, a bit lighter. It's got a lovely texture to it. It's not that silky smooth complexion of hummus, it's a bit more chunky. Like a guacamole or something. What was so nice about it is you get that sort of texture, and almost dryness from the chickpeas. It feels like it's gagging for something. What they did is they drizzle it with a chile butter, a very rich chile butter, and then loads of roasted nuts. You get all the things in it missing, and it's just divine. Suzy Chase: Now to my segment this season called my favorite cookbook. John: Right.Suzy Chase: Aside from this cookbook and your others, what is your all-time favorite cookbook and why? John: Oh, all-time favorite book, that's really hard. Can it only be one? Suzy Chase: Yes. John: Yes, because that was the question, wasn't it? Oh my God, that's really hard. What would be the one book that I would hang onto? I would be Delia Smith, How To Cook. Delia Smith is a stalwart British cookery writer and TV chef from the ... She was really massive ... She's still huge here now, but she was really big in the seventies and eighties. It was before cookery was cool, so on telly. It was a bit like a school teach telling you how to cook. Her recipes really worked. It was everything from how to make an omelet to how to make a roast chicken. I taught myself how to cook with that book. My mom had a copy. The cover, Delia has the most extraordinary, coiffed 1970s haircut you've ever seen. It looks like someone's put a weird bowl over her hair, tilted it backwards, and cut around it. Suzy Chase: I love it. John: It's extraordinary. If you Google it, it will just make you roar with laughter. That book, I learned how to cook from it. I think that would probably be the one book I feel so nostalgic about and hang onto. Suzy Chase: In interviewed James Rich, who wrote the cookbook Apple yesterday. John: Oh, yeah, right. Suzy Chase: He said the same thing! John: Did he? Suzy Chase: Yes! John: That's so funny. That is so funny. Suzy Chase: Okay, so you've done Turkey, Morocco, and Lebanon. What's next? John: I'm entirely sure, actually. I came up with a brilliant, very hair brained idea. I like really weird and wonderful, I love weird and wonderful a lot, and I my publisher thought my idea was way too weird, and perhaps not so wonderful. They've asked me to rethink. Yeah, I definitely want to continue with the Middle Eastern thing. I feel that I want to dip into another country there, because I just love it around there. I've got a trip coming up, actually. I'm going to Gaza in a couple of weeks, which is going to be very, very interesting. Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh. John: Yeah, I'm going with a charity to look at child nutrition out there. It's all quite intense. I think it will be incredible, I think it's going to be really extraordinary going to pretty much a war zone to see how people eat. Yeah, it's going to be quite an intense trip. I would love to go somewhere ... I love the Eastern Mediterranean, it's beautiful. I'd love to do a book in Iranian food, but I don't think now is the time to be going to Iran. Suzy Chase: What does your mom say? Is your mom freaking out?John: Yeah, completely. When I said the G word, they made that teeth wincing noise. She went, “Oh, my baby. What are you doing? Why are you doing that?” I said, I want to go because it's this amazing charity and we're going to help children. It means this tiny thing I can do to contribute could be a really good thing. She was just like, “But why there? Why don't you pick somewhere nicer?” I'm dead excited. I think it'll be great. Suzy Chase: So, where can you find you on the web, and social media? John: So, I use Instagram an awful lot, much to the annoyance of my family. My Instagram handle is @JohnGS. I've got a lot of content on there, I do a lot of free content. I'm trying to stick a couple recipes out every week for people to copy. Then, everything on my website, which is just JohnGregorySmith.com.Suzy Chase: As the Lebanese people say, Sahtain, which means double health. Thanks so much for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast. John: Loved it, and love you. Outro: Subscribe over on CookeryByTheBook.com. Thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.

James: Let's get started, 1 2 3. Hi listeners, welcome to Achieve Wealth Podcast. It's a podcast where we focus on how to achieve wealth through value add real estate investing. And today I have John Jacobus from, John, where are you from?  John: I'm from New York.  James: New York. Awesome. Awesome. Why not John, you talk to our listeners about, you know, about yourself and what you've been doing and we are going to be focusing a lot on a mobile home park investment and John is an expert in the operation of mobile home parks. And I thought of bringing him on board and learn that asset class through the level of details where we can learn and figure out, you know, why that would be a really good investment vehicle for everybody. So, John, why don't you go ahead and take a and tell our audience things that I would have missed out. John: Sure. Yeah. Thanks, James for having me on the show, it's really good to be here. As I said, I live in New York City but I invest in the southeast and the southwest. I got started in real estate investing in the early 2000s just doing single-family rentals and fix and flips, down in southern California. I'm originally from the San Francisco Bay area out on the west coast. And there was an equity opportunity down in southern California in the early part of this century. And with my dad, brother and I, we just got started. At the time, I was about 18, so I got started early and that really triggered an interest in investing and building wealth. And from there, just sort of followed my nose. So I got interested in stock market investing and just general assessing quality businesses. And then maybe four years ago, got interested in multifamily investing, being surrounded by skyscrapers and multifamily housing here in Manhattan. I poke my nose into that, got to know people, build the network and started my first multifamily opportunity as a limited partner in a project in Dallas, Texas. And since then, just sort of took incremental steps to become more active and raising capital. As you know, James, it's gotten pretty competitive in the apartment space, especially when you're out of state and don't have the ability to get on planes and meet brokers or property managers for tours. So seeing that it was a sort of impossible for me to compete with locals and the markets that I wanted to invest in, I stumbled across mobile home parks. And the more I learned about it, the more I poked my nose into it, the more I liked it. And I found that I could be competitive despite being located out of town. And for about the past year and a half now, I've been focusing full time on mobile home park investing. Now, I've acquired a portfolio of three parks and I'm looking to continue to scale where we find value. James: Awesome. So yeah, I mean mobile home parks, I mean, I do know some things about mobile home parks, but not to the level of details that you would know. Right. So can you explain to the listeners how does the whole, and at a high level, then we can go into a bit deeper into the details of mobile home parks. Why did you start with mobile home parks? Why not self- storage or office or retail warehouse and all that? John: Yeah, so I'm generally attracted to assets that are under the radar and have a kind of negative stigma with them. So I mentioned I am into investing in businesses on the stock market as well. And I tend to adopt a contrarian mindset where, you know, the more popular or something is in the media or among, you know, the masses, the less interested I become. And so, I think point number one that triggered me to look into mobile home parks was when I would attend these conferences of real estate investors or go to meetups or just hear about mobile home parks in the news, generally, there was no one really focusing on it. So amongst the thousands of people that were at a conference, there was maybe two or three people that were focused on mobile home parks.  And anytime you hear about mobile home parks in the news it seems to be negative. Nobody wants to brag about the fact that they're in the business full time because of the negative public stigma. To me, that's attractive because there are fewer competitors and especially when you dig into the details and see the fundamentals of the business, they're awfully attractive. So I think just generally the unpopular nature of the asset class was something that really appealed to me. And then, you know, the fact that it actually has appealing economics was even more of an attractive factor of the asset class. James: Okay. That's exactly why people can still find really good deals in mobile home parks where there's a lot of stigma tied to it, to mobile home parks and that could be just an opportunity. So I mean, I attended like a two days boot camp, on mobile home parks, like two, three years ago. And I thought it was a really good asset class to enter at the time because as you said, not many people, know mobile home parks, it's not out to the masses. There are not many gurus teaching mobile home park too even though they're teaching, they are not everywhere, right? They're not in the social media guys like what's happening now. And that's a huge stigma on mobile home parks. This is a bit cross kind of thing, right?  I mean that's what even the guy who was teaching that three-day boot camp was telling us, which can be a really good thing, right? I mean, I know the day we want to make sure that we have a good asset class where you know, it's very stable and able to predictably give you good cash and good returns at a high level. So let's talk about how do you make money out of buying a mobile home park? John: Yeah, so a number of ways. We focus on turnaround parks. So one of the areas, well, I said that mobile home park investing is unpopular relative to self- storage or apartments. There is some competition in the market so I still face very healthy competition in some of tier one, tier two markets, where the parks are closer to class B Class So, in an effort to find value, we've found that there's value currently in parks that are rough around the edges. So whether they have high vacancy rates, they have a high percentage of park owned homes, there may be an issue with the infrastructure, whether the sewer or the water. So those things that have a little bit of hair on the deal, those we're finding pretty attractively priced. So currently we focus on those turnarounds and that's where we're able to generate outsize returns, by digging into those problems and fixing them and either elevating the class of the asset or simply filling in vacancies or in some cases, like one of the projects that we have under ownership right now in San Antonio is we're actually expanding the size of the park.  So it's almost like a development deal, where we bought it for 20 units and we have plans to expand it by double. So those types of heavy lifts in terms of either turnaround operationally or expanding the footprint of the park, that's how we're finding ways to make money currently in the mobile home park business. James: Got It. Got It. And correct me if I'm wrong, so the mobile home park is basically you own the park, you don't own the housing units on top of it, right? John: So in an ideal world, and it really, depends on your perspective and what your preferences, but in the traditional way is that you just own the land and not the infrastructure. So you buy the land and you rent out the land to homeowners who pay you for the privilege of placing their home in your park. So in terms of operational cost standpoint, if you pursued that model, your operating costs are pretty low because you really just own the dirt and you're collecting rent for owner residents to use your land. Now, as you look more deals and get involved in the business, there are very few of those types of properties available because over the course of time, where residents come and go, ultimately you're going to find yourself as a park operator with some homes that you end up with, whether they're abandoned or sold to you or just come with the deal.  So there are models in the southeast, in particular where there are parks, where the park owners not only own the land and the infrastructure but also own all of the homes, in which case they're more or less operating an apartment complex just with a different look. There are individual units rather than stacked or adjacent to each other. And for those that can do it and have the model and the pricing is right and their strength in the market, that can be awfully attractive. But I think if you're looking to reduce the amount of time and energy to operate the park when you're a dirt owner, that's the lowest touch, lightest maintenance, I think most appealing and certainly most profitable model from an operating margin perspective. James: Yeah. It's like you have a big parking lot where people come and park their houses on top of it, I guess.   John: That's right. Yeah. Look at it. And it's great because you know, it's very high margin, but also you've got owners that are in your community so there's an alignment of interest. You've got people that have skin in the game because they own the home and they want to take care of the community. So that's a really unique aspect in contrast to apartments where, you know, apartments, you always have renters and just by nature, you know, they're going to treat their place as if they're renting it. And that's very different from the mindset and the behavior of owners who are in your community. It's a stakeholder group shared alignment of interests and it's a mindset shift and something that I really pursue and try to cultivate in our communities. James: Got It. Got It. Yeah. It's a very interesting model. It's a very simple concept. It does serve the affordable housing crisis that we have. Both apartments and mobile home park do serve it, even though it's two different, slightly different tenant base. One is one who wants to be a homeowner, even though it's a cheaper house, right? It's not like normal single-family houses but it's something that gives you a roof on top of your head and people liked that. And they have that community feeling when they are in that park so they are able to take care of it much better than like what you're saying in the apartment. You have leases turnover and you're 50% turnover per year and they leave the place every two years. So you have to go and do a turn around cause a lot more management intensive. How do you add value in mobile home parks? John: Yeah, so a couple of ways. So increasing the rents. So one of the appeals of being in the asset class is it's a very fragmented and somewhat a non-professionally managed business. So in contrast to apartments where you have, I think very high transparency into pricing, because you have things like Yardi Matrix and some of the other platforms, where you can get a very quick insight into what the market rates and comparables are, you don't have that level of transparency into pricing in mobile home parks. So there isn't this invisible hand of pushing up rents with inflation or with market forces because the industry is just sort of 30 to 40 years behind, relative to single-family and multifamily, in terms of just, you know, pricing transparency. So simply coming in and raising the rents to market rates or what should be market, is one way in which you can add value. Another that I described was expanding the footprint of rentable space. So in some cases, like our project in San Antonio, the former owner had given their residents very large lots, so they were almost twice as much as was required or determined as per the setback requirements. And so we found that if we simply move the homes over a bit and decreased the density by half, people would still be given pretty reasonable living space, we would be able to adhere to the setback requirements, and we would effectively double the rentable units within the property. So that's a way in which we're creating significant value by simply taking a look at the zoning requirements and the setbacks and seeing how we can reconfigure the lots well within the land to create new rentable space.  A third is just operating it more professionally. Again, this industry is not one where there's a very sophisticated network of third-party property management. And you know, it's largely mom and pops owner-operators who, you know, at this point in time probably own the property outright. They don't have any data on it and they don't really have a need to maximize or optimize the performance of the property and in which case they let things go. So they may run operating expenses high, where relative to where they should be, they may have their friends working for them doing maintenance and or day to day operations. And as a result, probably pay them at higher than market rates. So coming in and introducing professional practices and professional management, running it as a real business, that's a way to bring down operating costs and increase the NOI. Those are really the main drivers, you know, rent increase, increase the rentable space and push down operating costs, those are the things that we focus on and usually have the greatest impact in terms of value. James: So what about loans? I mean, you said a lot of these are mom and pop and fully, they own the whole thing, right? There is no debt on it. Are you able to get like seller financing deals? John: Yeah, so of the three properties that we own, two of the three are seller financed. So we've got interest-only loans for six years on those two. And it's awfully attractive not to have to go through a bank or an agency to go through the underwriting process. James: So you structure your non-recourse or recourse or how did you do that? John: Yeah, non-recourse loans on both of them. So really great, fairly low down payments. So we have a 75 loan to value on one and 80% loan to value on the other. And we even on the first one, we strung out the timing of the down payment so that we could minimize the use of upfront capital. So, yeah, just increased flexibility, ability to execute with speed and fairly attractive loan terms. Again, another appeal of, of the businesses, you have a lot of flexibility with the lending for some of these smaller to mid-sized parks. James: Yeah. Yeah, that makes it really interesting because recourse versus nonrecourse and loan terms, you know, in this case, you can structure this how you want, right? Because you're talking to mom and pop owner and how big are these parks? John: Yeah, so for us, so we have one in North Carolina, which is 75 spaces. That was the first one that we took down. And that was, we negotiated seller financing for six years at 75% loan to value. And then the second park, we closed the month after. That's in San Antonio, that's 20 spaces and we're currently in the process of expanding that to 49 spaces. So by the end of the summer, that's the one where we're reconfiguring the land and bringing in 29 new homes to expand the footprint of the park. And then the third one is in South Carolina and that's about 45 spaces. So in a 20 to 75 space range, that's where we're finding opportunity value and that's about in the zone where you can negotiate seller financing. You know, it's good and bad, the financing.  One, the pool of capital and the liquidity and access to the debt market is not at the level that multifamily is. So one of the nice things about multifamily is, you know, through Fannie and Freddie and other conduit lenders, you just have masses of capital available to you and it's an industrialized process to go through and get financing for these projects. That type of infrastructure doesn't exist really to the same extent with mobile home parks. So you know, on one end, financing can be really difficult, especially for the smaller parks. But what that affords you is the opportunity to negotiate more flexible and creative deals, through seller financing. Because ultimately, and in many cases, sellers, they don't have a choice. So if they are really interested in selling, buyers can't get financing through traditional sources and so they're sort of left with one choice, which is to carry a note. So, you know, in some cases we celebrate the fact that we can do this stuff, but in other cases we kind of bang our heads against the wall and say, if only we could go to Fannie or Freddie and get this financed, that, you know, very long term, low-cost rates. James: So you are in New York and scattered all over the nation. How are these parks being managed, who's managing them? John: So we have onsite managers for all three of our parks. And for all intents and purposes, they carry out the actions that we dictate. So all of them either live onsite in the park or live very close by and most of the time, we have daily calls with the managers to tell them what to do. Now their level of sophistication and their ability does not rival what you're accustomed to in multifamily because you know, in multifamily you've got a level of professionalism and sophistication that just isn't there yet in the mobile home parks that we deal in. So for us, it's just, we've got boots on the ground. Their jobs are primarily focused on collections. So making sure that people are paying rent on time, posting pay or quit notices or facilitating evictions, coordinating repairs to the extent that we need to bring in someone to fix the plumbing, for example. And then to the extent that we're filling in new units, they're coordinating showings with prospective residents to come and see homes and see if they want to sign a lease. So that's really where their job is focused on. So it's not a full-time gig really for any of them, it's part-time income for them and it's in peaks and valleys. So depending upon the activity, whether that's new rentals that we have, rental units available or repairs that are happening, they may be either really busy or find themselves with not much to do. James: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I see they're not very highly sophisticated people. They are basically, you know, house-owner. So you know, mobile home users, on how people are paying, then we don't expect a lot from them in terms of management. I mean, even in multifamily. Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of professional management, but still, you have to manage them, right? So much moving parts, there's so many expenses, so much of repair and maintenance that need to be taken care of, which doesn't exist in mobile home parks. Because mobile home parks, supposedly, you know, you're just looking at the land and collecting rent. Looking at some common area, usually this kind of thing. So I think it would balance out in terms of, you know, the amount of time that you need to spend, especially for operators. 20:56inaudible] me who's managing our own property management and also people who are not having their own property management, their own active asset managers of apartment, failing to be involved very, very closely. You can't just go to the party. I mean they'll take it to somewhere else. John: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Great. You know, and I think that's an important point that a lot of people miss. You know, going to the boot camp that you mentioned, I also attended, I think one of the things, I think the boot camp, people who leave the boot camp are fairly transparent about what it's like day, day in, day out. But for whatever reason, I talked to a lot of people that are interested in the mobile home park industry and one of the appeals to them is this sense that it's passive. And I would say, you know, it is very hands-on in the projects that we're involved with that we're turning around and trying to increase the value. We are pretty close to being full-time property managers as opposed to seeing the checks, you know, come in and you know, loving the passive income. So that's fine for us. I mean we like getting our hands dirty and taking action and being involved but that's one thing I would caution people about for whatever reason. I think headline news suggests that this is a passive income source and that's absolutely not the case at all when you're dealing with value add, you know, medium size mobile home parks. James: Yeah. I mean if you want really passive and you invest passively or [22:28unintelligible] I don't think there's any business, which is really, really passive in real estate, right? Especially if you're an active operator and you want to make the most money. If you want to be at the top of the food chain, then you have to do work. If you don't do work, you can buy the deal and all that but the thing is you've got no control on the returns that are being made and being generated unless the market is getting up. There a lot of guys out there who are making, who are boasting themselves that they made a lot of money real estate without doing work. But it's actually the market is doing the work for you.  John: Right, exactly. James:  So this is the elephant in the room, right? So how're the returns compared to multifamily class B and C in mobile home parks? Because you have worked a lot on the capital raising side on the multifamily, so you can see a lot of operational stuff on that side compared to mobile home park, you know, how does that compare to..? John: Yeah, so I'd say just general rule of thumb, it all depends, deal specific. I know that there are, you know, opportunities that you come across in apartments, they get into the 20% IRR. But generally speaking, I think hurdle rate for me, for apartment complexes, is about 15% IRR over say a five year holds. Whereas the hurdle rate for me for mobile home parks is about 20% IRR. So I'd say it's a 5% difference in terms of a return premium there that I'm seeing and that I'm using as a guideline for allocating capital in my projects. James: Got It. What about cash flow on a yearly basis? What do you expect between these two asset classes? John: It's about the same. So whereas, you know, you may expect an 8% yield a cash on cash for an apartment complex, larger apartment complex. We're looking at sort of 10 to low teens on cash on cash return. James:  Are you syndicating this deal or you're doing this on your own? John: No. So we use our own capital for all three of our projects and with this fourth in the pipeline. So, I work with other partners. There are about four of us that work together and to date, we've only used our own capital and that's intentional. We think we're still learning. We want to build a track record and we really want to get our arms around these heavy turnarounds so that in the future, we can raise outside capital and go to market with credibility and feel confident taking other people's money to do projects. So yeah, to date, it's just our own capital that we've used. So we're all active partners and no syndication. James: So you could do a Jv type of thing.  John: Exactly.  James:  Okay. So you're saying when you're doing syndicate, you know, I mean, if you do syndication then you have to make sure you allocate some money for your passive investors as well from [25:24inaudible] whatever you guys are putting in I guess. So you're saying cash flow wise is almost similar, is that what I heard? John: So like 3 to 5% premium, cash on cash return. Whereas the IRR was about 5%. That's what we're seeing. We see a significant portion of the overall return allocated towards the equity, the increase in equity because we are doing a turnaround. So you know, the cashflow is nice, but a majority of our returns are coming through the boost because we are fixing problems, elevating the class of the property or expanding it to generate significantly more income. James: Got It. Got It. Got It. I mean audience just want to let you guys know as I wrote my book, you know, as a passive investor, you can choose any asset class, right? It's not only multifamily. I know multifamily is a lot of, what popular names nowadays is more famous than anybody or anything else. I mean, yeah, it is doing very well. There's a black swan effect of people become renters, you know, just demographic shift too. You know, people becoming renters. But there are also other asset classes like mobile home parks, self-storage, office industry. There's a lot of different asset class in that people are doing very well, right? Like, I mean, if you as a passive investor can make a couple of percents more compared to multifamily and you can find a good operator who will give you the returns on the backend you can always definitely do that. The key thing is to diversify your investment from what I see, even though I only do multifamily but I just think that, you know, wearing a bigger hat, my thought process, I think that's the message for passive investors, right? So the question for you is, you're talking about the 5% premium with the IRR and that's where the value adds are being generated, I guess. Right? And how do you plan to exit? I mean, are you going to sell to someone else? Is there like a big reap that is coming in? John: Yeah, so for us, I mean, we like buying and we don't ever want to sell. So I say that in air quotes, you know, we'll own it forever. But for us, the exit is really through a cash-out refinance. For us, we find these smaller to medium size parks where we think that we can elevate the class of the property. So take it just under a million dollars and you know, at a low vacancy and augment it such that it can be financed through, either a conduit loan or a Fannie or Freddie debt. And at that point, we will have created sufficient equity that we can more or less pull out all of our capital that we've put in. And then when we're done, we've got long term, low-cost debt on the property and then we'll just collect the cash and go on and do our next thing.  So that's the vision for all three of these properties is to execute the heavy turn of the value add in the first three to four years and then refi, take out all our capital and then go rinse and repeat and do that elsewhere. Because, I mean there's a very stable asset class. We liked the business. Affordable housing, we think is going to be a thing for the very long term. We like owning productive cash flowing assets and so we don't have any desire to sell now. So someone comes along and gives us an offer we can't refuse, well, we've got to, you know, do the math and see if it makes sense. But we're definitely not looking to go in, execute a turn and then exit to other private equity owners. James: Very interesting. I mean that's what value add keeps you in commercial and that's the real power of commercial real estate. The other day, I was talking to a passive investor. He said, hey, this guy is giving me, you know, 8% cash on cash flow and that's it. Right? What about the back end? He said, oh, I don't care what the backend. I say, well then you can get much higher cash flow on mobile home parks. So if cash flow is the only thing that you're looking at, you know, you shouldn't look at multifamily alone. Or maybe you should look at 'A' type, 'A' class multifamily in a very strong location near to core urban center as what I call a core type of deal, right? You really don't have to do just multifamily, you can do a lot of other asset classes, right?  The power in commercial real estate is actually on the cash flow plus the backend. The equity growth that you generate through value add, right? So that's why I named this podcast as value add real estate investing, because that is the gs of commercial real estate, right. Otherwise, I mean, unless you are rich or unless you are a big family office where you want to preserve your wealth; you're not investing, you're preserving your wealth. You're making slightly more than your inflation. Say inflation is 3%, you're making 8% cash flow. There's nothing on the back end, then you can go and do, you know, that kind of deal. The majority of people, people want the value-add component where it grows on the backend. John: Sure. Yeah. I mean, we'd love to sell to those types of buyers. The ones that are looking at this squeaky clean, I mean, we'll do the work, we'll create the equity and then, you know, for those that just want to collect the rents, we're happy to sell for a premium. James: Yeah, there's a lot of syndicators who buy the type of deal where you just cash flow because they get fees. Right? But for the passive investors and you don't understand, you're just going to get a cash flow, right. And some times people are very intrigued by the cash flow concept. Suddenly they come out from work, you know, working w two for their whole lives. Oh, there's a cash flow coming in monthly, you're going to jump on it, which is okay. It's okay for some people, but there are much better alternatives out there. Where you can grow your wealth as well on top of preserving your cash against the inflation. So that's good. So, how are you finding these deals because you are New York, how do you find it? John: Yeah, so we explore all channels. So we do cold calling, we network with other owner-operators. We had done some fairly extensive direct mailing. We no longer really do that much. We talked to brokers, we go to industry conferences, we look at Facebook, Craigslist, eBay, a variety of other digital platforms. Really, we try to cast as wide a net as possible because again, this industry is really fragmented, not as industrialized as, you know, apartments are. You'd be hard pressed to find significant deal flow on a loop net, for example, for mobile home parks. So we just try to put ourselves in the flow of deals in as many instances as possible. Which means that we look at a lot of deals, we say no to most of them and it's very structured and haphazard. But, I mean, the three deals that we've sourced so far have been through relationships. So whether it's through meetups, we've met people and they needed to refer a deal because they had other priorities that they were going after. So despite, you know, we've done the work and built out databases of owners, throughout the country and, you know, done the cold calling, done the direct mail, despite all that time and energy put into revving up that engine, ultimately today, it's come down to relationships with other people. James: I mean, it is so fragmented, right? It's just so hard to go and get to a broker and buy a right deal. Right. And daily, even in mobile home parks there to work hard for it. But that's okay. I think you're able to find it, which is really awesome. John: Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's good and bad. It's hard work to do it because it's so fragmented. But at the same time, that's one of the reasons why there's value there because you've got really mispriced opportunities because the market isn't as efficient. So I mean, I'll take the hard work any day if it means you can still get good deals. James: Got It. What about the depreciation or tax benefit of mobile home parks? How does that compare to the apartments? John: Yeah, so with those parks where you're owning the land and the infrastructure, so you don't have quite as a large depreciable base as you do in multifamily. One good thing is that you have a condensed depreciation timeline. So while the depreciable base is not as high in terms of absolute dollar value, you can take a decent material dollar value for the depreciable base and depreciate it over sort of a 12 to 17-year timeframe instead of the, I don't remember the exact number.. James:  27.5 John: Yeah, 27 and a half year timeframe. So what you find yourself in a situation is that in the first sort of 10 to 15 years, you have about the same depreciation benefits and taxable losses that you would experience in multifamily. But then after sort of the 10 to 15-year mark, you run out of the depreciation and then, you know, you find yourself in with a larger taxable income. James: Well, I didn't know that that is shorter than multifamily, is it 12 to 17 years? John: Yeah. About that because it's not real property that you're depreciating. These are the utilities, so [35:11crosstalk] and the light posts and the roads and I mean this is equipment, essentially, depreciating. With the schedule, you apply a different shorter schedule depreciation. Then you do the actual structures, James: You're not paying for the whole, I mean, you're paying for the land plus the utility infrastructure. Infrastructure maybe 10% of the overall cost, is that right? John: Roughly. Yeah, it depends. It depends on what your infrastructure looks like. But it's still material; in most cases, it's material amounts that you can depreciate, but it accelerated, right? So now while you may have a lower absolute dollar value of an asset that you can appreciate, you can do it over a much faster time so it's accelerated, which means your yearly depreciation charge is higher and can also be a significant portion. But again, that expires faster than you find in multifamily. James: Yeah. Yeah. But even in multifamily, I don't think anybody owns it for 12, 17 years. I mean, on syndicated deals, I guess. John: Right. James: Interesting. So, okay. So yeah, usually I think in commercial office industrial, is it 39 years? Multifamily residential, it's usually 27.5. And you're saying some of the utilities or infrastructure in the mobile home parks minus the land is 12 to 17 years. Okay. Yeah. Very interesting. So, John: Yeah, so not quite as attractive from a tax basis. Look, after tax returns, I think you still find yourself in a very favorable situation because you know, the overall returns generated by the property are at a premium. And so even if you are paying taxes on that, you're after tax returns still tend to trend above what you would find in other commercial... James:  Are you able to get a negative K1 in the first few years? John: Yeah, yeah, definitely. James: I mean, let's say after value add is done, let's say after value-add is done stabilized, do you still get negative K1? John: I'd say, I mean deals specific, but it would be reasonable to expect that for, you know, the initial years of operation for sure. James: Okay. Okay. Yeah. For our listeners, I mean K1 is the form that everybody gets when you're invested in a deal where it shows what is your paper loss or a paper gain. But usually most of the times, it's the loss. Because your mind is seeing the mortgage or you're minusing the depreciation of the asset and also you're minusing the interest on the loan that you are doing. But in this case, I think, John's case, there is a lot of it is seller finance so that still be interest. Yeah. You still have interests, right? Because for your IOS and all that.  Interesting. So where do you think you want to grow from here in mobile home parks? John: Yeah. So continuing to scale. As I mentioned before, we're probably right on the cusp of taking in outside capital. We'd like to complete the turnaround with the three properties that we have under our ownership now so that we can prove out the concept, you know, go to market credibly with we've executed, have you turn arounds. We did it successfully and just have the inner confidence to be able to go and take outside capital. So look, we're trying to find value and when value presents itself, we'll act. We don't have any stated goals in terms of the number of units that we want to acquire. We do want to get larger. We wanted to do, you know, more complex, more interesting projects. Well, it's hard work, it's also really fun and we find a lot of sizes faction and turning around some pretty beat up and run down communities and augmenting the sense of community, beautifying the neighborhood and again, solving a really meaningful problem, which is the lack of affordable housing. So we get a lot of satisfaction and find fun and interest in solving these problems and continuing to grow the portfolio. James: Yeah. And how frequent do you go and visit these parks? John: So I make trips about quarterly. So I was just in San Antonio in April and was out there for a week and then flew back through the Carolinas to see the other projects. And in South Carolina, North Carolina, I'm going back to the Carolinas in June. So about, you know, every two to three months, I'm a boot on the ground, either looking at deals in the pipeline, checking up on progress on existing turnarounds or, you know, in some cases, we've got to get state licensing in order to do what we want to do in terms of lot infill. So for example, you know, I was in Austin in January to sit for the dealers licensing exam. So in order to execute the law and fill that we want to do in San Antonio, we need to be licensed dealers in order to buy homes directly from the manufacturer. So we were in Austin doing that. The same thing is happening in June. We're getting a dealer's license in North Carolina to be able to execute these large turnarounds. So between checking up on projects, chasing new deals and getting whatever required licensing we need in states, we're on the road a lot and touring around the southwest and the southeast. James: Yeah. Yeah, that's very interesting. How are you getting dealer license to turn it on these properties and how are you finding a lot of fun in doing a lot of value? That's where you make the money. To solve problems that other people don't want to solve.  John: Exactly.  James: Right. So, and what's the point of buying a cash flowing deal?  John: Right, right, exactly. You know, in maybe 30, 40 years from now, great. I'll do those and just collect the rent checks and that'll be fine. But in the meantime, you know, I'm still relatively young, hungry. I want to make an impact. And so that's where value add is really where the opportunity is. James: I don't know, I mean, I think if you didn't want to work hard, I mean, I know if people want to get into real estate, but just so many people either, they don't want to take action or they think the problem is too hard or they just didn't want to put their mind into solving that problem. And that's where the barrier to entry comes in. Not many people want to solve the problem. And people like you who are in New York, you know, is solving the problem like in San Antonio and North Carlina, it's hard work but that's fun. And you make money out of it and it's generational wealth too, right? Because after you refi, you take out your money out, it's your cash flowing for your whole life. So you don't have to answer to anybody since you're not syndicating anyway, so that's awesome. So let's go to a bit more personal side. Why do you do what you do? John: Yeah. So again, I think it's just fun. I'm the kind of person that I don't think I'm ever going to retire and sit on a beach or golf all day. I like to be active and doing things that are interesting. I liked doing challenging things and so, you know, for me, I just get a deep sense of satisfaction in doing hard things and really doing those hard things with teams of people. So I like surrounding myself with partners and binding together as a team to solve challenges that are just intensely satisfying for me. James: Got It. Got It. Is there daily habits that you practice that you think has made you more successful? John: Yeah, so I would say I'm a distance runner. So I'm an athlete, I've been running marathons for what seems like forever. And what that practice is instilled in me is a couple of things that have really translated directly into investment success. One is just the concept of compounding. So logging miles every day, over long periods of time. You know, maybe in a week or a month, I don't notice the progress, but over years of repeated activity and continuing to grind it out despite pain or cold weather or you know, emotional blocks that would, you know, would it difficult for me to want to move forward, I keep powering through it and ultimately it's led to a lot of success in my running endeavors. Implying that same approach of compounding and continuous daily incremental action in the investing space has really helped position me for success in investing there too. James: Got It. Any advice that you want to give to newbies who want to get started in the mobile home park operation or investment in the business? John: Sure. I'd say definitely learn about the nuances of the industry. Take the time to not only attend boot camp or something similar, but talk to other owner-operators about the details of owning and operating parks. You know, it's not enough to just read materials or listening to podcasts, I encourage people to do that, I do it myself, but really get to know owner operators because there are a lot of nuances about running or even finding parks that are glossed over or not adequately covered in podcasts, reading material or boot camps. So I'd say education, definitely take the time. I mean, I took about a year to really get my head around, you know, what is this industry like and what is it going to take to succeed? So education and then just get started. I mean, there's a lot of reasons to say no and to walk away from opportunities. Again, with mobile home parks being kind of 30 to 40 years behind the times relative to multifamily. There's just the nature of the asset classes, there always are going to be problems with these assets because they're not usually professionally managed and they all have some level of hair or warts on them. Don't let that scare you, that should inspire you to learn about which problems are fixable in which are not; where you should run away quickly and where you should dig in. And really find an opportunity to solve problems and create value. So I think those are my two best pieces of advice. Just get educated and then learn to get started and get going. James: Awesome. Hey, John, why don't you tell our audience about yourself and where to get hold of you or if they want to contact you? John: Yeah, so my website has my contact details. So Loan Juniper Capital is the name of my firm. We own and operate mobile home parks in the southeast and southwest. That's loanjunipercapital.com. There you can find my email address, my phone number and I'm on Bigger Pockets as well, I'm all over Facebook as well and the mobile home park forums and multifamily forums in Texas. So I try to be active and get my face out there and I do a fair amount of attending conferences in the southeast and the southwest too. James: Awesome. Thanks for joining us today. I'm very sure that you added so much value. You know, I like to talk about different asset classes such as mobile home parks, other than just multifamily. Because as I said, opportunities everywhere. You have to find the right guys to partner with to know or to learn from. So, absolutely, I had a lot of value. Thanks for coming to the show, John. John: Yeah, thanks for having me, James. This was fun. Appreciate it. James: All right. Okay. Bye. Bye.

Notes Jessica Jones Final Season. To start with we give a shout out to the See You Next Tuesday podcast, who are doing a men's health episode soon, John gives us an update on his health, and it's good news! We then toss the idea of having Haydn from See You Next Tuesday on as a guest near the end of summer.  As we go through the plot we talk about Jessica, and where she starts this season, as opposed to the beginning of last season. We also touch on Malcolm and Trish characters as well. We have some opposing perspectives on the characters this episode as we discuss the old and new characters introduced this season: Eric Gelden and Gregory Salinger, and give our thoughts on the villain this episode, and how he compares to the previous two seasons.  After our discussion on plot and character we dive into the themes of the season: Starting with “the ends justify the means”, which is most apparent in Trish's story arc as well as Jeri's. Then it’s “You're never a villain in your own story”, which is also the crux of Trish's story arc this season. But the serial killer Salinger also doesn't consider himself a bad individual, despite the murders he's committed in the pursuit of "truth". Then we talk a little about how Jessica seems to perceive herself through out the season, and the series. Which brings us to the last thought on themes: “That you can't give yourself the label of hero, it's given to you by others, and then you have to live up to it”.  John then elucidates his issues thoroughly about this season. Frank throws out some observations on the seasons treatment of LGBQT characters. Then Frank throws out some vain hope for the future on Disney+. Finally we wrap up with our final thoughts.  Quotes "This season, as much as I thought it was great, it's really, it's really shitty that this is where, where we end it." -John "I'm kinda ok with her dying alone and unloved." -John "In a lot of ways they are the most products of their time" -John Meta-Plot [Frank uses the reality ball to recreate SuperHero City, where all the residents constantly fight each other. They hide beneath the Big Bad Baddie Building where they discover, after a phone call with John's brothers dog, Wagner, that there's a tunnel that goes all the way to calculator city.] Credits Episode 109: Jessica Jones Final Produced by: Relevant to Our Interests  Hosts: John R. Belliston and Frank Shaw  Scripting by: Frank Shaw  Edited by: Frank Shaw  Graphic Design by: Nathan Newell and Frank Shaw  Intro Music: Morning Activities by F.G. Shaw  Outro Music: Morning Activities by F.G. Shaw

John "Jew Fro" Guiffré (Yep, he got two quote-encased monikers) is a brilliant young man. Between a knack for comedic expression and a burning desire to make something of himself, something that will positively and profoundly affect the lives of others, he's rapidly becoming a very unique blend of some uncommon traits. You know I like uncommon traits. I invited John to the podcast because he was recommended to me by Garrett Dailey, James P. Dowling and Steafan Fox, all of whom have been or will be on the podcast, and all of whom helped to found the AION Media Company with me. Hard to pass up a recommendation like that. I was not disappointed. The lad has dreams, and drive, and a set of skills that I believe will allow him to build that dream into reality. Listen in for a glimpse into the life of one of those guys you're going to feel lucky you knew before he became a cultural giant. Want more from John? Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheSloppyJohn Website: https://johngiuffre.co/ Compulsive Thinking Podcast (I'll be making an appearance on here soon) Want to take Merlin's advice? Uncommon Mentality --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/logocentrifugal/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/logocentrifugal/support

A message from Dr. John Demartini on his opinion of Selling Through Your Heart."I can say that the cornerstone of your book, the foundation and the edifice that it's bringing is a crucial component of the mastery of entrepreneurship, salesmanship and economic viability. So thank you." Dr. John Demartini Purchase the book at SellingThroughYourHeart.comSelling Through Your Heart, Empowering You To Build Relationships For Financial FreedomSPEECH TRANSCRIPTIONPatrick Snow: Amazing healer, amazing doctor, former chiropractor, author of many mega bestselling books. Let's welcome Dr. John Demartini to the stage. John I'm holding a microphone right under the phone so they can hear you loud and clear.Dr. Demartini:(Laughter) Good evening everyone, hi Shirlene, hi everyone.Audience:(Everyone answers) HiDr. Demartini: Welcome to the party. That sounds like a party there. First of all, congratulations Shirlene on your book, Selling Through Your Heart. Thank you. It's a great contribution to the world. And anyone who has the opportunity to devour this book will be blessed insights and inspiration. The vision that it contains will help people expand their business, expand their wealth, expand their hearts. The principles and methods that you've included in there are outstanding and there's no way that a person goes to that book without having insights elevate their achievements in life. I've been involved in personal development or human development or whatever you want to title it for the last 45 years and It's inspiring from across the pulpit because it talks about Integrity of the heart. So thank you for taking the time to do that. I've been teaching for years and anything that allows a person to be authentic, integral, to live by priority, to live congruently and inspired is going to transform the individual as well as the people they touch. Because if they are an exemplification they create a chain reaction like the block chain today. A network reaction that touches and ripples through society. So one book can make a difference and it's inspiring to see the book come out. So thank you for taking the time and sharing your 3 Step Sales Waltz™ or your insights on how to network and market and promote yourself and also reach out and touch us live and help people build wealth. Because I believe that people can build to live an extraordinary life and get rewarded financially for doing so. And so you have tips in there that can help a person with their financial destiny. So Thank you. And everybody who's there, in some way or another, have touched or is touched by your book. I've been touched you by your lovely interviews and also the network you brought into my life. So thank you for doing that. I don't have a specific presentation that I usually do to speak, but I can just say thank you and it's inspiring to be part of this special event. I'd say that whenever we exaggerate ourselves and we talk down to people carelessly, we assume and project what we think the world wants, and we don't meet the need. As so many entrepreneurs initiate their, entrepreneur ability from that status, then they wonder why they run into blocks. And sometimes we minimize ourselves out of insecurities, exaggerate them, and then negotiate away altruistically our profit margins. Either of these careless or careful walking on eggshell approaches block entrepreneurial identities. But when we speak from the heart we have caring, we have equanimity, we have equity. We have the sustainable financial transactions and economic business transactions that create an expansion and potential Internet growth. So your book emphasizes the heart and this is the key. If a person's not in their heart when they're doing their transactions and their heart when you're on a mission it can be revealed physiologically and psychologically. Energies can pert abate and disturb a creation of a great enterprise. So I can say that the cornerstone of your book, the foundation and the edifice that it's bringing is a crucial component of the mastery of entrepreneurship, salesmanship and economic viability. So thank you. All I can say is that the message in the book is inspiring and the people that will read it will be inspired. I don't know if anything you have something that you want to say to me, or asked me or share with me, but I just wanted to say that. So thank you for the contribution you've made Shirlene and all the twenty eight years you've put into your effort of making a difference in people's lives. It certainly has made a difference in mine. For the written transcription download here:https://maximizeyourwealthnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Demartini-Launch-Message.pdfConnect with Shirlene Reeves on social mediaFB:https://www.facebook.com/shirlenereevesauthorGoogle Plus:https://plus.google.com/+ShirleneReevesInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/shirlenereeves/?hl=enTwitter:https://twitter.com/MaximizeWealthLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirlenereeves/Ascended Masters At Work Weekly Podcast: https://feed.pippa.io/public/shows/5b20ea49f94d3c875e319c47Category: Business,LifestyleOccupation: Teacher, Author, SpeakerWebsite: https://drdemartini.com/#SellingThroughYourHeart, #ShirleneReeves, #AuthorEvent, #AscendedMastersAtWork, #MassiveVisibility, #Entrepreneur, #DrJohnDemartini #speaker #stage #Morgan'sRun #PatrickSnow #Sales #WomeninBusiness#MastersSpeak #MaximizeWealth #Booklaunch #DemartiniInstitute #Business #Finance See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

John Shaughnessy has solved the mystery of the ancient pyramids built all over the world. Amazing lost scientific knowledge on how the moon is a grandmother clock that regulates large cycles on Earth, like ice-ages and interglacial periods. If you're interested in the civilizations of the ancient past, Shaughnessy proposes a revelatory, mind-blowing new theory... MENTIONED ON THE SHOW Why the Pyramids Were "Really" Created by Brandon Ellis GUEST LINKS - JOHN SHAUGHNESSY Pyramid Gravity Force 1 Video lecture Pyramid Gravity Force: How the Earth's Pyramids Work by John Shaughnessy There is Something About the Moon... by Wendy Salter and John Shaughnessy HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT John: Well, I'm John Shaughnessy. I come from Massachusetts. I grew up in Massachusetts a few miles outside of Boston, downtown Boston in a small suburb. I first got introduced into space, generally the... whatever you want to call it, the Cosmo. I got a part time job working on the weekends at the Museum of Science. And in the Museum of Science, they have a place called the Planetarium. I was taking tickets. I sold tickets to the Planetarium show and I just fell in love with it. I was doing special effects. I was involved with running around during the show and changing slides in the old Don Howard projectors. I had to place myself Saturday, Sunday mornings, I'd get in there early. I had to place myself, this big giant sized projector, I could... After I knew what I was doing, I was click shutting the lights down and having my own light show and... That lasted about two years but it sowed a seed in me. Later on, like, I've always had, say, psychic anomalies that would just come in and I would know stuff before it happened or... to the point where I freaked out my friends I was hanging out with. You know, I just shrugged it off, made a joke out of it, because I didn't know what was actually happening. Back in the day, you didn't have a class in middle school on how to deal with your psychic personality, you know what I mean? Slade: I still don't think they have that on the curriculum. John: Yeah! You know, there's reasons for it, you know? It scares the hell out of people. Well, the ones that are in control, anyhow. That all being said, I joined the navy. It was my first geographical cure and you know, jumped into the service. I was on a small ship, the USS Miller and we did a couple of major cruises. I was at three 6-month deployments. One of them, it was like a small shakedown cruise just going up and down the eastern seaboard, say, from Halifax to Puerto Rico and maybe down to the Bermuda Triangle. One particular day in the Bermuda Triangle, I had an event and that kind of shook me to the core. You know, we're a mighty ship and it was a clear blue day. Not a cloud in the sky and the ocean was the same colour as the sky, really. You couldn't tell where the horizon began and end. We just lost power - this mighty ship with backup generators, batteries. Everything just went completely dark, still, quiet. There was no waves. Just amazing, and it was about 10 minutes of just sitting there. The eerie thing is it wasn't a lot of talking. It was like we were just looking into each others' eyes, because we had little battery lights that lit up so you could catch people's faces. It was like a show made up of mimes, you know? We were just looking at each other. It was, What's going on? What's happening here? So it was pretty profound. After we got the power back, generators finally kicked on. We got going and really, there was no real investigation that actually came down to the crew. I wasn't an Officer. I was just an enlisted man, so it kind of triggered something in me and I started chasing the paranormal, you know? One of my favorite books back then, I forget the author, it was 'The Probability of the Impossible'. It was like, maybe hundreds of incidences where things just defied logic and science. So I just got hooked into that and the Bermuda Triangle. There was a lot of books back then of the Bermuda Triangle and von Däniken. It was Erich von Däniken's work I grabbed a lot. Chariots of the Gods. Started reading a lot. I was always interested in the unknown, the mysteries. If somebody couldn't figure something out, I'd show up. But if everybody had it all figured out, it didn't interest me. So any puzzle or conundrum wasn't working right or something like that, I kind of enjoyed solving those problems. It's just how my brain worked and a lot of times, I would get intuitive... I'm the type of guy who would get from A to C without going to B. A lot of areas in my mind.. I have the mind where I can put things together inside my brain. I don't have to draw things. I can just, you know, build up systems and troubleshoot without having to do the hard work on the bench, so to speak. I can walk it through and all that while working and kind of works like that. So I got into the power industry. I'm retired right now. I got into generating electricity at the utility level. Gas turbines and boilers, steam turbines, so pretty large machines. 100,000 horsepower. I got into hydroelectric dam operations. I used to supervise, I was a supervisor in the big utilities, Con Edison Northeast Utilities, and retired now. So that's good. So I can put more of my work into my real passion and that's these leftover enigmas that seem to be sprinkled all over the planet. One particular time I got into... I was watching, getting into the pyramids. I touch topics and I just dig deep into them. I read all I could. I just get obsessed with it and I just hit a wall. I just hit a block. I was fascinated with gravity early on. I thought that was an awesome field to get into and try and unlock and basically get some kind of anti-gravity machines going. I did a lot of experiments. I was able to manipulate the weight of an object in an apothecary scale with rotating mass. As I got deeper and deeper into this, I would be reading Einstein's theory of special relativity, a lot of Tesla's work. Self-taught, really. Whatever I kind of got obsessed with, I just dug into it until I got to the bottom or got bored with it and couldn't get any further. One particular day I came into the living room. The TV was on and Michio Kaku's a pretty famous physicist out of New York. He was cutting right to a commercial and he kind of just, the last words he said as I was doing the dead drop into the lazyboy was, 'We still don't know what these pyramids are doing!' Then it just went off to a commercial. I muted it like I usually do. I just had an epiphany in my brain, just a thought going, I wonder what's on the other side of Giza? You know, the Giza Plateau pyramids. I've always had globes around me. If you came into my house, there's globes, atlases, maps and things of that nature. So I was pretty up on geography and, like I said, I got a little bit of training when I was 16 at the Museum of Science because I was obsessed with how the universe worked. So I got up, I walked across the living room, looked at the globe. There's a floor-mount globe about a three feet high and I found Giza and I spun it 180 degrees. Same latitude. Not antipodal, latitude. My finger landed right on a Hawaiian island chain, right? So that's strange. Just my background in gravity and the tidal lock with the moon and things like that automatically clicked in subconsciously, like this, the only real connection here is gravity. It's such a large distance. Therein lies the basis, the foundation of a theory that I've put out into the world with books, videos, talks, conferences and so on and so forth. So as time went on, next couple of weeks, my brain was just set on fire. I was driving down the road writing down notes. It's like you got this proverbial download of 30,000 words in about 5 minutes. And you're like back-engineering what you just took in kind of, type of thing. Because it was pretty profound. You know, the hair on the back stands up, on your neck stands up. You get the shivers. You know you're on to something. Long story short, I started saying, If Giza lines up with Hawaiian hot spots, what are the other pyramids doing? You know. So you gotta back out of my early theory that there's a connection between the two and say, Well if there's a connection between those two there's gotta be a connection to the other ones. Lo and behold, every time I went to a large cluster of pyramids, a large pyramid, 180 degrees and on the same latitude, there would be a volcano that aligned with it. So the pyramid at sundown in Mexico aligned with Mount Sigiriya in Sri Lanka, which is an ancient volcano. It has a, if you can believe it, an alien-shaped, elongated, not alien, elogated shape skull for a magma plug, and it's got huge claws at the base of it and nobody knows where it came from, who built it or anything. They rival the size of the Spinx, so that's interesting. Then I went over to the Chen pyramids, a large cluster of pyramids and that aligned with the... ironically, the Bermuda Island, which, unbeknownst to me at the time, it was made up of two ancient dormant super calderas that actually make up that island. And then there's El Tigre. It lines up with the Andaman Islands. Down in Guatemala, those pyramids are twice as high as Giza. As I said, El Tigre, the other name escapes me but... La Dante. It was like, 'Okay, these pyramids are lining up with these volcanos, or this strip of volcanic islands, or another island with a volcano.' So after I get up to 20, and then 30, and then 40, I said, 'Okay, alright. There's definitely a connection here.' And I'm like, at the time I didn't have it all figured out. I don't know if I have it all figured out now but I'm pretty deep into the theory. I was like, 'Okay, what's driving this...' My mind at the time, I just felt like gravity was static on the earth, that my concept of gravity was static gravity like, we have the gravitational field and it's x amount of meters per second, the force of it, and... After writing the book, I wrote my book and then a lot of times you get as much information as you have, and you have to get it out of you. You have to put it in writing and so I put my first book out, Pyramid Gravity Force. During that process of putting that all together, if you look at the cover of my book, it's the earth, the moon, and a large pyramid. A large super-imposed pyramid on the planet earth and I got a little one-line diagram that goes from the pyramid down to the core and back out to the moon. So that's where the gravitational energy was coming from that was actually connecting these spots together. Now, at this particular geographical time, geological time, sorry, geological time frame that we're in right now, the Nile Valley pyramids are aligned with the Hawaiian hot spot. That particular alignment is active right now. That in and of itself is, I call the Hawaiian hot spot the Magma Relief Valve of the planet in that particular location. It's the only constant erupting volcano because it's artificially controlled from the large pyramids on the other side of the planet. So basically we spin through the gravitational field of the moon, and that is the perpetual motion. This is a perpetual motion energy machine and you get the feedback from that energy when you go down to the ocean and see the tides roll in and roll out. I mean, this is a massive energy connection between this heavenly body we call the moon. So I said, 'Okay, it is the engine, the mechanics behind the system that basically lowers the gravitational field. When the pyramids of the Giza plateau spin through the moon's gravitational field, it lowers the gravitational field under the Hawaiian hotspot and allows that magma to dribble out. Now, granted, different alignments out there in the solar system like we just went through, not to get off topic. I gotta watch out or we won't be coming back. I mean, this is a real weird alignment anyway. I'll just touch this. Hopefully I can get back to where I was going. Slade: I'll bring you back in a minute. I'll bring you back. John: Well, I mean, this is where I've sold a minimum in conjunction with that, at the same time, we have all the planets on one side of the sun. You have this huge draw of gravitational pull collectively by all the planets, and that's why... Consequently, we have this very hot summer that we just went through. On top of when the sun is at a solar minimum, it actually puts out more radiation. It's actually hotter. Most people can probably identify.. when they walk outside, it feels like someone's jumping on your head. Slade: Yup. John: Pushing down on you. It's like someone's deflecting your field. It's like you're carrying a 50lb backpack around everywhere you go. Slade: It's making us feel a little crazy, right? John: Oh yeah, definitely. It's a lot of energy coming in and most people probably intuitively will just duck in from one shaded place to the next. From one air conditioning place to the next just to stay out of it. Anyway, so that all being said, getting back to the moon and the pyramid here. When we spin through the, the alignment of the pyramids and the Giza Plateau, they're set up in the Orion configuration, or dogleg. The smallest pyramid cuts into the moon's gravitational field. Because we spin in to the moon's gravitational field. So what this does, this way they have it set up, so if you can visualize, the earth spins in to the moon's gravitational field, it sets up the Fibonacci vortex, okay? And then the other larger two pyramids, GP2 and GP1, follow suit and flow through it. Now that creates a huge gravitational vortex in that zone and it goes through the planet and lowers the gravitational field on the Hawaiian hot spot and allows the magma to freeflow . That all being said, that's kind of the mechanics of what's going on with Hawaiian hot spot and the Giza Plateau pyramids. Slade: So it's controlling the volcanic forces at work in the earth, right? It's stabilizing something, right? Like what's the purpose here? John: When you step back, the god built the planets. If you go back and all the, you go into the ancient texts, it was built by higher minded beings, God, whatever you choose. And you put a planet together like Earth, you're gonna ask, What are my biggest challenges here? One of the biggest challenges on earth is magma control, like controlling tectonic plate slips. Most of our volcanism, volcanic activity on the planet are, build up pressure, explode, kill everything for a hundred miles around and seal it back up again. So that all being said, I mean you've got the Ring of Fire, which we have, you know, consistent volcanic activity. And right in the middle of the Ring of Fire is the relief valve of the Hawaiian hot spot. So it's actually, when we do go into these alignments I just alluded to this past summer, well since April. We went in, all the planets are on one side of the solar system. When that happens, going back just 120 years, you can go back thousands of years now, but just the last 120 years that actually happened SIX times. Every time that happened, we had a 3000% increase in volcanic activity on the planet. So, stepping back, your inner solar system, your planets in the solar system and it's affected by outside gravitational influences by the planets. So you're the host planet for intelligent life. So you want to keep it calm. So what you do is, you build some pyramids and you create this relief valve using the gravitational force of the moon, which is the biggest player of gravity on the planet. The other planets do increase and decrease that force, but nevertheless the moon is the biggest gravitational force. When these energies come into play on the planet, and create magma pressure, and especially in intergalacial pressure like right now we're in the warm up period, so you're in expansion, the poles are rising, the plates are getting squished together on the equatorial region because of heavier ocean. So you get a lot of... we're going from pumpkin-shaped to spherical-shaped. So you're in a constant changing environment. So this tool, this mechanism, this engineering, that's been on the planet for eons, I think it comes and goes. These things have been, probably have been rebuilt before. These pyramid systems, they've been rebuilt as the little ones underneath have been... As a technology comes back into the human consciousness and mainstream grabs it and says, 'Hey, these things are important. We'd better do something about this.' They're actually playing a critical role in our survival. And that re-emphasizes the rebuild and the physics and everything else that comes along with this. To sum that up, that's what this is. It's terraforming, and it's also, I hate to use the word geo-engineering, because it's got a bad rap lately, but it's geo-stabilizing. In essence, when you get control over... You saw that amount of magma come out of the Hawaiian hot spot just recently because the alignment of the planets and solar minimum piggyback. And that alignment we had a lot of magma... If you didn't have the Hawaiian hot spot, the lower gravitational field with the pyramids and the Nile valley manipulating that and allow that magma just to flow out freely, and after that the Hawaiian hot spot just sealed up for a year or so. It'd have been a catastrophic explosion beyond biblical proportions. We could have been going into the Stone Age a lot sooner, so... And what that particular location does, it lowers the lower mantle and upper mantle pressures and allows it to bleed out. And it prevents super calderas like Yellowstone Super Caldera from erupting. There's another giant super caldera in South America. So there's a reason behind the madness. All the magma. No pun intended. But there's a reason behind magma control so that's what it's all about. That's kind of where I've pulled this all into some serious scientific theory. And what backs up my gravitational theory is the moon and the high tide. A lot of people aren't aware that on the moon side, you get the high tide. On the moonless side, 180 degrees opposed to it, you get a high tide also. I call that the moonless high tide. So you get the moonless high tide and a moon high tide. Therein lies the evidence. Physical, repeatable, observable evidence that this is how gravity works on the planet. Recently, just recently, like the last couple of weeks, Russian scientists released a study and got published, I think, by Itmo University, I forget the name of the university in Russia. They built the Giza GP1 to scale using the same material. And what they did was they submerged it in bath of, not a bath, they submerged it with electromagnetic energy. And what they were able to find was, the three chambers inside the pyramids, the king's chamber, the queen's chamber and the subterranean chamber actually were focal points, okay? They were concentrating the energy inside these focal points. And then they did the same thing with the non-ionizing radiation, we know it as radio waves, some form of radio wave. They got the same result. They published the result. I put a, it's in my book, you know, the different language but the pyramids of subatomic particle lenses and they published the videos on YouTube in my name on pyramids being lenses. And I've also put down, in the chambers were the focal points. I've gone out and spoke about this. I had a Russian interview on, it was like their version of the History channel. I got about 15 minutes. They were really great. They do a lot of great graphics, bring in my theories and about four years ago, three years ago I think it was, three or four years ago, so I got on Russian TV and I got to expel on that. Somebody must've been listening, 'Maybe this guy's got something going', they were actually pretty advanced in their search for understanding what the pyramids do and what it's all about. So that all being said, that came back recently to me as, okay, proof positive, your theory's right in a lot of aspects. They're actually coming back with physical repeatable evidence that are being done in controlled labs. So the next step is getting the industry to, the mainstream paranormal New agers to look at these alignments that are... There's a connection between the pyramids and volcanoes. These things are... You're not putting 6 million tons of stone together to run a couple of light bulbs, you know? It's just... It's not... And I'm not putting down anybody that comes up with theories of what have you, because it's those theories that we all build our theories on. You know. Get higher and try to figure out what's going on. Slade: So what is this... What's coming up? What does this mean? You talked about the fact that this is controlling the ice ages, right? There's going to be a pole swap at some point, correct? John: Well I'm probably the only one out there that's not in the pole-swap camp. Slade: Okay. John: But I'll tell you why. Getting into my science there, and looking at the planet and knowing how the subatomic particles flow, just like the astrophysics did, theoretical physics community and all the what do you call it, neuron, electrons, galvatron, croutons, whatever. They all come in from the poles and they go out the equatorial region and they rotate back in, just like magnetic flux line, they call it. That's so famous. That image of the magnetic field on the planet that creates the Van Allen belts and so on and so forth. But what these, I call them 'planet builders', what they've done is they've created a huge... The Antarctica continent is shaped like a hexagon, just like Jupiter and Saturn. In effect, it kind if ties in with the tetrahedron. So it's a tetrahedron. In my book, the tetrahedron, the shape of this particular continent, sets up to be a subatomic land. It's like a giant pyramid. It concentrates the inflow of subatomic particles in the southern hemisphere of the South pole. Now if you look at the North pole, there's nothing really up there. It's water. Ice. There's no giant land, so... What you have to visualize is that you're going to have a higher flow coming in to the North pole and a slower flow coming in to the South pole, because the continent is right there. Antarctica. So what that does is slows down the subatomic flow. And it also slows down, or blocks the flow, to singularity. So you have a larger, say like a 70% of subatomic flow in the North and 30% in the South. But the flows are actually going at different velocities. So this is what locks in the magnetic field. Slade: So this is maintaining the magnetic field and it's also ultimately making the planet more habitable? John: Right. Slade: Without it, it'd be too chaotic and volcanic for us to even be here. John: Yeah, exactly. So it's all part of a huge system. Anywhere you go, any continent you go to. That's why I'm a naysayer on the magnetic pole swap because the people that built this planet, that did the last rebuild terraforming, they're geniuses. They're not gonna... They don't want to come back and rebuild pyramids every year. They do it and they make it last. And they see the human consciousness when it needs to be and when we get to that level so we can understand the technology and re-utilize it and build it and re-build it. And things of that nature. Slade: Let's talk about that for a second. So first of all, let me ask you: When you talk about the planet builders, are we talking Atlantis, Lemuria, Ancient Aliens kind of concept? Where do you come in in that whole thing? Do you think somebody came here and set this all up for us? John: Yes. Slade: Well tell me a little bit about that. Because you're obviously a very science-minded guy, but then you also, you do mention Edgar Cayce. And you talked about how you were intuitive, that you get these downloads, which was crazy because this is the first time you and I ever talked, but the people who listen to this show, that's something we talk about a lot. So when you say it's coming into the consciousness, talk to me about, are you one of the people who's bringing this through currently? Do you see yourself as, okay, I'm meant to bring this information in and put it back into human consciousness? John: Yes. Yes, I feel with the trying to stay humble and keeping your ego in check is like... And yeah, I feel that my information is radical. It's new. It's not mine. This stuff was already here, you know? I'm just saying, 'Hey, I think this is the way these things work.' And this is the proof that I have. This is the physical evidence. So yes. I think there's a, it's part of the human consciousness. We get seated at different ages in the human history. This last go from the ice age into the intergalacial period was, I feel that was when humanity peaks at the peak of the intergalacial period. And then we go into the ice age and we drop off and we forget everything. Only to come back and do it again the next intergalacial period. Hopefully we won't be on the oil economy. We got sidetracked into this oil economy by some corrupt individuals. But anyways... Slade: So this is waves of rise and fall of human civilization, right? John: Right. Slade: Okay. John: Yeah. Like it's, I'll just make a point. Michael Cremo, I don't know if you know. He's done a lot of work and he's got a lot of evidence that modern man has been down here for a minimum of half a million years. There's evidence all over the place that supports this. Obviously it's buried because it goes up against the narrative, whatever the narrative is, at any particular day, so... It's just a rise and fall of humanity. Now to come into this environment, you have to take the physical form of a human being. Whether it's just walk-ins or people just coming in to you who are what have you, or you're just a real mature soul and you've ascended to a real high level of consciousness. You've got the Buddha, Gandhi... You have a lot of very mature souls. Jesus Christ and going on and on and on. I'm just talking. There's a lot of them. I'm not getting everybody obviously. I don't want to offend anybody. Just saying, there's... We get seated with these master, these masters, really, of human consciousness. And in the middle of that, we get people like Tesla, Einstein, Newton, Galileo, a lot of the Greek philosophers, you know. They come in and they pass a message along. They bring in ideas, technology, concepts, sciences, and things of that nature. So it's just a re-circulation of the human consciousness on the planet. And it's like the old proverbial saying that your soul is here to have a human experience, not the other way around, you know? So... And I think it's a tool for growth. For the spirit, if you believe in reincarnation. You know, you keep coming back and hopefully every time you come back, you utilize that space and time to ascend to a higher state of consciousness. Then maybe eventually you don't have to come back. You can just sit up on the moon and watch the big show. Slade: So in your theory, the information that you're accessing, is kind of held in the collective consciousness. Some people call it the Akashic Records. There's some other dimension where this knowledge exists and different ones of us tap into it and... I actually think a lot more people tap into it than we even give credit for. You know, there are those Ascended Masters that are kind of like the rock stars. Then there's a bunch of us that do it a little bit here and there, right? Just humbly, you know, thinking of it that way. John: Yeah. It's a collective group. Yeah, I wouldn't be where I was at... Maybe I'm supporting somebody I don't know, and they're going to come up with something that's going to add to it and... You know, the Russian scientist's doing this research and then... The time spans are amazing. I mean, you're only down here for a short amount of time and all of a sudden, you're starting to get this wave of science, you know? And it's all coming together collectively from different parts of the world. And from places you'd never expect. It's like, we're a very small pocket of humanity. People in this new age, 'truth seekers', they call them, I call us. We're not satisfied with the story. We're lifting up the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, going behind the curtain to see who's running the machine, you know? So we're a small pocket. We do add to the human family. We do add a consciousness that helps, will help in the future, I think, to navigate us through changes that are coming. And that's what I think it's all about. Slade: Do you think there's something we're supposed to do in particular, like, do the pyramids need to be refurbished in some way? Do they need to be maintained or something like that? John: Right, I mean, my mind's always going on about that. Where are we at? What do we need to do? Are we at a critical stage right now? Four years ago, they came up with there's three times the amount of water trapped in the transition zone between the upper and the middle mantle. And I'm thinking, so that ties in to the volcanism. That ties in to the magma control. A lot of times, I just get overwhelmed. I have to jump on the couch and take a nap. Slade: Do you think we're in danger of breaking something? John: Yeah, I think we're going up fast. The only thing I can say to sum up where I'm at, the science and everything. And I go back to the icicle sample. Thank god for the icicle samples. Because we can get some grounded, we can ground our thoughts on this particular source of time. It goes back a million some odd years, but... They've done a great job showing intergalacial periods and ice ages. For the most part, it's like clockwork. It's like 104,000 ice age. 13,500 on average for the intergalacial period. That all being said, all the ice is not going to melt in intergalacial period. If that ice is 1,000,000 years old, we just came out of the ice age 13,500 years ago, something big is... A lot of people are going to wait for the ice to melt. But my theory in my other book, 'There Is Something About the Moon' gets into the physics of what controls the ice age. And that is, as the ocean rises, the gravitation - this is common knowledge - the moon's gravitational field is shifting from the glaciers and the polar caps... The actual claw... There's actually five images on the moon and that tells a whole story also but anyway... So transfer to the hard surface of the ice to the girth of the ocean. What that does is it, it in effect is causing the earth to tilt from 23.5 or 23.4 to, it's gonna go to 19.4. And Tiwanaku, the Gate of the Sun, the name escapes me now, but that's 4 degrees off. The Gate of the Sun, the sun is supposed to rise in the middle of it, and it will once we get back to the ice age tilt. The ice age tilt goes from 23.5 to 19.4 degrees, and then the sun will rise up in that Gate in Tiwanaku. I think it's in Tiwanaku. But anyway, long story short, there's a highway in Mexico and they've been marking the summer solstice sun at high noon and it's been travelling 100 miles, feet, north.. south.. Let me back up a bit I'm stepping on my words here. They're actually marking it and they're marking the tilt. They're acknowledging the tilt is changing. So we are going to a lower tilt. Now I mean, you gotta go like a thousand miles to get one degree. It's a pretty significant move. We don't think it is. You know, 23 to 19, you wouldn't think it'd be that big, but it's actually a significant drop, a significant movement. And the sun actually coming up over the Tropic of Cancer in the summer, what do you call it, solstice. The summer solstice in the southern hemisphere. So what's going on is that the solstices are squeezing the Tropics, the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn will move to 19. And what that does is lowers the light on the upper latitudes, both in the north and southern hemisphere. And essentially, we're going into ice-building mode, okay? So this is the control mechanism that the moon also ties into. It's a multi-faceted engineering system that protects the planet. So if we're melting faster because of human activity, which we probably are because of the higher greenhouse gases that they surmise based on the previous ice core samples, we are way off the charts. We're going to accelerate the melting of the ice and it's going to hit what I call is the high water mark. And I think maybe [unintelligible] island out in the Pacific might be the high water mark island. It's only 5 feet high. I mean, 5 feet's a lot of water but it is... As the water increases in volume on the earth, you're gonna get more of a larger degree tilt in a period of time. So instead of 100 feet a year, you could be getting a quarter mile. At some point, it's gonna really pick up pretty quick. And that'll launch us into the Ice Age. But this is a good thing! Because we're in an environment where you can't flat-line. Because there's so much energy, you know, the sun, the Milky Way galaxy, the planets... You're either going up or down. And that's just the nature of the beast that we're here. Hopefully we attain higher level of technology that operates on the natural energy that the planet makes besides burning stuff. We're in the burn-scorch technology. Slade: Yeah. It does seem like there's probably some better stuff we could be using. My mind is spinning out as you're talking. I'm thinking about, you know, maybe I'm getting downloads too. But I'm seeing all these potential explanations for what we call astrology, I'm seeing how a lot of this ancient architecture that we have, the Henges and all this stuff that the Aztecs left behind. They really are some kind of calendars or... Like you were talking about, they're marking the stuff on a highway but that's like the really scratching on the chalkboard version of something that has been left behind for us, right? John: Mmhmm. There's a book by Derek Cunningham. He surmised that the Sacsayhuamán, you know the saw-toothed walls up there, and I did the same thing. We're different theories but he's kind of, said there was a language being... Those shapes of blocks are actually a language. Slade: Ooo! Interesting! John: Again, it's like a lot of these little tiny pockets of information. These people come in, they do the download, and they're gone. You know? So it's up to the next generation to come in and pick up and keep putting this together. But I think it's all experimentation. That whole plateau up there is literally instrumentation of where we are in the ice age, or intergalacial period, and you can actually measure the degree of tilt on a lot of these obelisks. The three big power centres: You've got the Vatican, Washington, and some other place that escapes my mind. It has these obelisks and they actually measure the tilt. That's what those giant obelisks do. You can keep an eye on and measure what's going on. There's a huge one in St. Peter's Square where I've been before. That all being said, there's instrumentation all over the place. You got Stonehenge. You got the pyramids. You got the temples. The temples are, haven't completely been transcribed as a lot of... There's information on the moon. You know, the images on the moon also tell a story of where we are in the intergalacial period. There's a famous stele with Akhenaten and Nefertiti. They're with their three children. They have a disc and they have the lines coming down. At the end of every one of those lines, is a saying, iconography of the moon, the claw, right? So you have this claw coming down. And you go through, this is actually a very short period in the span of time between the ages. This is actually just a very rare point in time on earth. The intergalacial periods are very short span of time. A normal weather pattern is an ice age on the planet. 100,000 years building ice and you know, it's habitable, humanity survives it, and life does flourish, but obviously not, you know, a mile under a glacier, but... That all being said, as far as I'm concerned, a lot of the hieroglyphs and steles and images in Egypt, because Egypt seems to have a huge amount of information on the moon and Mars and a few things. Past life on the planets. So essentially, that stele, that round circle in the middle is the moon, okay? And we rock back and forth. And you can read the moon as it comes up out of the ocean or out of the horizon with the naked eye. Any higher than that you have to get binoculars because you have a lensing effect when it comes up out of the ocean. But that tells us where you are in a time on the... There's two clocks. You got the moon clock, which I bring in through with my research with co-author, researcher, Wendy Salter, we kind of put this whole thing together on what the moon is. So there's a way of reading where you are in the intergalacial period and the ice ages. Just to sum that up. Now the other big clock is the wobble of the earth, where you know it's a 26,000 year old clock (approximately, it's a little less than that). That actually is the only time we really have besides the moon. Like, if we didn't have wobble, we wouldn't really have any real time clock. Because we're just in a Milky Way band just floating around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy and all the stars remained the same. If you didn't have that wobble, you wouldn't have the change, the zodiac houses where the sun rises up in the zodiac house. We're in Pisces right now, going into Aquarius. So those are two giant clocks. So it's like the wobble was made on purpose, to give us time. For me, every time I get into, you know, why is it like that? And it comes back with an answer. That's the answer I got for the wobble. It's not like a defect. It's not... Everything is perfect on this planet. The solar system is absolute perfection. The highest level of knowledge. Universal knowledge. Slade: Wow. Okay. Just to sum up for everyone because, again, we're just scratching the subject here, and possibly starting like, 10 different conversations that I could go on. John: You gotta take it easy on the listeners, you know? Slade: I'm going to link to all these things in the show notes for everyone. But just to break it down so everyone knows where to go to get more information. You've got a free YouTube video of a lecture that you gave. It's a pretty good length. The main book that we're talking about here called 'Pyramid, Gravity, Force - How the Earth's Pyramids Work'. And then you co-authored with Wendy Salter, a book called 'There is Something About the Moon'. What are you working on next? John: Just the last couple of weeks, I brought in some discoveries on what controls the solar minimum. The irony here is, the orbit of Jupiter is 11 years. The solar minimum is 11 years. It's like, Hello! Is anybody paying attention? Even though the earth rotates past Jupiter 11 times, it only comes in direct alignment between Jupiter and the sun, the last 11 years, right before the solar minimum, so it comes into direct alignment between the sun and Jupiter. And so basically I put a paper out. I put a video out and I do try to get my stuff published. I put stuff out and I send it to the journals and hopefully someday they'll get it through. But the bottom line is that what a lot of people don't understand is Jupiter is not in orbit around the sun. It's like a binary orbit between these two bodies, like they actually wobble on each other's axises, or elliptic orbits, rather and they kind of bounce out and around each other. So Jupiter's movement actually creates a corkscrew orbit of the sun and that also has an 11 year cycle on it also. But long story short, what happens when the earth gets in between Jupiter and go full circle, going back to the point I wanted to make, once the earth gets directly in line with Jupiter and the sun, it actually blocks the gravitational field and kind of filters it, it lowers it. That is the source of all the turbulence on the sun, the sun storms, the black spots, the giant magnetic storms. Once the earth comes in front of it, the sun just goes into this pure fusion environment. This fusion or fission. I always get the two mixed up. But anyway, it just goes into a ball and there's no spots at all for three or four months. Sometimes six months, it depends. So it actually shuts down all that turbulence. Once the earth passes out, it's like two or three months later, the torque begins between these two giant heavenly bodies and you get the massive storms. So that was a recent discovery that I've just brought in and... It's tough. I'm not in academia, so I'm outside. But I think that's where you do the most work. I don't have any constraints. Nobody's saying I can't say this and... I can say whatever I want. I don't have to.. Slade: Right. John: So this is like what's good for me and I think it seeds the, whatever you call it, the mainstream world of academia. It resonates out and they'll grab it and, you know, put something together with it. I mean, we need to know these things. We really need to get on top of what effect these planets are having on our environment. Because we're in a critical stage where we're pretty critical with the heat. There's a lot of environments that are changing yearly, rapidly, very fast and... Prior to that, I put a system together to forecast volcanic activity a little tighter with the alignments with planets and the moon and the moon's Metonic cycle. It's a huge influence on, say, volcanic eruption. So like right now, the prediction system we have right now, the USGS (United States Geological Survey), every country that has a volcano has some kind of prediction. Basically it's like, Okay if it's rumbling, they put a warning out to the local people, societies that are living at the foothills of these volcanoes. Guatemala, we lost a lot of people just this past summer. They put the warnings out to them and the people there are saying, 'Well it's been rumbling the last 10 years. Nothing happened.' I'm trying to get someone to help me build a software because all this information is available. What you can do is, you can go back the last time a volcano erupted and you can time stamp it and go back and say, Okay, get the time stamp on the last time it erupted. Go back to a solar simulator and find out where the positions of the planets were. And then also go back to the moon's Metonic cycle. And what it is is, and this is what I've done is, I've gone back and looked at where that eruption was and I went back and saw they were in the same alignment that it was 400 years ago. I don't know the date off the top, just to make a point. And so, what this does is you can go to these people and say, 'Hey look. We know it's been rumbling the last 20 years. 100 years. Nothing's every happened, but the last time it did erupt, the planetary alignments were in this position and the moon was in this particular part of the Metonic cycle.' So you have more concern. So you're coming in with a little bit more heavier warning than 'You should get out of here.' Slade: Yeah. John: It's tough for people to just pick up and take off. Their whole lives' are around these volcanoes. So that's kind of what I'm working on. I'm working on that type of thing. I'm working in on tying in this new ocean system into my volcanic theory that said three times the ocean are locked up in this material called ringwoodite. It's a blue crystal-type looking thing but it actually has a high percentage of water in it. It's equivalent.. the numbers are wild. One of the numbers was three times the equivalent of the surface ocean volume is trapped in this lime. Trying to figure out, is this something we need to be concerned with? It's a huge amount of water and my thing is, seeing that all the ice doesn't melt, we know that because, you know, going back a million years, we've had 10 ice ages with this ice that doesn't melt. And then you have the Biblical flood stories from every ancient text. And I'm thinking, Does this water that's trapped in that section of the planet, is this something that somehow ruptures and bleeds out to the surface for 40 days and 40 nights and goes back down, you know? Slade: Yeah! Ohmygod. John, this is all so truly truly fascinating. We're just scratching the surface here. I want everyone to go and check you out so that they can see the amount of research and detail there is behind all these stories and theories. Tell us where we can go to find you online. John: I'm on Facebook under my name John Shaughnessy. My websites are http://www.pyramidgravityforce.com/ and http://www.tisatmoon.com which is abbreviation for There Is Something About the Moon. You can go there too and that'll link you up. Both my books you can get on Amazon, Kindle or Lulu books. Yeah you can get my emails also. I'm available. Contact links are on those two sites. I have 62 videos on YouTube and yeah, I'm pretty much out there. Google 'John Shaughnessy'. Put 'Pyramid' or 'moon' behind it because there's a lot of John Shaughnessys. I guess we have a reputation of breeding like rabbits. There's thousands of them. So you want to get the right guy. Put pyramid and moon in and you'll get me. Slade: I'll be sure to put all those links that you just mentioned. Make them really easy for people just to click on. John Shaughnessy. Thank you so much for taking some time this morning to talk to me. John: Alright. Really appreciate you having me on too, Slade. Thanks again. Maybe we'll do it again soon.

Great World Cup Dives (Feat. Neymar of Brazil)A list of the best LA Donut ShopsDon’t Think TwiceDir. Mike BirbigliaCasting Dir. Jessica Kelly, Kate GellerWatch the TrailerLady BirdDir. Greta GerwigCasting Dir. Heidi Giffiths, Allison Jones, Jordan ThalerWatch the TrailerDid Stanley Kubrick try to break up Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's Marriage?“Was ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ merely an elaborate, expensive way for Stanley Kubrick to toy with Tom Cruise?”“Nicole Kidman Admits That Stanley Kubrick Based 'Eyes Wide Shut' On Her Marriage With Tom Cruise”P.S. We have no idea if these articles are legit...PETA Abuse HotlineCharlie Smallman, the new producer of I Guess We’ll Do It That Way and Olive, the runner up. Charlie is the bigger oneDrake’s New Album, ScorpionDrake’s Rant to the haters Which some people say is complete a joke. Who knows.Euro Stepping Explained (Finally)Lance Stephenson, “A garbage pail kid”Lance Stephenson Blows Carbon Dioxide in Lebron’s EarLance vs. Lebron CompilationFollow Nate Drexler on Twitter // @NateDrexPopulation of Iceland: 334,000 Official Rules about World Cup NationalityCredits and Personal Links:A Mama Bear Studios Production // Mama Bear Studios WebsiteProduced and Edited by: Isaiah SmallmanExecutive Producer: Jon SchimpfOpening music: "The Get Down," Produced by Summer DregsOutro music: Composed and Recorded by Tom Paulus and Max BelzCover Art by: Nate GiordanoShow Website | ThatWay.fmShow Twitter | @ThatWayPodJon TwitterIsaiah InstagramIsaiah IMDBIsaiah’s Twitter (which he never uses)Isaiah LinkedInTRANSCRIPT (Probably a mess)so I have to pay is this a a small man you're listening to I guess we'll do it that way podcast right call my buddy John each week to check in on my progress as a direct my first feature film Senate by mama bear studios mama there's mission is to create entertaining works of art that explore he made it alright hears of the so to Hey Johnny mayor living it up in the city my man here in New York are you I am indeed the city that never sleeps the Big Apple the big easy those are not the same places very very different places vague the New York is the least easy place I've ever heard of in my entire life people are meeting New York I mean I love I love New York but they're they're mean they're mean to you of old because they smell my fear they see your weekend they're trying to weed you out of me food that is it is there yeah yeah a works works like a charm how do people respond to you I'm toting around little junior so the reception is always great there like I yes more people that we can corrupt from the young age just impressed you know anytime you see a kid doing something difficult like if you were hiking up a mountain and there were a ten year old next you trying his hardest to do it you be impressed and the same sort of thing happens here in old grizzled New Yorker sees a ten and a six year old hoofing it down the street right and he he says feel some mutual respect for that kid and as soon as I must be a good guy that I bred them to be this way but whatever I wasn't really know is that they're just walking because of the threat of spanks O. so they're terrified I had a I had a real New York moment the other day actually I was crossing the street because I kind of live in the city I mean I I live in the city it's right city it's the city and I was walking to get it done not with my uncle who is visiting %HESITATION LA is big downtown unlike New York that's one major bonus every New York there's not a Dunkin donuts in sight it's all local places that mostly also sell Lotto tickets and %HESITATION you know Chinese food or burgers but their donuts are good these are help homemade doughnuts very delicious homemade donuts I mean kind of in the classic style of a Dunkin donuts they're not like their fancy done it's too button for the most part that the other they're pretty basic pretty basic style raised fried doughnuts and they are bang in how to the top them %HESITATION any any way you want but I'm kind of a classic I like I like glazed I like %HESITATION glaze twist like Bavarian cream with chocolate %HESITATION yeah I'm pretty to I'm a pretty straight straight down the middle guy as long as the quality of the day I was there do you have any apprehension about eating a doughnut and public zero so you get these donuts also you get six doughnuts twelve donuts you'll walk out of Kelly's donut shop Sally's donut shop and there's a bench outside and people are sitting out there in donuts you'll join them you'll sit out there and you'll eat it down out in front of everybody %HESITATION hundred percent you get some custard on your face a little powdered sugar in your beard you're not afraid I was wondering if your worry I was a I was wondering if the root of that question was more that like some some donuts are sort of phallic in shape this says a lot about your personality in your file your private mental life and I'm still kind of working through some repressed feelings apparently towards donuts mainly no I mean the shame of getting sugar and Greece so I get that and I get that %HESITATION I mean it's kind of a car town so you honestly I take my daughter back to my car and eat in the car yeah is there shame involved here I mean usually the first one I feel fine and then once I've gone I've left got on the interstate turned around and come back for the fourth time to get another Donna that's usually when I start feeling some shame you think any director casting director has ever asked an actor to eat a doughnut in front of them just to see how they eat it down at the role requires you eating a doughnut so safe here and the defenses of that not having happened are the same as the chances that someone hasn't climbed a palm tree naked and take any **** from the top in Los Angeles I've done that so there we go out then I think it's pretty safe to say that someone has asked a someone in casting session to you don't have you ever seen someone eat it down and a casting session I've never now I've ever asked I should though but then again if there's a role involves eating it done and I'm casting myself we're here in town I were you I would pay you to get that role how much would you pay me a dollar fifty better rice with down to three Bucks yeah the price of a fancy Dona yeah I think that seems reasonable so last time we talked we were gonna go real quick I want to tell you I want to tell you my New York moment %HESITATION yet hit me so I was walking down the street to go get it done out right now and a guy in a cab which made it even more of a New York minute because there's not that many cabs in LA again handicap I'm crossing the crosswalk heat big dumb dumb pulls away too far on the interstate intersection any start backing up over me and my dogs he literally almost ran me over and I started banging on his hood and I was like dude what are you doing you don't back up in the middle of a crosswalk that's like number one rule of driving everyone knows that anyway it was a pretty classic New York moment there was a guy walking in there that's kind of how did you resolve that situation I was like get your **** together your professional driver and I walked it was just a yellow cab like a typical taxi cab resident who were left yeah yeah I expect this kind of the S. from a left no it was a yellow cab this guy is like supposed to be a true professional I was ticked I think a lot of people in that situation let the car hit them and sue I think I should have done it I coulda made rollers even bigger could be huge right now I should have made sure that my neck was very very staff you have some acting experience so you could really pull this off that was a major missed opportunity could sell a hand this is a bummer I'm gonna go find another cab we sat down and watched a few minutes of the World Cup which is %HESITATION it's excellent soccer and excellent acting I know I feel like you really can't play at that level as you were terrific actor these guys flop rubbing their muscles screaming five minutes later they're kicking goals and I mean it's unreal well and honestly to these guys are so strong I mean eat it took to play at that level for ninety consecutive minutes your muscles are so resilient they they you know I mean they are not going to get hurt that easily but I I mean Hey like this is a game it's not without it's not outside the rules you got to do everything we possibly can to win to take a break to you know get somebody else Yellowcard whatever it's got to be what's funny is that the refs don't put an end to it yeah they reward this behavior feels like they should have a panel up without score cards to put up the for how well that player and then when the film instead of penalty kicks a precisely acting points yeah I like that %HESITATION cool we should pray reintroduce the show because I'm sure everyone's already forgotten about it %HESITATION this is I guess we'll do it that way a show where I I say a call you Johnny there once a week to talk about the making of rollers among many other things as you probably already know John where did we leave off last week who knows it's been an entire week I think we decided that we were going to end up talking today about casting directors which incidentally has already sort of come up that's very true casting directors oh yeah because this week that was kind of the next big big thing for me wall what's happened this I mean honestly if not much is happening as we are now I think this is gonna be recover occurring theme no it actually some stuff started to come together this morning tele minutes minutes before we start recording no I think this is this is probably a good time to address it though that is going to be a recurring theme of this podcast for sure I think we can change that the theme of the theme of things not happening as quickly as I want them to but you're right maybe we can change it you need to change it maybe this will spur you on ten make more content by causing drama you know yeah tell some actors that they got the job in column back in town they didn't get the job who would see some heartache some drama John you should be a producer I like the way you think it's because I sound like Weinstein now earn a you don't sound rape you to sound smart keep manipulative so yeah so basically the casting director %HESITATION I'm not gonna drop any names because she has not attach yourself yet but got a very positive email back we're going back and forth we're kind of talking about you know the size and scope and type of the project and what my expectations are in the woman I'm talking to a super super cool and %HESITATION yeah I hope she hopes she gets excited about the project wants to do it she read it last week so %HESITATION but she's traveling so we're just kinda emailing at this point we might we might end up on the phone later today so I might actually have a more exciting update next week **** hole but I might have had on a promise everybody how did you even get hooked up with this person in the first place that is good question okay you know I started going through a lot of decent sized in the movies that I've liked from the last X. number of years five six three names three names three names of casting directors now of movies all movies okay one that I really like don't think twice he seen that one might perfectly it's about an improv troupe in New York now it's really really good it's okay so part of the reason that was interesting to me is it's very funny but it's very dramatic it's a little dark %HESITATION that is something that I think homely I'm trying to achieve with rollers and so I looked at that I was like boom that movies freaking great who brought all those people together well I'm assuming maker Biglia had a lot to do with it but at the same time I'm sure the casting director had a lot to do with it %HESITATION another one would be labor from last year GC labor now John we gotta get you in more movies and now if John doesn't even like movies %HESITATION herbal I've heard lady bird is good I've heard of Burr Biglia because he'd this is on NPR all the time who are used to be I don't even know that he was one of the city is a really great comedian %HESITATION you should look up the stuff he's he's amazing I'll link to some of his his definition of it's we know Mike listen so Hey Mike Mikey boy he our to our to listeners we are now up to we've got teddy Bronson of Wisconsin and Mikey bored labor big cleo from right here in New York City yeah baby I think does live in New York I think I heard an interview with him or that you want to go track them down I'm already working on it he's probably busy listening to our podcast so you know it's at home he sleep walking around the city mmhm nice reference I like so he but here's the real question so you have a movie you say okay this is of similar size as to what I'm making and you look at the credits and you find the casting director but you said earlier find a casting director who I like and I think most people out there like how would you know if what they did was good or not don't they aren't they really just going out and saying who can we get in our price range for this type of movie and they're just basically selecting the people who say yes I think that's a good yeah that's a really good question I hate I think it probably really depends on the type of project I think it depends on the casting director themselves and yet the people that I started calling it taints your previous question basically what I did is there's a website called IMDb there's a version of I am to be caught I'm DB pro which you know you pay like a very small annual fee and you just get a little bit more information and so some people will include you know contact information for either their company or themselves or whatever's necessary and so when I when I did create this list identify these people and some of them didn't have any information up so I just had to track it down you know by if say they have a name of their company but not %HESITATION you know not actual phone number or an email I would just kind of do some internet research and and find it and you know call them or email them and just say Hey here's the years just the project here's what I've done before is this the kind of thing you'd be interested in talking about and they say yes or no and yes it's kind of hit or miss from there once they're attached to what I actually do what are they actually doing okay well again it okay so that's where it comes into it depends on the project as a casting director in this case what I'm really excited about is finding someone who is going to have great ideas about people that I haven't thought of like Hey there's this actor that is in this show where there's this actor who's in this movie a couple years ago that you may not know and you should really think about that or what if we went to this person who is a little bigger but like we can maybe find a connection to them or hear someone that no one's ever heard of it all but I saw them in this thing and they are incredible let's have them in and talk to them and see if they'd be a fit for the role I think in my mind that's with perfect casting director does and then beyond that what they did then are able to do is say help me think through will these people work together well like will they have good chemistry you know so it's it's partly like it depends on the role and so with big leads there's a smaller list of people to potentially fill those roles and so with a big big big studio movie for example I think a lot of casting directors are %HESITATION you know there's only a handful of people who can headline a fifty to a hundred million dollar movie %HESITATION within any given age range gender etcetera and so that less is gonna be pre eighty short there's you know there's only so many Tom Hanks out there and so part of their job I I assume I mean I've never made a movie like that is to you know figure out what the deal is with those people figure out whether they're available you know pitch them on the project but you know at this level it is a lot more kind of keeping tabs on who's out there keeping tabs on projects making sure that we're thinking through every possibility and not just kind of you know going with the most obvious choices I think there are the obvious perception of a lot of people it's like the script comes in and the part calls for a two hundred and fifty pounds Samoan ex wrestler whose name has to do with lithography and she says you know who am I gonna get right what are the circumstances under which a casting director could get fired I would fire casting director if I felt like they were kind of phoning it in in saying lets you know if I was like I really want to push this like let's think outside the box is find somebody who looks different you know or find somebody who is it the first person that comes to mind when I think of this role for for example like there's so many movies so many movies get made so many indie movies and this is not to say that this is bad I I this is not a value judgment I just think it it is a in easy thing to slip into where it's just like great let's cast every role with typical white hipster twenty seven year old white hipster male female insert X. number of actors there's a number of people who can do that that's fine I want to see that's what the people want is that we'll see that's the thing though it is a you know a bunch of bearded guys let's just preponderance circle had to eat all of the problems with Hollywood by starting at the Indy level let's only cast white hipsters and then will only end up with white hipster movie stars it's perfect I love that plan John but it really does come down to what the script calls for like years what is that who were the leaves your script okay so there's really three three it's kind of an ensemble movie which is really fun and so again in this case I think a really count the casting director is going to look at it and say you know these are some people that maybe we should really think about and they're not the kind of people you would immediately thought of but man they would look so good day they would feel so good together they would feel like family for example there's a brother and a sister Madeon Rufus %HESITATION those are two of the three kind of main leads and then there's a second tier of really heavily featured supporting actors and so %HESITATION there's a lot of really juicy roles and so my goal there is to say obviously all of those rules don't need to be people that I've heard of I I hope that maybe one or two of them are just so that we can kind of help raise the profile of the project but %HESITATION finding people who played supporting roles in TV shows or or smaller movies and saying like man these people you may not have heard of them but they're gonna look great on screen with these other people and they're just gonna have like really great chemistry and where she finding these people is she going to local theaters I mean what is the actual work of getting is isn't this just a person that knows like fifteen actors now it's more like I if they end up knowing a ton of actors I think the real skill is probably I mean I don't know exactly how they do their job maybe down the road we can talk to somebody and really get into their world but out my assumption is that they'd kind of do it in a similar way that I do which is they watch a ton of stuff and keep notes on people that jump out at them and just sort of keep an idea of like Hey this is the kind of person that would be good for this kind of thing but what I really want help with in a movie like this is there's a brother and a sister for example manifest they need to be very believable as brother and sister obviously because they are brother and sister but how do we do that in a way that again is not just sort of a straight up the middle let's cast to people that kinda look exactly the same like that's not really what sells them as brother and sister you know right it's the chemistry it's it's the chemistry and I'm even kind of interested in thinking about Hey do they even have to look the same can one of them be Asian and one of them be white or one of them be black and one of them is Indian I don't know I mean I'm come clearly open and that's the kind of thing that I think a really excellent casting director is going to be able to help think through in some of this to it depends on the leads like frankly I'm probably not going to be in a position where I'm auditioning a lot of these leaks I'm probably gonna be making straight offers because people like auditioning auditioning sucks and so some of this is gonna be trust is gonna be largely based on their previous work right the people submit like a deck to you or a an audition tape or do you just look at their previous films a bit what if somebody hasn't been anything well the neck is we would audition them right the reason we would not dishing them is because they're just at the level where they don't have to audition anymore right %HESITATION but typically a you're just looking at previous work and then you know the the typical process is they send a real witches I hate reels side note I hate reels there that there are real is basically %HESITATION this is so annoying one is my my I pad keeps being eight the volume is down in its on do not disturb so I don't know how that yeah demonized okay I could hear it just then and I could hear you like pause yeah in it dad makes me angry it's totally fun yeah I think I'm gonna turn my wifi off so **** **** **** being put to impeding his neck in a killer call now I'm on my laptop for the call so what was the question again %HESITATION you were in the middle of telling me that casting directors up we talk about chemistry %HESITATION finding people who are right for the roles %HESITATION flow may find the direct offers right to making direct offers not auditioning people yeah another thing that it occurs to me when you're making an independent movie is cost has got to be a huge consideration right so it part of me is like if you had the capability to do something like it sounds like you have the capability to go out there and find these actors if it really just entails looking at work so you can go watch fifty independent movies and find people for this role is there any temptation to just want to do all a lot of the stuff yourself a lot over a hundred percent absolutely but here's the thing is I'm not again I I believe I believe in I believe and collaboration let's get real cheesy for a minute here now just super cheesy no I believe in collaboration I believe that someone else is gonna have not necessarily better ideas although they'll probably have better ideas but more importantly they're gonna have different ideas right and that's what is going to make this movie get I mean okay that's the name of this podcast which we should talk about at some point I don't know if we've explained yet the name of the podcast is I guess we'll do it that way which is very much at the core of this question which is yeah like if it look if if all these casting directors like do this script sucks and I don't won't take any risks on you because you seem like a real hack then yeah I'm gonna be like okay cool then I guess I'll just are calling all these actors myself like when the actors something about going to I know her agent so what I would do is I'd call her agent I'd say Hey do you think you can get this her and hopefully she would say yes and could I do that absolutely but am I gonna come up with as many good ideas no and more importantly another thing that casting directors do if they've made good stuff is that the legitimized project and so win actor why is thinking about you know when you're trying to get it to them their agent or their manager or whoever is their main gate keeper is to some extent going to be trying to shield them from bullshit and so when a casting director with great credits comes and says Hey I think this project is worth your time that's a completely different situation than some no name director like me calling them and sort of getting stuck at the bottom of the pile that's fastening that actually makes a ton of sense the legitimize the project by attaching themselves to it in that in in in the more people that attach themselves more legitimate the project gets and so the first actor that signs on is often the hardest and then if that person is really cool in the second person like on him work with that person isn't really great and then it just snowballs so these are all the rules are not cast at the same time they might pick of the main lead months or weeks or whatever ahead of all the other parts and use that as leverage to get yes the people they want absolutely but again back to the I guess we'll do it that way thing part of what happens is oh so and so is available on these windows next year March April and July and everything else they're booked and so we're like cool I guess we're gonna try to pull it off in April and then we start going everyone else in one of the first things you do when your check with actors you check their availabilities and you say Hey are they even available in the spring in there like now they're on a TV show until July and so you're like okay cool do we want to do it in July do we want to restructure do and this is why even huge movies you know another thing that we're producing a much much much bigger movie with like actual movie stars he would have heard of that would be a fine one to talk about down the road I can't talk about a time right now but like things here in a stars now right I'm just teasing everybody Kelly my wife was listening to the first episode she's like you better keep all these promises like in the show knows better be good because I need to show notes of like all they're going to be good I'm gonna make sure I got everything in there get ready to be disappointed Kelly yeah exactly Kelly's never no one's ever gonna listen episode three for sure but %HESITATION the idea would be so with even with bigger movies where money is really not the issue because they're paying people buku money to do these big movies shore the real problem is like the only get to do like three movies a year if you're not and then sell in and do you know so and so had to lose fifty pounds to do it and cut his hair off so like he's kind out of commission for the rest of the year and then you know and then this other guys like I'm only doing this and this and you know it's all of a sudden you end up making all these compromises and being like okay cool that's not our first choice but how do we find this other person who is also available to same time who also likes this person and then when you get into I mean thankfully I don't think this is as much of a thing for movies this size but I mean eventually get in a situation where it's like other crazy do you want to put up with that you know or they have history with this other person who's on you know who's who's acting in the movie is that gonna be a problem you know mean famously %HESITATION dis people said that Stanley Kubrick used eyes wide shut to break up Tom Cruise Nicole Kidman's marriage you know they're somewhat that way will way why would he do that for what purpose I don't know I don't even really know much about the legend I just maybe wasn't Nicole Kidman I don't know you never heard that I I think it does that not a common legend I thought that was kind of like a typical because they got divorced after that right you just invented a wild wild theory I love my life as I could get my phone just beep did somebody just sent me that on Twitter did know nobody's ever said that you just made that up I don't know I'm gonna find it it look there will be proof in the show knows who we are going to get a letter from his lawyer from his children I'm telling the state yes and I will have the last thing I want he's my hero you had a wild up to some serious forces here my man I'm just driving box office dollars may be so after the cast is set after everybody's lined up sometimes dude sometimes the cast doesn't get set until like the day before your shooting that scene I'm serious I mean I believe and we're shooting hunter gather there were a couple minor roles that we were looking for in till the last minute so after that after you're ready to shoot does the casting director just go to Jamaica what are they do they stick around and help it really depends I think a lot of cases they move on other projects I mean that's one okay another thought on casting directors hit me part of what makes a casting director slightly more approachable than say a famous actor or a big time super producer casting directors are that their involvement is very front loaded and so it's a little bit less when a producer or director or an actor signs on the project and they are stuck with that thing for years potentially you know because obviously they gotta sit through the development process they've got to make it which is like you know potentially months of work between prep and shooting I mean depends on how long the shoot is for advice shut your that's your year basically obviously rollers is not that big and then you've got %HESITATION you know potentially come back for reshoots and then you got it go to festivals and then you got to do like if it's a bigger movie gotta do like talk shows and podcasts in the press tour and all that kind of sucks all the sudden saying yes to one thing is a nightmare you know and see really got to want to do it it's not just %HESITATION it's not just like yeah pop in for if it's a pop in for four days type thing sometimes you can get pretty huge people %HESITATION but in this case you know it's it's you know like especially these leads it's a little bit of a process it's not gonna be a ton of press one nice thing is I'm shooting in LA so you know that's a big pitch to actors is Hey we're you know we're gonna shoot LA you probably live in LA just or maybe New York but either way it you probably spend a lot of time in LA at the very least and so you can probably sleep in your bed you can get other work done but I'm getting off track the point is the casting directors day %HESITATION they they're typically by the time you're in production they're they're pretty they're pretty pretty much moved on wears a producer isn't done really ever because even after the movie is released are still sending out okay accounting reports and you know %HESITATION finding new territories to sell a film to and all that kind of stuff do you know the path to become a casting director mean that's not something you go to school for right now that's actually good question I'm assuming the path is you start as someone's assistant and did they give you more things to do like I don't know exactly what casting assistant does on a day to day basis but I assume it's something like they are doing some of that research they're answering stuff the coordinating stuff they're doing whatever and then eventually they're like Hey want you you know here's this project that I don't have time for one of you can help me out I got to know we have to research this because now it's like who was the first casting director who never that's a good question come who is the for okay it would've been late actually I bet because back in the day it well but then again okay there's kind of two key components casting there's leads and names and all that kind of half you know there's there are the bigger people and then there's everyone else in the movie which is a completely different process because even a movie like the size of rollers a lot of the roles we are going to be auditioning people for but that's where some of the work of a of a cash record really comes in is because you've got the two halves you've got the the bigger half which is like leads to in this particular case with rollers I'm not necessarily going to be auditioning most of these leads I'm probably gonna end up going straight to some of them and saying based on your previous work I think it be amazing for this will you read this I might even write them a personal note explaining why I think they're great for the role in they decide to do it or not but they're not really an audition process a lot of the other roles though like all the a lot of supporting roles and and and guy number three who's you know I'm walking near that guy you know you can't audition that guy you got to find a guy because home and can be done that you got to get him to eat it down and for exactly I mean you got to see if you can eat a doughnut naturally a few looks like a looks like a crazy person some people look like crazy people in eight on us and you need that it's a litmus test to see a person's true self when they have powdered sugar on their face like can you hang with that if you can you have some real fortitude if not move along body we need somewhere else yet sorry it's nothing personal but we %HESITATION we don't need you it's not gonna work out get the F. out of my office how sad is it that really for the guy guy number three when you don't get that part %HESITATION Cascadia auditioning is brutal I mean I and most really famous people don addition all but I mean do it sucks because he okay let me describe a typical audition okay hit me you walk into the casting director's office there's like literally forty other people standing around they all kind of look like you year number twenty three you go in depending on the size a role and I had the the the distinct honor of being on both sides of of of this of this coin evolution for things and I've auditioned to people you've been dying to sitting there like a Shelob yeah and it's %HESITATION and you know it also sucks being the guy telling guy number twenty two thank you that was great and he walks out and you're like that was never going to happen there jobs were like oh that guy is great he just took in our and a half of his day to get here early and sit in front of me for literally three and a half minutes if that I've done auditions where I was in there for ten seconds not really ten seconds but under a minute because it's like yeah it's literally like you just pop in its for commercial they're like Hey take your shirt off while kind of commercials this %HESITATION I did %HESITATION it's that this special kind of commercial know this particular one okay this is part one of the dumbest auditions ever done is for like a cell phone commercial but the whole thing was a guy in a shower so they're like didn't actually make me take my shirt now they actually they did they want me take my shirt off to see what I look like shirtless which is fine I don't care I wore shorts and then I had to pretend like I was taking a shower I mine to shower described the room to us how many people are in this room in anywhere from one to five maybe it depends on the net is the one that you were in the one that you were in where you belong casting director one guy casting director making tape what city was this an easy walk in and you're like this is my name you know whatever %HESITATION this is in LA you walk in you like this is my name and and %HESITATION you know he said in the camera and then basically they're just making a big Ole list of people and so on the other side what do that the next step is I get let's say it's a commercial or movie for that matter %HESITATION I get in some form usually over the internet a %HESITATION you know a a list of or up a bunch of links to either a single link with a whole bunch of people with names and all that kind of stuff or like a link their little audition and %HESITATION and the resume and maybe an acting real %HESITATION I was saying earlier I hate reels here's why he reels and acting real is basically when you cut together a bunch of partial scenes and make like a little sizzle reel that shows how good of an actor your charm is there just never good there never good because the the things you were doing were never meant to be viewed in that way so it's you whipping around saying Hey I'm walking here and they take that put a yeah you like Hey I'm walking in the next thing you know you're in a different costume in a different place doing a different scene I just always would prefer to see I guess here's the thing a real can tell me if someone's bad I can tell someone's bad just by looking at a real I shouldn't really tell if they're good by looking at a real so then you bring him in so then I bring him in if I like my bring him in and I'm like Hey you know what's up dude don king if you're just starting out the next step would be let's say I have like a hundred a hundred people I mean it to be a totally depends but let's say a hundred people you know I would usually give some direction to the cash director maybe its sides if if it's a movie you know its price at the line you know the side space sides is basically the the peace of the scene or the peace the script that's relevant to that particular actor fanatical role and so the you know they may have the sides ahead of time and that's a whole nother thing how they get those sides that's usually %HESITATION it really depends on the size and role but usually these people out agents those those people's agents get contacted by the casting director by other people and and say to their actors who they represent their like Hey you you you you should come in here's a side to be ready you know have this monologue memorized have this other thing or have this line you know I'm locking him make she said you know three different ways and so you go in and you'll say it three different ways and then you walk out you're gonna get alone so this podcast I think you think I'll get a head like that role that's not you can be on NYPD Blue fifty times if I could get a job being that guy fifty times on NYPD Blue I would make good money yeah and probably be able to not have another job and make movies Hey if you're listening NYPD Blue casting rector I'm gay some of the ways that solid gold thank you John so what happens is I look at this beagle list of people and I'm like wow you know %HESITATION thirty percent of these people can't act unfortunately and %HESITATION choose your worst relief scene so I don't even know how to start hit me I mean I don't even know how to describe you know when you're like watching someone who can't act it's the worst %HESITATION it's just so painful it is absolutely excruciating homemade real if you're just starting out you you gotta put in what you're selling some in high school sometimes I I'm even I mean well that's the thing is it's really hard to get started because well how do you get rolls of you have been in anything and how do you get anything if you haven't gotten rolls right is it's a cleaner to classic chicken or the egg tell the kids out there right now I am have to tell the kids out there right now how do you get a how do you get a role kids out there right now I don't know I actually don't know I mean it's a it's a it's a haul it's you gotta find people you know that are making stuff and you got to get them to put you in it that's really what has to be and and I will say I don't usually judge acting based on the quality of the production value I can definitely see a little bit of a like okay this short is but Roche yes but that's not the actors fall in that in some cases are all bad should you know what you gotta do you gotta try some I've made terrible stuff that's just the way it goes that everybody makes bad stuff that's just how that's how you get better some you at right now exit we our making just a god awful podcasts of that later we can make a good podcast and but it won't real quick back to process though easy you know I don't even usually I don't look at a lot of reels unless I feel like I need a little bit more info typically let's say we have all these tapes and it's the person saying their lines or in some cases you know you come up with other ways to sort of see if they can do it like the donut thing that's a great Johnny should be cast record because that's maybe not the donut but it's a good idea for example there's one rollers the donut guy now casting director I'm available %HESITATION who the guy in my telling about casting directing is gonna be my casting director I love that I'll text you my fear right now okay is it above or below a million dollars I'm insulted that you'd even ask me that question if right will lower business I like your style it's all donuts I have a huge expenditure I'm gonna write a donut guy into the movie and you're gonna be the donut guy John I'm committing to that on the record right now I will fly out I will do this I love it okay so let's say it's a small role sometimes you got to come up with kind of creative ways to see if someone can do it for you handles yeah exactly and and and I've had roles where there's not a lot of talking but there's a lot of acting shore and some of its kind of improv some like you know sometimes you come up with this is I'm not saying this is good I'm just saying it actually kind of worked in this situation %HESITATION there is a person and the script it this was like a really last minute commercial the script was still in flux I was like I'm not gonna you know I'm not gonna try to make these people like memorize all this stuff and you know be this character and whatever so let's just honestly these people if they're right for the role part of it's going to look that's one thing I'm I I would say to young you know young actors the the the unpleasant reality is look look sexier no it's not that all the problem is each job because sometimes you just look the part or you don't and I think that's kind of an unfortunate reality like if they have somebody with brown hair and you know kind of shortened a little stubby and your lanky and tall Hey shoot going there do your best maybe they'll change their minds but the reality is a lot of the time they're just going like yeah they just don't look the part fix your body you got about a surge or just do you know you just may not get every part I think Jim pal that's my wet body it get it least three inches cut out of your legs put down at down put that down at down there is exactly the kind of message that will be spreading John there's a guy going around to give all of our listeners body image problems sorry keep on there's a guy walking around New York on quote unquote auditioning for as many rules as he can eating all the freemen's so the last thing I'll say about casting is you know they they there's an example where it's like Hey you know I don't need you to say all the I don't need you to do this like amazing Shakespeare monologue I just need to know that you're comfortable on camera and so you just come up with like a thing that they can do that will show you if they're comfortable on camera or if they can think on their feet or you just have to kind of decide what the role requires and then you have to figure out how to test those people it's almost like %HESITATION it's almost like science you know you have a hypothesis and then you've got to decide does does this work you know you're like I think dogs have emotions and then you have to come up with a test to actually figure out and create some sort of tangible evidence as to whether or not dogs have emotions in casting can be a little bit like that like I think you look right now can you do this can you be this way can I see you as small or can I see you as pathetic or can I see you as giant or strong or angry and that's really what it comes down to its last like I mean some of its professionalism some of its you know just can you be flexible can you think on your feet but some of its can I believe that you are a certain person or certain way how do you test to see if the dog has emotions I don't know that's a good question speaking of which we've got some new applications for producers my my sweet little kiddies with my niece right now %HESITATION Kitty cat came back well I'm not taken aback she can live with you but she's not a producer anymore I'm sorry I can't says bush league as soon as she saw my my niece who immediately picked this beautiful little Kitty happen started cuddling her and feeding her and taking care of her she was completely down with me the cat wants nothing to do with me anymore I think we're through well how should have a better life yeah I think that's great I think that she had it coming she did do a good job producing our last episode guides the first one was she produced like the first three minutes of it she said the Mike up and then that was it what do you think about have you met my dogs all of them Charlie because they're both vying for the role real hard I'm completely in favor of that that's not too nepotistic for you I mean if they fill out a form I watch a video you know go through the process is totally fine will speaking of casting I was trying to think of how to test whether or not they kind of have the %HESITATION the roll with the punches added to that a producer would need for show for a you know a high stakes show like this you have to do that well I I don't know yet I'm still working on kind of vetting them but earlier I decided to sort of get on the floor kinda wrestle with them a little bit and I found a toy that they really liked and I made them fight to the death I'm gonna put the phone number to pizza and the show now it's no I it's it's day trust me no one got hurt I stop them but I just needed to know that they if I say fight to the death with your brother all of I want you to kill him this is an Abraham and Isaac situation yeah exactly I needed to know that she would do it and she was totally in just your recitation and I I had to stop or she had her her mouth around Charlie's jugular and she was about to rip it out and I was like all of you got you got it but then it soon Charlie didn't waste a second he as soon as I said you're done he he took advantage of of her guard being down and he got her hand and so now they're tied and I can't decide which one we should give their all too after all that work it's gonna be a shame but just flip a coin alright let's %HESITATION let's flip okay I got a quarter I'm gonna flip now call in here okay as for all of Charlie got it it was tales he wanted it more yeah he definitely wanted it more okay says a %HESITATION you told me to listen to that Drake the new album scorpion what do you think of it I started at this morning listen the first two songs but I pulled it up on my phone on I tunes you know and they have notes about the album and Drake wrote the editor notes show for you for instance you know if it were like kids he goes it would say kid cutting Kanye west made this album last year blah blah blah it's a little bit about it but Drake wrote the editor notes for his album and they are the following your reading yes I'm so ready okay this is all caps so the person is screaming this I person being Drake yeah Drake is it cool to like Drake by the way I don't even know I just send it to you because like all this is blown up who's gonna read like three of these amps can relate okay ready yet and we can answer that question after we read this is it okay electric or is it cool electric is a cool okay ahead okay I hate when Drake raps Drake sings too much Drake is a pop artist who drink doesn't even write his own songs Jake didn't start from the bottom Drake is finished Jake thinks he's Jamaican what what Jake is an actor Drake changed anybody else later than sign Drake that's what he wrote I am dying right now it's crazy right so I saw that I had to read it like four times what does this mean Drake is going through some **** sick of the haters **** with them that is wild intense but the songs they sounding the haters are **** with them with good reason do you have an opinion on that no I mean I don't either I don't know anything about any of these people I know very little about him at all you make great songs do that's where it stops like I don't care what you do after that does he make great songs though yeah yeah he's okay I mean who I mean I think it is easy fresh out to the beach always sound so why I know I mean what it means not Williamsburg right now yeah yeah and I just said y'all y'all baby southerner but I did listen to one of the songs and Drake said that he zero stepping somewhere like his euro step in past people into the metaphorical and zone of success I guess some I just makes so many metaphors but not do you know I could not get that image out of my mind of Drake traveling because that's what is your your stepping is traveling right I bet it's a very luxurious process you know what you're stepping as you know I'm talking about I don't know I don't know how we know so little about basketball we're gonna be exposed here okay so yeah so you're a step is when you take like one two three I think people are screaming right now with the radios were on the radio teddy screaming because of how stupid I am right now but I think it's one two three steps shoot the ball get points owe you get twenty suits brought it over with basketball you know you make the basket you get points yeah yeah but these guys brought this like step over from Europe which is why it's from Europe league basketball and brought it over to the NBA hero stepping and now it's kinda G. year established and get away with it yeah daughter step it's a very it's a unique sort of thing but it looks like straight up traveling OC you meant travelling like traveling in basketball not traveling in Europe exactly I was picturing Drake on a jet that was the wrong image we gotta get a Canadian the horn did yeah we got a buddy need Drexler sports expert maybe you can clear pure stepping for us we think he's a sports writer he knows a lot of stuff about sports let's see what he has to say about your stepping we're just sports in general of baby is a level of those exports Nate oooh baby we got matrix or on the horn on biological I stay at my west coast spread my only west coast connect how are you neat I'm so good can you hear my boy Johnny bear Hey Anthony what's going on shot a bear what's going on with my man I'm just a few blocks away in beautiful Astoria I was gonna say long time no talk welcome to the east coast my friend Anthony never panned a nice screen last night together always scared we went on an ice cream journey and Johnny bear as yourself actually called him got ice cream snickers bar for the walk he was delicious like an appetite for the ice cream that we bought we bought ice cream and he got an ice cream bar and appetizers man after my own heart that is it was delicious I've got no regrets no regrets that is exactly how I would have done as right after we had to Blackie celebrities take their eyes power that seems like the kind of thing Drake would do who know we gotta get uncle Nate we gotta get I'm going to clear the suffers uncle Nate what is a year a step it's really hard to explain we found that to be true selves own thank you but essentially we connection at all to the basket at and you're holding the ball and you do something of a crossover step shoot shoot the defender and a leading one direction but it's really an awkward move so like it's sort of like the opposite of like a jab step to get a guy because when your jab stepping you're usually just going like comments about your body is going whichever way your jabbing but when he stepped you're actually jabbing opposite of the moment some of your body so it like EE confuses the defender and then you and then also uses his off balance enough that you can you can go up but it requires an incredible amount of coordination and worked out a lot of guys just can't Polack it's it's it's it's very tricky I don't really it's hard to explain exactly what it is you have to you too but I need tells real quick what you think about lebron James going to LA well I had a horrible night last night I mean I really I lock closure I have people of my Twitter telling me it's going to be okay and not to lose your cool lebron %HESITATION signed a four year contract with the Los Angeles Lakers and it's not about the fact that he signed a contract with a different team I'm not a cafe animal the brown family follow up anywhere I only he Jersey and a cat Jersey with his name on it LA is a huge market whatever it's gonna be great for his family the problem is they did not immediately build anything around him that's good brought on lance even stand who is like a garbage pail kid of a psycho who the little carbon dioxide in the bronze here in the middle of a very important game several years ago he's like a board and lebron wound me he blew it can you please tell what is blowing carbon dioxide in his ear is that a euphemism carbon dioxide is what is what actually comes out your mouth when you exhale okay she leaned over in the middle of a huge game they were coming out of a time not a playoff game where lebron's playoff life was in jeopardy inexplicably one of those games and lance Stephenson was guarding him in doing a decent job of guarding him in that game and coming out of a timeout he leaned over and blew it is here like softly and tenderly blew air into his years and then it's like you get is a great video and yes love it I love Ron just days staring like you didn't let but like this dude is like the ultimate lebron troll all through his career and gives them headaches media we'd look Ron sizeable Lakers they go get this guy and I think it's because we're brought was like I don't want to have to deal with this guy on the opposite side of the court as me he's not good and he's not going to help this team and he's a garbage pail easy garbage and also the other thing that he does he does this quite often I cannot get past is blowing in the air thing he doesn't say anything he doesn't he bends over and just like you know how like in knowing it would be if like someone gave you like a wet Willie who I would smack in the worse I would literally punch him in the face real that's what everyone wanted to do was punch minutes space will probably just stayed with us great you because he's a pro professional like I want to actually kill this guy he's he's a professional is the best professional what did lebron due to him he must have done something is he just the best kill them you just kill them it's just that he's the best and and lance Stephenson is one of these guys like everyone in the NBA has an ego I don't mean this in a negative way but all these guys if you think about it were the best in their grade school they were the best in their high school they were the best on their college team they were the best on their AAU team so when they get to the NBA it doesn't really register them I'm not as good as lebron James these guys absolutely believes they are the best movies haven't gotten their teens yet yeah yeah exactly like everyone's like I used to work for ESPN a little bit like bike blogging and I covered a lot of games down in Orlando when I was there I talked to a lot of players and I talk a lot better sheer and I think it's a time it was something like white Howard was was maybe gonna sign with a team with another big center and I was like does that scare you you know what that does that worry you to have those two guys in the same and the answer was unanimous and it wasn't like just the sound by these guys like what no like nothing scares me like I can play with anyone like this I mean the best and they really do think that so that's the way that people aren't you must have to think that yeah I mean otherwise you're not you can't get to that level yeah you know we don't think about because we really as fans we see more objectively were like yeah of course lebron is way better than expired of course this guy's better just buyers those guys in that moment they've never been told or believe anything except I'm actually Bob ask if not one or one of the best if not the best players work so there's that mentality still like when they go up so it's not that we're going to have to do anything to have missed that late Stevenson is looking at the mere at night when he goes on to his million dollar condo in Indianapolis and he's like dude I could stop this guy and he has a game where like you actually maybe has twenty points and maybe get the steel off lebron and he's like that just like reaffirms that you know what I'm saying me he lives in Indianapolis wise you live in Indianapolis lightly played for the Pacers arm the Pacers yeah are there soccer team they're they're not they're they're basket during the World Cup right the Senate in the World Cup states don't have teams that go to the world okay contact contact fun fact I sling Iceland in nearly beat Argentina in the World Cup do you know how many people live in Iceland three hundred thousand and they feel that if they feel that a world class soccer team that almost be Lino messy the entire United States did not field a world class soccer team that could almost be messy but I slammed it there are more people living in like Glendale California than there are in the entire country of Iceland and they feel that a world class soccer team how is that possible I don't know but I was going to ask you because I don't so I don't follow the World Cup closely but I'm curious if you look that up another thing you should look up is how many guys on that roster live in Iceland like I'm curious I'm genuinely curious going back to their home country okay that's fine but they're still Icelandic how much do they have to be I don't know but he just like a quarter and still choose to go play price I don't know that could still be true but if we can hide the ethnically connected to a country to play for the team you don't have to be right like the Olympics I external Chinese figure skaters the place that compete for America okay then fine if you can extrapolate out a certain amount of nationality that would be even more true with America right where is our World Cup team yet dum dum the more money you that's like Akron Ohio fielding an NBA team that beats the cavs in the finals not exactly how how I don't know the World Cup is confounding to me like I like I I sort of I sort of just like where we are now because like when did that game happened it wasn't in one of the early rounds where it's just like points that that you have to accumulate yeah I know I don't even know that much no this was this was a points game this was a points game what you're probably out now yeah I'm barely even paying attention I just thought it was a fun fact I see I don't know because in those points games I feel like people are let off the gas a little bit because they're like calculating we don't need to go balls out for this game because all we need is action on to the next round but then I don't like the idea of elimination games either because it's like the NC double a tournament and anyone can beat anyone like you can get a fluke goal I don't I didn't see the game I don't know if I slammed scored loopholes I don't STT messy place for Argentina right he's been getting a lot of slack right for being like kind of a fraud or not playing well you never plan that will help them yeah so I mean I don't know like I feel like an elimination like either World Cup games are just like unpredictable and I don't like killing March madness I yeah I'm more of a series guy I might let these things play against each other three to seven times then we actually knows better and of course I think like I don't know because I actually don't know but I assuming Argentina would probably win in a five game series Overijssel neat let's get a quick hot take on are you coming to Los Angeles to see lebron play or not well I fired off a treat this morning I'm extremely disgruntled about the move people are telling me that he's taken the long con he's building for next year and the year after that I think I live in New York City and I can't afford to go to our next game and the next part arable but I can't afford to get in the stadium eyes I'd love to be scary I think I would love to come to staples center and see what Ron and I follow him anywhere and I tweeted this morning that even though I'm disgruntled I'm I'm all and I'm on board the Lakers fan you know don't ask me don't ask me because I've gone on record to say that I'm a lebron fan so I follow him everywhere not just a band wagon or a life long you choose in a long time ago two thousand two thousand and one I think so have you covered up your cast had to yet I just got a King James that do but check this out I was the I saw online yesterday that a season ticket %HESITATION season ticket prices jumped already %HESITATION for staples that are like fifteen hundred dollars like my gosh %HESITATION so I mean there's just no way I just there's no way I could afford to go insane that so much money so if someone buys me a ticket I will absolutely be there if I can somehow figure out a way to finance the ticket I may do it I would love to see what Ron play at staples center maybe not this year because the team is garbage but maybe like in two years I'm done with long wall of stealing good yes on the four year contract he's great got his championship squad I save up a little bit of money and I get to go to that's all from me for now I hung up on %HESITATION he's there to get in the weeds in this isn't really a sports podcast you now you just hung up on him Coulter I just I I felt like he was gonna take like another ten minutes to wrap up the conversation it was so much sports my head was starting to her I know that's why I had to I just had to get out of there you know so much about sports it's intimidating and my crazy I really was a little worried that we were gonna end up taking another hour to finish that conversation was I was trying to soak in as much of that as I could I love that guy I will come back we'll come back hopefully it'll pick up next time I don't know man that was pretty rude we'll see if I had a ISIS okay speaking of lebron moving speaking of you know Drake and they they I mean that monologue is incredible %HESITATION or whatever you call that act it's in I think it's a message to the haters that's what that that is yeah it's pre it's it's don't you think you have a little for what is he afraid of though is you're freed of his recent success I mean I I because I was I was looking at the lyrics for that previously %HESITATION short it seems like he's terrified of success or what success entails being in the spotlight yeah people hating him people being haters so he's got to respond to them I don't know I guess I can can you have to respond to that I mean that just seems that's a very good question I don't know I really don't know drink your drink you have a jet to yeah acts you don't have to respond to people who call you stupid right now or say you're a bad rapper yeah it seems so but it seems like the entire album is about that at least from what I can tell us into enough of it I just heard those sweet sweet beats and I was seduced the other thing about this drink the drink liner notes is that it sounds a lot like what Kanye west said about himself I like the old kind yeah you know he he referred to the criticism before other people could get changed and somehow his musical style had changed her he's pre responding to the haters quote unquote and tracking who has already been accused of copying people seem like copy Tonya west at this yeah I don't know what that yeah I way we will have to have a a rap will have an address on on we'll get great I can get Draco column Jersey if you're listening had us up I don't know I am I can relate to the sense of of being afraid of the possibility of being seduced by success and and sort of becoming addicted to affirmation now right that there's something about obscurity I I there's part of me that like I do if I'm honest I would love to make movies that everyone watches and and become famous you know vinous I I want that and I'm sure you you know anyone can relate to that I want that for you well thank you John and but there's also a part of me that thinks I'm probably better off being a little bit of a career failure and being stable as a human being you know and I will and I hope I can have both of those things but it scares the crap out of me trying to have both the idea of trying to have both I don't know maybe I'm overreacting maybe I'm putting the cart way before the donkey you know I think we'll just have to explore that I think we will maybe we'll talk about that next week next week we'll check in in here what's with the what has happened since we last yeah I hope we'll have some more progress for you I think you need to create some drama to have something to talk about yeah I think it's time to start poking the bear if you know what I mean fire this casting director get a new one check it out did this casting director gave me the quickest read I've a sheet she read my script in under a week that is mirac

Show Notes00:00 - Introductions2:00 - Our nameless cat producer bailed on the show, so Jon and Zay are looking for a new producer. Applications, which are now open to dogs as well, can be submitted here4:00 - What the hell is this show, anyway?Fancy Rhino // The commercial production company Isaiah started with Drew Belz.Previous Projects produced by IsaiahHUNTER GATHERER // The OrchardTrailer // New York Times Review // Watch it onlineDAYVEON // FilmRiseTrailer // LA Times Review // Watch it onlineNEVER GOIN' BACK // A24Trailer // Variety Review // See it in theaters August 3, 2018!Shorts Written and Directed by IsaiahThree YearsChattanooga On SaleBroken Mast11:00 - Isaiah talks about the the plot of ROLLERS.Sandtown Children of Praise Choir W/ Toby MacDC Talk’s Jesus Freak Music Video // Video of DC Talk LiveVintage Fancy Rhino video from May 11, 2012We used to make a video every Friday just for fun. We called them Fancy FridaysJon’s Favorite Movie - 8½ // Watch it hereThe Face Melting Scene from Raiders of the Lost ArkCredits and Personal Links:A Mama Bear Studios Production // Mama Bear Studios WebsiteProduced and Edited by: Isaiah SmallmanExecutive Producer: Jon SchimpfOpening music: "The Get Down," Produced by Summer DregsOutro music: Composed and Recorded by Tom Paulus and Max BelzCover Art by: Nate GiordanoShow Website | ThatWay.fmShow Twitter | @ThatWayPodJon TwitterIsaiah InstagramIsaiah IMDBIsaiah’s Twitter (which he never uses)Isaiah LinkedInLonger Podcast Description“I Guess We’ll Do it That Way” is a weekly conversational comedy show where Isaiah Smallman and Jon Schimpf talk about life, movies and Zay's progress as he directs his first feature film, Rollers, a dramatic comedy about a struggling concert venue.When they're not on a random tangent, Jon grills Isaiah about the actual process of making an independent movie. How do you get actors to sign on? Where do you get money? What do producers do? What happens if the movie's terrible?! At the end of the day there are things Isaiah doesn't know... like will this movie even get made? But that's the real fun of the show. Because when you're making a movie you start with a vision and you make a plan. Then you realize your plan was never actually going to work and you begin the real job: making choices, finding compromises, and trying to build your vision in spite of the constant hailstorm of reality raining down on your parade.Episodes of “I Guess We’ll Do it That Way” will also feature:Interviews with members of the Rollers teamQ&A with listenersInterviews with industry experts (lots of famous people)There might even be the occasional movie review!TRANSCRIPT (Probably a mess)so I have to say this is a a small man and you're listening to I guess we'll do it that way podcasts right call my buddy John each week to check in on my progress as a direct my first feature film is presented by mama bear studios our mission is to create entertaining works of art that explore our humanity alright reserves of one I hear you Monday of baby all the early in his name **** yeah this sounds amazing although quit bumping your Mike bumpy make dumb person what's gonna my men I'm I'm just pumped about this park as did it is such a pleasure to be speaking with you at this very moment I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing a great deal think were a little late to the podcast game that did I don't know is there an end to the podcast came I mean that implies that there's a that there's a finite and to it we're gonna have headsets on sitting on a couch is next we're not gonna be talking to each other so yeah I think the podcast dies mmhm VR headsets or you know whatever whatever the next thing is we're gonna be there's gonna be robots that simulate podcasts me like OD one funny podcast cool these two robots are hilarious and they're way better than any two real people do you think that would ever happen absolute did they make videos have you seen these videos that are Amazon add videos they pull out I dont tent yeah do that it's completely automated they they have an algorithm that pulls out like the top ten things in a category being sold on Amazon and the A. I. makes an ad like it makes in a video at it's unreal that scares me a little bit yes alright let's move on %HESITATION John would you like to tell everyone who you are I'm little Johnny bear and let's do this thing that is only there are you the Big Bear the Papa bear mama bear the baby there and how do you like your porridge got a little bit of a crisis man I'm I'm the Big Bear here but our little friend are little furry friend get reunited just less than an hour ago with her real mom little Kitty cat is going to produce the show I'm doing it on the fly myself she stepped outside this afternoon and who should be they're kidding me now who should be there but her actual mother I'm pretty sure it was her mother send to cool full grown cat they met they bonded immediately and %HESITATION she couldn't be less interested in me anymore she still coming food but we're in crisis mode here man I'm gonna go ahead and say this right now and I'm not a litigious person but I didn't sign a contract with her so that she could just walk out the middle of the show I think we got a case against the mom cat a really well I guess we gotta find another cat to produce the show because I have all the controls were configured for cat paws there are so many so many stray cats running around here and I'm not healthy one extremely she may want to train another cat I may I may I don't want to train another cat to be a producer I was kind of like all those years of training I don't know if I want to go through that again this is the level that it is the thirty seven minutes we spent on Tuesday training her most of it was a sexual harassment class the cats get feisty you got it you really got to make sure that they understand what boundaries are they start to breed just about the same time as their eyes fully open the just immediately start banging out our cats hang in baby cats haven't baby cats it's a wild cat rolled out there it's a cruel maybe we should try to talk you know what I cannot imagine a dog walking out on us maybe we should train a dog to be a producer they are much much more loyal yeah well so this is a this is the show I guess we'll do it that way %HESITATION John I feel like maybe you should take a quick stab at explaining to our many many listeners mom what the show is and why they're listening to us right now days working on a movie and we decided that we're going to get together and discuss that and any other topic related to it and we're gonna let you the millions and millions of Americans and internationals listening right now you're going to get a sneak peek a glimpse into our conversations billions potentially I'm making a movie as you pointed out I'm excited about making that movie I've been making movies for awhile I've produced a number of movies but I've never directed a feature of Bob directed lots of other stuff but I am excited about actually chronicling a little bit of that process because I actually know surprisingly little about certain aspects of the process even if some of the movies that I've helped produce because things just flip by you know and there's not always time to actually like going to death and that's the kind of stuff that I think maybe someone would be interested in listening to there's one guy in Wisconsin right now who is now make it for that one guy I will do teddy Bronson this is for you baby sure voice I love you're wrong Sheboygan strong for ever thank you teddy Bronson for being our one fan I hope that this is an informative and fun experience for you and please donate teddy teddy we were desperate our cat just walked out on a steady we got to train a dog now right after we spay and or neutered that animal and that's going to cost more money teddy we're in a tight spot says that before we start you need to tell me and everyone or anyone listening what you do how you got here why you're making a movie and while you don't trust me barely are are one producer already ran out your fifty percent of this operation so you're fifty percent to blame okay I'll send you my resume I studied English at a precise TGS unheard of Christian liberal arts college in the south east I did not go to film school I thought about it but I wasn't gonna get in any the good ones and I study English read some excellent excellent books like %HESITATION I don't know you're struggling to come up with one title I skipped a lot of them I hear I read a lot of Shakespeare I read a lot of Shakespeare I skipped a lot of Shakespeare no I said the English I I started making stuff and like middle school you know I started just with a handy cam and all but %HESITATION starting in in college I started a Film Festival with some some folks including to rebels who I then right when I was finishing college I started a commercial production company with and we kind of grew that over the years you know a I guess over the course of like four years it got to you got pretty big we had about maybe twenty people or so working for us fall time including some freelancers and on top of that and that was when I kind of started to realize that I actually want to make movies and not make advertising for the rest of my life and I started talking to some investors in the process actually I should say we also produced a feature documentary that was set in Chattanooga it's called dhimmi world and in the process they started talking to some investors that we met very early on in life the company within the first like nine months of starting it that was the company's fancy right now by the way you can look it up and will put a link in the show notes but basically I started getting ancestor realizing that my true passion was making movies and I've had to figure out kind of way to do that I start talking to our investors and %HESITATION they were like yeah we think the idea that you have for kind of how to set up this this company is a really good one %HESITATION let's try some stuff in it but you know we can talk at a different time about kind of what the actual model was but basically yes we started %HESITATION producing producing movies and writing about scripts in the very first one we did was call hunter gather directed by a guy named Josh Lucy and it went to south by which was cool and you can actually watch that on I tunes and all the other things that flexes well willing to it the next one we did was call Davey on that was at Sundance and also got a theatrical release and is also on Netflix and everything iTunes obviously I'd love for you to buy on iTunes but you don't have to and then the most recent thing that we produced is called never gone back that was at Sundance this past year and it's getting released on August third in theaters so that's kind of like a little bit of my background and in the meantime I've been writing and producing a lot of other stuff that's just still you know kind of %HESITATION in process so can we find something that you have written and directed our yeah absolutely %HESITATION yeah I'll link to that's a great question I've done a lot of shorts %HESITATION there's probably two or three that I am most likely to to to want to show off broken masters one three years is another one and %HESITATION I like chatting on sale to diversity training on sale all Ali I have fun but I will it's very goofy it's very goofy I'll plow put on the album on the links did you make all these in Chattanooga yeah yeah I did and where do you live now do you live in Chattanooga I live in Las Vegas sunny beautiful seventy seven degrees Hollywood belly of the beast just soak in it and I'm looking at a palm tree right now how long have you been it is it is the ability to be six months so not too long not too long nam of fresh cookie I'm like still melting a little bit what's the biggest difference between the beautiful beautiful southeast and sunny California they you know it's kind of similar everyone in that you know there's a lot of crazy conservatives in the southeast that want to like split off their states yeah you know kind of from the union you're talking about me right now is that what you want John I'm not really part of a bullet Johnny part of a militia yesterday now not yet but I'm interested which one would you join if you joined one I'd make one o'toole I can not for it like and not crazy racist militia like a just a true equal opportunity libertarian militia I'm trying to turn Tennessee into New Jersey that's my that's my one more malicious goal as you could just move to New Jersey although I don't know why he'd ever do that a million years beautiful state is that mean no no no it's %HESITATION it's a misunderstood state you know it's some it's because I have some pretty rolling hills beaches and the people are just lovely famous for their hospitality just like the south have you met Bruce Springsteen and if so what did he say to him every New Jersey and when you're born meets bird Springsteen it's state law you have to meet him I shook his hand and said hello Sir he before my circumcision he's gotten pretty good at that then it's New Jersey think he holds the work he might hold the world record for most circumcisions performed is tied yeah when did they enact this law %HESITATION whenever he was born nineteen sixty seven I'm young circumcisions it wasn't very good when he started cemex said says eight what's the process of this film right now okay stage of the of the film are you in right now the film's co rollers I scribe server that film is called rollers rollers it's ours it's about rollers to ecstasy what is it about it's a comedy and it is about a historic concert venue called rollers this story kind of follows the three main characters Rufus Maddie and Jane roof isn't matter your brother and sister they bought rollers sort of saved it from the the jaws of real estate developers who were going to tear down the river do that because their parents died and they came in to not ton of money but enough to sort of get into some trouble put a down payment on this place and we can revitalize it and they have a number of really great years a lot of really great stuff happens a lot of bands kind of come out and and get big you know by sort of starting there but with the story mostly takes place about ten years after they buy it and things are not great Maddie's ready to move on with their life Ruth this is probably wants to move on with his life but cannot really allow himself to do that because he spent too much of his time in an emotional energy and invest too much of his identity and and building this place and now you know meeting failure is %HESITATION is not really an option in Jane his best friend who has a lot of history with kind of comes back and is this drawn from a personal story do you have some experience at a venue or something I do you know I don't have specific this experience at venue I did perform a lot as a kid I was in a well acquire it was it was different I was in a gospel choir we we we toward all over the country you can look it up sand town children of praise I should link to a video verbal you saying in this in this choir I did for years I grew up in west Baltimore there are we cut we cut rates on them loaded when I went to said small Christian liberal arts college I met people who I did not know who knew who I was now when they when they heard that like not my name but like when they heard that I was in sand town there like on my gosh I saw you when I was eleven that's insane isn't that weird did you make any money from it now it was like a nonprofit us somebody was made now there's no money there is no money unbelievable it was you had some notoriety had some celebrity in this yeah we performed at some some big festivals and Bonner and I think the biggest crowd was seventy three thousand people and that's not a joke whoa that is not a joke isn't that crazy that isn't insane that's a lot of people this artist that was kind of helping us a little bit gave us like half of his headlining slot who is the artist Michael W. Toby mac did your our DC talk of baby who hasn't Jesus freak baby Jesus freak yeah I remember how that song goes off and not really actually give me a lack of trying to remember we should hold up on you should pull it up that is going to bring back horrifying memories of other pulled up right now I've just being proselytized around a campfire by an over eager kid who went to a college like we did yeah that was never quite ours style hold you have altar calls did you have an altar call where you and so it was not like that it was very poppy it was kind of fun preaching is there preaching interspersed yeah can you hear that of this bring back so much sadness what are they doing right now one of these guys I really don't know rumbling down the apartment next to Los Angeles maybe we should have Toby mac on the show we think of that is you still perform I don't know let's find out there talking about what he's up to Toby we know your live shows give us a call tunes retired to the song it features this man so may I politely anyway having kids do you think were converted because of that song who dozens I don't know if that was their audience was that their audience I'm sure some kid look through the liner notes and converted okay moment of truth here hit me I really hope that the movie that I'm making I hope it's really good I hope it's not the kind of thing that anyone like looks back on twenty years from now and thinks yeah he tried that's the risk you take I hope people look back on and they're like damn that's good yeah that's the risk you take that is the risk I take it's it's a very scary risk I'm terrified actually I am I'm not terrified to the extent that I'm not gonna do it but it's it's scary I mean I've already put so much effort because okay so I I don't have a super personal connection to venues specifically right but I a lot of the emotional stuff does come from very personal place which is a I didn't you know this is weird I didn't totally realize this until I was writing my director statement which is a whole thing you know like when you're trying to pitch the movie around you put a book together and typically you included director statement it's kind of like this is why I'm writing this or this is why I think I'm the director that should be making this and I was thinking about it I was like man this whole thing is about letting go of something right and I knew kind of that all of the the the real root of it was me letting go of the business that I started you know this business fancy right now I had to I had to let go in order to kind of start mama bear numbers that obviously the production company that I now you know run that is %HESITATION you know it's producing this podcast and all that kind of stuff but thanks guy had to I had to leave the answer right now and I will and I chose to leave it right before someone who I will not name but an executive that we kind of hired to come in and run the thing nearly killed it heartland and that was it was Harvey strikes again biggest mistake of your career you can say that again he was toxic three months ago but he was cheap so everyone knew and now it was we thought maybe he had repented and we were wrong by low side that's what you guys thought yeah we bought low and sold lower but we thought we had this other guy I'm sure if you really want to find out who it is you can %HESITATION he did not do a good job he was very bad at running our company and she almost ruined it why do thanks to him in the first place well because we were we were ready to go to the next level and frankly felt like we were not the people that were capable of maybe doing that from a business standpoint from a business standpoint this guy was a hot shot like big time executive creative director vice president level at a major global agency and we thought if anybody can start locking down major deals because we were doing a lot of work with a fortune five hundred companies like Nike and office depot and Mohawk flooring and lodge cast iron and Disney at times and we thought how do we go from where we are to the next level we gotta get a big we gotta get a Big Boy in here we gonna get a grown up in the mix how old are you guys at this time twenty five babies babies little we've already been doing it for four years at that point that's amazing that so young we were babies and you guys were making money right you're making money you're doing well yeah we were making money we were getting rich we're making money we remain you had a successful business we were mostly reinvesting the money back into the business to grow that's how we got big you know right but it was a legit business yeah and and we so I don't think you guys are men and I like the halls yeah we were we were doing a good job and then I thought this is when you know drew my business partner that there's another thing that he's kind of still noodling on %HESITATION which I'll let him talk about one day but basically the idea was we are gonna make movies you know and this guy came along it was like holy smokes we were just gonna kinda leave the business **** nilly but like if anybody can handle this thing it's this guy right that was not the case but by the time it became clear what was going on we had already started my where we were already in the middle of producing hunter gather we had already done a bunch of other stuff invested money in things and I wasn't couldn't just walk away and so it was a very difficult process of of drew and I and our festers and everyone involved or or keep employees and everybody kind of coming to grips with that where the business was and I'm happy to say you know it it survived it's doing really well it's great it's much smaller than it was which I think is what it always should have been it's not that we won't grow again but I think we learned some really hard lessons and we've got an incredible core team and it's a great place and I was actually just back there a few days ago and in Chattanooga and it's a phenomenal business I mean they're working with huge great companies and and making really terrific work but it also just wasn't who I was you know you don't want getting you dump this character %HESITATION we got rid of them well we dumped him so hard do and he went back to sterling in brown or wherever he worked what happened yeah Gail who knows who even knows I don't know he's there certainly not in jail he's prime making beaucoup money somewhere just raking it in but the movie is really it it's it's totally fictionalized but it is really rooted in those emotions of being like whoa I weigh over invested my identity in this place I can't allow something to fail because that will ruin me and that's not a particularly good way to live your life I'm gonna throw that out there is not a the same thing that with this movie though are you putting all your bad year eggs in this basket your self worth is tied up in this I'm trying every single day to not do it but you're gonna be exposed in a way it's either good or bad you're gonna be exposed as a good writer a good director war or a not bad director yeah I'm absolutely can be exposed and that's what's scary but I think I think I've grown a lot I think I have made a lot of progress in in the sense of growing up in and and realizing that you know it's funny actually I had a great conversation and and this conversation actually was very thematically relevant for the movie I had a great conversation with someone who I don't actually know that well it was a a woman who was married to a guy that we were interviewing for a job this is pride two years ago now it was it was a lesson that I I don't actually remember exactly what it was and I usually not even involved in the interview process but this guy was like and he still working with us and I want to say who it is but like great guy he was up and we were having dinner we rang out and I was explaining how I thought about roller and I was like I really got to make this movie I have to make it it's inside of me I've been wanting to make a movie since I was like twelve I mean literally I've been wanting to make a movie since I was twelve is this written at this point of the script is done script is tight it is is it done tight is it done two years ago when you have the conversation with this guy now no it was not it's just an idea rattling around and it was a hot it was that it was a pilot but I I knew I wanted to make a different movie actually at this point that was what so the process of roller I I wrote a different movie maybe three and a half four years ago and that was a big kind of action movie and then I came up with a great idea for how to scale back make its models like that's gonna be the first movie I direct right I rewrote it I really like it I'm actually still working on it to this day %HESITATION as we'll see as we kind of we eat we should do a whole episode on just sort of script development but %HESITATION in and all the pitfalls and and challenges and maybe we can have somebody on to talk about it but basically I re wrote it and I was still like you know this isn't small enough for me to make as a first time director or if if I if I did pull it off it would take a very long time right and I decided to shift gears and others pilot that road rollers and I was like you know I think of an internist this pilot in a movie because I was I was talking about different people in the industry about producing a different networks and and I just realized that frankly and it's not the point as a producer or director or as a writer where I can just snap my fingers get a TV show me I mean I can't snap my fingers get a movie made either not yet but I definitely cannot get a TV show it right now and so I was like you know I wonder if there's another idea in there and as soon as I as soon as I open myself up to that I realized that it wanted end in part of the reason I think it wasn't a good TV shows because it had an ending right and I just cranked on it and %HESITATION but %HESITATION the conversation it was incredibly mean and forgot about the conversation did you pitch this pilot two companies like Netflix Amazon not %HESITATION not Netflix or Amazon because I just didn't have any particular like contacts at that point who like rich too but yeah like networks like IFC and write a lot mostly but mostly a lot of production companies to do TV or her and a lot of them were like look like this is really good but we just feel like you need you know we we need to bring on a you know an executive producer or director and frankly we've got other projects that are higher priority is just not gonna happen right now calls in six months and I was like alright to get it but I'm not gonna wait around you know I gotta I gotta make some stuff in the future we need to drill down on this in another episode we have to talk about this because just the idea of you sitting in a room with guys from IFC like I need to know what that looks like what it feels like I could I think experience that so few people have and it may have people are curious about but we got to skip over that the conversation you had this conversation two years ago with this guy tell us about it yet does it was with his wife actually we were all sitting at dinner and I had a couple drinks you know it's kind of vented not venting I was I was sharing baring my soul little bit and saying I I'm I I I had this moment of realization where realized movies and this is kind of what this podcast is about movies take a very very long time to make and if I want audiences real people watching this movie in the next five years I got to start now I got to figure out what that movie is now which seems crazy but I was expressing how much anxiety that was causing me I think I wasn't I I frankly I think I was in a much less healthy emotional place at that point and she looked at me and she said that's great man you seem super talented and I really hope that works out but you need to know that if you never make a movie in your whole life it's okay you're enough like your family will not hate you and you are still valuable as a human being even if you never make that movie and you stood up and you walked out she she just dropped the Mike and I was like no they did it struck the EAP it's very true it hit me yeah of course it's true but dude I needed that so bad I needed to hear that so bad and and and that's actually what rollers is about I mean I didn't even know that at the time and so there's a it's okay if I let something go it's okay if I fail it's okay if I try things life is bigger than that life is bigger than success lies life is is about more than than the things to accomplish and I'm getting all cheesy but it's real and that's honestly what the movie's about the movie is about that movies about you make choices sometimes they work out sometimes they don't work out any move on with your life and the only thing you really need to worry about is whether or not you are like loving people in your life taking care of your **** if you do that the rest of it configures itself out you can be ambitious you can you can accomplish things you know these are wise words thanks I don't know I guess the reason I'm rambling about this is because I really think that that section with the shows about the show I want to be totally raw to be totally real with the three and a half people that are gonna listen to this thing the half as a baby that's inside its mother's womb while she listens to it on speaker phone and I wanna be super real and I wanna be like there can be times where I'm like this movie's not gonna get made frankly this movie night might not get made I do not know how this podcast or this aspect of the podcast I don't know if the podcast will will end with the movie I I think we're gonna find lots of stuff to talk about but like I don't know if I'm gonna make them if you're not but that to me is interesting I mean I I lots of movies don't get made and I could go through lots of other examples in and maybe we can devote some episodes of these types of things of movies that we've developed that have not got made and probably won't ever get made and frankly rollers could be in the same situation I mean where it's at now it's in a promising position somewhere raise the money that I somewhere on a yacht you %HESITATION in Arab financier is pulling his hair out when he heard you say that this film might not get made he's he's Russian did don't tell anybody but he's a Russian guy I treated him the movie for some dirt and %HESITATION right now I can hear the dial toe right now if the movie doesn't get made all it means is a better podcast right now I kind of hope it doesn't cause it would be such a better podcast because I mean the chances of me like getting famous because this movie other so slim but there is a chance so others chan there's always there's always saying there's a chance John what's your favorite movie my favorite my favorite movie movie is it Fellini's eight and a half at such a pretentious answer but it's it was all it's so it's a great movie and it's you know it's metaphysical it's existential it's crazy it's a great film %HESITATION what's what's your favorite part of it half of the credits at the end you know I'm no I'm kidding can you describe them the I think they're black and white and they they're moving %HESITATION it's a lot of text the but I all I do is watch kids movies man that's only watch them like a little kid so much in like the Incredibles with stuff over and over again what's the what's it was a movie that you've watched recently with the kids we just less than twenty four hours hours ago we watched Steven Spielberg and George Lucas is raiders of the Lost Ark old baby it was intense I don't remember seeing it as a child I saw as a child but I barely remember it you know there are a few images I have in my head %HESITATION when they open the ark in people's faces melt I remember that vividly to the ending is a little much I remember it vividly and that the guy getting chopped up in the air in the propeller yeah oh might these shots are shocking images and now I'm John your kids are too young for this scarred for life did they sleep last night barely almost not at all of men just a mix of cranberry juice and you just woke up at four in the yeah just to shouting shrimp what term trembling in fear these movies are what were they doing when the guys face melted I mean cried they were crying there crying while I am not so good I'm kidding they loved it I mean that affects you we had a discussion after the how how do they do this because the kids actually what why because the kids actually thought a human was being murdered they thought yeah they act they ask me anything how many real people died to make that movie they did not did they actually asked me movie magic baby yeah it's it's a tough one because I'm I'm tori I don't want to spoil the illusion for them but I also want them to sleep sometime in the future I'm they were so they were just going to be an intense experience I mean that's intense thinking that you're watching a real human die an actual death yeah it's horrifying that is very intense and it makes purplish explanation I just let's see how much you know about movies what was her explanation for how they did it well I just explain to them that in the world there are people that are worth living in people that aren't worth living so they take the people that aren't worth living and I put it in movies and kill them for real and fill it that they were fine with it they thought that was fine you told them about the expendable people that something that's for the tell people until later they they got a quick early lesson is like telling about the birds and the bees to San I'm I have a whole stand up that that idea about the birds and the bees I'm not gonna do it now but you'll have to do it at some point one day you'll have to sneak it in and you perform this on stage %HESITATION at yuk yuks in Chattanooga what it was called he yuck X. %HESITATION %HESITATION JJ's barking likes on despite I performed at all of them what kind of audiences did you have %HESITATION so small the service now many standing ovations did you get %HESITATION sold so many zero that has to be that one of the scariest types of performance right if you you you know that's why did and nothing else it's hideous that's why I did it because I I I think I needed it well first of all this is actually kind of wonder the podcast not to be funny but because I like the idea of putting work out more often break you know as a filmmaker if you are Rankin I mean really crank and you put out a movie every eighteen months very few people achieve that pace and again we'll talk throughout this movie about this podcast about why that's the case but I mean that is Woody Allen writes and directs movie a year lover hate him it's crazy but also half as movie sucked and that nobody's beating that pace right and as an independent filmmaker it's not even close to eighteen months it's probably more unless you just making teeny tiny movies with some people have figured out a way to do but I was like I got I got up I'm a creative person I can't make stuff more often you know I can't just do ninety minutes of content every eighteen months that's lame yeah you know and so I was doing stand up and it was hard I I did not get I I started getting more laughs but man it was brutal I got a lot of blank stares I mean does is just part of the process where you do when you bomb what what's the proper have you must keep movin all have a bomb I've mostly bombed what do you do what mostly bomb John I'm not I'm not saying I'm surprised I just want to know what the process is like did you see stand up there and you keep telling jokes until your time's up and is have you been jeered at have you been screamed at Yale that heckled no not heckled as much I mean here's the thing though JJ's the audiences for an open Mike did this place was Poppin I mean there there were typically audiences of twenty five to fifty people and same with comedy catch quite a few people showed up and I actually got bigger laughs sometimes at the bigger crowds you know because I was telling okay jokes I just wasn't a good performer you know I I've been writing for so long that I think I was writing decent jokes but I just my pace wasn't right I just hadn't found my voice yet and I think I started to find my voice towards the end I realized you know I'm spending twenty five hours a week in a bar I don't need to do this you know like I I I just I I I guess I should get better writing scripts you know I'm not going to be a professional stand up I'm a screenwriter didn't help writer you think I'll be spending twenty five hours a week writing I think I'm really glad I did it I'd like to do it again do you think a chain but I can't change your personality at all to it to just I think it's a lot more resilient yeah yeah I realized I I I realized I can fail in front of people and it's fine I go home and no big deal well we're doing it again for a reason right now I know people are gonna hate this so much did there I can't wait to get trolled so hard my friend lost his license in Mexico and somebody found it and put it up on a Facebook page that mocks Americans who lose their licenses in Mexico I don't even find out about his phaser seems like the kind of thing that would be totally seeker yes I don't know someone sent it to him and he showed it to me and it was just you know hundreds of insults hurled at him in Spanish that sounds incredible contents I want to find this website I'll send you a link in the show knows my friend's home baby he men are shown a target beefy says a we're gonna check in together in a week and we're going to continue this conversation and you're going to tell us what what are you gonna be telling us next week where we can be talking about my dad I don't know I mean I think we should we should set a topic potentially what's something that you might be interested and I think we should have like a general topic and we should have a sense of what we're gonna cover and I also I mean right now I can tell you what I'm working on right now I'm waiting on some casting directors %HESITATION actually have it this maybe next week we talk about why I'm waiting on casting directors and why I am going to cast rectors and and not just going directly cast and the decision that I made to go that route that's on its next week I don't know let's talk about casting directors casting sounds sinister that has sinister overtones doesn't because of casting cal I think so yeah that's immediately what I think of Harvey it's Harvey damn you are black eyes freakin tentacles are just wrapped all over everything is he in jail did you get busted I don't think he's in jail because our justice system is absolutely insanity I feel like Trusteer children John I feel like John might there in this guy John oh oh he he just I would not be around to throw a wrench John I want to throw off I want to throw a little thought experiment at you at me if there is a country where there were children in jail because their parents brought them to the United States because they were fleeing warfare and there was a man who has raped people who is still probably sailing around on his yacht in the Cayman Islands and has no real plan of probably ending up in jail at any point would you consider that a modern country with an actual functioning government it sounds like you're trying to entrap me to say something negative about America and I'll never do it I love this country I support the troops John it just occurred to me that we might have one listener tell me it's the NSA %HESITATION definitely at the very least we have one listener I feel good I think we're deal and we have teddy Bronson were doing our part in the resistance by boring the **** out of these NSA guys right now reduce so the lord do you think teddy Bronson still listening right now I think when you said earlier that half of woody Allen's movies suck we lost teddy he bails in back he's got the cat sorry we need oh no that's why they carry it off teddy in the cat alright well we should probably go so we can review some applications for dog producers will be back in a week talks in body levy right well I say today I woke up and I thought my backers yeah it woman back does for my back I woke up and I was like my back hurts yet is my backer yes I tweaked it I guess is lebron I guess I bent over and wrong way to solicit tape I'm just constipated did down no I tried right before we started recording it ended uneventfully that's the worst yeah so it's it was a terrible feeling it always takes me like a day and a half to realize that my back isn't hurting my back is full of **** our defense ministry happening you need to fix that's not good I barely ever get constipated that's why I never notice it because I barely ever do it anytime he proved a day with more than one once or twice and a solid two to three times a day we're in and and so it will yes which means if I if I go a day and a half I'm in big trouble yeah yeah I'm on like let alone two days schedule almost a consensus terrific and I eat really healthy so I I wonder why this %HESITATION you know what it is Thomas most of a large most of a large domino's pizza with pepperoni eleven you said I healthy and then the next thing you tells you domino's pizza at what I do to help the okay a today today you arrive in today three smoothies two fried eggs an avocado and six beers and a bottle of tequila point yeah I said eat healthy and insane yeah thanks for tuning in for episode one of I guess to do it that way join us next week for discussion about casting directors and some other stuff today show is produced and edited by this moment intro music was composed by Carl Cadwell and recorded by the distribution outro music by Tom policy in Mexico our cover art was designed by need this is been a production of mama bear studios it's your whole See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A 1 minute excerpt from a recent interview with John Ayling. Hear the full interview by entering 'John Ayling' into our search index at www.ExitCoachRadio.com. We upload new content daily so check back often! Transcript:  John: I'm into financing businesses, so number one, your finances have to be in pretty good shape, especially if it's something we have to have so we can do SEC audits. Now, we're not necessarily saying they need SEC audits done, but they have to have trackability of their sources, of where they bought, what they sold, what barters they rent, and their financial statements. I think they should have an idea of what the opportunities are, what kind of opportunities they see. Because they're in the industry, and we're not. We have to find people to find people that are in that industry, so they have to know the industry pretty well, which they should. It has to be something that would be appealing to them to buy. If they were looking at a company, what would they need?  Need to work ON your business? Start with a free assessment at www.BizGrowth123.com  

GRP 56-Co hosting for this podcast is Army veteran Tim Kolczak the man behind the Veterans Project. On with us for this podcast is Australian Special Forces Veteran Eddy Robinson. Eddy has multiple combat rotations with the 2 Commando Regiment. We discuss Eddy's career path, get into some combat stories, and honor Eddy's best friend Corporal Cameron Baird, VC, MG. Corporal Cameron Baird is the first Australian commando to be awarded a Victoria Cross and the first posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross for Australia. Corporal Baird is also the 100th Australian to be awarded a Victoria Cross. He's one of Australia’s most highly decorated soldiers of the modern era. We discuss Iraq, counter-terrorism, and Afghanistan. Below is an excerpt from the episode: John: I'm reading about the rise and roots of ISIS. A lot of it is credited a to the Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The U.S. named him as one of the reasons for going into Iraq when he was just in charge of a small terror cell prior to that. After naming him it catapulted him into the spotlight. Making him a major player. He then stoked the flames for a civil war being Sunni and Shia Muslims throwing the country into chaos. Eddy Robinson: My experience there was from a contracting perspective 05-06 period. Every morning before 10'o clock you hear the huge IED's being detonated. For the guys on the ground, it was relentless. Zarqawi was the perfect catalyst for making the situation worse. We got our intelligence reports about mass graves being found on the side of the road. People being mass executed by these guys. It was a very difficult situation during that time. Tim Kolczak: I joined in 05 I was 17. My drill sergeants were coming back from their 18-month tours. You could just tell how it affected them. We were the first trainees to get trained up by these guys. I remember the recruiter telling me not to become a truck driver because 1 in 5 was getting killed. One of the guys I knew was killed by a Somali contingent in Samarra. We were fighting people from all over the globe.