Podcast appearances and mentions of kelly let

Al and Kelly talk about Grimoire Groves Disclosure: We received a free review code for Grimoire Groves. #gifted Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:23: What Have We Been Up To 00:12:16: Game News 00:36:28: New Games 00:39:42: Grimoire Groves 01:12:37: Outro Links Harvest Moon Pre-Orders Bugaboo Pocket Release Date Fields of Mistria 2nd Update Go-go Town “Spring Cleaning” Update Sun Haven “Festivals” 2.0 Update Autonomica (Farm Folks) Name Change Coral Island 2025 Roadmap Everdream Village Contact Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello, farmers, and welcome to another episode of the Harvest Season. (0:00:34) Al: My name is Al, and we are here today to talk about cottagecore games. (0:00:36) Kelly: And my name is Kelly. (0:00:40) Kelly: Yay. (0:00:41) Al: Welcome back, Kelly. How are you doing? (0:00:44) Kelly: Good. (0:00:44) Kelly: It’s always nice to be back. (0:00:46) Kelly: It’s so funny, because all of my voice recordings are just– (0:00:46) Al: Always nice to have you. (0:00:52) Kelly: oh, it’s like memory lane looking at all the past podcasts. (0:00:56) Al: You were last on talking about fields of mystery, which we might have stuff to talk about with (0:01:00) Kelly: Yes, yes. (0:01:04) Kelly: Yeah, I saw there was a note, but I (0:01:06) Kelly: I haven’t checked it out since we last spoke. (0:01:10) Kelly: Yeah, how have you been? (0:01:10) Al: But yeah, your first one of the year you did three last year. (0:01:12) Kelly: Oh, yeah, 2025. (0:01:14) Al: Let’s see if we can get you above three this year. (0:01:19) Al: Cool. Well, I have Kelly on this episode because we are going to (0:01:23) Al: talk about grimoire groves, grimoire groves. (0:01:28) Kelly: Yes, it’s like a little tongue twister. (0:01:31) Al: Yes, grimoire groves. (0:01:34) Al: Got to say up front, obviously, we received a free review code (0:01:38) Al: for the game, which actually can. (0:01:40) Al: I don’t know. No, that was a joke. That was a joke. That was a joke. (0:02:00) Kelly: No, no, no, no, I would absolutely pay money for this game. (0:02:11) Al: Spoiler alert. Yeah, so we’re going to talk about that game later in the episode. Before (0:02:15) Kelly: And thank you, Al, for that. (0:02:22) Al: that, we’ve obviously got a bunch of news, but first of all, Kelly, what have you been (0:02:26) Kelly: I have been up to taking care of a stray cat and then just trying to start (0:02:33) Kelly: planning out stuff for the spring for the yard. (0:02:36) Al: Oh, yes. Is it garden talking time? What’s your plans for this year? (0:02:39) Kelly: Yeah, but also we’re trying to… I don’t know yet. I’m still waiting but I have to (0:02:47) Kelly: clean up the yard because I prioritized weeding other areas of the house last (0:02:51) Kelly: fall instead of the garden, so it’s still kind of overgrown. (0:02:56) Kelly: I’m trying to get dirt so I can level out the borders of the (0:02:59) Kelly: yard and then tarp them. So exciting. And besides that, I’ve (0:03:08) Kelly: been playing Infinity Nikki for three solid months. This broke (0:03:11) Kelly: my streak, actually. I still play the game every day, so it (0:03:12) Al: No, I haven’t played it (0:03:17) Kelly: didn’t actually break my streak. I just was the only game I was (0:03:19) Kelly: playing for three months. (0:03:22) Al: Fair enough. I haven’t played Infinity Nakey. I’m pretty sure that Dalin plays it as well. (0:03:29) Al: I think we’ve talked about it before, but if you’ve been playing it for three months (0:03:34) Al: straight, I guess you’ve been enjoying it then. (0:03:36) Kelly: - Yes, yes, I think there were definitely moments, (0:03:39) Al: This is the dress-up game, right? Yeah. (0:03:41) Kelly: yes, there were definitely moments where I was playing it (0:03:43) Kelly: ‘cause I just was like, I don’t really have anything else (0:03:45) Kelly: I’m trying to play at the moment, (0:03:48) Kelly: but there is a lot of content and it looks really nice (0:03:51) Kelly: and it’s just like fun to run around the open world (0:03:53) Kelly: and like collect your stuff. (0:03:55) Kelly: It’s just a collecting game. (0:03:56) Al: Yeah. Look, you’re talking to a Pokemon player, right? Like, I know what collecting is like, (0:04:01) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:04:03) Al: I know the feeling. I think it’s a unique part of it, is the fact that it’s a gacha (0:04:10) Al: collecting game, but with outfits, I think is fun. (0:04:12) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:04:14) Kelly: Yes. (0:04:15) Kelly: And unfortunately, there are some things (0:04:19) Kelly: that you cannot beat with essentially not doing the gotcha, (0:04:22) Kelly: but you don’t have to do everything. (0:04:24) Kelly: It’s not going to stop your story progression. (0:04:27) Kelly: You’re just not going to get bonuses. (0:04:30) Al: Right. They’ve got to have a reason for you to pay money, right? (0:04:30) Kelly: You’re just not going to get the coolest outfit. (0:04:33) Kelly: Did I– absolutely. (0:04:36) Kelly: And did I spend some money to get a frog outfit? (0:04:40) Kelly: Yes, but it was a surprise. (0:04:42) Kelly: There was a dog outfit and I needed it. (0:04:44) Kelly: But also like the game is free also, so. (0:04:47) Al: Yes. And, well, yes, exactly. Tell me that three years ago. The thing about these three games is, (0:04:48) Kelly: You just have to you have to restrain yourself. (0:04:57) Al: yeah, you’ve got to make sure that you’re not going over the top, but you’ve also got to think (0:05:00) Al: about how much time and fun you’ve gotten out of games. Like, you know, if I think about Pokemon Go, (0:05:04) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:05:07) Al: I have obviously, I’ve definitely put too much money into that. But also when I think about the (0:05:07) Kelly: Ah, yes. (0:05:11) Al: amount of time that I spend in that game. Like, I spend hours every single day. (0:05:16) Kelly: Oh, I was Pokemon go is probably my highest. Yeah (0:05:17) Al: For eight, for nine years now. (0:05:22) Kelly: Like I don’t and I I I go back and forth on playing it but that game has (0:05:27) Kelly: That’s my most played game because of that (0:05:28) Al: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, ever. Yeah, that don’t think is… (0:05:31) Kelly: Like it beat my Sims like legacy of like, you know playing that from like 10 years old or whatever (0:05:38) Al: I think the thing is that because it’s so accessible, but also because you’re playing (0:05:41) Kelly: It’s so accessible it’s in your hand (0:05:45) Al: it for so many years, even if you only played half an hour every day after 10 years, which (0:05:47) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yes, exactly (0:05:54) Al: in a year and a bit, it’ll be 10 years since the game came out, if you’ve only played half (0:05:58) Kelly: That’s disgusting, don’t say that. (0:06:05) Al: an error, but you do it every single day for the for the for. (0:06:08) Al: 10 years, that is nearly 2000 hours. That’s the thing, the (0:06:12) Kelly: that’s insane but yeah no it’s it’s true yeah exactly but yeah it’s so it’s like (0:06:15) Al: numbers just add up so fast. And let me tell you, it’s way more (0:06:20) Al: than half an hour I’ve played every single day. (0:06:20) Kelly: okay yeah yeah and it’s like okay so like if I put some money in it every (0:06:26) Kelly: year like I’m getting so much out of it you know and I played love Nikki which (0:06:31) Kelly: is what is the phone game before like there’s been other phone games before (0:06:36) Kelly: this too but that was the one I got really into which is different like (0:06:40) Kelly: setup wise, but essentially it’s just an outfit game again. (0:06:42) Kelly: Gotcha outfit game and again, it’s like okay. I played that game for like four years. I put some money into it (0:06:49) Kelly: But I played it a lot like I spent so much time playing that game (0:06:52) Al: Yeah, as long as you can afford what you’re doing, that’s the important thing. (0:06:56) Kelly: Exactly, but yeah, what have you been up to? (0:07:00) Al: I have been procrastinating playing Grimoire Crows. (0:07:06) Al: Every so often, I end up in this situation where I’m like, this is a game that I need to play, (0:07:11) Al: and then I end up not playing it very much. And instead of procrastinating by playing other games, (0:07:17) Al: I procrastinate by doing other things instead. So I’ve not really done much this week at all. (0:07:20) Kelly: Yep. (0:07:23) Al: I have started a shiny hunt for Regigigas in Pokémon Sword. I’m at the point where I need to (0:07:38) Al: actually get through the rest of the legendaries. I don’t have a shiny if I want to finish my (0:07:43) Al: living decks, because I’m 110 left. And so I’m going to run out of non-legendaries very soon. (0:07:48) Kelly: Oh, my god. (0:07:52) Al: And so I thought, let’s start this one, because I can’t just… Yeah, exactly. (0:07:55) Kelly: Start breaking it up. (0:07:58) Kelly: Yeah, no, I understand that. (0:08:00) Kelly: I used to do that with Angry Birds. (0:08:04) Al: You’re going to have to explain that. (0:08:10) Kelly: Since Angry Birds came out, any phone that I get, (0:08:13) Kelly: I download Angry Birds and beat the whole game again. (0:08:15) Al: You replay it all again, oh my word! (0:08:16) Kelly: 3 stars? (0:08:18) Kelly: I’m less about it now, I just kinda go back to it when I’m bored. So like, you know, I have my phone for a while, eventually I get all the stars. But there’s certain levels that even after all these years of replaying it, they’re just difficult. And they piss me off. So I’ll break it down. (0:08:25) Al: look it’s fun it’s a fun game but I can’t say i’ve played it in the last 15 years (0:08:48) Kelly: I always break those up when I go back to get the 3 stars for them. So it’s the same thing where it’s like, I don’t want to do the really tough thing repeatedly and then just get frustrated at the game. Like it’s boring, you know? It gets boring. (0:08:56) Al: Fair enough. My 15 years might have been a bit of an exaggeration, however it is only (0:09:04) Al: 15 years since it’s 15 years since the first game came out. I can’t believe it’s been 15 years, (0:09:06) Kelly: Yes, yes, because I played it on the first iPhone I had, or an only iPhone. (0:09:09) Al: that’s wild. It was it was definitely it was one of the it was one of the early games that made you (0:09:20) Al: go ’this is why I want a touchscreen’ and it was that and (0:09:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. (0:09:26) Al: Fruit Ninja and Digital Jump. Those were like the three that made me realize I get it, (0:09:27) Kelly: Yes, I never got into Fruit Ninja. (0:09:36) Al: I would like a touchscreen please. (0:09:38) Kelly: Yep. Well, that was the thrill of like, you know, with the iPhone too. It was like, oh, this is so sick. I can, I can play these fun games. I can do this for a peggle. (0:09:48) Kelly: I played peggle so much on that phone. It’s pinball. (0:09:52) Al: Okay, no, I didn’t. I didn’t play that one. I don’t think I need more games. (0:09:54) Kelly: Oh, you should look it up. I think you like peggle. (0:10:03) Al: Yeah, fun. All right. I think that’s all. Is that all I’ve got to talk about? I’m shiny (0:10:09) Al: hunting. I think so. I played… You were the one that you were you were spying me on steam. (0:10:16) Al: Was it like half an hour I played of Grimoire Groves or something? (0:10:16) Kelly: Oh, yeah, I was watching you all week because every time I’d sign on to the Steam, it’s (0:10:22) Kelly: like you’re the only person I know that has the game also. (0:10:22) Al: Oh, I’ve got an hour and 20 minutes apparently on steam there. Okay. That was yesterday. (0:10:26) Kelly: So for like the whole week, it was like 12 minutes playing. (0:10:30) Kelly: Yes, now, I see it now, but I was like watching it. (0:10:37) Kelly: I know because like two days ago, I was like, he’s still, he is cutting it close. (0:10:43) Al: Look, well, the problem was you messaged me and you said, “I’m loving this game. I’m (0:10:48) Al: played it so much.” And I’m like, “Okay, cool. I don’t need to then.” (0:10:52) Al: Yeah. No, I legitimately think that’s all I’ve (0:10:53) Kelly: Also, I’m the problem. (0:11:02) Al: done this week is like shiny hunting and Pokémon Go. (0:11:05) Kelly: sometimes it’s like you just get that mental block where you just can’t (0:11:08) Al: Yeah. Oh, I did do… I know. I did do the the Scarlet and Violet Quack Quack Quack Quaville (0:11:09) Kelly: even you’re just like oh I gotta I gotta do this but I can’t (0:11:20) Al: raids. I don’t think I’ve ever figured out how to say the name of that. (0:11:21) Kelly: What? What is that? I actually did not play Scarlet and Violet. (0:11:22) Al: Pokémon. Did you not? Um, it’s the, uh, it’s based on like carnival dancers. Uh, let me send you. (0:11:36) Kelly: Okay (0:11:38) Kelly: But like what is it you do the dancing like you (0:11:40) Al: It’s a Pokémon. Oh, no, no, just like a raid, like a normal Pokémon raid. (0:11:45) Kelly: Oh, but it’s like dressed up like a carnival dancer (0:11:49) Al: No, no, clearly you completely misunderstood this. This is just a Pokémon. (0:11:51) Kelly: Okay (0:11:52) Al: A Pokémon that is based on a carnival dancer. That’s the Pokémon, (0:11:57) Kelly: Oh, but that’s what you’re waiting for (0:11:57) Al: but they’ve done, there’s a raid to defeat it and capture it, yes. (0:12:01) Kelly: Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I thought this was like a costume Pokemon. You know what I mean? (0:12:05) Al: Oh, no, it’s not. They’ve not done that in the main games yet. Um, yeah, that’s it. (0:12:06) Kelly: Okay (0:12:12) Al: That’s the entirety of that. It was a raid. I did it. There we go. Done. Uh, (0:12:17) Al: should we talk about some news? Because the section is being a little bit of a disaster. (0:12:21) Al: Um… (0:12:23) Al: So, first up, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, we have some news on Harvest Moon, (0:12:30) Al: The Lost Valley, and Skytree Village, the ports or remasters, however they want to call them, (0:12:38) Al: for Switch, which for some reason they’ve decided to do, is up for pre-order now. (0:12:44) Al: It is $40 for the two of them, which still feels like too much, but (0:12:51) Al: I feel like it says a lot. (0:12:52) Al: When they’re selling two full games that they originally sold individually on separate consoles, (0:12:59) Al: and they’ve ported them both to the Switch, and they’re selling them both together for $40. (0:13:03) Al: That shows you how much people definitely want to buy these games. (0:13:07) Kelly: Yeah, cuz a lot of these remakes are like still a full 60 dollars alone. Yeah (0:13:11) Al: Exactly. The good ones are. (0:13:15) Al: So it’s coming out in June. Previously, we just knew it was coming out in the summer. (0:13:19) Al: We don’t have an exact date as far as I can see, just says June. (0:13:23) Al: And if you pre-order it now, you get a free acrylic standee (0:13:27) Al: with some of the worst art I’ve seen for a Harvestmen game ever. (0:13:31) Kelly: I can tell you really like this one. (0:13:33) Al: I haven’t even played these games, but I know for a fact they’re bad (0:13:36) Al: because I talked to Rachelle about them and they did not like them and yeah. (0:13:39) Kelly: I can never remember which ones are bad but the art for this one does not look good. (0:13:47) Al: These were I think the first two they did after the split between Harvestmen and (0:13:53) Al: so these were the first ones that weren’t by the original team. (0:13:56) Al: They were by Natsume and let’s just say they hadn’t made any games before and you can tell. (0:14:08) Al: I do, I will, I’m so strongly of the opinion that I think that people sometimes are judging (0:14:17) Al: Harvestmen too harshly purely because they’re angry that they kept the name and didn’t give (0:14:23) Al: back but that’s how these things work and I’m sorry you dislike that but I think if you actually (0:14:29) Al: played some of the newer games they’re not as bad as you think but these ones I’m pretty sure are. (0:14:37) Kelly: - Fair enough, I think that’s a fair point. (0:14:40) Al: The way I described it in the last episode I did with Micah is (0:14:43) Al: they are so close to having a good game. (0:14:47) Kelly: Oh, with the new ones. (0:14:48) Al: Yeah, they’re so close. So close. (0:14:51) Kelly: Maybe next– maybe next game, they’ll hit it. (0:14:52) Al: what we said for three games now. Each game they do is better than the last. Yes, but (0:15:00) Kelly: OK, so they’re growing slowly. (0:15:02) Al: they do still make some bizarre decisions in those games. They’ve also released a whole (0:15:07) Al: bunch of screenshots. And yeah, I mean, they basically look like the original games did, (0:15:13) Al: but with, I guess, more pixels, but not more pixels on the actual models, just more pixels. (0:15:20) Al: So it’s like– (0:15:20) Kelly: No, they look like knees, but like with a little bit better quality. (0:15:22) Al: Yeah, yeah, that’s exact. It looks better quality, but not in a good way. (0:15:30) Kelly: No. (0:15:31) Al: It looks like HD kind of, but it’s like you’ve got HD upscaled basically, right? (0:15:39) Al: Like you were recording on a really old camera and you’ve upscaled it to HD, (0:15:43) Al: so it’s like everything is shiny and lots of pixels, but it still doesn’t look good. (0:15:52) Kelly: - Yeah, no, it’s not right. (0:15:53) Al: These were a DS and a 3DS game, I think, originally, so they have had to merge the two screens. (0:16:02) Al: However, I think the bottom screen was mostly just like for the map, (0:16:06) Al: and so they now have a mini map on the screen, so… (0:16:09) Kelly: Okay, I feel like a lot of games like this have like the map or like controls or something at the bottom (0:16:14) Al: Yeah, yeah, so I guess we’ll see. (0:16:19) Al: I don’t, I’m gonna buy this. (0:16:22) Kelly: I like, did you notice that it’s so you said it’s releasing in June, but then at the top (0:16:23) Al: I’m gonna do my duty for the podcast, you’re welcome. (0:16:33) Kelly: it says ships in April to June. (0:16:36) Al: Yeah, if you scroll down to the product description, it says release date June 2025. (0:16:41) Kelly: interesting so this game is worth that $25 basically (0:16:43) Al: Apparently, the acrylic standee is worth $13. (0:16:48) Al: So yeah, well, I don’t know what to say. You probably shouldn’t buy this. (0:17:02) Al: But I will. Next, we have Bugaboo Pocket. (0:17:07) Al: Have announced that the release date is on the 2nd of April. I don’t know if you’ve (0:17:11) Al: seen this game, Kelly. It’s a bug game. It’s like a bug Pokémon, but like on… (0:17:12) Kelly: I have not. What is this? (0:17:20) Al: How do I describe this? It’s like virtual pets. So like Tamagotchis. (0:17:24) Kelly: Oh, okay, I see it now. Now I got the screen page, but it’s got like way more details. (0:17:30) Al: Yes, yeah, it’s very much like modernized in terms of how you would interact. (0:17:37) Al: Quality of graphics and is much more intense from that sort of aspect of things. (0:17:43) Al: But I think you also can, for lack of a better phrase, because I’m very tired. (0:17:51) Al: It’s the end of the weekend. Do science on them. I don’t know how to describe it. (0:17:57) Kelly: Like, experiments? (0:17:58) Al: No experiment. No, that would be immoral. No, inspect them and look at them. (0:18:06) Kelly: Oh, OK. (0:18:07) Al: There is like if you have… (0:18:09) Kelly: Oh, and pin them. (0:18:10) Kelly: It looks like you can pin them. (0:18:11) Al: Yeah, but those are dead. Like you’re not pinning a live one, right? (0:18:13) Kelly: Yeah, that would be immoral also. (0:18:18) Kelly: I hope so. (0:18:19) Kelly: I’m just looking at pictures. (0:18:22) Al: So yeah, it’s much more involved than a Tamagotchi. (0:18:28) Kelly: The graphics look really cool. (0:18:30) Al: Yeah, Cody is excited to play this. (0:18:33) Kelly: I’m sure that makes sense. (0:18:36) Kelly: This looks really cool, honestly. (0:18:37) Al: Anyway, coming on the 2nd of April. Next, we have the Fields of Mistria 2nd update. (0:18:45) Al: It’s out now, Kelly. Have you played it yet? (0:18:48) Kelly: Not since, uh, November, end of November, since we talked. (0:18:54) Al: Yeah, that was just the first update that was then, so. (0:18:56) Kelly: Yeah, ‘cause I had finished everything that you could possibly do at that point, (0:19:00) Kelly: and I was like, “Okay, I gotta, I don’t wanna kill the game for myself.” (0:19:00) Al: Yep. (0:19:04) Al: We were on the same page at that point, right? Basically, I think we’d both done everything you could do in the game and didn’t want to destroy our enthusiasm for the game. But does that mean you’re definitely not going to get jump into the game with this new update? (0:19:13) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:19:20) Kelly: I’m probably going to wait. (0:19:23) Kelly: I mean, I started breeding for different color animals (0:19:27) Kelly: and stuff, like the tears. (0:19:28) Kelly: So I had been failing my time with that, (0:19:30) Kelly: but mostly because I didn’t have a new game. (0:19:34) Kelly: But yeah, I’m going to wait and see. (0:19:35) Kelly: I got games coming out soon. (0:19:37) Kelly: We got “Rethopia.” (0:19:38) Al: Yes, oh, yes, that’s that (0:19:41) Kelly: I got a solid amount of games currently. (0:19:43) Kelly: So I gotta actually, like, focus on them. (0:19:46) Al: That’s fair. We’ve already covered what’s out in this update, so let’s not spend too long on it. (0:19:50) Kelly: Mm-hmm, okay. (0:19:50) Al: Next we have Gogotown. Their next update Spring Cleaning is out now. I presume you haven’t played (0:19:59) Al: this game. It is fun. It definitely feels very polished for the way that I talked about it in (0:20:07) Al: the episode I did on it. It’s very polished what is there, but it feels like it’s a long way to go (0:20:13) Al: to feel complete. (0:20:15) Kelly: Okay, that’s fair. I mean it seems very ambitious looking so hopefully they just get there (0:20:16) Al: Yeah, a number of things in this update, you can now store a tool and a vehicle on (0:20:29) Al: yourself, it says in a patented Townco dimensional pocket. Basically, you had vehicles, but you (0:20:36) Al: had to like park them somewhere. So now you can keep one of them on yourself. So you have (0:20:40) Al: to keep running back to the parking spaces, which is a nice update. There’s also (0:20:46) Al: a Town info app that gives you a bunch of information on the Town. 360 degree camera (0:20:52) Al: rotation, which is good. I like this. Oh yes, what was that? You’ve asked for it. We’ve (0:20:56) Kelly: I like their note on this. (0:21:00) Al: put in an experimental setting for you to rotate the camera 360 degrees. Fair enough. (0:21:05) Kelly: The screenshot is definitely making me dizzy though, looking at it too long. (0:21:07) Al: Yes, you can definitely tell us experimental. There’s some things that move out of view when (0:21:13) Al: when they shouldn’t do and stuff like that. (0:21:17) Al: A work in progress. (0:21:17) Kelly: But I mean like they they they put it out there that it’s experimental so. (0:21:20) Al: Yep, yep, and they’ve also added (0:21:23) Al: infinite seeds for your farming, which I am intrigued by because I thought (0:21:28) Al: when you planted a seed, the plant never never seemed to die. (0:21:33) Al: It just seemed to always grow new stuff. (0:21:35) Al: So you essentially had infinite stuff, right? (0:21:38) Al: Because as soon as you had a seed, you just (0:21:39) Al: planted it and you had that plant forever. (0:21:40) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:21:41) Al: But maybe I’m misremembering. (0:21:44) Kelly: Maybe they changed it. (0:21:46) Al: updates as well. But yeah, those are the main ones that I noticed. (0:21:49) Al: Next, we have Sunhaven have released their 2.0 update. (0:21:53) Al: And you’re like, oh, 2.0, that sounds like it might be a big update. (0:21:57) Al: It’s festivals. (0:22:00) Al: It doesn’t particularly feel huge. (0:22:02) Al: I’m intrigued as to why they decided to go for 2.0 at this point. (0:22:06) Al: OK. (0:22:10) Al: It adds a furniture festival, a garden (0:22:12) Al: festival, a pet festival, a mushroom festival, a snow festival. (0:22:16) Al: And a bunch of other (0:22:19) Al: furniture and stuff like that related to that. (0:22:22) Kelly: Okay, interesting how much of the game is actually out? (0:22:26) Al: Well, it’s no longer in early access. (0:22:28) Al: So I feel like I think they might have I feel like they’ve done everything that (0:22:32) Al: they said in the Kickstarter, like it’s the story is done and stuff like that. (0:22:38) Al: When I see people talking in the comments, they’re no longer complaining about things (0:22:43) Al: they’re talking about translations being bad. (0:22:49) Kelly: Yeah, this one’s been on my wish list, (0:22:50) Kelly: so I’ve been just waiting to see. (0:22:54) Al: I think I own it, yes, I do. (0:22:56) Al: I kick-started this one, I just haven’t played it yet. (0:22:59) Al: So this came out initially in 2023. (0:23:03) Al: Or was that, no, that was the 1.0, I think. (0:23:06) Al: Yeah, 2021 is when it first came out. (0:23:08) Al: And this was when I was still well and truly (0:23:11) Al: primarily Switch, but it wasn’t on Switch yet. (0:23:15) Al: And then I got a Steam Deck, (0:23:16) Al: and then suddenly I was very much on the Steam Deck, (0:23:18) Al: except for games that weren’t on the Steam Deck. (0:23:21) Al: but I had kind of really moved the path. (0:23:24) Al: I’m just thinking about this game, because it was, you know, it had been like two years or something since it started. (0:23:32) Al: Sometimes I do think that there is like a time period where if you’re not going to play a game (0:23:36) Al: within that time period, you’re probably never going to get to it. (0:23:38) Kelly: Yeah, no, definitely it definitely gets harder and harder to go back to it (0:23:44) Al: So maybe I’ll get to it one day, who knows, there’s so many games. (0:23:48) Al: Next we have farm folks or, as it is now called, (0:23:54) Al: Autonomica? Good job, going from a game name that was just slightly awkward to say to one that I don’t know how to pronounce. (0:24:02) Al: Autonomica? Auto… Autonomica. (0:24:04) Kelly: Oh, Tom, oh, oh, Tom, I don’t know, I don’t know. (0:24:08) Al: Autonomica. That’s what you were trying to say, wasn’t it? Autonomica. (0:24:13) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, something like that. (0:24:14) Al: No, I don’t think it’s Autonomica. (0:24:18) Kelly: I don’t think it is either, (0:24:19) Kelly: but I was just trying to see if I could say it. (0:24:20) Kelly: And apparently I can’t. (0:24:24) Al: For those who don’t know the story behind this game, it was started as farm folks, and then the company that was making it went bust. (0:24:32) Al: And then another company basically, I don’t know whether they bought the company that went bust or whether they bought the rights to the game and the code and stuff, (0:24:40) Al: but they continued development. So the company that’s making this is not the company that did the Kickstarter for this game. (0:24:46) Al: Although I’m pretty sure I saw somewhere that they are going to honor the Kickstarter, which is always good. (0:24:52) Al: Um, don’t take– (0:24:52) Kelly: nice isn’t there another game with like a similar ish name to this new name but (0:24:54) Al: I’d need to confirm that, but I feel like I saw that somewhere. (0:25:05) Kelly: also like how do you go from farm folks which is like the most generic farm game (0:25:08) Al: Yeah. (0:25:10) Kelly: name I’ve ever heard now which is not saying a lot because a lot of these farm (0:25:14) Kelly: games have a lot of similar names it is but how do you go from that to what do (0:25:16) Al: Naming is hard, all right. (0:25:20) Kelly: What are you calling it? Autonomica? (0:25:22) Kelly: Autonomica. Oh, it’s a musical artist. Yes, I knew I’d seen this name somewhere before. (0:25:24) Al: Autonomica. Autonomica? (0:25:30) Al: Oh. (0:25:36) Al: So they’ve made they have went the new (0:25:38) Al: company that took over the game have basically been moving it in a different direction. (0:25:43) Al: So it’s it is still farming. (0:25:46) Kelly: It looks like Fortnite with Farfian. (0:25:46) Al: It’s not. (0:25:49) Al: Yeah, they’ve never really explained their reasoning, but they’re like, it’s not just farming. (0:25:53) Al: It’s so much more than that. (0:25:55) Al: So therefore we think farm folks is a misleading name and I’m like, OK, but I don’t. (0:25:58) Kelly: Okay. That makes more sense. But I don’t get anything about farming from this name. (0:26:04) Al: No, but you do get the automation part of it, which I think they’re really big enough. (0:26:09) Al: The college so that their new blurb on steam is Autonomica is an open world life simulator (0:26:16) Al: game that seamlessly. Oh, my word, I hate this so much seamlessly merges resource (0:26:22) Al: management and automation with farm building, extensive customization, (0:26:26) Al: PvP slash PvE battles and elusive phantoms. What is this jumble of words? (0:26:34) Al: Play solo or with friends to build your mega farm factory with almost no limits. (0:26:38) Al: It is a farming game. It’s just like a industrial scale farming game. (0:26:44) Al: Right. And I get why they wanted to change. (0:26:48) Al: Why they wanted it to be clear that this was not the same game that they took over. (0:26:52) Al: But also it is farming game. (0:26:57) Al: Like you can’t say it’s not a farming game. It is a farming game. (0:27:01) Al: Build your mega farm factory, they say in the new blurb. (0:27:04) Al: Like I don’t understand the issue with it. (0:27:06) Kelly: All of these screenshots, too, are just like, what is that game? (0:27:09) Al: Yes, Factorio. Yeah. (0:27:11) Kelly: Factorio? (0:27:14) Kelly: It’s like that, but with farming more. (0:27:16) Al: Open world 3D Factorio. (0:27:20) Al: Which I honestly am excited by. I think this game could be really good. (0:27:25) Al: I just don’t understand why they really didn’t like the name and they decided to change. (0:27:29) Al: But I don’t think this is a better name. (0:27:32) Al: That’s all I’m going to say. I get why they didn’t like the old game. (0:27:35) Al: Old name. I’m not sure this is better. (0:27:37) Kelly: Honestly, they can take this if they want to, but I think it should have been (0:27:44) Kelly: auto-pharmica, if anything. (0:27:46) Al: I would, yeah, I would certainly be more better. Yeah, I don’t disagree with you. (0:27:49) Kelly: It would be better than this. (0:27:54) Kelly: I would assume that this is some sort of space or underwater survival game (0:28:02) Al: Oh, interesting. Yeah. Anyway, they changed the name. RIP farm folks. Long live farm folks. (0:28:03) Kelly: just going off the name alone. (0:28:08) Kelly: It’s so weird too, because I don’t even like farm books. (0:28:14) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:28:18) Kelly: I digress. (0:28:19) Al: Coral Island have announced their 2025 roadmap. They have 1.2 planned to come out in the first (0:28:27) Al: half of the year, bringing multiplayer and revamped romance. (0:28:32) Al: Which I was looking at what they say about the romance. So let’s talk about the multiplayer (0:28:37) Al: first. There’s probably not a huge amount to say. Basically, it looks like it’s stardew (0:28:41) Al: style multiplayer. You’re all multiple people on the farm. Great, fine. I’m sure it will be (0:28:46) Al: great for people who love. I am not particularly interested just because I don’t want to actually (0:28:51) Al: play my games with other people. I like these games because I’m playing them on my own. (0:28:52) Kelly: I have no desire, I have no desire to play these. These types of games are for me to play by myself, so I can be a maniac, like, let me be a psychopath by my- (0:28:59) Al: Exactly. Exactly. (0:29:03) Al: I have tried so many times to play multiplayer Stardew, and I just can’t because I have to be (0:29:08) Kelly: Oh, no. No, no, no. (0:29:10) Al: the one who has this. The problem is, right? You have to organize to play at the same time, (0:29:16) Al: and that is just not fun. Organizing times for these. (0:29:16) Kelly: No, because either you’re micromanaging all of it, too. (0:29:25) Kelly: It’s like, how do you organize the time to play together and also organize how you’re (0:29:30) Kelly: playing together? (0:29:32) Al: Yeah, the best way to do that is just be like, right, you do the farming you do the mine, there you go, go, go do your jobs. (0:29:32) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:29:38) Al: And yeah, I don’t, I don’t particularly find it fun, I get why people might. And so if you are excited about Coral Island multiplayer. (0:29:46) Al: There you go, it’s coming. I hope you enjoy it. I’m not going to do this. (0:29:48) Kelly: I think the only multiplayer game I like is Monster Hunter, to be quite honest. (0:29:58) Al: So I was also looking at the romance revamp that they’ve got. (0:30:02) Al: And I think the only difference is, so there’s a bunch of heart events that existed already. (0:30:10) Al: And it looks like you have to see the previous heart events to unlock certain, to unlock (0:30:17) Al: more hearts. (0:30:18) Al: So once you get to five hearts, you have to watch the heart events for them before you (0:30:24) Al: can do heart six to eight. (0:30:26) Al: And then you have to watch another heart event and give a locket. (0:30:32) Al: Before you can start dating and do the next two hearts, which then you have to watch the (0:30:37) Al: other events and propose before you can get married and do the other five. (0:30:43) Al: I do think this is better because what I found when I was doing this, because I got married (0:30:49) Al: in Coral Island, is I had no clue that there were heart events still to do, which is probably (0:30:55) Al: still going to be a problem here, but let’s put that aside for a minute. (0:30:59) Kelly: There’s no like there’s no like heart marker next in like the (0:31:02) Al: So there are hearts, but it’s not like, it’s just like how many hearts you have. (0:31:09) Al: Like there was no like indication that there’s an event you should be doing. (0:31:12) Al: So like I got to 10 hearts and then I went and tried to propose and they were like, oh, (0:31:17) Al: I’m not ready yet. (0:31:18) Al: And I’m like, but this is the point where I meant to be able to propose. (0:31:20) Al: Why can’t I do it? (0:31:22) Al: And I googled and it was like, oh, because you’re missing heart events. (0:31:24) Al: And I hadn’t done any of the heart events. (0:31:27) Al: And I don’t know how it happens in Carta Island, but in Stardew, (0:31:29) Kelly: How– so I was going to say, it’s similarly set up, (0:31:32) Al: I was always finding the heart events. (0:31:37) Kelly: like you just trigger the event when you encounter them (0:31:40) Al: Yes, and there are a few heart events in Stardew that were very niche and you (0:31:41) Kelly: in a certain location. (0:31:46) Al: wouldn’t immediately find, but like by that point, you’re like, oh, (0:31:51) Al: I know that these things are coming, so I should be expecting them. (0:31:53) Al: I hadn’t done a single one in Carta Island. (0:31:56) Al: How had I not triggered any of the heart events? (0:31:59) Kelly: Yeah, that’s crazy. That doesn’t seem like a good sub. (0:32:00) Al: It was very confusing. (0:32:02) Al: And also, I don’t think the heart events are required in Stardew for marriage. (0:32:10) Kelly: I don’t think they are either. I think they’re just, like, for you. (0:32:12) Al: Yes, and you can get extra points by doing them. (0:32:16) Al: And they’re nice, and you want to know about the story because all the characters are good characters. (0:32:16) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:32:22) Al: I was going to say great, but no, not all the characters are great. (0:32:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:32:24) Al: All of them are good characters. (0:32:28) Al: Um, but yeah, I just, it was really, so if they have a. (0:32:32) Al: Way to make it clear. (0:32:34) Al: That you’re now expecting to see events, then that would be good. (0:32:38) Al: Um, I don’t know. (0:32:40) Al: Um, we’ll see, I guess they don’t talk about that. (0:32:44) Al: I don’t think, but it’s interesting restricting it that much. (0:32:48) Al: So you, you have to see the events before you can continue your heart progress. (0:32:53) Al: Uh, I don’t know how I feel about that. (0:32:55) Kelly: Yeah, that seems kind of iffy the way you just described your past experience, so I guess we’ll see. (0:33:00) Al: Aha, the revamped romance system unlocks at heart level two and you’ll see a prompt (0:33:05) Al: in the relationship UI whenever a hangout event is available. (0:33:10) Al: That is good. (0:33:11) Al: It’s now making it clear when you can do something and when there’s something to do. (0:33:15) Al: That is good. (0:33:16) Al: And if you click on them inside the menu and it shows like all the stuff that you’ve done (0:33:22) Al: with them, you know, the stuff you’ve learned that they love and stuff like that, and like (0:33:25) Al: there, the birthday and stuff, it says unlock requirement, see hangout event. (0:33:30) Al: I don’t know what happened to three but anyway, whatever. (0:33:37) Al: I think that means for heart two and for heart four. (0:33:41) Al: That’s what I think it’s talking about. (0:33:43) Al: So they are definitely making it much more visible, that aspect of things. (0:33:47) Al: So that is good. (0:33:48) Al: They’re also adding more heart events for after marriage, which is also good because (0:33:52) Al: one of the things I’ve really complained about Carl Island is that your spouse ends up turning (0:33:55) Al: into a hollow husk after you get married. (0:33:58) Kelly: That’s pretty sad. (0:34:01) Al: - It was so sad. (0:34:02) Al: The minute you got married, (0:34:05) Al: they just stand in your house all day doing nothing. (0:34:07) Kelly: Oh no. (0:34:09) Al: It was the worst. (0:34:09) Al: I’ve taken your life (0:34:11) Al: and you are now just an ornament in my house. (0:34:15) Al: It was so sad. (0:34:16) Al: So hopefully that’s improved a lot with this. (0:34:20) Al: And then the 1.3 update will include your kids growing up. (0:34:27) Kelly: that’s cool that’s what I literally just started like wondering if it’s like generational like do (0:34:27) Al: And it is, I wonder how far it will go. (0:34:30) Al: I don’t know. (0:34:36) Al: I would expect not. (0:34:38) Al: I expect it would just be, oh, they grow up to be a teenager and then they stop sort of thing. (0:34:42) Al: That is my expectation. (0:34:44) Kelly: that makes sense because that’s a big that’s that’s a lot doing (0:34:44) Al: I don’t think they’ll go full hog. (0:34:49) Al: Especially as they could actually make it like real-time in-game, right? (0:34:52) Al: For every year, they are a year older. (0:34:54) Al: And so you would actually have to do 18 in-game years. (0:35:00) Al: Before your child is an adult. (0:35:04) Kelly: - Hmm. (0:35:05) Al: So they could just go, I’m sorry, if you’ve played 18 years in this game, you’ve played too much. (0:35:12) Al: But I mean, I don’t know, maybe it will work. (0:35:14) Al: I mean, I do know that some games where you have kids that grow up, (0:35:18) Al: you then die and you become your kid. (0:35:20) Al: They could do something like that. (0:35:22) Kelly: That’s true, that would be cool. (0:35:23) Al: And then you inherit the farm and, you know, 20% of it is taken in tax. (0:35:31) Al: Yeah, so they’ve not got a huge amount of information in the 1.3. (0:35:35) Al: They also said there’s going to be a Merfolk festival. (0:35:39) Al: But they’ve not got any details on how the kids grow up. (0:35:42) Al: But that is coming in the second half of this year. (0:35:44) Al: Have you played, you’ve not played Coral Island? (0:35:46) Kelly: No. I really try to avoid early access. (0:35:47) Al: No. (0:35:50) Al: Well, it’s not early access anymore. (0:35:51) Kelly: Uh, oh, it’s out, out? (0:35:53) Al: Yeah. (0:35:54) Al: The 1.0 came out just over a year ago. (0:35:58) Kelly: Okay, I must have missed that. (0:35:58) Al: and then they go and they go on. (0:36:00) Kelly: I thought it was still in early access, still. Okay. (0:36:00) Al: 1.1 sometime last year? No. The 1.0 was technically not early access, but realistically (0:36:06) Al: was early access. The 1.1 feels like what the 1.0 should have been, but the multiplayer (0:36:12) Al: was always coming after early access. So I don’t feel like you would be missing out if (0:36:17) Al: you played now compared to if you played two years ago, you definitely were missing out (0:36:22) Al: in a lot. (0:36:22) Kelly: Okay, okay, maybe one day (0:36:24) Al: All right. And we also, we all maybe, maybe, probably not. We also have (0:36:30) Al: a new game by the developers of EverDream Valley. In fact, this is a sequel to EverDream (0:36:36) Al: Valley called EverDream Village. I get what they’re doing with that name, but also I am (0:36:42) Al: going to constantly mess up. Which one is which? They also feel the wrong way around, (0:36:47) Kelly: The valley and village is like too close to each other. (0:36:53) Al: you start in a village and then you go out to a valley. (0:36:53) Kelly: Yes, it should have been, this should be a prequel. (0:36:57) Kelly: Yeah, this is the prequel in my, (0:36:59) Kelly: I literally thought like this should be the prequel (0:37:00) Al: Set 10 years after the events of EverDream Valley, EverDream Village brings a whole (0:37:07) Al: new chapter with living, breathing village and a world beyond your farm. Now you’re built, (0:37:13) Al: this is the thing. It’s like the problem was EverDream Valley wasn’t really a valley. It (0:37:17) Al: was EverDream Farm. Right. And if it was that way, it was EverDream Farm and then EverDream (0:37:21) Al: Village. That makes more logical sense to be our expansion on that. Right. You’ll build (0:37:22) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:37:28) Al: relationships explore mysterious islands. (0:37:30) Al: The Valley may have been home but it’s time to explore a world full of new adventures, (0:37:44) Kelly: - Yeah, it doesn’t seem right, there’s something off. (0:37:57) Al: NPCs and endless possibilities. I don’t really get whirled and (0:38:00) Al: abilities from village. I know what they mean. I know what they (0:38:02) Kelly: - No, but I think they just mean the world of Everdream. (0:38:08) Al: mean. I know what they mean. Build your ideal cozy farm in a (0:38:12) Al: living village. Form bonds with fellow villagers to lend a hand (0:38:16) Al: as you grow crops, care for animals and craft a corner of (0:38:18) Al: paradise. Sail across enchanted islands to discover new resources (0:38:22) Al: and adventures along the way. Maybe it’s definitely not a (0:38:25) Kelly: Maybe there is a world. (0:38:28) Al: village. (0:38:31) Al: Anyway, I mean, you can ride a pig in Evergreen Valley, so they hopefully have something like that in this game. (0:38:36) Kelly: I’m looking at that right now. (0:38:38) Kelly: That actually looks really cute. (0:38:39) Kelly: That’s a good feature. (0:38:40) Al: I haven’t played this game. It’s been on my list for forever. (0:38:44) Kelly: The first one. (0:38:45) Al: Yes, well, the second one is now yet, so of course I’ve not played that. (0:38:48) Kelly: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:38:50) Al: It’s just coming soon. They’ve not said when, it’s coming just soon. (0:38:54) Kelly: One day. (0:38:54) Al: One day. All right. (0:38:56) Kelly: Do you see this tag at the bottom on their news updates? (0:39:00) Al: The second one is that in the Evergreen Valley page? (0:39:04) Kelly: On the Steam page, yeah. (0:39:07) Al: Where am I looking? Where am I looking? (0:39:07) Kelly: I guess this is who they base the pig off of. (0:39:11) Kelly: Let me send it to you. (0:39:12) Kelly: I’ll just send it to you. (0:39:12) Al: There’s too many pages here. That’s the problem. (0:39:13) Kelly: I would do that. (0:39:15) Kelly: It really is. (0:39:15) Al: On their news. Oh, happy birthday, Peter Curleytail. (0:39:18) Kelly: Recent events, yes. (0:39:20) Al: I don’t know what to say. That is quite a pig. (0:39:24) Kelly: He’s a little frightening, but kind of cute. (0:39:26) Al: Yes, that is quite the pig. (0:39:29) Kelly: But I like the interpretation of him. (0:39:31) Al: Yeah, I like the name Peter Curleytail. (0:39:35) Kelly: Yeah, I. (0:39:36) Kelly: I’ve never seen a pig like that before, so it’s a little haunting. (0:39:42) Al: All right, that’s us done with the news. (0:39:44) Al: We are now going to talk about grimoire, grimoire. Is it grimoire? (0:39:51) Al: Grimoire. Grimoire grows. And grimoire is something that’s a witch term, isn’t it? (0:39:59) Al: like what it what I keep hearing great (0:40:00) Kelly: Yeah it’s always like I feel like it’s like swamps and grimoires and uh no it’s um what (0:40:00) Al: memoirs and lots of these witchy games. (0:40:08) Al: That explains that because, right, okay. (0:40:10) Kelly: is it a grimoire is a the book it’s the book it’s like your book of spells that’s what it is. (0:40:17) Al: And the grove is the land that you’re doing (0:40:22) Al: because a grove is like a kind of forest type thing. (0:40:26) Kelly: Yeah, yeah. But no, it’s a little book that you… (0:40:28) Al: Okay, makes sense. (0:40:30) Kelly: have all your information in. (0:40:33) Al: So, a quick introduction to this game. (0:40:38) Al: It is described on Steam as join the witches in their quest to restore the grimoire groves, (0:40:45) Al: master magic, grow cute plant creatures, and discover the mystery of the rainbow socks (0:40:52) Al: in this cozy roguelite dungeon crawler. (0:40:55) Al: The way I would describe this in my whole one hour and 20 minutes playing it (0:40:59) Al: is it is kind of cult of the lamb, but without actual, without. (0:41:09) Al: Combat the way you interact in your runs is different. (0:41:13) Al: It’s not combat so much. (0:41:16) Al: And it’s less about building a village and more about restoring nature. (0:41:24) Al: Would that be a fair way of putting it? (0:41:26) Kelly: Yeah, I think so. It’s, it’s, it’s… (0:41:29) Kelly: But you still, I feel like I’m fighting. (0:41:31) Kelly: Maybe I feel less like I’m fighting and I’m more surviving. (0:41:31) Al: Yes, okay, so I mean, okay, you could make an argument that it is basically just fighting, (0:41:39) Al: but it’s it feels so you’re feeding the plants instead of fighting them, I think is how they (0:41:44) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, but no, I’m just I’m just being a jerk. I think it’s I think that’s a good. (0:41:44) Al: describe it. So that’s why I’ve been like is not. No, no, it’s, it’s, it’s fair in terms (0:41:50) Al: of game play is very similar to most other Roguelike action games. (0:41:51) Kelly: Yes, I also think it it has that. Yeah, yeah, it has that cuteness that I think (0:41:59) Kelly: cultural land kind of has, which is why I think like they remind me like like you said like it (0:42:04) Kelly: makes you think of them. You have the juxtaposition. Yeah, yeah. (0:42:06) Al: I think the cuteness works much better in Cult of the Lam (0:42:09) Al: because it’s… exactly, exactly. (0:42:12) Al: Whereas here, the whole world is cute. (0:42:14) Kelly: But I love the saturation in this game. So like that for me is like, and I loved Call to the Land. (0:42:21) Al: Okay, I will say the game looks lovely. (0:42:24) Al: It looks really nice. (0:42:25) Al: I do love how the game actually looks. (0:42:28) Al: The graphics, the design of the characters, (0:42:36) Al: and character, but also the plants and everything. (0:42:38) Al: I do like all of that. (0:42:39) Al: That is all nice. (0:42:41) Al: I will absolutely agree with that. (0:42:44) Al: Yes. (0:42:46) Kelly: I just think it’s like you don’t always, you don’t really get a lot of games that are like, (0:42:52) Kelly: it’s like saturated, but it’s also pastel, like there’s two different kind of colored (0:42:56) Kelly: tones going on in the game, which I think is interesting. (0:43:00) Kelly: Like the backgrounds are more saturated, but the creatures, the plants are a little more (0:43:04) Kelly: pastel leaning, but it’s so vibrant. (0:43:07) Kelly: Like a lot of games, they’re so dark a lot of the time or like aiming to be more realistic (0:43:11) Al: - Yeah. (0:43:13) Kelly: in their tones, I guess. (0:43:15) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:43:16) Kelly: Yes, but yeah, no, I love all of the designs. (0:43:17) Al: No, you’re definitely right about that. (0:43:20) Al: You wouldn’t look at this and think it was something else. (0:43:20) Kelly: I love all the little plants. (0:43:23) Al: That’s very true. (0:43:23) Kelly: No, exactly. (0:43:26) Al: So I guess there’s two main parts to this game, (0:43:29) Al: and there’s obviously a lot of other things, (0:43:31) Al: lot of things that I won’t have done in the main area. (0:43:33) Al: But like most of these roguelites, (0:43:37) Al: you have your hub, (0:43:38) Al: which is an area that is run– (0:43:41) Al: was previously run by some other witch– (0:43:44) Al: I can’t remember her name, maybe– (0:43:45) Kelly: Is it lavender? (0:43:47) Kelly: I think so. (0:43:49) Al: and it’s been taken over by thorns, (0:43:53) Al: and it’s all dreary, and you are to restore it. (0:43:57) Al: That’s the main idea. (0:43:58) Kelly: You’re the young spry witch coming in to fix it. (0:43:59) Al: And you do that by classic cliche, (0:44:05) Al: but it’s there for a reason. (0:44:08) Al: and your runs that you do. (0:44:11) Al: I think of roguelites specifically talking about roguelites not roguelikes (0:44:22) Al: well let’s not have that debate again. I find there are two types there are ones where (0:44:31) Al: your hub the point of the hub is to improve your powers skills etc to then do the runs and the (0:44:38) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yes, I was going to say, very– (0:44:41) Al: runs is the purpose of the game and that would be your like Hades stuff like that. (0:44:49) Al: And then there’s this type of thing this and Cult of the Lamb where your hub is the point of (0:44:55) Al: the game and the runs are to gather resources for doing things in your hub. (0:45:00) Kelly: I would say it’s kind of like a mix, I think, between Cult of the Lamb and Hades in that aspect. (0:45:07) Kelly: Because I do think Cult of the Lamb, there’s so much that you do in your hub area. (0:45:12) Kelly: And I don’t think this quite has near that amount of stuff. (0:45:16) Kelly: Like, you have a lot of updates and things you can interact with. (0:45:20) Kelly: I don’t want to spoil anything. (0:45:22) Kelly: But Cult of the Lamb, you could like run the village until you ran out of resources. (0:45:28) Al: I guess my point is like you’re not the run isn’t the like with Hades you are escaping hell (0:45:28) Kelly: like I spent like five minutes like you know up (0:45:31) Kelly: and then I got another run (0:45:37) Kelly: the sole purpose yes (0:45:40) Al: and your run is escaping hell and if you fail you go back to the hub world and you try again. (0:45:45) Al: Whereas in this and with Cult of the Lamb the point is the runs you’re doing to do (0:45:50) Al: things to bring back you’re never like disappearing and I think that’s that is very much (0:45:53) Kelly: No, that’s a fair point, yeah. (0:45:58) Al: why I liked Cult of the Lamb because I was building up this thing and I really hate the (0:46:05) Al: overall feeling of Hades where if you fail you fail and you’re back to the start and you have (0:46:09) Al: to start again and so I was really excited for this because I was like oh maybe this will be (0:46:15) Al: another one that I like because it’s that sort of style but I mean I guess I need to say at some (0:46:21) Al: point I didn’t like the combat in this game. I didn’t but I feel like (0:46:24) Kelly: Did you try it on easy mode? (0:46:27) Kelly: I d

Al and Kelly talk about Fields of Mistria Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:05:39: What Have We Been Up To 00:13:12: November Game Releases 00:15:25: Stardew Concert 00:27:34: Game News 00:40:41: New Games 00:51:38: Fields Of Mistria Links Stardew Valley Symphony of Seasons Sun Haven UK/Switzerland/NZ Switch Release Everdream Valley “Family Time” DLC Snacko “Builders Dream” Update Spiritea “Phantom Friends” Update Farlands 0.3 Update Ratopia Dreamland Farm Ooze Keeper Contact Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:30) Al: Hello farmers, and welcome to another episode of the harvest season. My name is Al, (0:00:36) Kelly: And my name is Kelly. (0:00:37) Al: and we’re here today to talk about cartridge core games. (0:00:43) Al: Welcome back Kelly, how are you doing? (0:00:46) Kelly: Pretty good. Enjoying the long weekend. It’s been nice. (0:00:49) Kelly: It’s nice to be back, too. How have you been? (0:00:51) Al: Yes, yes, good, good, good. (0:00:54) Al: I’m, yeah, doing all right. Just, you know, I’m cramming in as many farming games as possible (0:00:58) Al: before the end of the year. (0:01:00) Al: My game of the year episode is as accurate as possible. (0:01:04) Al: So busy. (0:01:06) Kelly: - Good dedication, really dedicated. (0:01:08) Al: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I probably could have played half of these in the first half of the year, but, you know, procrastination. (0:01:13) Kelly: But yeah, where’s the fun without that? (0:01:18) Al: Yeah, this is when the ADHD kicks in and goes, “Oh, deadline, great!” (0:01:22) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, no, literally. (0:01:25) Kelly: Do you have any things I did in like the 10 minutes (0:01:27) Kelly: before I sat down to record this? (0:01:29) Kelly: I think I ran through like five chores, just, why? (0:01:30) Al: Yeah, classic. Well, this is also Kelly’s 10th episode on the podcast. (0:01:40) Kelly: Whoo, I can’t believe it’s been 10. When you said that, I was so shocked. (0:01:40) Al: It’s wild. Yeah, yeah. I was surprised as well. I didn’t expect it to be that many because (0:01:52) Al: I guess it’s just been over a long time. Your first episode was in 2021. So we did Spirit (0:01:56) Al: and then the Spiritfare DLC, and then you and Kev did. (0:02:00) Al: Cult of the Lamb, and then you and Bev and Maddie did Potion Permit, (0:02:05) Al: and then we did Fishing Break, you and Kev did Graveyard Keeper, and then we did Pumpkin Panic, (0:02:11) Al: an episode called “What is Stardew still missing?” which I don’t even remember doing, (0:02:15) Al: but apparently we did. Yeah, sure. (0:02:16) Kelly: I remember that. (0:02:17) Kelly: That’s when it came out for the PC. (0:02:23) Al: I need to see how many episodes we’ve done on Stardew, and then the Dave the Diver story episode. (0:02:29) Kelly: Oh, yes. (0:02:30) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:02:31) Al: And then this will be your 10th one, wild, there you go. (0:02:34) Kelly: So many fishing– (0:02:35) Kelly: farming games, not fishing games. (0:02:37) Kelly: Also fishing games. (0:02:38) Al: Well, yeah, one of them was specifically a fishing game. (0:02:41) Kelly: Yeah. (0:02:42) Al: And the others almost all have fishing in them. (0:02:44) Al: Does Dave the Diver count as fishing? (0:02:46) Kelly: I wanna say yes, but I feel like no, because realistically to me it’s the mechanic of fishing. (0:02:55) Al: Well, that’s why that’s why I’m questioning it. (0:02:58) Kelly: Like I think the fishing is so different. (0:02:58) Al: But like, there’s a lot. (0:03:02) Kelly: Would you count scuba diving and animal crossing as fishing? No, that’s like it. (0:03:07) Al: You’re not catching fish when you’re scuba diving, though. (0:03:08) Kelly: Oh, you’re not? Oh, the dive thing? No. (0:03:10) Al: No. (0:03:12) Al: No, you only catch fish with a fishing rod in Animal Crossing. (0:03:16) Al: You, there are, it’s quite, yeah, yeah. (0:03:16) Kelly: Is it just like clams? (0:03:18) Al: I think maybe as far as like a crab, but I don’t think there’s any fish. (0:03:23) Kelly: Okay. No, I would not count David Diver as a fishing game, honestly. (0:03:28) Al: Interesting. OK, that’s this is our controversy of the episode. (0:03:33) Al: Listeners, tell us, do you think Dave the Diver is a fishing episode or not? (0:03:40) Al: If you make me decide, I would say yes, it is a fishing game (0:03:44) Al: because I think that fishing would be catching fish. (0:03:48) Al: I don’t think you specifically have to use a fishing rod or a fishing net (0:03:52) Al: to count as fishing. (0:03:54) Kelly: I see your point. I think I’m going more off of the vibes of every other mini fishing game. (0:03:58) Al: Yeah. (0:04:01) Kelly: Because definition-wise, you’re correct. It is a fishing game. What else am I doing, (0:04:05) Kelly: if not fishing? But I wouldn’t count it with the fishing games. It almost is kind of like (0:04:06) Al: Yeah. I mean, I would say it’s a– Sure. Okay. I would say it is a fishing game, (0:04:11) Kelly: that little controversy they had with the indie game thing. Okay, okay. (0:04:18) Al: but not a cottagecore game, which is ironic because it’s a cottagecore podcast. And I feel (0:04:24) Al: like we had the discussion about whether it was cottagecore or not, multiple times throughout the (0:04:27) Al: summer. Anyway, five minutes discussion on the Diver who expected that. This episode, we are (0:04:34) Al: finally going to talk about Fields of (0:04:36) Al: Mistria. I realised that, apparently, Spotify has the (0:04:40) Al: ability to leave comments and I went on and noticed there’s a (0:04:43) Al: person on Spotify that has just been commenting regularly. Are (0:04:46) Al: you going to cover Fields of Mistria? So, yes, here we are (0:04:51) Al: covering Fields of Mistria. Shout out to you, our single (0:04:53) Kelly: For that one Spotify– (0:04:54) Al: commenter. I can’t even remember the name. Yeah, episodes as (0:05:01) Kelly: I didn’t know you could comment on Spotify stuff, either. (0:05:07) Al: Yeah, so there’s Jack. There we go. Jack, you’re the one who’s (0:05:12) Al: commented multiple times asking for Fields of Mistria. As (0:05:15) Kelly: Hey, Jack. I hope you enjoy this episode. (0:05:16) Al: recently as nine days ago. Yeah, I mean, we had decided to do (0:05:19) Kelly: This is personally for you, Jack. (0:05:25) Al: this before I even looked at Spotify. But yeah, sure. So (0:05:30) Al: we’re going to talk about Fields of Mistria. Before that, we (0:05:32) Al: We have some news. (0:05:36) Al: A bunch of new games and a bunch of updates. (0:05:39) Al: First of all, Kelly, what have you been up to? (0:05:42) Kelly: I have been playing a lot of Rimworld again, because I think it’s a (0:05:49) Kelly: like, I don’t know what it is, Stardew is like a march game for me. And I think Rimworld is a (0:05:57) Kelly: late fall game for me. So I am back to Rimworld, which is not cottagecore, but it is a lot of (0:06:01) Al: Okay. (0:06:04) Kelly: farming. I mean, I guess technically, you could play cottagecore style, because they do have like, (0:06:10) Kelly: No violence mode, which I have (0:06:12) Kelly: played because I just want to like build. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no. And then I’ve also (0:06:14) Al: yeah it’s a management game though isn’t it management style game yeah yeah I’m (0:06:18) Al: not playing it then (0:06:21) Kelly: been playing web fishing, which is really cute and fun and like, very simple, but like the core (0:06:27) Kelly: mechanic of fishing that I just enjoy in every farming game without like the deadline of having (0:06:33) Al: So. (0:06:35) Kelly: having to go to bed at night. (0:06:36) Al: So I have a question about that. (0:06:39) Al: I have been interested in this, but not enough to play it. (0:06:43) Al: But what do you do you interact with the chat room aspect of? (0:06:50) Kelly: You can play alone, or you can join a random lobby, or you can play with your friends. (0:06:55) Al: And what have you been doing? (0:06:56) Kelly: I have been either playing alone or playing with friends. I’m not really a big like, go into random people’s lobbies. (0:07:01) Al: OK, but you have you have done it with friends. (0:07:04) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:07:05) Al: What does that actually like? (0:07:08) Al: What is actually like? Is it audio? (0:07:10) Al: Is it text? It’s text. (0:07:10) Kelly: No, it’s text. It’s text. And then you kind of get the, like, Animal Crossing sounds as you hit send. It, like, does that. (0:07:20) Kelly: On top of your little chat and it pops up above your head and like, you also have like a little chat message bar so you could like see what you’ve been talking about. (0:07:29) Al: Okay. Okay. Okay. Because I hadn’t I know I looked through the screenshots and I hadn’t seen anything that actually showed the chat room aspect of it. It was all just like, you know, pictures of the fishing. (0:07:37) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s, it’s like a cute little aspect. I like that. I think it’s good (0:07:48) Kelly: that it’s like text. But very, very cute little game. Very cute. I just love fishing games. (0:07:49) Al: Yeah, yeah for sure (0:07:57) Kelly: I’m not going to lie. What have you been up to? (0:07:58) Al: Fair enough. (0:08:04) Al: I have obviously been playing Fields of Mistria quite a bit. (0:08:09) Al: We’ll talk about that when we come to it. (0:08:10) Al: I’ve also been keeping going with Marvel (0:08:13) Al: Snap and Pokemon Pocket. (0:08:16) Kelly: Oh, that’s the TCG one, right? (0:08:18) Kelly: I’ve been playing that. (0:08:19) Al: Yes, yes. (0:08:21) Kelly: I keep forgetting to open my pack, so– (0:08:24) Al: Do you not just open it when you get the notification, no? (0:08:26) Kelly: I don’t have notifications for things. (0:08:29) Al: OK, right, OK, so I turn off a lot of notifications, right? (0:08:34) Al: But, right, if you forget things, which. (0:08:39) Kelly: Yeah, but I’m just going to swipe the notification away. (0:08:40) Al: Yeah. (0:08:42) Al: No, you tap on it and then you open the app, open the gate, open the thing, right? (0:08:46) Al: You just do it then, you do it there and then it’s so fast. (0:08:46) Kelly: No, I’m not gonna do that. (0:08:49) Al: This is so this one, but this is the beauty of this game is it’s so fast. (0:08:53) Al: It’s like you open it and you press it and you get your five cards, you get your (0:08:53) Kelly: It is, that is nice. (0:08:56) Al: Dopamine hit, you swipe the app away the next- (0:08:58) Al: and the notification comes up, you do exactly the same thing. (0:09:00) Kelly: Al, listen. You’re right. I’m not going to try to fight you on this because you are 100% right. (0:09:02) Al: Ten seconds. (0:09:08) Kelly: However, many times I open the app and a message pops up that says, “You didn’t finish opening your card pack!” (0:09:16) Al: did stop doing that then. Yeah, I do. I do that. Yeah, I have to say, yeah, that is a bit of a (0:09:18) Kelly: So that is– [Laughter] (0:09:21) Al: problem. I don’t know why this game is so obsessed with that. It’s like you open up, you open a pack (0:09:26) Al: and you see it and then you write, close the app. And it’s like, I’ve seen my cards. I saw my cards, (0:09:28) Kelly: Mm-hmm because I forgot to like swipe it up. Yeah (0:09:32) Al: right? Don’t tell me I didn’t finish just because I haven’t gone and seen the 15 million animations (0:09:37) Kelly: Yeah, exactly. (0:09:37) Al: after that. It’s the same because it’s the same thing with, uh, with the battles, especially the (0:09:41) Al: solo battles is bizarre, right? Because it’s like, if you, you know, (0:09:46) Al: you do a battle and then you get annoyed because you lose. So you close, (0:09:49) Al: you just swipe the app away in anger. It’s like a really satisfying thing to do. (0:09:53) Al: And then you open it next time and it’s like, oh, did, you know, you didn’t finish this battle. (0:09:57) Al: I’m like, I did. I lost because I didn’t go through this stuff. Don’t make me relive this. (0:09:58) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, I actually I haven’t battled yet, but I completely understand. (0:10:01) Al: Why are you making me relive this? Go away. (0:10:10) Kelly: Yeah, but I do like the aspect of the whole idea that it is a two second app where you just open it open your card pack and then close it again. (0:10:18) Al: Perfect. That’s fair. That’s fair. But the problem is you can (0:10:18) Kelly: Like, I just want it for the cards I don’t want to really battle. (0:10:25) Al: get more cards by battling. Oh, yes. Absolutely. I don’t I (0:10:26) Kelly: Is it better than Pokemon Go? (0:10:28) Kelly: I’m not sure. (0:10:30) Kelly: Okay. (0:10:32) Kelly: Maybe I’ll try it, maybe I’ll try it. (0:10:34) Kelly: We’ll see. I gotta get more cards first. (0:10:36) Kelly: Yeah. (0:10:37) Al: don’t do PvP battles very much because like, you know, people (0:10:41) Al: suck. But I do there’s a lot of solo battles in the game. And (0:10:45) Al: know, there’s a new solo battle event going on right now. (0:10:48) Al: now that has unique cards for winning things. So yeah, against the computer. (0:10:51) Kelly: Oh, you can just play it yourself. (0:10:53) Kelly: Okay, okay, I didn’t I didn’t even look at that. (0:10:56) Al: The best bit is you can also tell the game to play for you. So you can have the computer (0:11:02) Al: playing against the computer. Yes, but what I do is when I’m sitting at my desk and I want just (0:11:04) Kelly: What? Kinda lazy? (laughs) (0:11:10) Al: a couple of battles and I don’t care about it because I’ve already beaten these battles, (0:11:14) Al: I just want to beat them more for more rewards (0:11:16) Al: Then I just have it sit (0:11:18) Al: In here I like just down on my phone (0:11:22) Al: Stand it’s just sitting there and it’s just doing the battles and every so often (0:11:27) Al: I look over it and see if I’ve won or lost and then I start again (0:11:30) Kelly: that is nice. I agree. That is a nice feature. Oh, yeah, I should go check mine. I do really (0:11:34) Al: Speaking of which I just got a notification that I’ve got packs. Let’s see. I’ve already got that already got that already got that (0:11:39) Al: Already got that no new cards great (0:11:43) Kelly: like looking at the card art, though. I think that’s the most fun of it. (0:11:46) Al: I’m just in an (0:11:48) Al: unfortunate position right now where I have most of the cards so most days I’m getting nothing (0:11:52) Kelly: Hmm. I only started like a week ago, I think. Also, I’ve noticed I’m very biased. I like almost (0:11:59) Kelly: never opened a Charizard pack. I know, I know. But I don’t want to. I know. I’m just, I have my own problem. (0:12:00) Al: Yeah, some of the cards are specific to that pack. (0:12:09) Al: I don’t know what to tell you. (0:12:15) Al: Anyway, so yeah, Pocket and Snap, I am at 98 on Snap now, so hopefully I’ll get to 100 by (0:12:22) Al: the end of Tuesday. We’ll see. And I’ve also started playing, speaking of playing games (0:12:31) Al: until the Game of the Year episode. I’ve been playing Luma Island as well, so yeah. (0:12:38) Al: I think it’s doing some interesting new things that I may or may not talk about in a week, and (0:12:45) Kelly: - Okay. (0:12:48) Al: I think I appreciate what it is doing, but I don’t know if it’s for me. (0:12:56) Al: But I’ve only put in like 15 hours into it so far, so. (0:13:00) Al: I’m gonna need more time to make that, isn’t it? (0:13:02) Kelly: I think that that sounds like it’ll be fun to see where it goes at least, (0:13:06) Al: Yeah. (0:13:07) Kelly: you know, and sometimes even if the mechanics aren’t for you, (0:13:09) Kelly: it’s like nice just to see people trying. (0:13:11) Al: Oh, for sure, for sure. (0:13:14) Al: All right, that’s what we’ve been up to. (0:13:18) Al: Next is our monthly segment of the recent releases, (0:13:22) Al: because this is only a second time doing it, but I decided that because there’s so many releases (0:13:28) Al: of games. (0:13:29) Al: And I’m always talking about the future. (0:13:30) Al: Talking about the past, I felt like people might want a monthly recap on what’s out (0:13:35) Al: in case they’ve heard of something that they’re like, “Oh, that’s something I want to play.” (0:13:40) Al: And now you can. (0:13:41) Al: So there have been four releases in November. (0:13:43) Al: I know it’s now December when you’re hearing this, but this is for November. (0:13:47) Al: So we have Farming Simulator 25. (0:13:50) Al: So if you love that Farming Simulator, there’s your new one, it’s out now. (0:13:55) Al: We also have Everhome, which I think… (0:14:01) Al: I don’t think that was previously Early Access, was it? (0:14:04) Al: No, I’m not seeing anything about Early Access, so that’s just a release now. (0:14:10) Kelly: Oh, that one looks cute. (0:14:11) Al: It does. (0:14:12) Al: It’s definitely on my list of “I want to play this,” but that list is very long. (0:14:15) Kelly: I’m going to add it to my list right now. (0:14:18) Al: And then we have Petite Island, which I’m pretty sure was in Early Access. (0:14:23) Al: So that is now 1.0. (0:14:25) Al: Is that correct? (0:14:26) Al: Oh, no. (0:14:27) Al: No, it’s not saying anything about Early Access. (0:14:28) Al: I was wrong. (0:14:30) Kelly: Honestly, with the amount of games that are in early access for forever, it’s like, (0:14:37) Kelly: who’s to remember anymore? Everything feels like it’s in early access. (0:14:42) Al: And and then Luma Island as well, which is also not in early access. (0:14:48) Al: So that’s four releases. (0:14:49) Al: None of them in early access. (0:14:51) Al: None of them have been in early access one unusual month. (0:14:54) Kelly: That is pretty crazy is it is it like I wonder if it’s like a pre-christmas thing (0:14:58) Al: Possibly, possibly. (0:14:59) Kelly: You know (0:15:00) Al: I do think a lot of I mean, a lot of games get delayed at this point. (0:15:04) Al: Like you don’t get a huge number of games coming out just now (0:15:06) Al: because they’ve either come out in October in time for, you know, (0:15:12) Al: the Christmas sale or they come out next year because they didn’t quite manage it. (0:15:18) Kelly: Mm hmm. Yeah, that. (0:15:18) Al: They don’t tend to like to come out in December or November (0:15:21) Al: because there’s too much happening. (0:15:25) Al: All right, next, we’ve got the news. (0:15:28) Al: The first news is a piece of news that I (0:15:30) Al: meant to talk about in the last episode, but I forgot (0:15:34) Al: because I didn’t write it down for some reason. (0:15:36) Al: And that is that they’ve announced a new series of stardew concerts. (0:15:40) Al: they had the previous series. (0:15:42) Al: Stargie Concerts that were called Festival of Seasons. (0:15:44) Al: The new ones are called Symphony of Seasons, and these are bigger. (0:15:49) Al: It’s a 35 piece orchestra. (0:15:52) Al: I believe the last one was under 20. (0:15:55) Al: I can’t remember exactly. (0:15:56) Al: I don’t know if it has it listed, but it was it was certainly much more intimate. (0:16:01) Al: It called it a chamber orchestra. (0:16:02) Al: Is that a specific number? (0:16:04) Al: I suspect not. (0:16:05) Al: Rona would be shouting at me if she was in the room. (0:16:06) Kelly: I have no idea. (0:16:07) Al: No, it just means just means small. (0:16:12) Al: So we may if you’ve not listened to it, me and Rona did a greenhouse episode on (0:16:18) Al: going to the previous Stargie Valley concert because Rona, my wife, is a big (0:16:23) Al: musician. She enjoys music. (0:16:26) Al: She does not play Stargie Valley. (0:16:27) Al: So it was a fun discussion to have about the music versus the the game sort of thing. (0:16:34) Al: I have successfully purchased tickets for the new concert. (0:16:37) Al: one the one that they’re doing in Scotland which (0:16:42) Al: obviously one is not very many, but we actually get one in many cases we don’t even get one. (0:16:47) Al: So I’m very happy to actually have one. (0:16:48) Kelly: Whoo! Whoo! Yeah, that is exciting. I forgot you went to the last round. (0:16:55) Al: And the Yeah, yeah. (0:16:58) Al: So that was earlier this year sometime, April or something. (0:17:04) Al: And that was in a converted church in Edinburgh. (0:17:08) Al: This new one is in 2026. (0:17:12) Al: It’s over a year away, which is just because of the time of the year that makes it sound (0:17:17) Al: even further away. (0:17:18) Al: It’s actually only like a year and two months away or something. (0:17:21) Al: I think it’s February. (0:17:22) Kelly: - Oh yeah, it’s heavy, all right. (0:17:22) Al: So it’s not that bad, but it does sound ridiculously far away. (0:17:30) Al: But they’re doing that, and this shows you how they’ve gone up a little bit. (0:17:32) Al: They’ve gone from a converted church in Edinburgh to the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, which (0:17:38) Al: which is, I think, three times the size. (0:17:42) Kelly: It’s, it’s, you know, you know, Stardew is big, but I think when you see it like in this kind of aspect, it’s like, wow. (0:17:48) Al: Yeah, this is their second world tour, and this one’s bigger. (0:17:52) Kelly: Yeah. (0:17:54) Kelly: The next one’s going to be stadium level concert. (0:17:58) Al: Yeah, I don’t think I would want to see stardew music in a stadium. (0:18:02) Kelly: No, I think this is much cuter. Yeah. Yeah. But no, that’s so that’s so cool. (0:18:03) Al: I feel like concert hall works best. (0:18:09) Al: So, yeah, it was funny because (0:18:11) Al: so there was a presale that if you signed up to the newsletter, you got the code. (0:18:14) Al: I signed up for that and then we got the code (0:18:17) Al: and then I forgot all about (0:18:18) Al: it. And it was like, because I had my laptop next to my work, because it was 9am on Monday. (0:18:24) Al: I had my personal laptop like next to my desk, ready to log on at nine, and then completely (0:18:29) Al: forgot. It was really unfortunate. And then I looked at the time, there was, I can’t remember (0:18:36) Al: what it was, I just randomly looked at the clock, and it was 11 o’clock and went, “Oh, (0:18:40) Al: the concert. Oh, no.” And so I went on and thankfully they still had. (0:18:49) Kelly: That’s good, especially because, like you said, you only have one night for Scotland, (0:18:53) Al: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And well, yeah. And it’s like I could go to England, but there’s only (0:18:54) Kelly: so it’s not like, “Oh, I could drive a few states over if I have to.” (0:19:01) Al: two in England and one of them is London, which is like four hour train ride or yeah. (0:19:06) Kelly: You wanna go to London? (0:19:07) Al: And who wants to go to London? And it’s like, it’s always annoying when you, cause like (0:19:11) Al: London gets the, cause I think you get like, obviously New York gets the, you know, Broadway (0:19:16) Al: musicals first cause obviously Broadway, uh, it’s kind of in the name. Um, but then they, (0:19:17) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:19:20) Al: They tend to go to London next and they take forever. (0:19:24) Al: You can always go to London for these things. (0:19:26) Al: It’s like, I don’t want to go to London, oh my word. (0:19:29) Kelly: Yeah, I don’t even want to go into the city for some of this stuff, so I feel you (0:19:34) Al: London is one of them, and Manchester is the other one. (0:19:36) Al: Manchester, despite being further north, is harder to get to than London. (0:19:41) Kelly: Oh, really? I thought I thought that would be closer to you, honestly. (0:19:44) Al: If you’re driving, it’s faster. (0:19:46) Al: But if you’re getting the train, it’s more difficult. (0:19:48) Al: It takes longer to get there. (0:19:48) Kelly: Mm. That makes sense. (0:19:50) Al: because they’ve got like a super fast train from Edinburgh to… (0:19:53) Al: London. It’s like four hours on the train which is fine but then it becomes a whole weekend thing (0:20:01) Al: rather than a night thing. Whereas this is, it starts at 7pm it’s like I can get my kids (0:20:08) Al: mostly ready for bed and then head off and then be back in for midnight. (0:20:13) Kelly: Yeah, you know, that’s nice. Yeah, that’ll be exciting. I didn’t realize it was, I mean, (0:20:18) Kelly: like you said, it’s only like a year basically away. (0:20:20) Al: Yeah, I think the American dates start in like August or something. (0:20:25) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, end of August. (0:20:26) Al: Yeah, the first dates in Seattle. (0:20:30) Kelly: I will say it’s funny. There’s no New York City date. (0:20:33) Kelly: It’s only upstate New York and New Jersey. (0:20:35) Al: Oh, that’s funny. Is that because New York City is just stupidly expensive to? (0:20:40) Kelly: That’s what I was about to say is it’s definitely because of that. (0:20:42) Al: Of all the places, of all the places in the world, it’s like you do not want to do that. (0:20:47) Kelly: Yeah. So that one makes a lot– because at first I was like, wow, there’s no New York City one. (0:20:54) Kelly: but there is a new (0:20:55) Kelly: New Jersey, which is close enough. (0:20:57) Kelly: I would go there instead of Albany. (0:21:00) Al: Yes, yeah, because, well, I don’t know where New York is, but New Jersey’s closer, I mean, (0:21:06) Al: much of New Jersey is closer to you than most of New York, right? I know, because I read (0:21:09) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, exactly. (0:21:14) Al: a lot of Ms. Marvel Comics, and she’s based in New Jersey City. (0:21:19) Kelly: Yeah, those are my sister works, actually, (0:21:21) Kelly: right across the water. (0:21:23) Kelly: It’s nice there now. (0:21:24) Kelly: They’ve been making it nicer. (0:21:24) Al: New York is right there. You’ve got New York, and then you’ve got Manhattan, and then you’ve (0:21:32) Al: got Jersey City, and then you’ve got New York. That looks… Yeah, that would… Yeah. (0:21:33) Kelly: No, yeah, literally. (0:21:38) Kelly: Oh, they put all their businesses on that side, (0:21:40) Kelly: I’m pretty sure, because they’re like tax reasons. (0:21:42) Al: Because there’s also casinos in New Jersey as well, isn’t there? (0:21:43) Kelly: You know? (0:21:46) Kelly: Mm-hm. We have them in New York now, just they’re more limited. Yeah, there was one that (0:21:49) Al: Howdy! (0:21:52) Al: I thought New York was quite strict with gambling. (0:21:55) Kelly: they were, I think when I was like in my early 20s, stuff started to change (0:22:02) Kelly: and they opened up a casino near where I lived. But I think they were, it wasn’t, you know, (0:22:08) Kelly: as open as like other states are with the gambling even inside of there. You know, (0:22:13) Kelly: like not every game I guess is allowed or stuff like that. Difference. (0:22:17) Kelly: I don’t know what gambling rules are. I just go in and I pull the lever. (0:22:23) Al: - Okay. (0:22:27) Kelly: But yeah, usually people from New York would go to Jersey to gamble because it’s better over there. (0:22:32) Al: It’s really funny, I’m just looking at the Google Maps and I knew there was weird stuff around (0:22:36) Al: exactly who owned Ellis Island and Liberty Island and I noticed that on Google Maps it has most of (0:22:44) Al: Ellis Island listed as New Jersey with like a big chunk of it including the Immigrations Museum (0:22:52) Al: listed as New York. So it’s like because you’re over the line, technically the island is within (0:22:53) Kelly: Oh, that’s funny. (0:22:58) Al: New Jersey. So most of it is New Jersey, but then there’s like an (0:23:02) Al: exclave of New York. We love border disputes. Did you know that Greenland and Canada now (0:23:04) Kelly: I forgot about that whole debacle. (0:23:13) Kelly: Who doesn’t? (0:23:20) Al: have a land border due to a solved border dispute? Yeah, so there’s an island between (0:23:23) Kelly: No, I did not (0:23:27) Al: mainland Greenland mainland Greenland between (0:23:32) Al: Greenland Greenland and like the very north of Canada. (0:23:36) Al: What is that? (0:23:37) Al: It doesn’t have a name. Nobody cares about it. (0:23:41) Al: Which is like right in the middle of the water, (0:23:44) Al: which is where they put the border between them. (0:23:47) Al: So it like crosses the island. (0:23:48) Al: So they spent decades arguing over who owned it. (0:23:52) Al: And then eventually they decided they just split it. (0:23:53) Al: So now technically it’s half and half. (0:23:55) Al: So they have a land border there. (0:23:57) Kelly: that’s cool. It’s kind of like the two little islands in the bearings straight between what (0:23:59) Al: Thank you. (0:24:02) Al: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:24:03) Kelly: are they called? Something with a D. I don’t remember. Yeah. Yeah. That one’s messed up though (0:24:06) Al: Diomede, a big Diomede and little Diomede. (0:24:10) Kelly: because like people live there and then they can’t, they got split up and now they can’t see their (0:24:11) Al: Yeah. (0:24:14) Kelly: relatives. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But you can’t cross that ice. It’s not allowed. (0:24:15) Al: Well, and it’s, and it’s essentially a land border half of the year anyway, because of the ice. (0:24:23) Al: Well, not, well, yeah, not allowed is very different from Kant. (0:24:27) Kelly: That’s true. That’s very true. (0:24:29) Al: Anyway, enough about geography. (0:24:32) Al: That’s the Stardew Valley Concert. (0:24:33) Al: Are you going to go to any of them? (0:24:34) Al: You’re going to go to the New Jersey one? (0:24:36) Kelly: Probably not, no. Yeah, probably not. (0:24:44) Kelly: It would be cool, but no. Yeah, no. I’m very excited for you. That is very cool. (0:24:46) Al: I’m excited for it. (0:24:52) Al: We don’t go to stuff very often because kids. (0:24:54) Al: So this year we went to the Stardew Concert (0:24:56) Al: and we went to Hamilton. (0:24:58) Al: Hamilton were in Edinburgh. (0:25:00) Al: And then next year, next year. (0:25:00) Kelly: Oh, nice. What is that? (0:25:02) Al: Next year, we’re going to see six. (0:25:04) Al: I think that’s what it’s called. (0:25:06) Al: So I believe it’s about Henry VIII’s wives. (0:25:08) Kelly: Oh, you know what? I think I might have heard something about this, actually. (0:25:11) Al: You’ll probably have seen music from it on TikTok. (0:25:15) Al: It’s all over the place. (0:25:15) Kelly: Yeah, that makes sense. TikTok is a great marketing ploy for that. (0:25:17) Al: So yeah, so many, so many musicals I’ve learned about that, yeah. (0:25:25) Kelly: Yeah, they’re really catchy. They get stuck in your head really well. (0:25:31) Al: Yeah, it’s a modern retelling of the lives of the six waves of Henry VIII. (0:25:36) Kelly: Okay. That’s cool. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. Yeah, why not? And that’s fun. And now that you (0:25:38) Al: All I know is the music’s catchy, and Rona wants to see it, and I was like, yeah, let’s (0:25:45) Al: go see it, because I like the music. (0:25:49) Kelly: can, like, now that the kids are a little older and can actually get out a little bit (0:25:53) Kelly: more. It’s like, why not? (0:25:54) Al: So that’s our one for next year. (0:25:56) Al: And then we’ve got the Stardew concert the year after. (0:26:01) Al: Maybe I’ll see Wicked in 2026. (0:26:04) Kelly: Oh, yes, I want that to come out. I want them to release that on the streaming so that I don’t have to go into the theater for it. (0:26:10) Al: So here’s an interesting thing for you, apparently you can go into the New York Public Library (0:26:20) Al: and watch it. (0:26:20) Kelly: Oh, but I didn’t have to go to Manhattan. (0:26:21) Al: No, I know, I know, right? (0:26:26) Al: But you can, at least. (0:26:27) Al: I can’t. (0:26:28) Kelly: Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. That’s fair. That’s fair. That’s fair. (0:26:29) Al: Yes, it would be work, but less work than going to the theatre. (0:26:30) Kelly: It would be a trek to get there and then have to sit there and watch it. (0:26:38) Kelly: Yes. I’ve heard it’s a lot of sing-alongs in the theaters, (0:26:42) Al: Goodness, thankfully, I live in a very, a place where it is unacceptable to sing. (0:26:44) Kelly: which I’m happy for those theater kids, but you know, I don’t, I’m not a theater. (0:26:54) Al: So when we went to see the film, there were not people singing. (0:26:59) Kelly: I wish. (0:27:00) Al: This is what is unusual. (0:27:01) Kelly: My mom, actually. (chuckles) (0:27:02) Al: This is what is unusual is actually the people clapped at the end of it. (0:27:06) Al: I have never had people clap at the end of the film. (0:27:07) Kelly: Oh, it’s like clapping when a flight lands. (0:27:11) Kelly: I hate both of those. (0:27:12) Kelly: I hate those kind of people. (chuckles) (0:27:12) Al: There is one situation where clapping when a flight lands is acceptable, (0:27:16) Kelly: Yes, yes. (0:27:16) Al: and that is when you thought you were going to die. (0:27:18) Kelly: Yeah. (chuckles) (0:27:20) Kelly: Every other time, it’s just like, (0:27:22) Kelly: that guy was just doing his job or her job, (0:27:24) Al: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:27:26) Kelly: like, this is how it should go, don’t clap. (0:27:29) Al: If you thought you were going to die or you’re flying Ryanair. (0:27:35) Al: All right, so let’s get into some game news now. (0:27:37) Al: So the first in the news is Sunheavour. (0:27:40) Al: I’ve announced their UK, Switzerland, and New Zealand release date. (0:27:46) Al: If you’re not up to date with the weird situation here, I will just summarize it. (0:27:51) Al: Sunheaven announced their America’s release date, and then they announced their Asian (0:27:57) Al: release dates. (0:27:59) Al: And then they announced most of Europe and also Australia, but not Switzerland, the United (0:28:05) Al: Kingdom, and New Zealand. (0:28:07) Al: And I, at the time, and still do think they just forgot. (0:28:10) Al: Well, so the Switzerland and United Kingdom I noticed were alphabetically at the end of the list, after all the other countries, so I just think they just copied and pasted incorrectly. (0:28:12) Kelly: ‘Cause I was like, what a weird bunch of countries to kind of like… (0:28:26) Al: I’m not sure why New Zealand, maybe they just forgot it existed, but I’m not 100% sure what the system. (0:28:34) Kelly: Because I would think New Zealand and Australia would be paired together like (0:28:36) Al: Well, so, so, right, OK, so… (0:28:40) Al: The weird thing about… So, the way the eShop works is there are, I think, six different regions. (0:28:47) Al: There is one for North America and one for South America, one for Europe, Australia, (0:28:55) Al: and New Zealand, and South Africa, I believe, and then there’s one for Japan, one for Hong Kong, (0:29:02) Al: and one for South Korea. Was that six? That was six. I believe that’s all of them. (0:29:04) Kelly: Okay. Yeah. (0:29:09) Al: what I understand based. (0:29:10) Al: So I think this is just them like cleaning up after their mistake and not admitting it, (0:29:30) Al: which is weird. And I also think the reason that they got they released it region by region is (0:29:36) Al: because they didn’t realize there were multiple regions until they’d already added it. (0:29:41) Al: To the Americas one. (0:29:42) Kelly: That’s so funny! (0:29:45) Al: And the problem is we don’t know any of this because the Sunhaven developers are very bad (0:29:49) Al: at communicating their discard after they announced the European release date before (0:29:54) Al: they announced that also included United Kingdom Switzerland and New Zealand was just people (0:29:59) Al: saying, so is it not coming to the UK? Is it coming a different date? What’s happening? (0:30:03) Al: And it turns out it’s exactly the same date, which would back up my they just forgot to tell you (0:30:08) Al: about it because there are two. (0:30:10) Al: There is a possibility of that, but I mean, generally the regions are very similar politically. (0:30:29) Kelly: which I could see because it’s like, aren’t some countries kind of (0:30:40) Kelly: Yeah, that’s true. (0:30:41) Al: But if that is the case, what happened was they ticked all of the boxes except the UK, (0:30:48) Al: Switzerland, and New Zealand. They did not check those boxes and then they put in a different (0:30:53) Al: release and checked just those three countries. Because it’s not even like an EU versus not EU (0:31:01) Al: thing, because Norway was in the first release and is not in the EU, and obviously Australia is (0:31:01) Kelly: No, it’s a, it’s a weird. (0:31:06) Al: is not in the EU and Switzerland is not in the EU but for (0:31:10) Al: and purposes regulatorily it is the same and the UK is mostly the same because obviously it was in (0:31:17) Al: the EU until four years ago so it’s a bit of a mess I miss clicks or copy and paste mistake which (0:31:22) Kelly: Yeah, that’s, that’s, that sounds like a misclick, a few misclicks, for sure. (0:31:31) Al: is what I think I think they went and tried to copy the entire list and just missed the last two (0:31:35) Al: of them. (0:31:38) Kelly: and then did not even like acknowledge it or any like. (0:31:41) Al: Yeah well that’s the weird thing right? Like people have been talking about this from the (0:31:45) Al: moment they published their post about it coming to Europe and they said nothing (0:31:51) Al: and so like if they had just it almost feels like they just don’t want to admit their mistakes (0:31:56) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they could just make a joke about it like this. People would (0:31:56) Al: and but why in such a weird way? Yeah! (0:32:01) Kelly: find it funny like it’s not a it’s an inconsequential mistake like nobody’s. (0:32:06) Al: Yeah. And the people already think they don’t communicate. And so making this weird like, (0:32:13) Al: oh, we weren’t wrong. We were right all along. Thing just makes it seem even weirder. Oh, (0:32:22) Al: anyway, living on. We have one DLC release. So Everdream Valley have announced a family (0:32:31) Al: time DLC. This is coming to Steam on the 6th of December and then in consoles. (0:32:36) Al: Next year Q1. This has new story quests, new NPCs, new animals and new furniture. That’s (0:32:45) Al: an interesting thing to put in a DLC. Well, quests, were quests, animals and furniture. (0:32:52) Al: I guess NPCs like, I guess that’s not an unusual thing to put like new characters in, but the (0:32:54) Kelly: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, like I could see, like a lot of games will do like a new DLC with (0:33:03) Kelly: more quests. You know, so maybe. Yeah, yeah, that’s how I would take it. Yeah, like it’s (0:33:04) Al: Mm hmm. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I guess. Yeah. They’re not saying like this is by the DLC to get (0:33:10) Al: quests. It’s the DLC comes with quests. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. The furniture (0:33:13) Kelly: like additional furniture, additional quests, additional NPCs kind of thing that that’s I (0:33:17) Kelly: could be wrong. But that’s how I would read it. Yeah, that’s just add on. (0:33:19) Al: is, I guess, not weird because it’s just like that’s pretty common thing. And then we have (0:33:24) Al: three updates to games. Snacko have released their builder’s dream update, which I’m sure (0:33:30) Al: you can guess where that is. It’s a whole bunch of crafting building stuff. (0:33:34) Al: Lots of good improvements. And I guess we’re not getting Snacko 1.0 this year. (0:33:41) Al: We’re probably getting next year. Because that’s 0.9.5. So close. (0:33:44) Kelly: They intentionally just decided we’re going to add a few more digits into this. (0:33:55) Kelly: It looks so cute though, I wanted to come out. (0:33:57) Al: Yeah, at this point I’m like, because I’ve not played it since the early access came out, (0:34:01) Al: I did play a very early alpha of it. Because I’ve not played it since the early access (0:34:07) Al: come out, at this point I’m like, I just need to wait for the 1.0, right? (0:34:10) Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, because I feel like at this point, it’s like if you don’t wait for the 1.0, (0:34:15) Kelly: like what are you getting out of the 1.0 when it comes out? (0:34:17) Al: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I will, I will say, I will say, Snacko Devs, listen to me. (0:34:25) Al: We’re good friends, we’ve talked before. (0:34:27) Al: Listen to me now, do not release this in December. (0:34:30) Al: You released the early access last December. (0:34:32) Al: Do not, do not do this. (0:34:35) Al: I beg of you, January, January’s fine. (0:34:39) Al: Do not release your 1.0 in December. (0:34:41) Al: I will cry. (0:34:43) Al: I will cry. (0:34:44) Al: Thank you. (0:34:45) Kelly: - You’re gonna release it December 31st at… (0:34:48) Al: That’s OK, that’s December 31st is fine. (0:34:50) Al: That’s basically January, because I will have recorded all the episodes by then (0:34:54) Al: for the year. It’s not like I need to then rush it, right? (0:34:57) Al: As a 2024 game, it was December the 31st. (0:35:00) Kelly: Also, I just love in their little notes the difference in communication where they literally (0:35:08) Kelly: have screenshots from the Discord talking about part of the updates here. (0:35:10) Al: Mm. Yeah. (0:35:13) Al: That is such a good point. (0:35:14) Al: Snacko Dev is fantastic with communication. (0:35:16) Al: Like they are literally just in the Discord talking to people. (0:35:20) Al: Sunhaven, I have never seen a single one of them talk in the Discord. (0:35:26) Al: Yeah, definitely. (0:35:28) Al: Spiritity have released their Phantom Friends update, which adds a… (0:35:33) Al: You can have your spirits as pets now. (0:35:40) Al: Interesting change. (0:35:40) Kelly: to like follow you around. (0:35:41) Al: If, yeah, yeah, they follow you around and replace your existing… (0:35:48) Al: No, they don’t replace your existing spirit companion. (0:35:50) Al: They add to… (0:35:53) Kelly: I wonder if I should give this game another chance. (0:35:55) Kelly: It seems like they’ve added so much since I last played. (0:35:57) Al: possibly, yeah. (0:36:00) Kelly: But I have enough other farming games. (0:36:08) Kelly: That’s that. That was my issue. (0:36:13) Kelly: Yeah. (0:36:18) Kelly: Now that is a good point, because I feel like I just at its core, (0:36:21) Kelly: I felt kind of listless playing the game. (0:36:25) Kelly: So, yeah, I think you do have a good point. (0:36:27) Kelly: I just like I want to like it so much. (0:36:30) Al: I agree. I also want to like it. Um, but I guess about it, that counts, right? (0:36:36) Kelly: - Yeah, it does have very positive reviews, (0:36:38) Kelly: so obviously other people are enjoying it. (0:36:39) Al: Which is good, which is good. And it’s, you know, yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Um, (0:36:39) Kelly: So I’m glad, yeah, I’m glad. (0:36:41) Kelly: ‘Cause I do like, I like the whole concept. (0:36:47) Al: and it’s over 500 reviews as well. So it’s not, it’s not like they’re, they must be getting (0:36:52) Al: enough. That’s, you know, 500 reviews means quite a lot more people buying it, right? Because (0:36:57) Al: most people do not review your game. (0:37:00) Kelly: Yeah, no, I don’t think I think I’ve reviewed like two games (0:37:00) Al: I don’t know if I’ve reviewed any of them on Steam. (0:37:09) Al: They’ve also added new spirits, so that’s what you care about in the game, right? (0:37:15) Al: The spirits. (0:37:16) Al: So there you go. (0:37:19) Al: And the final update is Far Lands. (0:37:22) Al: I’ve released their 0.3 update. (0:37:25) Al: This is the biggest update Far Lands has seen to date. (0:37:30) Al: It adds achievements, which is always a good thing. (0:37:34) Al: Another game we’re about to talk about later on in this episode could have. (0:37:37) Al: That would be great. (0:37:38) Al: Please and thank you. (0:37:42) Kelly: I also love achievements. (0:37:44) Kelly: It’s honestly one of the big things (0:37:45) Kelly: that I really like from not playing (0:37:47) Kelly: as many games on the Switch and switching over to PC. (0:37:48) Al: Mm, yeah, I wonder if, well, almost every game feels a mystery. I wonder if, because (0:37:51) Kelly: I’m like, oh, achievements in every game. (0:37:54) Kelly: How nice. (0:37:59) Kelly: Yeah, yeah, yeah. (0:38:05) Al: obviously they have been slowly getting more and more features as they get a lot, you know, (0:38:10) Al: like the 3DS added a bunch of stuff that other games, other systems had, and then the Switch (0:38:16) Al: called Mostly Modern. (0:38:18) Al: Maybe the next switch you’ll have. (0:38:23) Kelly: Maybe. I always wonder, I didn’t know what the issue was, to be honest, because I know (0:38:28) Kelly: when some people, what is it called, port the games to the Switch, like I know for HoloNet (0:38:34) Kelly: I can’t do video screenshots. I could do plain image screenshots. Yeah, because I think it’s (0:38:37) Al: Yeah, interesting. That, so I believe the video screenshots is something they can disable. (0:38:46) Kelly: about how hard it is for the person porting it to, I guess… Okay. (0:38:51) Al: I don’t think that requires any work on their point. I think it’s more a case of they didn’t (0:38:53) Kelly: Which is, yeah, because it’s weird, because you can record it on every other device. But (0:38:55) Al: want to add that feature. I’m not sure why, but… Yeah. (0:39:03) Kelly: that was also one of the ones where I don’t have achievements, and I know there’s achievements (0:39:06) Kelly: for that game. Yeah. (0:39:07) Al: And some games add them into the game itself, like they’ll add, but that’s a lot of work. (0:39:11) Al: The whole point of the achievements in Steam and stuff is that they’re very easy to do, (0:39:16) Al: because it’s literally just, “Here’s my list of achievements,” and then you put in the code to say (0:39:20) Al: when the achievement is hit. Yeah, because it doesn’t have… Switch doesn’t have an achievement (0:39:22) Kelly: Oh, so that’s the issue is that it’s just hard to add them in on the switch, like the switch doesn’t make it okay. (0:39:29) Al: system. So if you want to have it on the Switch, you have to build it entirely yourself. And it (0:39:34) Kelly: Uh, I’m dumb. I understand now. (0:39:34) Al: And it would be only within game because there are a. (0:39:38) Al: Couple of games that have done that they’ve recreated the achievement system in their own game, but then it only works for that game and it takes a lot of work to do that. (0:39:40) Kelly: Mm hmm. (0:39:42) Kelly: Mm hmm. (0:39:46) Kelly: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. That makes a lot more sense. (0:39:47) Al: Whereas with steam and with Xbox and with PlayStation there’s a piece of code that they can call which just does the achievement for them so. (0:39:54) Kelly: Okay, I knew it was something to do with how it set up, but I never looked into the actual basic why behind it (0:40:02) Al: They’ve added to upgrade system as well. (0:40:04) Al: They’ve added food, they’ve added house upgrade system, they’ve added new (0:40:07) Al: furniture, they’ve added guests and better NPCs, one of which looks like a xenomorph. (0:40:12) Al: Not sure why. (0:40:14) Kelly: I like his jacket. (0:40:14) Al: Legally distinct, legally distinct xenomorph. (0:40:20) Al: Yeah, it looks like a pretty big update. (0:40:21) Al: I haven’t played this game yet. I do want that. (0:40:24) Kelly: Yeah, it’s on my list of games to check out. I just I tried to avoid most early access, honestly. (0:40:33) Al: Good thing we’re not talking about an early access today then (0:40:39) Kelly: Is it generally? (0:40:42) Al: So that’s the game updates. (0:40:43) Al: We now have three new games to talk about, (0:40:47) Al: the first of which actually, no, let’s go the other way around. (0:40:49) Al: Let’s talk about Dreamland Farm first, (0:40:51) Al: because I think this will be the quickest to talk about. (0:40:55) Al: Dreamland Farm. (0:40:56) Al: Since childhood, you’ve dreamed of being close to nature, (0:40:59) Al: but being born and raised in the city stood in the way of that. (0:41:02) Al: The closer you were to adulthood, the more time you spent with your grandma, (0:41:05) Al: who showed you all around her own farm, from crops to berries and mushrooms, (0:41:09) Al: everything she knew, she taught you, she prepared you to be her (0:41:12) Al: successor. I mean that’s just every farming game. I don’t know. I don’t know. And what (0:41:16) Kelly: - Yeah, why do they all do that? (0:41:19) Al: I find really interesting is like, so if you have a farming game, the description should (0:41:25) Al: tell you what’s different about it. Don’t be like, oh, it’s a farming game. It’s like, (0:41:27) Kelly: Yeah. This time it’s your uncle and not your grandpa. (0:41:28) Al: yeah, we know that, right? It’s like, if you have, yeah, exactly, exactly. It’s like, come (0:41:36) Al: on. Let’s not, let’s not pretend. This one looks… (0:41:42) Al: Pretty… I don’t see anything unique in this, personally. (0:41:46) Kelly: I only gave it a cursory glance and it does look pretty. (0:41:52) Kelly: It doesn’t look like it’s breaking any boxes or molds or whatever though. (0:41:56) Al: But equally I also didn’t think about Fields of Mistria and didn’t want to play that until I decided, until it got a lot of buzz and I was like okay it’s time to play this one, you know, like, sometimes you can’t tell without playing it, which is a PR problem, obviously. (0:42:12) Kelly: Which goes back to your point of pointing out the differences (0:42:14) Kelly: and not the similarities. (0:42:19) Kelly: That’s what you need to get in touch with all the devs (0:42:22) Kelly: about is changing their PR management. (0:42:26) Al: I will be your PR. (0:42:29) Al: No, no, I will not. (0:42:32) Al: That is very much a conflict of interests. (0:42:36) Al: This one interestingly, so it’s now it’s on Switch and Xbox, it is not on Steam, which (0:42:41) Al: is interesting. (0:42:42) Kelly: Oh, that feels so backwards. (0:42:43) Al: Yeah, yeah. (0:42:47) Al: I wonder why. (0:42:48) Kelly: I wonder right too, especially if it’s on x. (0:42:49) Al: Yeah, because it’s not like it’s they had an exclusivity deal with Switch, because then (0:42:54) Al: and they wouldn’t be on Xbox. (0:42:57) Al: And the Xbox version did come out like a week after the Switch version. (0:43:01) Al: That’s not long enough for it to be an exclusivity. (0:43:04) Kelly: - No. (laughs) (0:43:04) Al: So yeah, weird. (0:43:07) Al: I don’t know, I’ll keep an eye on it. (0:43:09) Kelly: Hopefully it’s good. (0:43:09) Kelly: Hopefully they got something unique in it. (0:43:11) Al: Yeah, yeah, hopefully. (0:43:13) Al: Hopefully. (0:43:14) Al: It’s 10 pounds. (0:43:16) Al: Is it 15 dollars? (0:43:18) Al: Probably. (0:43:20) Kelly: Probably something like that, yeah. (0:43:22) Al: So it feels cheap enough to like buy it and play it. (0:43:26) Al: And if you’re not bothered by it, then it’s not the end of the world sort of thing. (0:43:30) Al: Next we have RATOPIA. (0:43:33) Al: RATOPIA. (0:43:35) Al: I keep wanting to say RATOPIA, but it’s only one T, so it’s definitely RATOPIA. (0:43:38) Kelly: Uh, to be fair, I say rat topia (0:43:41) Al: Yeah, but there’s no second T. (0:43:42) Kelly: Well, he sounds better I know but it’s funner to say that way (0:43:47) Kelly: For the podcast, I will say rat topia (0:43:50) Al: RATOPIA. RATOPIA is a new game that is combined first of all, a new game, come on. What is (0:44:01) Al: that? I just feel like sometimes I feel like this this podcast is just me editing and critiquing (0:44:07) Al: the descriptions of games. Is a new game. Yeah, we know that. Don’t add that in. Also (0:44:13) Al: just a point, you don’t need to put your name in the description because your name is elsewhere (0:44:17) Al: on the page, right? Just right. (0:44:19) Kelly: Uh, you sound like somebody’s like third grade English teacher critiquing their (0:44:20)

"This was the greatest moment in Dance Moms history as far as I was concerned." exclaims Christi since Abby is away "with her mother" and Gia is left in charge on "Gone, Abby Gone". There isn't even a Pyramid this week, how could this not be the best week ever? Cause Abby still found a way to make it awful! But most of that wasn't shown on camera, so prepare for a lot of 4th wall breaking to find out what really went down that Fourth of July weekend in 2013.Kelly is contractually forced to bring her kids back to the studio. The show frames this situation as Kelly sneaking-in her kids while Abby is away, just to get Brooke that solo she 100% wants. This immensely upsets Leslie, who is convinced Kelly has it out for Payton and fears they will be kicked to the curb if Kelly returns. A feud begins to quickly fuel between the two moms, though Kelly doesn't have anything against Payton in reality, so it's rather one sided. Kelly takes the bold step to call Abby and request a solo for Brooke, to which Abby informs Gia that if Brooke is given a solo she'll be fired. Gia downplays the situation and gives Brooke a solo to practice, knowing what may come of it. To add insult to injury it's far and away the worst choreography Brooke has ever been given. When Abby calls in to give the Hylands a piece of her mind, she crosses a line with Brooke that suspiciously didn't make it to air.Christi also takes the crown for "Worst Dance Moms Outfit". So tune-in to hear Christi relive the horror of it all!Quotes“Paris Hilton's book... and she refers to us in there! Oh yeah, about how ugly our clothes are. It's not Dance Moms level ugly? Ok Paris fuck off! Shut up! I mean maybe...” (8:39-8:51 | Christi & Kelly)“Every time you show up Payton gets kicked back off the team. But that's not my fault. That's a TV show, there's only so many spots!” (26:23-26:29 | Christi & Kelly)“So you're in your white minivan with your bar of clothes in the back and they came up. Walk me through it. Were they like you need to ask for a solo? Absolutely. None of us wanted a solo. None of us wanted to even be back." (30:16-30:27 | Christi & Kelly)“Let's take a poll. Do you think it's hoodlum if you say the F-word or do you think you're a hoodlum if you break a beer bottle on someone's face?" (42:08-42:16 | Christi)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What could have ticked Kelly off enough to once say, “I always knew in the back of my head that the day would come where Christ would stab me in the back, and you know what? She did...”? If you ask either Kelly or Christi now they'd be hard pressed to give you an answer! It's time once again for Christi and Kelly to be fighting one another for some reason as the second half of "Boy Crazy, Mom Crazy" just about has everyone up in arms.Jill still believes Kelly is taking the opportunity Abby has given Brooke for granted, but Kelly is still worried about what Abby has in store for her daughter. What she might not have expected was Abby setting Brooke up on a date with her fellow senior dancer Kevin. For all the talk about "No Boys Allowed", Abby sure seems to love to make exceptions.Jill also starts a spat with Cathy as the ALDC arrives at competition, which only manages to worsen Cathy's already fragile state as Anthony has continued to increase tensions over at their own studio. Mickey is strongly considering transferring Gino to the ALDC, and Cathy could seemingly care less whether any of her dancers stick around.But how do Jill and Kelly end up fighting? Are these Bitches still going on about not calling that one time? Somethings never change it seems, though stick around for a rare moment of Abby being unambiguously nice for once!Quotes“[Abby] says I think Kevin could charm the pants off of anyone. He's quite demure for a teenager. Ok, it is a little unnerving that Abby just said a 17 year old could charm the pants right off of anybody… He's a minor Abby settle down!" (12:06-12:31 | Christi & Kelly)“I'm in my interview and I say this is the worst fight we've ever been in. Are friendship will never be the same after some of these things. You know what's the funniest part about that? You ready? Neither of us remember this fight.” (21:06-21:22 | Christi & Kelly)“Let's just drink, Cathy's gonna wear fur in the next scene. Oh yay. Between Cathy and Jill I'm going to become an alcoholic. Ha, THAT'S the reason.” (28:18-28:27 | Christi & Kelly)“Abby says that they look “leggy” which is good. They were leggy. They were fucking eleven! Eleven year olds are leggy. Their legs are the only part of them that grow.” (40:51-41:00 | Christi)LinksSubscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarreThank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiakFollow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari says policymakers have yet to win the fight against inflation, and that they will consider more tightening if needed. Neil Dutta, Renaissance Macro Research US Economic Research Head, says a rebalanced labor market could led to a rate cut. Katy Kaminski, AlphaSimplex Chief Research Strategist, expects more potential buying for treasuries in the short-term. Mohamed Younis, Gallup Editor-In-Chief, previews the off-year elections happening across several US states. Nadia Martin Wiggen, Svelland Capital Director, discusses the global oil market as prices fall to over two-month lows. Get the Bloomberg Surveillance newsletter, delivered every weekday. 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transcript: This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Lisa A. Bromoids, along with Tom Keen and Jonathan Ferrow, join us each day for insight from the best in economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on Apple, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal, and the Bloomberg Business app. This morning, Mike McKay Drumrow, fantastic guests the random type with us to talk about Fed policy. Yes, and thank you very much, John, because we are pleased to welcome Neil Kashkari, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, to the table today. Thank you for coming in making the trip all the way to New York only for us. I'm sure nothing else There would be nothing else this morning, and except for Bloomberg Surveillance. You're kind of known as the guy who is the most hawkish. I don't want to characterize you exactly now, given how things have changed over the last couple of months, but you have left open the possibility of doing more. How much more would you think the economy might need? Are we talking about just that one leftover move from the dot plot in September, or if you have to start raising again, do you have to go farther. Probably. Well, first of all, it's great to see you, Thanks for having me. People are looking for certainty, and I wish I could give that certainty provided there's been so much, so much it's unusual about the reopening of the economy and the dynamics that led to the high inflation, and how long it has taken, and the dynamics as the disinflation process has taken hold. I wish I knew. We have to let the inflation data guide US, the labor market data guide US, just to point out the obvious. Our forecasts have not been great over the past couple of years, and so we just need to We're all committed. Everybody on the FORMC has committed that two percent is our inflation target. We have to get inflation back down to two percent over a reasonable period of time. Ultimately, the economy will tell us how much is needed to get there, And I just don't know. Well, at what point do you think you would believe you have tightened enough or not tightened enough? What is it that you're looking for. Well, I'll give you some good news is that core PC on a three month basis is running about two point five percent, and it's lower than the six month data. It's lower than the one year data. So that suggests that the disinflation is real. If we continue to see inflation numbers of that range two point five percent or lower on a go forward basis, that would tell me, Okay, we are now on a path back to two percent inflation. But three months data is still only three months data, and if we see that start to tick back up again, that would tell me our job is not yet done. Tick back up means what? In other words, we get another couple of CPI reports in a PCE report before your next meeting, a couple of tents higher. The chairman and others say it's going to be lumpy or does it have to be a significant move? In other words, what are you thinking about for December? Well, I think we could look at, as the chairman always says, we look at all of the data. So what surprises Over the past few months, We've been surprised by how strong American consumers have been. Consumer spending is held up remarkably well, we've been surprised by GDP growth. When activity continues to run this hot, that makes me question is policy as tight as we assume that it currently is. So if you saw inflation tick back up and you saw continued very strong economic activity on the real side of the economy, that would tell me, okay, we might need to do more. So it's hard for me to say this one data point needs to be here. I would be looking at the suite of data. Did we outsource doing more to financial markets? In the arts week? Have we outsourced doing more to financial markets? You know, this is a very complicated question on what has been driving the long end of the Yeld curve. Some people point to term premium, and I always joke the term premium is the economist version of dark matter. It's the residual of all the stuff we can't explain. It's not that our models are wrong, it's the dark matter is out there. So that's the term premium. And some people say, well, that's driven by fiscal If it was fiscal driving the term premium, I would have expected to see a week dollar. Usually when investors are worried about a country's fiscal position, their currency weekends our currency has been quite strong. It makes me wonder is it really fiscal driving the term premium. Another possibility is the path of policy over the next few years. That could explain both the stronger dollar and the weaker stock market going into the last meeting. Another one is that maybe the neutral rate is higher, or maybe it's a combination of all three of these. And so these are things that we're spending a lot of time trying to understand what the markets are doing. But just speaking for myself, I'm not comfortable saying which of those three it is, because which of those three it is determines what it means for policy. If it is the term premium, then it is doing some work for the FED. But if it's the neutral rate, or if it's the forward guidance of the path of policy, then we would actually have to follow through to preserve those rates. So how did this line end up in the statement? And I'll share it with that audience. The kind of financial and credit conditions for households and businesses are likely to wound economic activity, hiring, an inflation. Where's that coming from? Oh, that's been there for a long time. I mean, that's been in there since the Silicon Valley bank episode and the banking stresses leading to some tightening of credit conditions across the economy. So I think that that's right. I, for one, don't say that that means the recent moves in the old curve. How fluid is that assessment? Can that change from month to month, meeting to mating, because some of those comments around that has inspired quite a move in this market over the last week. Well, you know, one of the things about the statements, we always have to be careful about putting things into the statement because they tend to be long lived and it's hard to pull them out of the statement because as soon as you take something out, then all of a sudden, people say, oh my gosh, they're declaring that all the banking stresses are over, as an example, and so, you know, I would look at all of the range of commentary that you get, look at what the chairman says, look at his press conference to get a read of the thought of the committee. You said that people want certainty that you can't give it to them, and I understand that, but people don't just want certainty, they also want some sort of guiding philosophy. Do you think that Fed Shir Powell has outlined some sort of guiding philosophy and where the bar is to cut rates and where the bar is to raise them further. Well, I think he's articulated very clearly that we're committed to getting back to two percent inflation. Right. There's been some chatter amongst economists that maybe we should raise the inflation target. I think he's done a great job saying that is not on the table. We're not going to do that. We're going to get inflation back to two percent, and we're going to let the data guide us. We've moved very aggressively. We've made a lot of progress on inflation. We're not done yet, meaning inflation is not back to our target, and if we need to do more, we will. There seem to be a feeling in markets that the bar to cut rates has been lowered over the past week or two weeks. Suddenly not only are we reaching a pause and have we seen a peek in the FED funds rate, but that also the Fed will cut next year, maybe surgically. Neil Dada is talking about that and he's coming up next. Do you want to push back against that? Do you think that the bar to cut is still just as high as it was. I have no idea where market participants are getting that. There's no discussion amongst me and any of my colleagues about when we're going to start preparing to cut rates. The only thing that's been talked about at all is that at some point, when inflation is well on its way back down, if we didn't back off a little bit, then real rates would be getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And that's real, but that's math. But is there enough weakness currently in the market in the economy, I should say to give you that sense at this point, look at the last GDP print. I mean, does anybody look at that and think, oh, my gosh. The economy we for the last twelve months GDP has been very strong. The labor market continues to be quite robust. Yes, the unemployment rate is ticked up to three point nine percent, but we've also seen a huge surge of labor supply, which is really positive come online. So I'm looking at this, I'm seeing consumers that are strong. My air by the way, my airplane that I came here on was one hundred percent full yesterday. It's going to be one hundred percent full today, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that the economy is weaken Well, whether you go higher or not, you are on board for longer. And so you must have modeled out some idea of how long you would need to leave rates unchanged before you could get down to a level low enough that you could take your foot off the break a little bit. How long do you think you'll be at five point five into twenty twenty four. Well, I think it's going to depend if we continue to see inflation prints similar to the ones we've seen the last few months, you know, and we end up with a year of a year at two point five percent core inflation and it continues to trend down, that constellation would give me evidence to say, hey, we ought to look at should we start backing off just so the real policy isn't getting tighter and tighter and tighter, because we're clearly on our way back down to two percent. But again, I don't want to just point to one data series. We will be looking at the suite of data to try to get a read of where the economy is headed. Well, not just data. You talk to businesses in your district, all the time, What are they telling you now about their view of growth and hiring and pricing going forward. It's moderating. So the labor market is still tight in my district, people especially in the Dakotas, really have a hard time finding workers. But in Minnesota, it's still a tight labor market, but it's not as tight as it was six months ago. It's not as tight as it was a year ago. So that kind of maps to the national data that we're seeing of a gently cooling labor market but one that's still very very warm. Same thing with economic activity. Depending on the sector, they're saying, Hey, we feel pretty good about things. We're a little cautious about the future. Obviously, they watch the news, they read the news. There's a lot of economic anxiety that is reported on that people, you know, factor that into their own thinking and their own business planning. So I think the outlooks are still optimistic, but it's cautious optimists. Well are they still raising prices or think they need to? So it's funny there Still they still buy and large have some pricing power more than they had before pandemic, but not as much pricing power as they had six months or a year ago. Can we finish on housic sure in the space of three years, we've had record low interest rates in the highest rates in several decades. Is this housing market broken? Well? I think since the pandemic, we have structurally underbuilt the number of units that we need to meet our growing population. And that's the factor. And that's really about regulation at the local level that are creating barriers to more supply coming in. The raid environment will settle out over time, but structurally we have to actually bring a lot more supply online to meet America at the time, but it could be like twenty thirty years. I think this is the issue here. The legacy of this FMC could well be a generation of people look down to the housing market. Why do you say that there could be a generation of people with two three percent mortgages that never sound their home. Yeah, I don't know. People end up needing to move. It's funny when people don't tell their home because they're locked into a low mortgage. That's less supply, but that's also one less buyer. Most people who buy homes are leaving another home, and so that affects both the supply side and the and the demand side of That's why I set a generation look down because I'm renting and count by, so I'm not sounding anything, and that's the generation. I'm talking about that generation specifically, you concern that could be the legacy at the FORMC. Now. I think the legacy of this FMC is that we've dealt with the pandemic very aggressively. Then we were surprised by very high inflation, but then we move very aggressively to bring the inflation back down. I want to ask you about a story on the Bloomberg terminal today about all the financial CEOs from the US over in Hong Kong sounding very doer and down about the prospects for the economy. They suggest that things are pretty fragile right now, both in the economy and the markets, given everything that's going on around the world and in the shadow banking system as well as theirs. How worried are you, well, I mean, we're always worried about things that can happen all around the world. We've got teams of people looking at different scenarios around the world. Ultimately, we have to focus on what we can control, you know, geopolitics. When Hamas attacked Israel, the first thing we thought of is what's it going to do to the oil market, what's it going to do to commodity prices. Remarkably, the response so far has been muted. But that's something we're obviously paying close attention to. But the broader geopolitical issues are just so far outside of our bounds of forecasting. You know, we have a hard enough time forecasting inflation trying to forecast where geopolitics is going. We just have to focus what we can control. Oil price is dropped. I mean, that's the crazy thing about the last month. Physically, it doesn't make any sense. And this is the reason why trying to get it right is just impossible. And then trying to get the idea of a FED put and whether they're going to respond. I'm just saying people are talking about that now, so yeah, talking about it in the last few hours. Yes, it's on this program. No, always a pleasure, Thank you, Sirving Neil, Cash County, the Minneapolis FED price Alongstide Plympecks, Mi M chab No Tatsa, the head of US economic research at Renaissance Macron. Nil, good morning to you. Good morning. Let's go straight there because my IB was lighting up with messages from you. We're not thinking about tapering. Two months later, we're a long way from neutral cutting a month later. What do you think is going on within the FBC. Where do you think this is going? Well? I think I agree that it doesn't pay much to forecasts right now. It's important just to look at the data as it's coming to you, and so I do sympathize with that. But at the end of the day, I mean, the unemployment rate is up above the fed's forecast for this year, and that's the first time that's happened since March of twenty twenty two. Now you know we're in. When you're in the thick of it, it's hard to know whether that represents the start of something much more onerous or whether it's just the normalization of the labor market. But I think for the FED, I think the doves on the FMC, and remember you know President Kashkari, he tends to lean on the hawkish side of the consensus at the FED. I think for the doves, they have all the ammunition they need to basically put the hawks in a casket. Okay, I mean, I think that's the way I would think about it. I mean, you can point to the pickup in productivity and what that's done to unit labor costs. You can point to what Powell has said, right, I mean, when when central bankers use proceed carefully risk management, that's code for doing nothing. And you know, finally, I mean the employment report was probably understating payroll growth. That's my view. I mean, there's a lot of strike activity and so far, but at the end of the day, average hourly earnings are running just over three percent at an annual rate over the last several months. So I don't think the hawks on the committee frankly, can use the labor markets as a rationale to be hawkish anymore. So that is over and so I think the doves can basically say that the labor markets have been rebalanced. And if they can say that just implicitly, it means that the door is a little bit cracked open for a cut. And you know, the point I'm making to you is, you know J Powell, it wouldn't be the first time he basically, you know, flipped on a dime. I mean, we're a long way from neutral. I mean a few months later he's cutting rates, We're not even thinking about thinking about tapering or hiking, and then we're hiking and tapering basically in the same month. So you know, to me, the fact that they're not talking about it is irrelevant. It's also in their sep for next year. The question is whether these surgical cuts, what are surgical cuts? Basically a few cuts to stabilize the economy. I mean, I think the issue is is the extent to which cutting quickly translates into rapid economic stable So I mean, for as an example, I mean, let's see what happens with mortgage purchase demand. Over the next couple of weeks. We've seen mortgage rates basically come down to what like seven percent. Okay, I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Six months ago, you were talking about way more economic strength in the US economy than people had expected. Now you're talking about strategic or surgical cuts by the Federal Reserve to stabilize the economy. Are you saying that they are warranted because the economy No, I don't think that they are. Part of the tention, Lisa, is that my job isn't to tell people what I think the Fed should do. My job is to try to get into their head and figure out what they will do. I mean, if I was there, would I be I would probably be more hawkish than the consensus on the FMC. But I'm not there. Well, but does this mean that you think the consequence of surgical cuts to fortify the economy will be prolonged inflation? Yes? Okay, So then how do you sort of arrange around that sort of what is the inflation rate? How do you sort of lean into the rally that we've seen in the bond market and say, wait a second, you guys have gotten ahead of your skis based on the game theory that the FED is playing and the way that they're likely to do Searga, I don't know that the bond market's getting ahead of itself. I think the bond market is sniffing out that the distribution of risks have changed. I don't know what the FED may do next. I mean, that's what I think the bond market is doing, and I think bond market investors are right to do that, because, as I say, you know, you think about it basically three prongs, right, the labor market, inflation, and then financial conditions. If the FED can look at the labor market and say the labor markets are rebalanced. Okay, that's check done. You can't use that anymore as a reason to be hawkish. So, if anything, if the unemployment rate's not going up a little bit, the distribution of risks are that they would cut because the labor markets. And right, if the labor markets are thawing, that's going to give them increased confidence that inflation will thaw and so and then finally, if that's the case, they're not going to be particularly concerned about the easing and financial conditions that you've seen since the last in the last week, which is what we've been talking about through this morning, whether they are going to tolerate the easing we've seen over the last week. And it feels like perhaps they will help me work with me here. It feels like to me that you believe the world might have changed post pandemic versus pre pandemic. Do you sense that they still believe were still in the same old world pre pandemic? I do. I mean, I mean, if you listen to someone like New York Fed President John Williams, even Chair Powell, I mean, there's not much there's quite a bit of reluctance to just say that, you know, neutral rates are higher. I mean, why do you think that, is, Neil? You know, I don't know. I mean I think that maybe in their minds things haven't changed. I mean all, I mean, you saw Powell talk about this at at the press conference last week. I mean, oh, well, if we get to pick up in potential growth, it's a temporary pick up and potential growth, then we'll go back down. So if you don't think that the world has fundamentally changed, then you're going to be more sort of cognizant of overtightening risk. Right Like, So if the unemployment rate is starting to go up, you may have thought, well, maybe you overdid it, so you might be more willing to cut sooner as a result. So are you more bullish on the US economy but also expect inflation to remain higher and the FED When people look back, this will be considered a policy air that they weren't hawkish enough. Yeah, I mean I think that that would be Yeah, I mean that would be something I could be saying in twenty twenty five. What would you point to if you had this conversation right now? And I would love to get you around the table next time I have a FED official to work through somebody's issues. But what would you it sounds dangerous as the number one thing that indicates to you that the world has changed, versus pandemic that ultimately they don't believe it. What would you point to, Well, I mean the first is just look at let's look at the obvious. I mean, you've done a lot, and yet the economy is still kind of hanging in there. I would say that things like household formation rates are running twice the rate they did after the Financial crisis. I mean, to me, I think it's much easier to tell the story about why the post financial crisis period was actually the anomaly than not. So I think we're actually going back to the old normal more so than anything else. Obviously, you think about all those people during the financial crisis period or the years after that, we're saving up for retirement. A lot of them have now since retired and they're now dissaving, which is you know, implies higher neutral rates. You think about income inequality, it was something that we were talking about all throughout the twenty tens. Well, it's coming down now. People at the lower end of the wage spectrum. We're seeing more rapid growth in their wages. You see more increased sort of union activity and unions getting big wins for blue collar workers. I mean, these are not things. I mean, and those folks have a much higher propensity to spend. And so I think it's it's not right in my view to say that things haven't changed. But if that's what the FED believes, then you have to be recognizing what that implies for what they might do later. And so I think just because they're not talking about cuts now does not mean they won't be talking about cuts in three six months. That should be in the realm of possibility, and I think the market's Frankly, I'm not willing to fight the move yet. I mean, okay, no a clinic as always. You know you're one of my favors. I think everyone knows that. No data, every nice loose Macro, No, thank you joining guess now. Katy Kaminski, chief research strategist over Alpha Simplex. Katie, it's the number one question for us. Are you still short treasuries? Yes? Why? Well, this is because for trend falling, it's not just about a couple of days, It's really about persistent trends in the market, and I just want to point out, and this is something interesting, trend falling signals have been net short for nine quarters. This is the first time in many decades that this has been the case. And so the reason I'm pausing right now is because we've been saying short, short, short all year, and for the first time, it's starting to feel like we already got that short come through. What's next? What does the market do now? Buy are coming in because yields are at interesting levels. They're probably thinking, maybe we've finally hit that point. Do you think something changed fundamentally to lead to that in the last few weeks. I do, And then I think that the data has come out to support the narrative for investors. But I also think a narrative that has made sense to me is that investors have woken up to the idea that five percent yields at some point there's a buying point where you think, well, there's a chance this could actually go down. And now you start to see this equilibrium occur where you're seeing the disinverted curve, which is something we've been looking for since the beginning of the year. So Katie just to put a bow on this, are you now not short treasuries and actually starting to see value, particularly if yields get up to that five percent level in the tenure. So we're still short in terms of the overall frequency that we see signals, but we are seeing consolidation in those signals, so there's a reduction in that particular conviction. But what I will say is that I'm seeing more and more positive signals on higher frequency, and so I think on the shorter term you're going to see more and more potential buying for treasuries. But I do want to remind everyone inflation is still an issue. Rates could be higher for longer, so there's still really a good chance that we're going to see a lot of volatility instead of a new trend per se that starts to emerge. Yet this raises this question of which particular data points are going to be the real action drivers, like what we saw over the past ten days. Is it going to be basically every inflation read that we get, or do you really buy into this idea that it's treasury supply that's been dictating a lot of the volumes and a lot of the angst that we felt over the past month. It's really interesting that you bring this up, Lisa, because we've been talking about the supply issue. I mean, how often do people actually talk about supply. They're only talking about it because I think people are trying to understand the equilibrium of where people sit and what yield should cost, I mean, what should be the right yield. And I think from our side on the technical side, what we're looking for is potential breakouts so that we're seeing a steeper curve at some point. Our view is it's going to depend on really what happens with the economic data of whether we end up with tighter conditions or if we actually see something very extreme where we actually saw higher yields. Again, that to me seems very unlikely right now, but I think it's really a point to start watching every data point to see which direction the yield market is going to go or which direction the yields go, because it's definitely an inflection point than Katie, were going to catch up with Nil Kashgari in about twenty minutes time. I think we're all looking forward to this conversation. There is this second paragraph in the statement that they put out last week on kind of financial conditions it reaches follows. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Time of financial and credit conditions for households and businesses are likely to weigh on economic activity, hiring, and inflation. Could you still write that same sentence today? After the move we've seen in the last week, what's that on the movement we've seen in the last month, for the the last six months, what do you think it is? Well? I think the challenge is that these numbers come in at different frequencies. Last week we had a massive buying but this could also be somewhat of a relief rally given how much movement we've seen downward, especially in equities. And let's just be honest, like I said, at a five percent yield started to get exciting, people said, oh I better get in there. So I think there's really still This could just be the tip of the beginning of understanding how serious financial conditions have changed, and if it's enough to actually warrant a point where we might actually have cuts at some point earlier than some would would have thought, like myself, who's been very pessimistic about rate cuts. Hey, Ketty, do you have a decent understanding of the conditions that would lead to those cuts. Well, usually in terms of this, I think we'd have to see pretty severe deterioration in financial conditions to see rate cuts, given the mandate of the FED and the fact that the other factors that are really focused on have not come down to their target level. So the fact that inflation is sticky, and the fact that we have a strong workforce and that we have all of these conditions putting us in a good place. They have been pretty clear that they're going to keep us higher for longer until we can sort that out. On the other hand, if we had some sort of very severe draw down or deterioration and credit that was clear, I think that they would have to act. So that to me would be the situation where we would see those rate cuts. Is if you saw something in the credits markets or something in terms of consumers really struggling that would cause them to actually react. So the FED put still exists, just at a much higher pain point, I would say probably yes. I mean, I think it always exists somewhere, but it's definitely moved a lot compared to what we liked in twenty nineteen and before. Kelly Let's finish what we started. Given the uncertainty you now have about your position, why maintain the shot? That's what I'm going to walk away from this conversation scratching my head about why maintain the short when it can be as expensive as it was on weeks last week. So this is the point of trend falling. Systematic trading is about not double sort of using your emotion in the moment. And I think what works with trend falling is following the data, and we just need more data to know the answer, and over longer periods of time, it turns out the market is actually quite good at giving us indications of where things are moving, and it's particularly short term movements where they disagree. Where you want to lean on your own gut, but you shouldn't, because that's what systematic trading is really about. It's about measuring and falling the markets and allowing the markets to tell you what the market where we're going, as opposed to sort of my own personal view. Unfortunately, Katie, thanks for the clarity on that point. I appreciate it. Katie commenced you that of aphasimplex, two major political parties remain unpopular in the United States, fifty six percent of Americans viewing the Republican Party unfavorably, fifty eight percent saying the same thing of the Democratic Party. Mohammed Junis, the editor in chief at Gallop, joined us now, Muhammad, help us out. I've been rinting through this piece. Neither party is well liked. You guys have pointed out that the GP has an edge on certain issues. Can we just talk about the likability of both parties right now, Muhammed? How unusual is this? Unfortunately, you know at harkens to your Amtrak conversation earlier. We're at a state right now in the United States when both parties are really not doing that great in terms of their favorability. It's nothing new, Unfortunately, It's been quite a while since Americans had a favorable view of either party in the majority. We're also at a time where there's a record high of Americans saying that they'd like to see a third party in American politics. Of course, easy to say I want more. It doesn't necessarily mean that that party would exist or actually be powerful. But we're also at a time, John and Lisa where there's a high of people that identify as independents, and that is important not only in the current moment, but also in our analysis over generations. What we find is that younger Americans today are actually sticking with that independent id much further along their lifespan than previous generations young folks. So, certainly America is highly dissatisfied with national government. We've talked about that a lot. They're really, in some ways most dissatisfied with both parties. That being said, today is a local election. It's really, I know, it's so tempting for us to jump to twenty twenty four. Americans line up today to vote on local issues, and there's a huge difference in the way people perceive local government versus the national government here in the United States. SOMEHOWMA just explain that a little bit more. What is the big difference between the two currently? Basically and coetence. Americans have very low trust and competence in the national government and national institutions. Perceptions of corruption are astronomically high. When you come to local government, though, people have a much more positive perspective on local government, whether it's the efficacy, transparency of local government and corruption, but also how they feel about their local governing officials. So Americans light up at the ballot box today, they're hearing a lot of echo chamber on the national what this means, we're twenty twenty four, but really what they're going to be focusing on our local issues, and the national conversation certainly will inform that. That's why things like abortion, things that implicate attitudes about big and small government, for example, they're on the ballot box. They will be discussed. They're going to be they have been a focus of the campaign. We know in Ohio there's a really big push on abortion. It'll be a really important weather vane in terms of whether or not Roe v. Wades overturning has sort of faded, The impact of that has faded or is still with us. I have to say, as you're talking about local elections and how different they are than the nationals, I think, well, they're probably not on TikTok, the local elections, they're probably not on Facebook. How much is it the social media echo chamber that polarizes people and gives them a worse and expected view of national politics in a way that local politics might be slightly immune. I think that's a great point. Lisa it's much easier to sort of check the bs if you will. On a topic or an issue. When it's about where you live, you know that reality. You have direct information from people you know where you live. You can talk to your neighbors, you can talk to your local religious leaders or community leaders. With national politics, it's a very different thing. It really tends to have now become sort of a war of the propaganda's if you owe both parties where truth is very hard to identify, but both sides are absolutely out there to religiously convict you excuse me, to religiously convert you to their worldview. So that's certainly a factor. But look, when it comes to twenty twenty four, and it's important for us to keep our eye on that mark. Everything that we've done with regards to national elections really comes down to one thing. Americans focus on the economy. The economy is king. It's not only king, it's king, queen and bishop when it comes to picking a president here in the United States. And that's going to be a huge factor in where people place their votes in November twenty twenty four. But as you all know, we are light years ahead from where that is in terms of assessing where the economy is going to be then, and that's going to be the major factor when it comes to party advantages. The Republicans definitely have maintained their historic advantage in terms of Americans viewing them as more competent in keeping the country prosperous, keeping the economy booming, and keeping the country safe. That's said, how much are you looking to Glenn Youngkin today? And maybe there is going to be very much local issues that are decided, but the local issues have implications for their glens might be the Republican con candidate for presidency. Do you think that's a stretch. I think looking at the polls right now, that is a stretch. It's hard to argue that President Trump is not the front runner of the Republican Party. You know, every poll you do, every poll, what we've done. We don't do too many political polls anymore, but there are good polls out there. It's really hard to see somebody sort of astronomically jump ahead of him. Now that being said, we haven't had a president in modern time that's facing the legal challenges that he's facing, and that's a whole other sort of curveball that's being thrown here. It's not clear exactly what his situation will be come real. Kind of rubber meets the road in terms of November twenty twenty four. But you know there are still we heard from David Axelrod this week about the Democratic side. There's still a lot of movement in this race, and I wouldn't rule out any surprises or sudden departures on either side up against the clol kid. Just to squeeze it in and finished where we started. You do mention in the piece of the GP holds advantages on certain issues. Can we just bring some life into that, Mohammad? Which issue specifically? There are really three issues In specific one is keeping the country prosperous. Republicans have a pretty sizable advantage to Democrats in terms of perceptions of keeping the country prosperous. The other one is keeping the country safe. As you know, we're now very focused on too pretty significant conflicts across the world. Hopefully that doesn't become a reality for us here in the United States, but as Americans focus more on security issues, Republicans do have that advantage in our polls. The final one is who's most competent to handle the most important problem facing the country. And what's fascinating about that question is that the most important problem facing the country, as I have said on this show many times right now, is actually poor leadership and government. So Americans identify the quality, the low quality of national le as the most important problem facing the country. So it's the most of our problem. The economy and keeping America safe fascinates in gright. To catch out Mohammed azoh Wis, He's going to say, Mohammed unus of gallop. Everyone's been pointing to oil prices. Why have they not caught up given that there is a sort of existential risk and threat that seems to be escalating every single day in the Middle East? Joining us now to help us understand what exactly to look for. Nadia Martin Wiggan, Director ats fell in Capital, Nadia, I just want to start there. What do you make of the fact that we're seeing crude traded on the NMEX blow eighty dollars a barrel again today despite what's going on in Israel and in Gaza. Hello, great to be on. I think what we saw last week is that Hezbollah and Iran for right now, they're on the sidelines, right, They don't actually want to show an escalation of the war going on in Gaza right now. So that has taken off some of the risk premium. For the last ten days, we actually see the implied volatility in the options market come down. So it's not even something that's happened just today, it's been for the last ten days that trend. I think. In addition, when that premium, that initial shock goes away, as we saw was the case with the war in Ukraine by Russia, eventually you know, the market starts to think about how to work around that. And for example, we've seen that freight rates have gone much higher, and part of that is when you look at it, it's almost like a risk balancing that, Okay, if we can't flow through the Suez and we have to go around, then let's de risk ourselves if things were to take longer. And we see that the freight market has actually priced that in as if they have to avoid the Suez, which they haven't had to do. So as a result, things have come down also in the oil market. Okay, so let's take a step back for a second. Nadia. If you're looking at freight producers, that already come up with alternate roots that avoid the suz Canal to avoid potential or the straits of our moves to avoid potential blowback from Iran. Does this mean that oil prices are actually higher than where they would be at this point if there weren't this geopolitical overhang, because it's actually being priced into the market in a material way. Yeah. If we look at what was happening to the market in oil before the October seventh attack, we could see that prices were coming off right. We had a lot of pressure on refinery margins. We had physical creed trading poorly. You know, we've had the largest overhang in the West African market that we've had in years. We had more than twenty twenty five million barrels unsold out of the November loading program. So we saw that kind of weakening and then this is where the market would like to rebalance. We saw the physical premiums come down for those grades, but the futures market has remained quite strong, and this is where we have to see that kind of reb ballancy. When we look at kind of the momentum and what is happening to pure speculative traders, you know, the CTAs and so forth. That short term momentum has been downwards, right, and that is put pressure bringing us down to where we are now in WTI, you know, just above the two hundred day moving average. If we look at that long term momentum, it's still intact for a strong market, right. So there are still those longs in the market that we've had in since before all of this started. But again, the market is preparing in case something were to happen, because you know, things had been taking along well in the Middle East and we were about to have a deal between Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel recognizing Israel, which would take off potentially a premium right, and instead we've moved in the opposite direction. How much is the US becoming the swing producer at a time where there is consolidation in the shale patch and you are seeing companies try to realize the value from their stores, basically pump the oil while it's still valued in the world. The deal of Exon, for example, buying Pioneer right, that really shows that they are focusing on the Permian right. And what interestingly Exon announced in their earnings call is that they believe that with their equipment and knowledge, they're able to bring in a total of one billion barrels of oil more out of those same assets that Pioneer was able to. So, when we think about the terminal regular production rate in the US, that goes from around fourteen and a half million barrels per day to maybe fifteen and a half million barrels per day, and the question is when do we reach that. Right August production was thirteen point one million barrels per day. It will probably take two years, but of course that depends on the short term oil price and the signals short term meaning monthly, quarterly, and the signals that that yields to shale producers in terms of activity. Right, a weaker oil price will slow that down. A strong oil price we'll speed that up. So right now, given more prices are do you expect more consolidation to be expedited currently or do you think that people are going to wait until prices go up a bit further. Well, prices are reasonably strong, right, the whole oil complex is in a good situation and making money. So when what we saw at the start of October is that demand was starting to get hit, right, we had producers selling crewed for more than one hundred dollars a barrel, and then we saw, for example, companies like India really complaining. Part of that is because Russian crudis continued to flow and we had price caps breached, right, so you were paying more than sixty dollars a barrel, maybe you were paying seventy dollars a barrel, and then on average, facing more than one hundred dollars a barrel was becoming difficult. So I think we've been in a pretty comfortable space, you know, in the eighty dollars range for everyone to make money, so it makes it ripe for consolidation and valuable resources. We don't really need things to move much higher. Do you think that all things being a well, this is going to be the range for the foreseeable future, just because of the pushes and the pulls that seem to be working in equilibrium from a technical level, yes, But of course things can suddenly change very quickly, both in the Middle East, you know, towards the negative towards a positive, so that can really shift things. And the number one thing to keep track of is that inventories were expected to draw quite steeply in the fourth quarter, and so far in October they only drew on land around three hundred thousand barrels per day. So the market is waiting for evidence that actually we have tightness led by these supply cuts and demand isn't waning, Whereas you know, on the other hand, if it continues waiting, then we could see for the falls and price. Nadie Martin Wigan of Spell and Capital, thank you so much for being with us. Subscribe to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Eastern on Blueberk dot com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always on the Bloomberg terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Lisa Abramowitz, and this is Bloomberg.See 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Kev and Kelly do a second harvest of Graveyard Keeper Timings 00:00:00: Theme Tune 00:00:30: Intro 00:02:17: What Have We Been Up To 00:06:11: News 00:34:56: Graveyard Keeper 01:14:29: Outro Links Coral Island 1.0 Moonlight in Garland Early Access Sun Haven 1.3 Update Fabledom Fairytales & Community Update Moonstone Island Eerie Items DLC Lonesome Village Physical Edition Garden Story Translation Update Fantastic Haven Graveyard Keeper Contact Al on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheScotBot Al on Mastodon: https://mastodon.scot/@TheScotBot Email Us: https://harvestseason.club/contact/ Transcript (0:00:32) Kevin: this is kelly ween this is kelly ween kelly ween kelly ween and in this show uh we talk about games that are filled with cottage gore yeah hi everyone welcome to the harvest season um with me today is kelly i’m kevin she’s actually gonna be here for well spoilers but then she’s gonna be on next week too she were on last week I bring it up because last year you were on for Halloween we did Cult of the Land. (0:00:47) Kelly: Hey. (0:00:57) Kelly: Oh, I forgot about that. (0:01:02) Kevin: And so, yeah, so, well, that’s exactly right. (0:01:03) Kelly: Is this just like my thing? (0:01:07) Kevin: Um, yeah, you’re Kelly our pumpkin queen. (0:01:10) Kevin: So here we are. (0:01:11) Kevin: Um, she’s all about this stuff. (0:01:14) Kevin: And so we are here today to talk about graveyard keeper, another, um, cottage gore game, um, technically this is a second harvest episode. (0:01:25) Kevin: Uh, Raschelle covered it way back. (0:01:28) Kevin: Like the first Halloween episode. (0:01:32) Kevin: And so I knew about it for years, but I didn’t get a chance to play it until recently. (0:01:37) Kevin: Um, and Kelly has played it significantly. (0:01:40) Kevin: Um, yeah. (0:01:40) Kelly: I only got out of it though last year. I was very new to it, so… (0:01:44) Kevin: Well, still more than I have. (0:01:49) Kevin: I’ve only played, uh, just a handful, relatively speaking. (0:01:51) Kevin: Um, but yeah, that’s, uh, we will get to that soon enough. (0:01:58) Kevin: Um, but before that, as always. (0:02:02) Kevin: Show notes and links and the transcripts are all available on the website for people to see and look at and on. (0:02:09) Kevin: Ooh, and whatnot. (0:02:11) Kevin: Um, and, uh, before the graveyard keeper will do news as always. (0:02:17) Kevin: And more importantly, what have you been up to Kelly? (0:02:19) Kevin: What have you been playing, watching, doing, yada, yada. (0:02:21) Kelly: Um, playing? I’ve really been slacking. I’ve been playing solitaire in Pokemon Go, which is not… It is, but I just… I get stuck playing it, and like, it’s fun, but I’m also like, I could be playing something better. (0:02:37) Kevin: Yeah, I mean it’s like comfort food sometimes it just it’s simple and I get it Exactly sometimes you just need a mindless game Okay, okay madman okay, I have not watched it. I’m familiar with it. That’s the one with That’s the one like 50s (0:02:37) Kelly: Um… [laughs] (0:02:39) Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, thoughtless. Um… (0:02:50) Kelly: But I just… (0:02:51) Kelly: I rewatched Mad Men, so that I think is more exciting. (0:03:05) Kelly: yeah like 60s advertising, yeah. (0:03:05) Kevin: add agency right (0:03:07) Kevin: 60s okay all right how how mm-hmm how long is it like the whole thing oh wow that’s longer than expected well that’s cool yeah sure (0:03:07) Kelly: uh I was a big fan when it came out. (0:03:12) Kelly: uh it’s like seven seasons I think? yeah seven seasons. (0:03:18) Kelly: yeah when I first ran I jumped ship like I think after season five. (0:03:25) Kelly: uh I mean it’s not the worst last two seasons but they’re not as good. (0:03:32) Kelly: Good. (0:03:34) Kevin: Um, let’s see, uh, well, I’ve last week we covered paleo pines actually kept up with it a good bit after There was a patch that dropped It’s been a big dinosaur for a week for me. I watched Jurassic Park this week again - (0:03:35) Kelly: What about you? What have you been up to? (0:03:52) Kevin: Boy, that movie’s real good good other than that Yesterday I cried that Super Mario wonder it just came out yesterday (0:04:04) Kevin: the newest one for this switch and It’s a good one Um, I’ll plug the rainbow road radio the other show I do with our mutual friend Alex We did our first look at it on that show. We just recorded and that’ll be dropping soon It’s fantastic it’s There’s I’m only a little bit in like on the second world but like every (0:04:23) Kelly: What do you think of it? (0:04:34) Kevin: level feels like it is introducing something new and different and I mean classic Mario is good you know 2d it’s your standard 2d Mario and whatnot so the gameplay is good and it’s just filled with all sorts of fun surprises and delights I’m going to spoil people on probably the best part that I’ve experienced so far there’s this level it’s like the second or third level you can do. (0:05:04) Kevin: There’s a bunch of piranha plants popping out of the pipes and you run and jump past them and whatnot. (0:05:09) Kevin: And then there’s the Wonder Flower which changes the level in different ways or whatnot. (0:05:15) Kevin: So when you touch the Wonder Flower, it starts this musical production and all the piranha plants just start singing. (0:05:23) Kevin: And it’s incredible, you entice everyone to at least look it up. (0:05:29) Kelly: I actually, I saw it on TikTok this morning and I was like, hmm, okay. (0:05:30) Kevin: It’s just so much fun. (0:05:34) Kevin: It’s so, because it just, right? (0:05:37) Kelly: Very much unexpected. (0:05:38) Kelly: I thought it was like somebody made it at first, like, you know, somebody edited it. (0:05:41) Kevin: Yep, it’s so out of the blue. (0:05:42) Kelly: But no, it was real. (0:05:45) Kevin: Yeah, no, it’s good. (0:05:48) Kevin: It’s really funny and yeah, the game just brings smiles to me every level with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns like that. (0:05:56) Kevin: So yeah, Mario Wonder, two thumbs up for me for sure. (0:05:59) Kevin: Like I said, people can go to Rainbow World Radio to hear more in-depth thoughts. (0:06:04) Kevin: But, yeah, that’s mostly what I’ve been up to. (0:06:08) Kevin: And now, with that, let’s hop on over to the news. (0:06:15) Kevin: We have, as always, a handful of, mostly game updates. (0:06:19) Kevin: Yeah, there’s a lot of game updates for some reason right now. (0:06:24) Kevin: So we’re going to start off talking about Coral Island. (0:06:30) Kevin: Okay, the one, okay, this is a big one. (0:06:34) Kevin: For people who may not remember, Coral Island is your standard Stardew-esque, well, I say standard. (0:06:40) Kevin: It’s got all your fixings, your farming, and it’s on an island, hence the name, right? (0:06:46) Kevin: So it has the tropical aesthetic and whatnot. (0:06:51) Kevin: But the big news is the 1.0 version is launching on November 14th, which is exciting. (0:06:58) Kevin: They have a trailer, and it looks expansive. (0:07:05) Kevin: There’s a lot going on. You have your farm, you can go underwater, you can meet mermaids, you can do your romancing, (0:07:12) Kevin: you can do, I think there’s even a race in there somewhere. All that good stuff. (0:07:18) Kevin: It looks very polished and like a 1.0 game. You can also… (0:07:22) Kelly: Yeah, I was going to say, it definitely looks like there’s, it looks a lot different than like the first, you know, clips I saw of it. (0:07:30) Kevin: Yep, absolutely. Yeah, it’s definitely a game now, for a better way of putting it. (0:07:36) Kelly: Yeah. (0:07:37) Kevin: And you can also dress up as a panda or dinosaur, so you know, there’s a lot going on there. You also get your little animal crossing, you can redecorate your house wherever you want. (0:07:49) Kevin: Oh, you can even have a baby in this, that’s wild. Yeah, that is dropping on November 14th, (0:07:58) Kevin: just a couple of weeks and it will be dropping on Steam, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5 they’re hoping for a 2024 release for a Switch version. Do you think you’ll try Coral Island or look in its general (0:08:12) Kelly: I think I might. I think it definitely looks really cute. I think it depends on if I’m playing anything, you know, when it comes out. I’m trying so hard not to, like, backlog myself. (0:08:22) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, that’s the hard part right too many games Yeah, no, that’s that’s a good idea I definitely have bought back So I respect that I think you can romance a mermaid so, you know, I’m not that going free I wonder how that’s gonna work. How are they gonna move up the land or vice versa? (0:08:43) Kevin: It’s a two-story floor but the bottom floor is underwater [laugh] (0:08:44) Kelly: just uh living in a two separate homes kind of situation there you go (0:08:52) Kevin: I’m down for that, um, yeah, right now it’s only 25 bucks, oh that’s not bad for this, that’s, that looks like a lot of content for 25 bucks, so, um, get excited. (0:09:06) Kevin: Um, oh, oh yeah, okay, sure, yep, that makes sense, that’s fair. (0:09:07) Kelly: Oh, it does say it’s going to release, I think, at $30, though. (0:09:11) Kelly: There’s a note about the price adjustment. (0:09:14) Kelly: But the diving looks really cool. (0:09:16) Kelly: I played a lot of Dave the Diver over the summer, (0:09:19) Kelly: so I feel like I’m still looking for games where I can go exploring like that. (0:09:19) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s good. (0:09:23) Kevin: Yeah, it does look good for like the animation stuff. (0:09:29) Kevin: I’m also a big fan of underwater type games and it looks very expansive down there. (0:09:35) Kevin: So yeah, there’s a post on Steam page with all the updates and everything. You guys can check it out. (0:09:44) Kevin: If you do have early access, it looks like there will be a save reset. (0:09:53) Kevin: So there is that. But, either way, November 14th, I look forward to it. I might actually check it out now. It looks pretty… (0:10:00) Kevin: So, next up we have Moonlight and Garland. (0:10:06) Kevin: I don’t know if this is a game announced, but it’s… (0:10:09) Kevin: Yeah, I guess it is, because they’re announcing their early access October 24th, which will probably already be out by the time people are listening to this. (0:10:18) Kevin: This is… here, let me read their, uh… (0:10:22) Kevin: The elevator pitch, where is it? (0:10:24) Kevin: A cozy open-ended life sim about finding your feet in the big city, decorate your apartment, make new friends, grow too many houseplants, and love your city life. (0:10:33) Kevin: Um, so it… yeah, it’s… it’s city-based, right? So you’re in an apartment, you’re not running a whole farm, but you can grow plants, you can have pets, um, make relationships and whatnot. (0:10:46) Kevin: The art style is… (0:10:48) Kelly: That’s the most realistic farming sim. (0:10:52) Kevin: » [LAUGH] (0:10:54) Kevin: » No, you’re right. (0:10:59) Kevin: » Yeah, yeah, Kelly can. (0:11:00) Kevin: Well, no, you’re in the house now, you’re not in an apartment anymore. (0:11:03) Kelly: No, but definitely, you know, went through that also, like, how do I keep my plans alive in my apartment when there’s no sun? (0:11:04) Kevin: But yeah, you know the feeling. (0:11:12) Kevin: Man, gosh, you’re super right. (0:11:16) Kevin: Boy, there’s a person showing an apartment with a lot of bunnies in their apartment, that seems difficult. (0:11:23) Kevin: You’re gonna have that many bunnies in an apartment. (0:11:26) Kevin: The art style is, it’s 2D pixelated, but it’s not Stardew-esque. (0:11:31) Kevin: It’s a little more cutesy than that, and I don’t know how to best describe it. (0:11:35) Kevin: And all the NPCs are kind of bobbing their head at the same time to some unknown beat, it is cute looking. (0:11:43) Kevin: And it’s only the early access, so I’m sure it’ll grow considerably more. (0:11:51) Kevin: That is, you know. (0:11:52) Kevin: October 23rd? 24th? I’m seeing two different days. (0:11:58) Kelly: I definitely want to follow up on it because just looking at the coming soon photo, it’s like why is there an iguana on the sidewalk? (0:12:06) Kevin: Hahaha! (0:12:06) Kelly: Can I have an iguana? (0:12:07) Kevin: Wait, you havin’ a guana? (0:12:08) Kelly: And then there’s also the bear man. (0:12:10) Kevin: Wait, wait, wait, wait, let me see, which one are you talkin’ about? (0:12:10) Kelly: I’m on the steam page, the early access release. (0:12:14) Kevin: What? (0:12:15) Kevin: Okay, okay, let me see… (0:12:17) Kelly: So in the coming soon photo that says steam early access, October 24th, whatever, wishlist now. (0:12:27) Kevin: Okay, okay. Oh, I’m looking at the wrong page. I would explain it wouldn’t it? Yup. There it is. Okay Yeah, I was looking the wrong page. There is a bear man. Why is there a bear man? (0:12:28) Kelly: There’s a bear man in the iguana, like do I get a pet iguana, do I get pet pigeons? (0:12:37) Kevin: Okay, I Okay, I want to mine a department full of pet iguanas that that I can do they’re pretty low-key There are pigeons. So, you know, definitely, you know, they’re hitting Oh, are they gonna have the the trash bags out on the sidewalk? (0:12:55) Kevin: Are they gonna go all in on the city? (0:12:57) Kevin: I don’t know if garland is a city name. It’s a city in texas. I know that much. (0:13:11) Kelly: Yeah. (laughs) (0:13:28) Kevin: But yeah, coming soon, early access. (0:13:31) Kevin: Next up, the clip side of early access, we got DLC patches, whatever you want to call it, for Sunhaven. (0:13:39) Kevin: This is the magical-esque farm where you do magic, there’s monsters, dragons, etc. (0:13:51) Kevin: It is patch 1.3, which includes new buildings. (0:13:58) Kevin: There are several that don’t look human, one is an angel, just straight up an angel. (0:14:04) Kevin: One guy is blue, he’s a moon attendant, whatever that means. (0:14:11) Kevin: You have to, they will be unlockable at some point, but that’s fascinating, dating non-humans like that. (0:14:20) Kevin: Oh, they will have a couple of other romancibles coming later this year. (0:14:28) Kevin: They will also have new farm structures and buildings. (0:14:32) Kevin: Greenhouses, silos, chicken coops, butterfly gardens, I like that. You don’t see that in farming games. (0:14:38) Kelly: That’s very unique, yeah. (0:14:40) Kevin: That’s cute, I love a butterfly garden. (0:14:44) Kevin: Monocyphoners, glorite siphoners, I don’t know what they are, workshops, and ticket counterfeiters. (0:14:54) Kevin: I don’t know what that means, but you’re counterfeiting. (0:14:57) Kevin: They’re up to crimes. I like that. (0:14:59) Kevin: I want to know why you can do crimes. (0:15:01) Kevin: Tickets for what? (0:15:03) Kevin: I don’t think they’re concert tickets. (0:15:05) Kevin: That’s fascinating. (0:15:07) Kevin: But yeah, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff. (0:15:10) Kelly: A lot of stuff. There’s like a ghost shed kit? I want a ghost shed. (0:15:11) Kevin: What does that mean? (0:15:18) Kevin: Do you keep ghosts in there? (0:15:19) Kelly: You grow them in there, maybe? (0:15:21) Kevin: I don’t… (0:15:23) Kevin: Oh wait, there are variations. (0:15:25) Kevin: variations because there’s pumpkin and mushroom. (0:15:27) Kevin: It looks like a ghost, oh I see it. (0:15:29) Kevin: Yeah, it has the eyes, the windows look like eyes and the glow, okay. (0:15:29) Kelly: Oh! (0:15:31) Kelly: That makes so much more sense because I was like oh mushroom shed. That’s just a shed where you grow mushrooms, you know That’s and then I just took the rest of them like that [laughs] (0:15:33) Kevin: Um, sh*t skins, yeah it does. (0:15:36) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, okay. (0:15:44) Kevin: Um, oh that’s the butterfly, wow those are big butterflies. (0:15:47) Kevin: Um, oh those are fascinating buildings. (0:15:49) Kevin: Um, let’s see, player birthdays. (0:15:53) Kevin: There is the birthday, birthday celebration. (0:15:57) Kevin: There is a huge pinata that you can hit, so I’m already down for this. (0:16:01) Kevin: Um, geez that’s like a full sized lion looking pinata, that’s great. (0:16:06) Kevin: Um, that’s uh, so all that’s included in the patch. (0:16:10) Kevin: Aside from that there will be DLC available. (0:16:13) Kevin: Um, all six different packs, trick or treat, spirit battle, rock and roll, cyber pop, monkey monkey, and dreamy ram. (0:16:22) Kevin: They’re all, they contain different items, packs, outfits, items, whatever. (0:16:27) Kevin: You guys can check the Steam page for details. (0:16:30) Kevin: Uh, for, yeah, there’s more details out there than we talked about, but, uh, yeah, that seems like a hefty patch. That seems like fun. (0:16:38) Kelly: Yeah, there’s a lot in this. This page goes on. (0:16:38) Kevin: Um, uh, yeah, it does. Um… (0:16:41) Kelly: And there’s even a coming soon, so… (0:16:43) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, they’re talking about future. (0:16:47) Kevin: Um, wow, new season of weather. Wow. (0:16:50) Kevin: Gloomy, what’s the difference between rainy and gloomy rain? I don’t know. (0:16:55) Kelly: Um, I think there’s I could I could understand that one (0:16:55) Kevin: But there you go All right, yeah, I guess. Okay, uh See like out here in Georgia. It’s a little more like rain. Not gloomy rain. Gloomy rains like hurricane force rain That’s what I think Wait no, yeah, okay. I get it (0:17:10) Kelly: No, I think gloomy rain is like when it’s kind of cold and like the sky is just dark and grey all day and it’s like just kind of constant. Like you could have nice rain, like you could have sunny rain, you could have like… (0:17:24) Kevin: Yeah, I do enjoy sun showers. (0:17:25) Kelly: It doesn’t have to be gloomy. (0:17:26) Kelly: Just like a normal rain shower isn’t always gloomy. (0:17:27) Kevin: You’re right. (0:17:28) Kevin: Yeah, no, you’re right, okay, um Yeah, so there’s all the whole bunch of stuff you guys can check that out Is that sorry? Yeah, when’s the release? I didn’t it’s it’s Oct they posted it October 20th It is oh, yeah, it’s already out on Steam. Yeah, so Now time this recording which means by the times you guys are listening. It is definitely available. That is again Sun haven (0:17:58) Kevin: Huh? Oh man, I’m just looking at the picture like a big tree man monster. I might have to check this out I like tree monsters. I I haven’t played a magic game in a minute. Well, I mean, well, maybe our keeper gentle notwithstanding Um, but it’s high, you know fantasy magic II I’m down for that. I could use that Yeah, uh, okay speaking of well, I don’t know more updates (0:18:04) Kelly: right? like i’m kind of like- i’m intrigued. i’m definitely very (0:18:17) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:18:18) Kelly: I feel like this is pretty different, yeah. (0:18:28) Kevin: We have so this is The what I refer to as not a city builder but a village builder because it’s medieval villagey themed But you’re helping build the whole village and run everything it is currently in early access and they are dropping a update for it I’m excited for this game myself. I’m gonna wait for the 1.0, but I love the art style. It’s cutesy and goofy (0:18:59) Kevin: and they are dropping all sorts of things in this update including a An encounter with a misunderstood Cyclops who’s very cute. His eye is just a dot His name is Eric one eye you can there will be a witch’s hut a red hooded girl Who’s looking for her grandma’s house? That that’s a speech. I don’t trust that at all. Oh, no, I don’t like that Hemisary gnomes (0:19:26) Kevin: It was seriously rare! (0:19:28) Kevin: And then a fawn with a really big nose and mustache. Oh, I like this guy. (0:19:33) Kevin: There’s a… and a few more. (0:19:36) Kevin: Well, those are fun characters that they’re adding. I love the art style and it looks really fun on these mythical, magical, whatever you want to call them. (0:19:46) Kevin: Cyclops and fawns. Gnomes. They’re fun looking characters. (0:19:48) Kelly: No, yeah, they look they look so cute. It looks very adorable (0:19:49) Kevin: Yeah. (0:19:51) Kevin: Yep. (0:19:53) Kevin: There are, oh gosh, 50 new world events and 30 new objectives. (0:19:58) Kevin: I don’t know what that means, but those are big numbers. (0:20:00) Kevin: Oh, there’s a magic bean. (0:20:03) Kevin: There’s monthly and yearly objectives. (0:20:06) Kevin: Hot weight. Positive and negative events. Oh, oh, they’re, they’re, they’re wild. Okay, I’m down for that. (0:20:15) Kevin: They have, let’s see, new buildings, a laborer guild. Oh, so you can hire better laborers. That’s fun. A bank. (0:20:24) Kevin: Oh, you can tax your villagers at different rates? (0:20:28) Kevin: Oh, that’s awesome. Grand theater? Oh, that’s a nice looking theater. (0:20:34) Kevin: Fisherman’s hut? Fish up stuff? All sorts of quality of life stuff? (0:20:40) Kevin: Well, there’s a lot of graphs in this game and things like that. I’m down for that. (0:20:45) Kevin: Yeah, that’s a lot of stuff coming. Like I said, I’m probably going to wait for 1.0 myself, but I’m glad that it’s coming along nicely. Yeah, that is again fabled. (0:20:57) Kelly: Is there any, is there any real estate or? (0:20:59) Kevin: Go. Oh, it is live. That update is already live as of this recording. (0:21:05) Kevin: So, yay. If anyone is playing the one point or the early access, first of all, (0:21:10) Kevin: somebody tell me if they are because I want to know about it. And it is out already. (0:21:15) Kevin: Um, yeah. All right. Good. Oh man. I’m just trying to fable them. It’s so goofy looking and the. (0:21:23) Kelly: Is there like an overall release date or no? (0:21:33) Kevin: uh not that i’m saying now um I have left here a quick glance um yeah so probably still a hot minute probably sometime in 2024 i’d hope but uh it’s not dead yet so i’ll take that let’s see next up we have uh moonstone island we have dlc for that this is which one’s this one okay all right we so we have dlc come (0:22:11) Kevin: Well, let me get to the details. Yeah, it’s the Halloween update right? That’s the key thing here. Um, (0:22:16) Kelly: I think so, ‘cause it’s for Halloween. (0:22:17) Kevin: We’ve got just a whole bunch of Spooky decors per their website gravestones skeletons a big old pumpkin house um Web’s five types of cobwebs. Oh Oh a rug. That’s just the tongue. That’s clever. I like that. Um, (0:22:38) Kevin: uh So yeah, there. (0:22:41) Kevin: Okay. (0:22:43) Kevin: Okay. (0:22:45) Kelly: I’m sorry, it’s actually not out yet. (0:22:45) Kevin: Okay. (0:22:47) Kelly: It’s not out, which I’m kinda… (0:22:47) Kevin: Um, there are n- some- the- so some of this stuff is DLC, which I’m assuming means purchasable separately, but there will be stuff included for free in the updates on the skeletons and things like that. (0:22:58) Kevin: Um, spirits are free- I don’t know what spirits are in the context of this game, but um, but they’re coming some out. (0:23:05) Kevin: Um, oh wow, I didn’t check- it’s got some good reviews. (0:23:09) Kevin: Um, I’ll have to check that out. (0:23:11) Kevin: Oh wow, what? Oh gosh, I forgot about- I’m remembering the game. (0:23:15) Kevin: There’s- you can fight like robots with a card battling system. (0:23:19) Kevin: They are… (0:23:21) Kevin: Yeah, oh man, oh gosh. (0:23:23) Kelly: These are really cute looking things, these creatures. (0:23:26) Kelly: I, yeah, like, I really like the style of it, yeah. (0:23:26) Kevin: This whole episode’s just me getting excited about games I forgot to get excited about. (0:23:31) Kevin: Um, as if I didn’t have enough already. (0:23:33) Kevin: There are really cute characters- there’s a fishbowl with legs. (0:23:36) Kevin: Um, I like that. (0:23:39) Kevin: that. And then at the end they just. (0:23:41) Kevin: Have a picture of a cat with like a sun hood. I don’t know but um, it’s very cute cat. (0:23:47) Kevin: That is Moonstone Island. That is already out, I believe. Why do we have a date for that? (0:23:52) Kelly: It is a very cute cat. (0:23:54) Kelly: The game is out, it says “NA” for them. (0:23:56) Kevin: Okay, thank you. But it says, while says it’s October 27th. I (0:24:06) Kevin: Couldn’t find that myself. Oh wait. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, October 27th. It’s only $4. (0:24:11) Kevin: Okay, that’s actually not bad at all and 10% off the first week. So there’s 46. (0:24:18) Kevin: Yeah, okay. Oh, it’s a new spirits must be a little monster buddies. That’s what it means. I’m excited. One looks like an apple with a worm through it. They’re just showing silhouettes. I’m just guessing. (0:24:23) Kelly: There you go. (0:24:29) Kevin: And yeah, I don’t know all that. Oh, I might check this out now. It’s a very cute game. (0:24:34) Kevin: Moonstone Island. Um Let’s see Next up we have oh, this isn’t an interesting (0:24:41) Kevin: one because boy, I never thought we’d see this this is Lonesome Village game that I notoriously advocate because the developers are from Mexico. It’s got the cute coyote as you saw puzzles in a tower. They’re coming out the fiscal edition. Pre-orders are live. You can check the show notes for the link. It is not from limited run games actually. A game a site called premium edition games. (0:25:11) Kevin: physical edition which includes all sorts of goodies including oh wow a full-color manual oh that’s exciting Wow a dog tag yeah they do um oh man a manual that’s exciting um yeah it’s great um yeah I I cover this game with Johnny, it was last year or year before, I don’t remember. (0:25:22) Kelly: Dude, the indie games always put so much into like what you get from… (0:25:32) Kelly: I love a manual. (0:25:33) Kelly: A full color manual too, that’s so nice. (0:25:41) Kevin: It’s a fun little game with lots of puzzles, and just very very cute little animal-closing-esque villagers. (0:25:47) Kelly: It looks really cute. The art style kind of reminds me of like Cult of the Lamb, but without the like paper feel. (0:25:47) Kevin: It’s actually funny because in the “story” of the game, so it’s called Lonesome Village because there’s a village and everyone’s kind of been turned to stone or disappeared. (0:26:03) Kevin: And the villains, they’re the people who did it very much look like Cult of the Lamb. (0:26:06) Kelly: Okay. (0:26:07) Kelly: Oh! Oh! It’s a cult! It’s a cult! What is happening here? (0:26:09) Kevin: Yeah. (0:26:12) Kevin: It came out around the time Cult of the Loom. (0:26:14) Kelly: I’m watching the trailer! Oh my god! (0:26:15) Kevin: It looks a lot like Cult of the Loom. (0:26:18) Kevin: The cult from Cult of the Loom. (0:26:20) Kevin: I think we made the joke in the episode. (0:26:22) Kevin: It came out around the same time too. (0:26:25) Kevin: Yep, yep, exactly. Yep. (0:26:26) Kelly: That’s so funny, ‘cause I was thinking it kinda like reminds me of the way they do the animals, like the style of the animals. (0:26:32) Kelly: But now that I’m watching this trailer, it’s like literally… (0:26:32) Kevin: It’s cult, it’s a lot like Cult of the Loom, Cult. (0:26:36) Kelly: That’s so funny. Oh, I gotta play this. (0:26:41) Kevin: Yeah, I have to check it out again. I still have it. (0:26:45) Kevin: It’s been a while. I’m sure they patched it up and done some stuff. (0:26:48) Kevin: ‘Cause I had a few rough edges back then, but I’m curious. (0:26:51) Kevin: I might do another look at it at some point. (0:26:54) Kevin: Because, yeah, props to–but, again, Mexican dev team, so I gotta shout them out. (0:26:59) Kevin: Ogre Pixel, that’s the name. (0:27:02) Kevin: But, yeah, that is a cute little logo of an Ogre–Pixillator Ogre. (0:27:07) Kevin: And again, this is the physical edition release. (0:27:11) Kevin: $40 for the premium edition, which seems to be their only version but includes all sorts of goodies. Um, I When do pre-orders end? I don’t know if I see that but the pre-orders are available now So you can check out the site and get it. Um Alright next up we have Not Garden Galaxy is perfect. We’re heading on the notes. That’s a different game that I was going to cover almost (0:27:42) Kevin: Garden story. That’s the one with the playable grape. That looks a lot like Stardew Valley a lot like It has It’s very cute though the grape that’s playable It is an update that has 11 new languages. Wow, that is a lot of languages I don’t know which ones they are. I just see the It’s out on Steam and switch already this update (0:28:09) Kevin: Very cool. Yeah, I actually don’t know what language is. I don’t know. (0:28:11) Kevin: Let’s see the details. But wow, that’s a big number. Good for them. (0:28:16) Kevin: Always props for making it more available for more people and whatnot. (0:28:19) Kevin: Yep. It is. The grape is very cute. (0:28:20) Kelly: Yeah, that’s always awesome. It really does look like stardew though. It’s cute though (0:28:25) Kevin: Next up, a new game announcement for as far as I can tell. (0:28:31) Kevin: This is called Fantastic Haven, which actually I find really intriguing. (0:28:36) Kevin: It’s the prime… (0:28:40) Kevin: Let me read the– (0:28:41) Kevin: The elevator pitch. (0:28:43) Kevin: So, this is a… (0:28:57) Kevin: Yeah, a Zook cheaper-esque type game, but they’re all magical creatures. (0:29:03) Kevin: Um, so you’re building big pens that look like circular homes more? (0:29:09) Kevin: Um, you alter the land and… (0:29:11) Kevin: It’s full 3D graphics, um, the… I think the actual designs of the creatures are actually quite nice, um… (0:29:18) Kevin: I like animals and critters and… (0:29:21) Kevin: …cheaping them and whatnot, so I’m already pretty interested, um, especially with the spin of… (0:29:26) Kevin: …like, they’re all magical creatures, I don’t see any other animals in here, I see like a griffin, uh… (0:29:31) Kelly: No, I’ve only seen, like, yeah, griffins and some weird frog with, like, horns and stuff. (0:29:31) Kevin: Yup, it’s a bullfrog, you get it? (0:29:36) Kelly: Ah, yes, yes, yes. (0:29:41) Kevin: The color shows a lot more, uh, it looks like you’re even busting some out of, like, cages and, like, carny… (0:29:46) Kevin: …you know, those carnival cages with the wheels, the cars, um… (0:29:51) Kevin: So that’s… that looks very fun, yeah, like I said, a lot of menus, probably, um… (0:29:57) Kevin: …very zookeeper tycoon-esque, um, but with the heavy, uh, magical fantasy paint over it, um… (0:30:06) Kevin: So that is right now the only release date planned is for Q2 of 2024 so it’ll probably be a minute but look forward to it I certainly am those are some fun designs yeah it’s it’s it’s charming enough for me I’m definitely interested um and then lastly okay this one I want to talk about in depth a little more because this one’s affecting me personally uh well actually there’s two me and my neck was night market once again got another patch that one. (0:30:41) Kevin: one point two point one oh whatever the it’s out on switch so you know it’s out on the steam version or whatever um so uh there’s a lot of quality of life stuff you can do with it. (0:30:48) Kevin: I’m not gonna go into the details because I don’t remember them but the other one I want to talk about because we just talked about last week is paleo pines. (0:30:53) Kevin: We just got yup okay so uh one point two point one oh whatever the it’s out on switch so you know it’s out on the steam version or whatever um so uh there’s a lot of quality of life stuff you can do with it. (0:30:54) Kelly: Which I still have to play, but I have not yet. (0:31:11) Kevin: We can change how quickly time passes in the game um oh gosh so one of the after I recorded last week with Spencer and we talked and played I was getting a lot of crashes. (0:31:23) Kevin: They had released a patch previously to fix some of that they said it was like a memory issue um but they were still experiencing it. (0:31:26) Kelly: Mmm. Okay. (0:31:31) Kevin: I felt like the more farther I got in the game the more I was crashed getting crashes uh they addressed some of that. (0:31:37) Kevin: that the game is still not free of crashes because (0:31:41) Kevin: we’ve been probably within an hour after downloading the update the game crashed on me again But it is better in general So they’re definitely aware and working on it at probably top of their list There is Also, there’s a whole list and you can check the show notes for them. I’m trying to look at which ones that are Stand out to me. Oh, there’s a cooking pot (0:31:46) Kelly: Oh, God. (0:32:07) Kevin: But it was weird because it was at some other guy’s house you have to go all the way to this other (0:32:12) Kevin: cook stuff but now you can buy one for your own ranch so that’s great oh here’s a fun one um so you can ride your dinosaurs because of course you can but the thing was whenever you got off of them they would just run away from you at max speed it was whole it was wild you could like try to stop them but um clearly not intended they have addressed that and and this definitely was an update needed and and it works um they will no longer run away from you when you get off of them (0:32:42) Kevin: um yes well luckily I think it was only in the ranch like your home base when it happened they wouldn’t leave you when you’re out in the wild oh my god that would be the worst yes but it’s still a pain because your character is a lot slower than the dinosaur so yeah yeah it’s just a pain having to go across the ranch to find them I mean it’s a pretty big ranch too um (0:32:44) Kelly: feeling it’s like okay nice I can I can get to the place I’m going to but once you’re there you’re stuck there now (0:32:56) Kelly: Oh, okay, okay, I was picturing like you, yeah, like you in the middle of like some field or something. (0:33:12) Kevin: uh there’s all sorts oh horse lock so there was a uh resource called forestwood that was needed for a lot of things it was pretty rare they increased the respawn on that that’s great um they did some ui improvements which were nice uh um lots of other things some oh there was a storage glitch spencer talked about think they fixed that um yeah just sort lots of little things (0:33:42) Kevin: because there were lots of little things that needed fixing um like I said still not 100 percent yeah yeah there is um where is it do they not have it um so there there is I read there is one glitch that they haven’t addressed yet um they know it’s an issue but for some reason at some point and it’s happened to me your game will reset to the first day of the game because there’s you know calendar like most farm. (0:34:12) Kevin: games and whatnot like you’ll keep all your stuff but somehow the calendar will just have reset to the very first game or very first day of the year which is wild um luckily I was able to get around that if you encounter it you can just reload an old save and it’s fine but um that was the wild glitch to see um but yeah that was I’m glad that came out because that addressed a lot of the little nitpicks Spencer and I had with the game and I’m sure (0:34:42) Kevin: they’re still working hard on that so good for you paleopines that update again is out already for switch and probably the other versions whatever versions it’s on all right so that was uh yeah the hearty helping of news and things but that’s now we’re doing that let’s talk about grave graveyard keeper yeah what’s what’s the tagline the most inaccurate medieval simulator isn’t that (0:35:09) Kelly: Something like that. I know inaccurate is involved of [laugh] (0:35:14) Kevin: Hold on let me look at it. Um the most inaccurate cemetery simulation game. Okay. Yeah, I think that’s what it is Okay Well Yeah, so again, um It and this game’s been up for years at this point. Um, I’ll covered it years ago Yeah. Yeah, there you go. That’s cute (0:35:24) Kelly: Oh, the most inaccurate medieval, yeah, cemetery sim of the year. (0:35:36) Kelly: Uh, they had their five year anniversary actually in August. (0:35:42) Kevin: There’s a bunch of DLC I bought the (0:35:44) Kevin: version with all the DLC I don’t know what the base game hazard does not have. (0:35:48) Kevin: I’ve only played it for an afternoon or two. I don’t think I’ve reached any of the DLC portions yet probably. (0:35:49) Kelly: Oh, did you? Okay. (0:35:57) Kevin: They’re all parody names there’s a stranger sins there’s breaking something (0:35:57) Kelly: Um, I’m trying to remember. I know the DLC… (0:35:59) Kelly: Yes, because there’s better save soul. (0:36:04) Kelly: Um, I did look into getting them, but I didn’t- I didn’t, because I think it was like- (0:36:11) Kelly: I feel like there’s- there’s so much going on in this game already. (0:36:14) Kevin: Even if it is, there’s a lot going on. (0:36:14) Kelly: Uh, that I was very happy to not have the added, um, things that like go along with the better save soul one. I heard that gets a lot of pretty tedious. (0:36:24) Kevin: Yeah, heh heh heh. (0:36:25) Kevin: Better save solo, that’s good. (0:36:29) Kevin: I don’t think that one’s out on Switch. (0:36:31) Kevin: That’s it? I don’t know if that one’s out on Switch. (0:36:32) Kelly: Oh, are you playing on Switch? I am not gonna lie. I have not. (0:36:36) Kelly: I’ve been so bad at playing my Switch this year. (0:36:44) Kevin: But, I mean, that’s fine, like, I know that the Switch port gets black for a good reason. (0:36:55) Kevin: There’s a Switch tax for sure, so I don’t blame you. (0:36:57) Kevin: But hey, at least we can compare notes on that. (0:37:00) Kevin: If you played on Steam, I would guess? (0:37:10) Kevin: Um, but okay, so let’s okay, let’s the elevator pitch Okay, first of all, I didn’t expect that this game’s an isekai That I didn’t expect at all so for people unfamiliar with isekai that is a genre of anime primarily where a character wakes up in a simulated often fantasy type world (0:37:38) Kevin: Sword Art Online and just… (0:37:40) Kevin: …other ones. It’s a whole trope now. (0:37:42) Kevin: Umm… (0:37:43) Kelly: I was gonna say it breaks the, you know, inherited your grandpa’s farm trope though. (0:37:44) Kevin: … (0:37:46) Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. (0:37:48) Kevin: You’re just a guy who gets hit by a car cause he’s looking at his phone. (0:37:52) Kevin: Don’t look at your phone when crossing the streets. (0:37:54) Kevin: It’s dark in the rain, people. (0:37:56) Kevin: It’s not recommended. (0:37:58) Kevin: And he wakes… (0:37:59) Kelly: Poor dude’s just trying to give back to his girlfriend or whatever. (0:38:00) Kevin: …yeah, his love, as he says, and… (0:38:03) Kevin: …he wakes up in a graveyard area and… (0:38:08) Kevin: There’s a talking skull that talks to you. (0:38:10) Kevin: And he says, “Hey, welcome. You’re the graveyard keeper, I guess.” (0:38:13) Kevin: Um, more or less, and sure enough, you’re put in charge of this graveyard in this little medieval village area. (0:38:23) Kevin: And you’re trying to figure out how to get back home while managing the graveyard and all the stuff people are asking you. (0:38:32) Kevin: Because, of course, people are going to ask you to do everything around here. (0:38:35) Kevin: Uh… (0:38:36) Kelly: I mean, what would a game be without everybody asking you to do all these things? (0:38:40) Kevin: Right, right. (0:38:42) Kevin: Um, so, okay, hell, you beat the game, correct? What are your overall impressions? (0:38:50) Kelly: I really liked the game. I thought it was a lot of fun. I think there’s a lot of stuff to do, (0:38:57) Kelly: like it can get a bit overwhelming, but I think, you know, it definitely involves, you know, (0:38:59) Kevin: Boy does it. (0:39:01) Kevin: Oh. Yep. (0:39:04) Kelly: looking things up online. But I will say there is an issue with how intuitive it is. (0:39:08) Kevin: Yep. (0:39:10) Kevin: Yep. (0:39:12) Kelly: I think I could have been further along in my gameplay if I understood some of the (0:39:20) Kelly: panics. A lot better. And I will say on that note, it was not always easy to find the answers on the internet. So that made it even worse. And sometimes if you did find an answer, (0:39:21) Kevin: Yep. Okay, so yeah, so. Mm-hmm. (0:39:31) Kevin: Oh yeah, the double whammy, oh yeah. (0:39:35) Kevin: Yup, it’s wild. (0:39:38) Kelly: it was from like 2018, so something got patched or didn’t work like that anymore. (0:39:46) Kelly: So, that was my biggest issue. (0:39:48) Kelly: Did it stop me from putting in, you know, (0:39:50) Kelly: 90 hours, I think, or whatever into the game? (0:39:55) Kelly: No, but there were definitely moments where I was frustrated. (0:39:59) Kelly: Or, like, again, just like, I was playing the game, I was enjoying myself, (0:40:03) Kelly: but I could have been further along than what I was. (0:40:07) Kevin: Yeah, um, okay. Mm-hmm Okay, yeah for sure they’re just Yeah, absolutely. Um, so for comparison I got the game Thursday I think today’s like Saturday. So two days ago So I’ve only played for and Mario wonder so I didn’t play as much yesterday So I played the game for an afternoon and then some um, I like the game a lot. Um, (0:40:07) Kelly: And not even in, like, a micromanagy, like, you know, whatever kind of way. (0:40:13) Kelly: Like, in, like, a… (0:40:15) Kelly: It would have made more sense. (0:40:26) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:40:37) Kevin: I think it is Almost minecrafty and how open it is and crafting and everything But I fully agree like that’s my biggest criticism there’s a lot that is not intuitive Or explained well Yep, yep, yep, I’m sure (0:40:50) Kelly: you haven’t even gotten or opened a lot of the, you know, different aspects of the game yet at this point, I’m sure, because it really expands. It expands a lot. There is a lot to do. There is so (0:41:03) Kevin: But I can imagine… I mean I see the skill tree. (0:41:07) Kevin: So… I can… I can… she’s… I can… (0:41:12) Kevin: So there’s a skill tree in this game, right? You have to get points to unlock your skills. (0:41:18) Kevin: And you can see how far it goes. And yes, I can see there’s a lot to unlock and do and whatnot. (0:41:24) Kevin: But… I think the skill tree is probably where I can direct my first criticism. (0:41:32) Kevin: Because there’s three types of points, whatever you want to call them. (0:41:37) Kevin: Red, green, and blue, and you need different amounts of each for unlocking each new skill, which lets you craft new things or do new things, whatnot. (0:41:46) Kevin: Um, the red and green work hard to get, but the blue, the blue is killing me because I hit a point where I had like one blue point overall and couldn’t figure out how to get more. (0:41:56) Kelly: You run out of them. (0:41:58) Kevin: Yeah. (0:41:59) Kelly: There’s a certain point where the game just stops you from getting more for a bit. (0:42:02) Kevin: Really? Wow. (0:42:04) Kelly: Not like stops you. (0:42:06) Kelly: There’s definitely a roadblock, I would say. (0:42:11) Kevin: - Yeah, okay. (0:42:14) Kelly: I struggled with that for so long. (0:42:17) Kelly: And then, of course, at a certain point, it’s like, oh. (0:42:20) Kelly: Now, actually, you’re out of red. (0:42:23) Kelly: Or now you’re out of green or whatever. (0:42:25) Kelly: And it’s like, oh, something that I– (0:42:26) Kelly: so I think one of them is done from manual labor, red, I think. (0:42:27) Kevin: yep yep your manufacturing and things yeah red okay oh you don’t get read from them (0:42:34) Kelly: Yeah, so at a certain point, you get helper zombies that you can assign to do things. (0:42:42) Kelly: So you’re no longer getting the red from those things that you would be getting red from. (0:42:47) Kelly: So it definitely makes you have to stop and think and watch everything. (0:42:56) Kevin: Yup, absolutely, um, it’s a very resource-manage-y heavy game and that includes your skill points or whatever you want to call them. (0:43:07) Kevin: That’s fascinating. (0:43:09) Kevin: Like I can see the blue are going to be very scarce. (0:43:11) Kelly: But I think it’s interesting because it does… (0:43:13) Kelly: Sorry, I was gonna say it just it does impact, I feel like, (0:43:18) Kelly: what you’re trying to do in that day. Because if you’re trying to get blue points… (0:43:19) Kevin: Right. Yeah, exactly. (0:43:22) Kevin: The nice thing, one of the nicest things about the game, (0:43:26) Kevin: there’s no real pressure. (0:43:28) Kevin: There’s no seasons or years or whatever. (0:43:31) Kevin: There’s a week. (0:43:32) Kevin: So like in six, seven, I don’t remember how long, how many days, (0:43:36) Kevin: but that’s the worst that you have to wait. (0:43:37) Kelly: It’s seven days Which and I liked I like I really like the fact that there was no pressure on the seasons or When you finished the game even or anything like that. I also liked the Each day is a different person You have to make sure that you’re getting the things you need to have done before that day so you can go and deal with that person (0:43:38) Kevin: Yep. Which go by quickly. (0:43:42) Kevin: Yep. (0:43:57) Kevin: Yep. (0:43:57) Kevin: Yep. (0:44:03) Kevin: Yep, he just gotta wait until… (0:44:03) Kelly: Because there’s definitely some weeks where if you miss that person you’re screwed (0:44:07) Kelly: Yup. And there is something later on in the game, you know, when things have slowed down in certain areas and you’re just like waiting for that one day where you can fast forward. (0:44:10) Kevin: Until that point. (0:44:21) Kelly: Yes, but I do actually want to say on that point, I think this is very interesting because there is no pause button. There’s no space yet. (0:44:21) Kevin: Yeah, sure that makes sense. Yeah, you can fast-forward at any point you should go to sleep and (0:44:32) Kevin: Yeah, yeah, even if you’re in your menus, time goes on. (0:44:37) Kelly: Yeah, you have to literally like go to the exit screen or whatever. Like the main menu page. (0:44:41) Kevin: Yeah Yep Yep, so if you’re looking through your notes here You know hemming and hawing at a menu thinking about where you want to spend your points that happened to me just just today When I was playing I cuz I finally got some blue points today. And so I was just like agonizing over I wanted where I wanted to spend them and before when I got out of the menu Oh, it’s evening already. Cool. The whole day’s [laughter] (0:44:43) Kelly: There’s a certain page that stops time, but the rest of them don’t. (0:44:48) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:45:09) Kelly: Yep. (0:45:11) Kelly: Yep. (0:45:12) Kevin: But they’re the kind of I mean, I don’t know if it was their intent or not But the way to combat that it’s very easy to reroll your did your save like you own there’s no autosave It just saves when you go when you wake up So most of the time you can say you’re pretty much have a safe at the start of the date or start of the day, excuse me, and You can just reload to that and have a plan or save yourself (0:45:23) Kelly: Oh, yes. (0:45:25) Kelly: Yes. (0:45:29) Kelly: I would just quit the game. (0:45:32) Kelly: Mm-hmm. (0:45:40) Kelly: Oh yeah, no, there was many times where I would either just, you would see like the NPC walking away from their post, and I would have to go and reset the game and then do the day over and make sure I got there early enough. (0:45:47) Kevin: Oh my gosh. (0:45:50) Kevin: Yep. (0:45:52) Kevin: Oh my gosh. (0:45:54) Kevin: That happened to me twice already when I go down and Snake is running away and like, “No, I need to talk to you, Snake.” (0:46:02) Kelly: oh god he’s so annoying he’s so annoying for the skill points though I think it’s like kind of fun like there’s some weird ones you can choose from uh-huh (0:46:05) Kevin: He is. (0:46:08) Kevin: He is. (0:46:11) Kevin: Yeah. (0:46:13) Kevin: Overall, I’m a big fan of the Skilled Trees, umm… (0:46:17) Kevin: Because you can very much pick and choose if you want to focus on certain areas and whatnot. (0:46:23) Kevin: Umm, obviously like… (0:46:25) Kevin: To get green points, that’s the farming stuff, so you do want to invest in some of that stuff. (0:46:30) Kevin: Umm, but like, early on you can really get through a lot of the wood and metalworking stuff. (0:46:37) Kevin: Umm, and again, with almost no pressure on when to do it, umm, it’s… (0:46:42) Kevin: It’s very open and you’re very free to pick and choose as you want. (0:46:46) Kevin: You know, (0:46:47) Kevin: the limitations of how many skill points you actually have notwithstanding. (0:46:52) Kevin: I think it is a clever system. (0:46:54) Kevin: And because you get to see what’s coming ahead, that helps you plan that too. (0:47:00) Kevin: I really like that. (0:47:01) Kelly: Yes, definitely. (0:47:01) Kevin: Um… (0:47:02) Kelly: There was definitely some areas in the skill tree though where I did not understand what, (0:47:09) Kelly: like if you unlocked something, (0:47:12) Kelly: I didn’t understand how to access it afterwards, (0:47:15) Kelly: which then led to me diving down a rabbit hole, (0:47:18) Kelly: trying to figure it out. (0:47:18) Kevin: Yeah, sometimes that’s a little unclear most of the time When you look at the skill tree thing it says okay, you can craft at this bench or that bench or whatever But some are not very clear. Yeah Some aren’t super clear. Yeah But I do agree (0:47:27) Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, it definitely is pretty good. (0:47:30) Kelly: It’s pretty good. (0:47:34) Kelly: Can we talk about the main premise of the game, which I think is the most weird and fun part is, you know, collecting your corpses? (0:47:41) Kevin: Yeah, the it’s definitely yeah the differentiator the the the graveyard itself. Yeah, let’s talk about that (0:47:43) Kelly: Because you are, you are quite literally the graveyard keeper. So you get a (0:47:54) Kelly: Annoyed little donkey that delivers corpses to you. (0:47:56) Kevin: I’m red donkey from a leftist stable [laughter] (0:47:57) Kelly: And oh my god, there was so many times where I would hear that bell and just be so far away from home. (0:48:06) Kelly: And just go running because it’s like the second you hear that bell that corpse starts, you know, deteriorating. (0:48:12) Kevin: Yep Yeah, that’s that’s an interesting aspect that the forps is deteriorate and it affects a lot of things And yeah, they’re kind of deliver just at random times. It feels like I didn’t detect any pattern Umm… (0:48:22) Kelly: Yeah. (0:48:23) Kelly: Yes. (0:48:27) Kelly: No, they can definitely be whenever. (0:48:31) Kelly: And they can pile up too. (0:48:34) Kevin: Oh my gosh, I don’t think I’ve had that happen yet, but I could see that happening. (0:48:35) Kelly: Yeah, no, they can definitely pile up. (0:48:43) Kelly: I mean, this game goes in depth. (0:48:48) Kelly: I have freezers for bodies. (0:48:53) Kelly: So, you know, it’s like you are literally treating it like a morgue, like… (0:48:57) Kelly: But I think one of the most fun parts is removing the organs, (0:49:03) Kelly: but also the most hard to understand initially. (0:49:06) Kevin: Right, so yeah, let’s talk about that because as very early on you’re introduced that you have options to do the corpse One you can bury them in your graveyard. It has a prettiness rating you how you decorate it Well, you bury them and whatnot You can even just throw it in the river or cremate them or You can take them into your morgan Do a little bisection, you know see what you can poke around and find in there pull out a skull some blood What? (0:49:36) Kevin: A bit of flesh. (0:49:38) Kevin: It’s fascinating that they gave you this option. (0:49:43) Kevin: There’s… (0:49:44) Kevin: I haven’t gotten too in-depth with the body parts. (0:49:47) Kelly: So, I’ll explain it. It’s a lot. (0:49:51) Kelly: Basically, your corpse, so when you bury a corpse, you want it to be as high rated as possible because it impacts your cemeteries overall like beauty rating, (0:50:05) Kelly: which is a whole different aspect. (0:50:07) Kelly: And that’s a big part of the game because it kind of roadblocks you if you don’t keep up with it. (0:50:11) Kelly: But so you want to make sure you’re removing. (0:50:14) Kelly: If you remove certain organs, it makes your corpses… (0:50:17) Kelly: …that’s how you can remove them. (0:50:19) Kelly: If you remove other organs, it decreases it, and they don’t really tell you at first. (0:50:23) Kelly: You have to unlock skills on the skill tree… (0:50:25) Kelly: …that tell you. (0:50:25) Kevin: Yeah, I mean they tell you like there’s bad organs, but you don’t you can’t tell which ones until you go get that later (0:50:29) Kelly: Yes. Yes. (0:50:34) Kelly: And so you can remove organs, and you can also try to put the organ back. (0:50:38) K

Alan Kelly - Let every heart prepare Him room | 18/12/2022 by The Vine Church - Dunfermline

“There are two good episodes of Chloe in ‘Dance Moms' and this is one of them,” says Christi of the final episode of Season 1. In this episode, the girls and their moms are still in L.A., (although there is a “pickup” scene that is filmed in Studio B back in Pittsburgh and everyone had to pretend otherwise.) Chloe is chosen to portray the younger version of singer Lux in Lux's music video, “It's Like Summer.” This was really a competition between Chloe and Paige, and as Christi points out, Paige received high praise from producers and more camera time than even Chloe in the video's final cut. Yet Dance Mom producers made it seem like another rivalry between Chloe and Maddie to amp up the drama. Kelly and Christi finally find an “abbey” they like. They talk about visiting The Abbey, a West Hollywood institution and wonder, not for the first time, how a group of moms from suburban Pittsburgh ever found themselves in such a crazy situation. Back then, reality stars didn't think to brand themselves or utilize social media the way they do now. Only a few years later, other cast members like JoJo Siwa, capitalized on the mistakes and missed opportunities of the show's original core cast.  Kelly and Christi continue to share hilarious anecdotes about being recognized in their early days of fame, when people still thought they knew the ladies from the bank or from church, but we're still waiting to hear the story about naked pizza.  Quotes “Abby uses one of my favorite quotes, the one that reminds me of the night I got roofied: It's every man for himself.' She said that when I got roofied.” (13:37-13:48 | Christi) “It's really unfortunate that Chloe and I are featured a lot in this episode's interviews because these are the worst interview looks Chloe and I have ever had so far.” (22:47-22:59 | Christi) “We had the bows before JoJo had the bow-bow.” (24:49-24:51 | Christi) “Melissa looks like she's from ‘Little House on the Prairie' in these episodes, except with fake boobs.' (34:19-34:26 | Christi) “We weren't of that era. Now, when people get cast on shows they think, ‘How can I have this be on my social media? How can I leverage this? How can I brand this like JoJo with the bows?' We had bows in every episode but JoJo had someone to brand her. And she was three years later, and watched us so she knew what to expect.” (39:13-39:37 | Kelly and Christi) “No one knew what to do with us or our kids. It was just a totally different thing. Now, if you're on TV you can say, ‘Here's a link to my outfit.' Then we just thought, ‘What isn't dirty. What can I put on my body and just crawl into the dance studio and get through the day. We were not like that. The world wasn't like that.” (40:52-41:19 | Christi) “The kids spent 24/7 together, you didn't really want to be in an argument with each other.” (42:42-42:48 | Kelly) “I know everyone in the audience says, ‘You could have called and met with the producer Seven.' No, I couldn't. Just like I couldn't go and meet with an acting coach because I was on a TV show, and I could only do what they allowed me to do.” (43:57-44:14 | Kelly) “Let's drink in honor of the kidnapper van. I wish it would kidnap me.” (47:43-47:48 | Kelly and Christi) “We go to an interview and you say, ‘How do a bunch of moms from Pittsburgh end up here?' That's what I was thinking when we were at The Abbey.” (48:15-48:22 | Kelly) “I'm watching you in this episode and you look a little aggravated and I remember they kept saying it was down to Chloe and Paige, in real time. They did not say Chloe and Maddie. (100:13-1:00:27 | Christi) “I remember very vividly Seven telling us that Paige reminded him of Taylor Swift's early test shots. He said she has this amazing presence on camera, and they actually show Paige repeatedly in the end video. You see Paige more than you see Chloe, if you actually watch it.” (100:57-1:01:20 | Christi)  “It's actually a fucking miracle that we're still friends. It really is a miracle.” (1:03:27-1:03:33 | Christi) Links Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w  Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarre   Thank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=   Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510   Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiak   Follow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland

“I'm so fired up,” says Christi in regards to episode 9 of Dance Moms, “This is one of those episodes that I'm still pissed off about.” It's the episode in which the crew heads to Las Vegas, where the girls do their dance routine as each of the seven deadly sins. Kelly and Christi agree the theme was simply a way for Abby to get another dig in at the girls, (e.g. Chloe is envious of Maddie and Brooke wastes her talent by being lazy). The women discuss the den of lust that was the Rumor, a sleazy and completely inappropriate hotel for young children to stay. Abby herself commits the other sins like gluttony (only filming with the girls in Rumor's restaurant because there was ice cream involved), and she's as full of wrath as ever for anyone who gets in her way. She even breaks some commandments as Kelly insists that Abby truly wants the girls to disrespect their parents, and she spreads false rumors about all of the mothers knowing the audience will automatically believe her.   This episode is also a watershed as it's the first one where a group of new mothers come into Cathy's Candy Apple studios trying to be like the “core four” Moms and Christi and Kelly agree it doesn't work. The Moms visit an ice bar and as soon as they leave they attend the premiere of Dance Moms, which is pretty much the moment their lives completely change. Christi says the ice bar is her all time favorite moment as it's the last time they were just Kelly, Christi, Melissa and Holly–four regular moms from Pittsburgh.    Join the party to find out why the moms were escorted out of the premiere, and the two words that Christi shares with Kelly that will haunt them both for the rest of their lives.    Quotes “I think Abby would like none of the children in the world to have mothers, so she could just rule.” (12:36-12:43 | Kelly) “It didn't take much to make the girls happy, the producers should have done something every week to make them happy. It wouldn't have been that difficult.” (31:21- 31:29 | Kelly) “Kelly you say, ‘I'm so excited that the girls are seeing this, because it shows what they've been working for.' And then the very next sentence is Liz telling us that she works topless.” (32:02-32:15 | Christi) “The night we premiered we were still filming. We couldn't even have the night that our show premiered off. We were working.” (37:48-37:59 | Kelly) “Let me just say, the only way they got Abby to go down there was the ice cream. She was not babysitting our children. They said you have to come down and film for 15 minutes with ice cream sundaes, or she would not have been filming.” (39:02-39:17 | Kelly) “To be fair, Holly was probably only drinking because she was trying to use the alcohol to kill any germs she picked up at Rumor.” (52:30-52:36 | Christi)  “Abby tells us that I'm rude and arrogant and clueless. Funny though, Abby always talks about how I was smart and you had to watch me. It just goes to show that she knows that whatever she says, people will believe. And she says it a few other times in this episode about other things and it pisses me off because I think, ‘They're you go, just saying shit people will believe just because you're saying it.'” (56:28-56:53 | Christi) “We always start off strong at the beginning of the seasons, and then halfway through, by Nationals, when we get to the New Orleans episode in Season 3, you see me in New Orleans, and you when you're sitting on the dumpster at the end of Season 2. We look like we have been ridden hard and put away wet. It's exhausting. Rough.” (1:03:47-1:04:17 | Christi) Links Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC50aSBAYXH_9yU2YkKyXZ0w  Subscribe to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/backtothebarre   Thank you to Ashley Jana for allowing us to use Electricity!! Follow her on IG HERE: https://instagram.com/ashleyjanamusic?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=   Download Electricity HERE: https://music.apple.com/us/album/electricity/1497482509?i=1497482510   Follow Christi on IG: www.instagram.com/christilukasiak   Follow Kelly on IG: www.instagram.com/kellylhyland

Kelly Let A Donut Ruin His Performance.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Good moring

Host Black German & King Tut XXX Da Money Maker with special Guest The Coin Flipper talk pandemic and sports with a special mix online again in (Quarantine Radio Episode 12) Kevin Gates - 2 Phones- Send Me- Bobbi Harvey - Your Body Calling - R. Kelly - Let's Get it - OG Maco- Angle of a Creep - Casino Trap Beats - Momma Kobe- Fairow Clash or 008 Green God - Barbershop - Famous Clash - Work For it. Ft Big Sean - Fairow Tut - Workforce- Yeah - Med - Wiz Khalifa - Level - Special- MED

For this special ELECTION DAY episode of The Berman Hour podcast we have Ethan Kelly from the wildly popular YouTube channel Let's Talk Elections. Ethan & Jeff discuss 2020's Electoral College Map, the potential chances of a Democratic majority in the Senate, voter turnout, early voting & more! Ethan Kelly is well-versed & well-researched (on top of being incredibly kind & articulate) in the American election & political sphere & is the exact person you should listen to on this historic Election Day!presented by NooWave Flow-State-Coffee. (Visit http://www.NooWave.Co/Berman for 10% off)&Divided Heaven - New Single "They Poisoned Our Fathers" Out Now! http://smarturl.it/dh2020Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thebermanhour. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

DJ MOUSS - WANTED MIXTAPE 17 (2006) Re-Mastered 01 - DJ MOUSS - Wanted Intro 02 - BEYONCE feat. JAY-Z - Deja vu 03 - LL COOL J feat. MARY J BLIGE - Favorite Flavor 04 - AVANT feat. LLOYD BANKS - Exclusive 05 - Q. AMEY - Get at you 06 - 3LW feat. JERMAINE DUPRI - Feelin' you 07 - SHAREEFA feat. LUDACRIS - I need a boss 08 - MILA J feat. MARQUES HOUSTON - Goodlookingout 09 - DARON JONES feat. FABO - Dance 4 Me 10 - CASSIE feat. AC - Me & You (Remix) 11 - LIONEL RITCHIE - I call it love (Scott Storch) 12 - JC feat. YOUNG RELL - Go 13 - AKON - Gangsta bop 14 - JAHEIM - The chosen one 15 - NE-YO feat. JOE BUDDEN - Sexy love (Remix) 16 - FRANKY J feat. MANNIE FRESH & SLIM THUG - That girl 17 - AVANT feat. SHAWNA, KRAYZIE & LAYZIE BONE - 4 minutes (Collipark Remix) 18 - JAMIE FOXX feat. TWISTA - Dj play a love song (Remix) 19 - SEAN PAUL - Breakout 20 - SEAN PAUL - Head in the zone 21 - SEAN PAUL - Eye deh a mi knee 22 - SEAN PAUL feat. KEYSHIA COLE - Give it up to me (Remix) 23 - DEEP SIDE feat. R.KELLY - Let's make love 24 - MARIO WINANS feat. DARKCHILD & PHASE 2 - Real Love 25 - Q. AMEY feat. JAZZE PHA - Forever girl (Remix) 26 - TAMIA - Too grown for that

Week two of Let’s Talk About Sex is with Kirsten Kelly, wife, mama, and creator of Sacred Sexuality, a platform to get the conversation going about sex in Christian culture. This week we talk about our sexual pasts, purity culture, and how we can raise children who know their sexuality is sacred. Find all the links from the episode in the show notes.

Indie singer/songwriter Rorie Kelly has been compared to Joni Mitchell and Sara Bareilles for her catchy-confessional songwriting style, and to Alanis Morissette and Janis Joplin for her raw powerhouse vocals. She checked in with Robin Renée to talk about life as a full-time indie musician, the entrepreneurial drive that makes it possible, and the activist determination that fuels many of the songs as well as challenging conversations on and off the stage. Rorie also shares about her latest single, "Alternative Facts," the hopeful "If You Teach a Bird to Sing," exploring spirituality, and more. The Leftscape takes a breather from the anxiety-filled news cycle this week to report on two happy happenings and positive actions in the world -- the sweet, inspiring Spread the Love! project that is being documented on Instagram, and the wickedly funny activism of Cards Against Humanity Hacks the Election. This Day in History recalls the 1814 London Beer Flood and the OPEC Oil Embargo and subsequent gas rationing in 1973. Birthdays include Ziggy Marley, Gary Puckett, Irene Ryan, Arthur Miller, Evel Knievel, and Eminem. Here are some of the reasons to celebrate, learn, or do something interesting: Dwarfism Awareness Month, Inktober (Wendy Sheridan's Inktober drawings can be found @wendycards, Earth Science Week, Alternative Fuel Day, National Pasta Day, National Mulligan Day, Hagfish Day, Black Poetry Day, and World Vasectomy Day. Wendy also talks about Jodie Whittaker as the new Dr. Who and Mary McGinley recalls that her Shakespeare teacher appeared in an early Dr. Who episode. Wendy and her husband celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary on October 22nd. Congrats and a very happy anniversary to Wendy & Rich! Things to do: Visit Bandcamp to stream and download music by Rorie Kelly. Explore the work of some great black poets in honor of Black Poetry Day: 2Deep the Poetess Lillian Allen Maya Angelou Amiri Baraka Gwendolyn Brooks Staceyann Chin Paul Laurence Dunbar Nikki Giovanni Langston Hughes J. Ivy Ted Joans Christopher Johnson Ethelbert Miller Lenelle Moïse Poet On Watch Ursula Rucker Verandah-Maureen Shepard Patricia Smith Lamont B. Steptoe Kendal S. Turner Nayyirah Waheed Saul Williams Watch a snippet of Mary's Shakespeare teacher, Tina Packer, on Dr. Who circa 1968: httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBP7p2dYuBQ Watch Wendy open her Cards Against Humanity Midterm Pack: httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04BXLJVjMrk&feature=youtu.be         Watch the Comic Relief Dr. Who episode Wendy mentions on this show. She says, "I had it totally backwards! Gah! Dr. Who is played by Rowan Atkinson and the Master is played by Jonathan Pryce. Juila Swahala is the companion. Actually, there are five actors playing the doctor in this comedy episode: Rowan Atkinson, Richard E Grant, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, and Joanna Lumley." httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp_Fw5oDMao   Featured Rorie Kelly photo (c) Tiger Darson. All rights reserved.    

The Sean Kelly on Movies Podcast is now officially known as "Sean Kelly Interviews..." to reflect how interviews have dominated the content of this podcast since it relaunched last year. With the film Let Me Make You a Martyr now streaming as an exclusive on the horror streaming service Shudder, I thought that I would go the interview I did with, the filmmakers of the film, Corey Asraf and John Swab following the Let Me Make You a Martyr's world premiere at the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival. OPENING CLIP - Let Me Make You a Martyr Trailer 1:27 - Introductions 2:15 - Interview with Let Me Make You a Martyr filmmakers Corey Asraf and John Swab 9:10 - Closing Comments/Next Episode CLOSING CLIP - "Sweet Dreams" by Marilyn Manson Other Stuff Let Me Make You a Martyr on Shudder 78/52 exclusive interview on Patreon

The Sean Kelly on Movies Podcast is now officially known as "Sean Kelly Interviews..." to reflect how interviews have dominated the content of this podcast since it relaunched last year. With the film Let Me Make You a Martyr now streaming as an exclusive on the horror streaming service Shudder, I thought that I would go the interview I did with, the filmmakers of the film, Corey Asraf and John Swab following the Let Me Make You a Martyr's world premiere at the 2016 Fantasia Film Festival. OPENING CLIP - Let Me Make You a Martyr Trailer 1:27 - Introductions 2:15 - Interview with Let Me Make You a Martyr filmmakers Corey Asraf and John Swab 9:10 - Closing Comments/Next Episode CLOSING CLIP - "Sweet Dreams" by Marilyn Manson Other Stuff Let Me Make You a Martyr on Shudder 78/52 exclusive interview on Patreon --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/skonmovies/message This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit skonmovies.substack.com/subscribe

Title: Pick Up the Damn Phone Means No Cold Calling! Listen to Joanne-of-the-Nice-Voice Explain. Date: August 25, 2017 Attendee and Guest:  Kelly Coughlin, CEO, BankBosun; Joanne Black, Author and Consultant, [Boatswain’s whistle] That’s the Bosun’s whistle calling you bankers to attention.  Listen, compete, win. Intro: Kelly Coughlin is a CPA and CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Greetings, this is Kelly Coughlin, CEO of BankBosun, helping bank C- suite execs navigate risks and discover reward in a sea of threats and opportunities. It wasn’t so long ago, that there were really only three ways to communicate with people: the mail, in-person, and on the phone. That was it. That’s the way it was only 40 years ago. Imagine that…no texting, no social media, no cell phones, no internet, no email…just 40 years ago. Today, we have all these new different ways to communicate…and frequently, when something “new” is introduced in the market, it gets overused and misused. Why? Because we lose sight of the purpose of the new concept and focus simply on using the new concept. In communications today, I will say the reliance upon binary digits…technology…is overused and misused today. As most of you know, we at BankBosun are huge fans of using the human voice as a way to more effectively communicate your message…whether it be your company mission and vision, your product features and benefits, or your assessment of the market landscape and environment, the power of the human voice to communicate empathy, energy and emotion is one of the strongest powers as human beings we have. And if we don’t use that power, we miss a huge opportunity to connect and communicate with our tribe. We like to say, while the pen is mightier than the sword, the voice is stronger than both. Use it. The new communication tactics today are terrific and I use them constantly and consistently. But in terms of effectiveness, nothing compares with the sound of the human voice…I fully recognize that it is not efficient, and that is why many companies founded in the digital era have adopted a business model that minimizes or sometimes completely eliminates the human voice…Facebook, Google, Uber…have you ever tried to get an Uber customer service agent on the phone…forget it…it just won’t happen. This audio interview is an example of the power of the human voice. I posit that if you only read the transcript of this interview, you will miss a huge portion of the underlying message. See how I said huge there? You would miss that if you just read it…it would sound huge…If you only read, you will miss the guest’s energy, empathy and emotion. You just don’t get that with the written word. Oh, and did I mention people don’t read anymore…they don’t. If you send a written piece longer than three quarters of a page it most likely won’t ever get read. Over 65% of written documents over one page in length get put down for later reading…and over 50% of those docs never get read…period. But if you listen, you get to hear a whole new dimension of communication. And you technical people that think your products and services are way too complex and need to be communicated with a written doc or flow chart or a Powerpoint. Wrong. You especially need to tell your story with your voice. I am not suggesting you abandon your written material. But frankly the more complex your offering the more you need to be able to tell your story with your voice…if you can’t, you need to learn your story better. My guest today is also a strong advocate of using the human voice. She is a thought leader, author, and consultant.  And frankly, she is the genuine article.  She has written a number of books, one is called No More Cold Calling: The Breakthrough System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust.  And then another one, Pick Up the Damn Phone!: How People, Not Technology, Seal the Deal.  She is America’s leading authority on referral selling.  She is not bragging though, her publisher gave her that moniker and she runs with it, and runs with it hard.  And now she is going to run with it at BankBosun to help our community and regional banks compete and win, not through cold calling or the traditional tactics like getting referrals from centers of influence, rather, she is quite the contrary and thinker who believes no sales person should ever have to cold call or send cold emails.  Let’s hear about that.  But what I like most about our guest, Joanne Black, she has a nice soothing voice, especially, compared to my rough and gruff voice.  And so, I am going to welcome Joanne and hope she is on the line so we can all hear her great wisdom and insight and hear her especially nice voice.  Kelly: Joanne, are you on the line? Joanne: Oh, I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Kelly. This is fabulous. Kelly: Thank you Joanne for taking the time.  I know you are on the west coast of California, is that correct? Joanne: I am in the San Francisco Bay area so it’s a beautiful sunny day here and we haven’t had any earthquakes in a while and I hope that continues. Kelly: Excellent!  Well, Joanne, are you ready to get right into it? Joanne: I am always ready.  Kelly: Alright. Well, Joanne, I am going to start out with a challenging question here.  I am going to start out by asking you to reconcile two seemingly contrary and opposing messages that are the titles of two of your books.  One book says, Pick Up the Damn Phone and the other says, No More Cold Calling.  Well, what do you want us to do, call or not call? Joanne: Oh, I want you to call but only if you have gotten a referral. The reason I wrote that second book is, I truly was alarmed by how so many people depend on technology and not only depend on it, I think they hide behind it.  And instead of actually having conversations they are depending on emails, on e-books, on social media to get people’s attention.  But the titles may seem like they are not aligned but they actually are. To only wants you to pick up the damn phone, when you have done your research online, when you have talked to people and then when you have been introduced to the person you want to meet or you are going to pick up the damn phone to talk to some of your colleagues, to talk to your clients and ask them for other people you should be meeting.  That’s what the phone is for, not to cold call.  Kelly: Well, are people afraid of the phone these days or are people afraid to contact people? Joanne: It depends on who your clients are.   So, we need to communicate as our clients communicate, and if they communicate by text then text them and set up a time to talk to them.  But you have to have the conversation when you are asking for a referral.  You know, you can’t ask for a referral in any digital format.  That’s my point of view and I am sticking to it.  And the reason is that a referral is very personal and before I can introduce you or I can introduce any banker I need to have a conversation.  I need to know the business reason why I am going to make the introduction. Because when I refer someone my reputation is on the line.  I need to depend on you to take care of my client just as I would.  So, therefore, I need to have that conversation.  I also need to equip you with a language to introduce me.   And it’s not just because I am a nice person.  It’s not just because I have written two books.  It’s not just because I have had my company for 21 years.  It’s not just because you say I have a nice voice.  I mean, that’s not business reasons for the introduction.  There has to be something I do that’s going to resonate with the person you are introducing me to that’s going to help them solve a problem.  Kelly: Now, you are kind of picky about using the term referral, why don’t you define what you think a referral is and then what a referral is not. Joanne: Well, it is what I know, not what I think.  But a referral means that you receive an introduction.  Let me contrast that to my definition of a cold call, any cold outreach, whether you are sending an email, whether you are on social media, whether you are just popping in to a client.  I mean, I don’t know if anybody does that anymore, but some do.   A cold call versus a referral, a cold outreach means that you are contacting someone who doesn’t know you and doesn’t expect to hear from you.  That is ice cold, you are definitely interrupting them. They don’t know you. And in many times there are actually circumspect whether that person really said that you should talk or not, a lot that goes on there.  So when a referral gets you the introduction you always get the meetings, because you have been introduced by someone your prospect knows and respects.  Make sense? Kelly: Yes it does.  I’m interested in the term outreach.  I’ve been in the sales business one way or another many many years and it’s only been in the last eight years maximum that the term outreach has become popular.  It is just selling, correct?    Is it just making a contact, whether it be outreach on the phone, outreach on email, outreach in person, it’s selling, correct? Joanne: I don’t agree.  So here is the thing, I’m want to go back a whole bunch of years when I did work in the banking industry.  I worked for a makeup performance and my clients were all banks, mainly community banks, and at that time if you wanted to get information on a bank you would call their corporate communications department and they mailed you an annual report.  That’s how we learnt about a company.  We did not have the internet and when the internet first became frequently used, I’m going to say mid 90s, maybe, when people were contacted all over the world and then it went from there. We now have many different ways of reaching people so it’s not just calling someone to get information.  It’s not just making a phone call.   And, by the way, I think those times were probably a lot simpler, but there are so many ways of contacting people now.  And that’s what I mean by outreach, because it could be by phone, in person, social media, email, I can’t think of anything else, but there probably is, but there are just so many avenues we have now to reach people. So that’s why I call it outreach, and I don’t think it’s selling. Kelly:  I think probably selling implies doing more talking than listening. But if an outreach is listening and talking then that probably makes more sense to use the term outreach. Joanne: I think it is very much about building relationships and expanding connections, and those lead to sales.  Here is what happens. I have been exposed to several people recently who have said to me, I don’t know if I should go to that event because I have been to things like this in the past and I don’t get any leads.  Don’t say that to me, I say that’s always a wrong approach.  We need to be out there meeting people all the time, whether it’s for breakfast, for lunch, for a beer, whether it’s part of a golf tournament, a tennis tournament, whether we are going to our kid’s...to their baseball or soccer games, we need to be out there all the time meeting people, getting to know people, sharing ideas.  That to me is what selling is about, because the number one reason that people do business with us, because they trust us.  That doesn’t happen overnight.  It does happen when you get a referral introduction.  For me, sales is about having a conversation and being clear about what their issues are before ever talking about what we do.   Kelly: Let’s talk about account based sales. You seem to spend a lot of time, a lot of energy on account based sales activity. What’s your definition? Why is that important and what’s the alternative to that? Joanne: It’s the old saying that there is nothing really new again.  So account based sales is a newer term used for those of us who have named accounts.  We have a certain book of business, a certain book of accounts that we are responsible for meeting with and ultimately selling to.  It’s a book of business, period, named accounts.  And as bankers then we know we need to meet these companies and talk to them and build relationships with them. That’s what it’s about. That’s account based selling.  It’s just a new term but there is nothing new about it.  The opposite is, so many companies now have people on the phone all the time, inside sales reps, people calling and wanting to open up a conversation.  They don’t build relationships.  They are the ones making a hundred dollars a week, a day or whatever it is, and maybe talking to a few people.  That is not what I’m talking about and that’s not where bankers are playing either.  It’s not where I play.  Account based sellers build relationships.  That’s the differentiation in the term.  Kelly:  Do you distinguish between retention of business or for cross selling, up-selling purposes? Joanne: One of the downfalls that I see is that in so many organizations, that we do business with a client, we close that business and then we move on.  To me, when you talk about cross selling and up-selling, it’s always listening.  So, we get in there with one product or service because most of these companies have more than one bank they are doing business with and through developing the relationship and getting to know them better, yes, our goal is to find other opportunities within that client.   We may or may not, or it could be that a bank that they were doing business with, maybe they changed bankers and their client doesn’t like this new banker and suddenly reaches out to you because they like you. It’s critical to stay in touch with people.  And yes, if the door opens and you see an opportunity to talk about another product or service, you do that, but more importantly, we need to be asking those clients for referrals to other people they know. And that is not happening.  It’s happening yes, ad hoc, but it’s not a discipline.  It’s not systematic.  And it happens but we can’t depend on that.   Kelly: Okay, you make a pretty bold statement in some of your work.  One of these statements says this, Why closing is never a problem in account based selling. Why is that? Joanne: First thing, it’s never the problem, it doesn’t matter what you do.  So, when people say to me, I’ve had a sales leader say to me, Joanne, my team can’t close, can you help me?  Well, that’s my time to step back because it is never about closing.  It’s always about something earlier in the sales process that was forgotten. That was over looked.  If we have done our true discovery and we built relationships with all the people who are going to be involved in the decision, that we found out their timeline, we found out what they need, we’ve made a lot of check ins. I don’t even like to call it that, but we are in touch, then closing should be like one foot in front of the other.  Closing is never the problem.  I am going to give you an example.  I realized that I missed a step, very recently, and I knew the deadline was short so I wasn’t even sure about that. But a client was having a meeting and they were bringing in their account executive and suddenly they wanted to expand it to a bigger group so now we are looking at like 25 people instead of 10.  The mistake I made was, I did not have the conversation with the right person about what that would cost them when they expanded that number and I would have made a recommendation to start with a smaller group.  The group that really would get the most benefit from referrals, start with them first.  Let’s get proof, let’s get results and then we can expand it.  So, I missed that step. Now, as a result, first of all, the date didn’t work and second, it was too big. And it will happen because they do these quarterly business reviews and bring the whole team together then.  And now I have to do a lot more work on my end which I am willing to do and we have already outlined some next steps to bring a referral program into a quarterly business review with a smaller team. So, I made that mistake.  It’s called, sometimes...I have an author friend who calls it "happy ears”.  You know, when a prospect or a client just says, oh, this is fabulous, yes we need to do it.  This absolutely meets what our challenges are.  I never thought about it that way, you have given me so many insights   and good advice, on and on and on.  We have “happy ears”, and they go sure, they are going to do business with us.    That’s not business, that’s “happy ears”, and that was my downfall. Kelly. Yeah.  You make another statement here, How digital dependence derails account based selling teams.  I want to give some background in this question.  At BankBosun, we believe that audiocasting is a very effective way to communicate your message, whether it be a company message, a product message, service message, a human voice communicates with energy, empathy and emotion and you just can’t get that out of the written word unless you are writing like Yeats or Shakespeare, most people really don’t read anymore anyway.  So, we like to use digital audio to capture this, like we are doing today.  In my interview with you, we get the emotion, we hear your wonderful voice, we hear your energy and then we envision banks would share that message with their referrals or current customers or prospective customers.  I am not at all suggesting that banks rely upon this and be dependent upon it, but do you think that tactic challenges your statement, digital dependence derails account based selling teams? Joanne: No, if digital is the only outreach then I would say yes.  The point in that post and really the message in my second book, Pick up the Damn Phone, is that if we sit behind technology and we rely only on technology, whether it’s audios, videos, emails, e-books, whatever it is, webinars, podcasts that we are not developing the relationships we need to develop when we have a conversation, and that’s what I mean by digital dependence.  Now, audio is one tool, video is another.  I just wrote a post, in fact, about why video doesn’t work for me.  You see, everybody has a different way of accessing and understanding information.  For me, I can read way faster than I can listen, of course then, I have to put in my blue tooth or my earbuds.  You know, whatever I’m doing, it’s one other block for me.  Now, I agree that there is nothing that replaces hearing a human voice, that’s why we need to talk to people and have conversations but we need to communicate in different modalities.  Some people love videos, some love audio, and many people love audio because they put it on their phones and can listen in the car.  If it’s the written word, there is Infographics.  Some people love those.  Infographics gives me hives. I just don’t know where to look first.  I get, you know, where is this?  It’s like charts and graphs. I want someone to explain it to me.  That’s my learning style.  We need to use various modalities in digital but then we need to have an actual conversation.  And when I talked about digital dependence is there are so many people who are not having conversation. They are relying on digital for everything. Kelly: Got it. I would like to reserve part two, if we could, to talking about strategy and tactics on getting referrals, could we to that in part two, do you think? Joanne: Well, of course we can and I look forward to it. Kelly: Okay, I want to end part one with, I find it interesting, the contrary, and you are, that you use the term, circles of influence and many of us use the term centers of influence, is there a difference between how we use the terms?  I actually kind of like your term better. It implies, large, diameter, circumference, wider in scope whereas a center implies something that’s closed.  It’s got a door and only few people are allowed in it, closed, narrow. What are your thoughts on that? Joanne: I think they are interchangeable.  I mean, truthfully, with everything I say is maybe I meant center and I said circle. You know, it’s really the same thing. We understand these are the people who would most likely to give us referrals over time.  And that’s centers of influence, circles of influence, it’s exactly the same. Kelly: Okay.  Well, with your permission, unless you have some kind of trade name, ownership and you are going to charge me every quarter every time I use it, I am going to start using it. Joanne: Oh, fantastic Kelly, please do.   Kelly: Joanne, I would like to know how bankers can get in touch with you.  You could put a plug in for your books again and any other thing.  I think we are doing a giveaway on the book, No More Cold Calling: The Break Through System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust.  Is that correct? Joanne: That’s correct.  The way to reach me is, Joanne, J o a n n e, @nomorecoldcalling.com and the first 10 people who send me an email and put in the subject line “listened to your podcast with Kelly” will receive a book.  If you would like to chat and hear a human voice, it is area code 415-461-8763, 4154618763, and that’s Pacific Time. I invite you to visit my website, nomorecoldcalling.com.  And yes, both of my books are available on Amazon, on Kindle as well as in hardcover for No More Cold Calling and paperback for Pick Up the Damn Phone Kelly: Very nice, sweet.  Joanne, thank you so much and we will be in touch about scheduling part two which is “the circles of influence and how to get them to work for you.”                                                   Joanne: Terrific, thanks Kelly. Kelly: Okay Joanne, thank you, good bye. Outro: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC;  and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier.

Sun Tzu and Woody Harrleson Help Banks with Revenue Creation Narrator: He learned strategy by playing chess with his older brother. Narrator: Kelly Coughlin is a CPA and CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast, Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover reward. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Greetings, this is Kelly Coughlin, CEO of BankBosun, helping community banks navigate risk and discover reward in a sea of risk, regulation, and revenue creation threats. Today we are going to talk about marketing strategy, tactics, and revenue creation. BankBosun has a program for banks called Tactical Ecosystem Marketing. It is the results of three years of research and discussions with marketing experts and community bank executives. It’s a program guaranteed to generate new revenues from all bank business lines. And get all the banks’ centers of influence – that is those people and companies who influence and recommend banks and bankers – get them fully on board and engaged to help you get new customers. Guaranteed. How you might ask? Spoiler Alert: By primarily promoting them – your clients, prospects and influencers – and their businesses and services -  and then secondarily promoting your services and yourself. In 2014, I started researching ways that complex financial technology or financial services companies could be more efficiently and effectively marketed and closed. I use the terms efficiency and effectiveness carefully and intentionally, because they imply a reduction in time, as in shortening the sales cycle; reduction in expenses, travel, entertainment, and other direct business development costs; and reduction in effort, as in reducing the days, months or years it takes to close a deal. This was the challenge and, believe it or not, I actually figured it out.  But first it requires some attention to strategy and tactics and then a discussion on marketing and revenue creation. I have invited my friend Chris Carlson to join us in a few minutes. You see, Chris is one of my favorite people on the planet. He is a lawyer and an actor. Not one of those Hollywood elite actors though – he lives in South Minneapolis. But I think he has a small part in a movie coming out this summer. Chris has been very helpful to me in helping me craft my message and public speaking skills and style to conform not to dull and boring business standards, but to the stage and theater standards. Not that you need to be an entertainer. I certainly am not. Rather, you need to be your true and authentic self. Chris is terrific with this. So I asked him to help me with my messaging on this. And I thought, let’s do it as an interview and a podcast. I know you have heard plenty of people talk about strategy…and some business people use strategy and tactics interchangeably. In war, if you do that, it can be life threatening. In business you can sometimes get away with blurring the two with the result ranging from financial and operational inefficiencies to the ultimate penalty in business…death through bankruptcy. I don’t like to blur them. Because I think it is critical to achieving success to define your strategy and constantly be revising your tactics to implement that strategy. In short, strategy describes the destination and tactics describe the specific actions you will have to take along the way. Generally speaking, strategy doesn’t change that much, but tactics will constantly be adjusted and modified. When I lived in Seattle, I used to have a sailboat. I loved participating in sailing races. There was one race in the winter of 1985. I think they called it the Frostbite Series. This taught me at the age of 25, the real difference between mission, strategy and tactics. There was some heavy weather on the Puget Sound…probably around 25 knot winds. The mission was to have no more or no less a crew suitable to lead, navigate and operate the boat in that competitive situation and in that weather condition. Round each buoy and finish the race in the shortest time; and win the race. Before the race we developed our strategy on buoy placements and how we would round them; wind direction and speed and what sails we would need; and the number of boats, competition and the starting line placement and how we would approach the start. In a sailboat race, if you have a lousy start, you will have a very difficult time making up that time lost. Taking too much risk to cross the finish line ahead of the gun and have to circle back and re-cross could cost you five minutes. In a sailboat this can be painful. Our tactical decisions went something like this. We added one more crew to the boat. We used a starting tactic where we went to the finish line two minutes before the gun, and sailed perpendicular away from the line for one minute. And then we tacked and turned around and started sailing back to the start line. The tactical theory here is that if you sail away from the start for one minute, it should take you more or less one minute to return to the start. If it takes you more, you are late, if it takes you less, you are early. I liked that starting tactic. We decided to not fly the spinnaker because it was so windy. The cost of that decision was a loss in boat speed. But the gain was that we expected others would be more aggressive and fly their spinnaker and either struggle with that during sail changes or perhaps experience a knock down. We adopted a more conservative tactic and hoped our competitors would be more aggressive and get hurt by that. The end result was while we were winning the race, but because one of the buoys had blown free during the gale storm, the race was canceled. We actually chase that windward buoy for about 90 minutes past the original placement of it until they finally notified us by radio the race had been canceled. This one race taught me so much about the relationship between mission, strategy and tactics. In this race our mission never changed. Win the race. Our strategy was defined at the beginning based on conditions and competitive landscape. But our tactics were constantly being modified and adjusted and corrected to deal with the ever-changing conditions and our competitors’ reactions to those conditions. It taught me to not get caught into myopic thinking about how we win a sailboat race. The concept of not flying our spinnaker seemed so very foreign to me at the age of 25. Now, at 59, it makes total sense. In 1980 a Harvard business school professor, Michael Porter wrote a seminal article, “Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors". Commonly referred to as Porter's Five Forces. Porter maintains there are five undeniable forces that play a part in shaping every market and industry in the world. If you haven’t created your own, Five Force Analysis, you need to do so. I love doing these things.  This will help you determine how to modify your strategy and tactics based on your competitive landscape. And always update it at least annually, if not quarterly. So in summary, strategy and tactics work together as means to an end. There are a number of good quotes on strategy and tactics. More on strategy than tactics actually, because frequently the same principles in strategy apply to many, many areas including war, sports and certainly business. I just finished reading the book, POWER by Robert Greene. He even claims that there is strategy and tactic in romance. He quotes the 17th century French poet, Francois La Roche Foe Cou. I bet I butchered that name. Sounds a little like….Well anyway…“A reasonable man in love may act like a madman but he should not and cannot act like an idiot.” I love that quote. Many of the concepts in strategy, apply to many if not all human endeavors. But tactics are more specific to a particular business and industry. There are hundreds of great quotes on strategy and tactics ranging from Caesar in the war versus the Gauls to Norman Shwarzkopf in the first Iraq war. I certainly have a couple favorite quotes on strategy and tactics including this one by Sun Tzu: Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. But my favorite quote on strategy and tactics especially for smaller banks with limited capital and budgets competing against big banks and big brokers with much bigger capital and seemingly unlimited budgets. It’s a quote by Napoleon, one of the most brilliant military strategists and tacticians, ever. Napoleon said, “The amateurs discuss tactics. The professionals discuss logistics.” I’m going to repeat that. “The amateurs discuss tactics. The professionals discuss logistics.” To me this plays exactly in to my core message in this podcast of revenue creation strategies and tactics that are both effective and efficient. Napoleon is saying, I don’t want to talk about tactical ideas that can’t be implemented, because of logistical constraints…only those we can actually implement. For community banks, this means, let’s not talk about big picture ideas that we cannot afford. Rather, if you have ideas that fit in our budget, then terrific. If not, let’s not waste each other time. Well, rest assured, if you keep listening to this podcast and other video and audio content we have produced on BankBosun.com you will see or hear that these meet the Napoleon standard referenced above. It is a discussion on tactics that are logistically feasible and reasonable for all community banks. So with that in mind, I think I have my friend Chris Carlson on the line. I’m gonna start with a quote from a director who actually despised actors…recall Chris is an actor. Let’s see if Chris can identify the source: “I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.” So with that said, Chris time to come to the slaughtering pen…can I hear your best moo cow imitation? Chris: I’ll try to give you my best moo cow imitation. But I’m first need a motivation. What is my cow trying to communicate? Kelly: First of all, can you identify the source of the quote? What is the source of that quote? Chris: I don’t know. It would have to be some sort of director. It can’t be Woody Allen, because he likes actors. Kelly: Alfred Hitchcock Chris: Alfred Hitchcock, that would make sense. What is my cow trying to communicate? I mean, because it could be Moo (uplifting). He’s trying to solicit an answer from the other cows. Or it could be Moo (forcefully). Like, move out of the way rancher, because he’s trying to cattle prod me into a slaughtering pen. Or it could be maybe a seductive Moo, that wants to get something going with one of the other cows. Kelly: Let me hear that seductive one, again. Chris: Moo, Kelly, Moo. Is that good? I mean. It’s not as good as a pugilist. You can do a good impression of, can’t you? Kelly: What I thought you would do is just like a Mooooooo! Chris: Oh wow! See, that’s why I’m in a nationwide movie opens tomorrow and you’re not. Kelly: Why, ‘cause mine was just too kind of stereotypical? Chris: Well I don't think they'd put your picture on the poster with Woody Harrelson peeing in a urinal. But they did for me. Kelly: Did they? What's the name of the movie? Chris: Wilson. I haven't seen it yet so I can't speak to the quality. But Woody Harrelson is pretty good. Kelly: Alright that is terrific. Chris: And I will not be mooing in it. Kelly: So let's get down to business. Chris you heard my introductory statements, or as you actors call it, a soliloquy. What questions do you have about what I'm doing or how do you want to start? Chris: As an actor you know I want to know how to make money. But you’ve got these kind of inventive ideas with generating revenue as you call it. So why don’t you fill me in and let me know if I can get in on it. Kelly: As I mentioned earlier in 2014, I started researching ways that complex financial technology or financial services companies could be more efficiently and effectively marketed. Technology, the Internet, and mobile devices have enabled many businesses to operate more efficiently and effective in my mind…I think of Uber and many other kind of virtual companies. Many of these companies don’t even have a human being available to sell, support or service. They pride their business models on the ability to open up a sales funnel and close a deal without ever having to talk to or “touch” the customer. Those are “air quotes” under touch. Build a technology platform. Offer it to consumers. Make it easy for the consumer to pay for the services. And collect the money and deposit it. And spend more to capture more consumers and more money. No human interaction at all. If any of you have had to deal with Uber for ride sharing or Facebook or LinkedIn for advertising, you know exactly how challenging it is to talk to somebody there. In their minds, they are the perfectly fine-tuned efficient and effective revenue generators. I use the terms efficiency and effectiveness carefully and intentionally, because they imply a reduction in time, as in shortening the sales cycle; reduction in expenses, as in travel, entertainment, and other direct business development costs; and a reduction in effort, as in reducing the days, months or years it might take to close a deal. This was the challenge and, believe it or not, I actually figured it out. Chris: Well wait a minute though. I mean hasn’t digital marketing and especially social media don't they help with efficiency and effectiveness. That has to have been a good thing, isn’t it. Kelly: Well, yes. In part, it has. Here’s how I see it. There really are two ways we develop business relationships: directly to the buyer and indirectly to the influencers of or to the buyer. The combination of customers, prospective customers, and influencers of customers plus the other businesses and individuals that also sell services to members in that ecosystem, comprise the total ecosystem. All require an investment in time, expense, and effort. Social media like LinkedIn has helped us stay easier connected to buyers and influencers. And this ease has certainly helped with efficiency, as it doesn’t cost much to connect on LinkedIn or Facebook. But in terms of effectiveness, it doesn’t quite get it done in that it really just the beginning of the relationships. It’s more like an advancement of the old days of giving somebody a business card and they stick it in their rolodex. And hope they remember you some time. Do you even remember what a rolodex is?? Chris: Yes, I do remember what a Rolodex is. It's a thing you wear on your wrist, right? Kelly: That would be a Rolex. Chris: Rolodexes are no longer. How do you parse that problem? What's your way to phrase the big dilemma? Kelly: The reality is the method by which we initiate business relationship has changed a bit with social media and email. But developing the relationship, hasn’t really changed that much. We make contact. We connect. We get them in the funnel. Then we do some mix of pounding them with emails, and sending them articles about our products and services or information that we think they would find interesting and useful. We might call them on the phone. Maybe get a face to face. There is always a challenge to deliver sufficiently good and interesting content to get the buyer motivated to accelerate their sales cycle with you. And there is always a struggle to keep your product and your company top of mind to the influencers of the prospect. This all takes time, expense, and effort. And also a patient CEO, board and shareholders. Chris: Well wait, wait, wait. What did you figure out? What did you figure out in terms of efficiency and effectiveness that you were talking about earlier? Kelly: It was my experience as a sales and marketing professional and as a CEO and manager of sales people and responsible for revenue creation, that sales cycles were dreadfully long; sales messaging was painfully repetitive and uninteresting; and there were constant and continual struggles to come up with a new excuse to call a prospect to see where they were in the sales cycle – hot, warm, or cold; and to make sure the center of influence still remembered you as the go-to company for a client referral or recommendation. We’ve been exploring this and we’ve developed a revenue creation strategy that solves the problem of efficiency and effectiveness. We call it Tactical Ecosystem Marketing. It utilizes the cost efficiencies of digital marketing, especially audio content that is produced and syndicated on iTunes, google play and YouTube; coupled with connecting with the client on social media and promoting THEM…not you. At its core, Tactical Ecosystem Marketing is a marketing strategy whose primary focus is not to promote your company and your products, rather to promote your CUSTOMERS’ and PROSPECTS’s company and products. The secondary focus is to promote YOUR business and YOUR products. And the same applies to the Centers of Influence.  You focus on promoting THEIR business and THEIR products and a secondary focus on YOUR business and your products. How do you promote them? Through your own audio podcast program. It delivers high quality content for your sales people to distribute and discuss with your clients and prospects. High quality content for your ecosystem members to distribute and discuss with their clients and prospects. It’s one big fat happy symbiotic ecosystem. Everybody wins. It’s highly effective. It’s very efficient. It’s very Sun Tzu. You attack your enemies’ weakness and avoid their strengths. This strategy and tactic does just that. Chris: So, Tactical Ecosystem Marketing is a revenue creation strategy. And the tactics are designed to help community banks create, publish and syndicate on websites, YouTube, iTunes and GooglePlay and all those other things. And they promote all the products and services of the bank’s ecosystem, as well as its members. Kelly: Yes, Chris. It’s kind of like Tactical Ecosystem Marketing is a way a community bank can pay it forward and in return good things will happen. Well, we're up to the twenty-minute mark. Is there anything you want to add about what you're doing with Narrative Pros these days with you, Chris.   Chris: We're just trying to help people like you Kelly make their point and connect with their audiences. Some people don’t have the gift of gab like you. So, what we do is we try to help them come up with a clear way of conveying their message and do it in an authentic and genuine way. Unfortunately, you do not have need of our services. You're a master and we respect that. Kelly: Hmmmmm, I don't know. I think I have paid you a few dollars over the years to help me Master those skills though. Chris: That's true. You're one of our star pupils, so I will accept that. Kelly: Chris, I appreciate your time. Take care of yourself. Chris: You too! .Narrator: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier.

ESSENTIAL FLAVOR SHOW #54 01.02.2017 DJ ADDICT 01 - Heartless intro (Salo) 02 - Akon ft. O.T. Genasis - Ride Daddy 03 - Dosseh ft. Booba - Infréquentables 04 - Iggy Azalea ft. French Montana - Sexy 05 - S.Pri Noir ft. Jok’Air - La liste 06 - R. Kelly - Ignition (Myrne rmx) 07 - Drake - Fake Love (SMTH rmx) 08 - Bruno Mars - That’s what I like (Cabiuzee rmx) 09 - Ginuwine - Pony (Statik link rmx) 10 - Chris Brown ft. Gucci Mane & Usher - Party 11 - Migos - T-Shirt 12 - Tyga ft. Kanye West - Feel me 13 - Lloyd ft. 2 Chainz - Tru (rmx) 14 - The Weekend ft. Kendrick Lamar - Sidewalks 15 - Ghost Town Djs - My Boo (rmx) 16 - The Supermen Lovers ft. Mani Hoffman - Starlight (Dj Sub Zero 2017 rmx) 17 - Kiiara ft. Lil Wayne - Gold (rmx) 18 - Marian Hill - Down 19 - Mura Masa ft. A$AP Rocky - Love$ick 20 - The Stylistics - People make the world go round 21 - Rick Ross ft. Ty Dolla $ign - I think she like me 22 - Busta Rhymes ft. Swizz Beatz - AAAHHHH!! 23 - Fetty Wap ft. Monty - Way you are 24 - Ariana Grande ft. Nicki Minaj - Side to side 25 - Sean Paul ft. Tory Lanez - Tek weh yuh heart 26 - Ed Sheeran - Shape of you 27 - French Montana - ft. Swae Lee - Unforgivable 28 - Dj Snake ft. R. Kelly - Let me love you (rmx) 29 - Dj Snake ft. Yellow Claw - Ocho Cinco (Victor Nigilo rmx) 30 - Lexy Panterra - Downtown 31 - P. Diddy ft. Ginuwine, Loon & Mario Winans - I Need A Girl (part.2) 32 - Tory Lanez - I need a girl (Dj Serom edit) 33 - Salvatore ft. Enya & Alex Aris - Dive www.djaddict.fr http://twitter.com/dj_addict http://facebook.com/addictdj Instagram : addictdj snapchat : addictdj

In this episode Kelly and Caroline talk about shipping shit for your biz!!! When shipping your products it takes time. Caroline and Kelly talk all about how to figure it out effectively! From finding the right processes to the right materials,  so that it does not cost you time and money in the long run.  Find out what helped streamline Kelly’s process for shipping and the tool she lives by for printing shipping labels! Sometimes my brain needs a break -Kelly The Beginning When first starting out, it can be really freaking scary to try and figure out all your shipping costs and materials you are going to need and how much each item weighs.  Caroline and Kelly talk about how important it is to get your shipping shit down to a well oiled machine! They give great tips on how to start from the very first product you package.  From purchasing a usps scale (highly recommend)  to using spreadsheets, Caroline and Kelly give you all the beginning ins and outs for shipping your shit!!  Be sure you have your shipping policies listed on your shop website as well! Usps.comFedex.com The worst feeling in the world is realizing you did not charge enough for shipping. -Caroline Be sure you have clear shipping policies and stick to them -Caroline Shipping Options Caroline and Kelly give great tips on how you can use different shipping options for shipping shit!  Don’t get stressed and over worked, charge for rush shipping if someone needs something really quick! Kelly and Caroline talk about the different shipping options they offer and how to incorporate RUSH orders in their process of shipping.  You don’t have to offer all of these, figure out what you are capable of doing and what you want to offer your customers. Materials Caroline and Kelly talk #allthethings they use for shipping all their shit! From finding out where to order your packaging from to finding the right sizes and shapes for your product, Caroline and Kelly talk about how they figure out what products fit with what to minimize your inventory.  They talk about their fav shipping material company-Uline and they great things that ULine offers its customers!   Find out how Caroline and Kelly build their packaging material into their biz! Don't use your profit to pay for your materials, find what works best for your biz!  What incentive can you use for your shop?!  Flash Sale. Uline Shipping Tools Caroline and Kelly talk #allthingsshippingtools to keep your shipping running smoothly!  From getting the right scale to measure your packages, to purchasing labels, and finding a local shipping store or getting a PO Box for your biz, Caroline and Kelly break down how important it is to use these shipping tools. Find a happy medium for your shipping  -Kelly Let us know if you as listeners what more information for any one of our topics! Shipping Station Tour Blog From HelloWorldPaperCo Follow us on Instagram and interact with us for a shop shout out!!! If you have a second please jump over to iTunes and leave us a review! You can find Kelly online at: www.helloworldpaperco.comwww.kellyparkersmith.com www.helloworldstamps.etsy.comwww.helloworldpaperco.etsy.com You can find Caroline online at: www.carolinecreates.comwww.carolineannhull.com www.carolinecreates.etsy.com

  Kelly: Hello, this is Kelly Coughlin, CEO of BankBosun. Today we're going to launch a series of podcasts on community banks and the role they have played in our history and the future. Community banks are critical to a community's social and economic ecosystem. I use the term ecosystem carefully and intentionally to describe a system of inter-connected elements formed by the interaction of a community with their environment, and in terms of a social and economic community, in my mind community banks are critical members of that ecosystem. That brings me to this podcast series, in which we're going to focus on community banks. In this series we're talking to a number of executives who are leaders in community banking, and I'm asking them to make community banks more fun and interesting. I think I used the term “humanize” community banks. The community bank has been around a long time. From the Revolutionary War in Massachusetts to the Santa Fe Trail in Kansas; expansions and contractions, recessions and depressions, community banks have seen it all. With that in mind, I have one of those leaders, Sammie Dixon, CEO of Prime Meridian Bank in Tallahassee, Florida. He's not been around since the Revolutionary War, I don't think, but he has seen a lot. Sammie, are you on the line there? Sammie: I am. Kelly: Have you been around since the Revolutionary War, Sammie? Sammie: No, I barely made the '60s. Kelly: Barely made the '60s, excellent.  Sammie, I wanted to talk to you because when I look at your bio and some of the community involvement…I looked at all the involvement that you guys have…and I counted nearly 50 organizations, whether it be the Treehouse of Florida, Toys for Tots, Young Actors Theatre, Good News Outreach, Holy Comforter School, Lee's Place, Opening Nights. I'm not sure what Opening Nights is but..., you've got Florida Tax Watch. You've got over 50 organizations that you guys support one way or another. Talk to me about that. Sammie: Well, Kelly, there was a famous banker here in town by the name of Godfrey Smith, that always stated that a healthy community makes a healthy bank. And if you take care of the community, then the bank will be taken care of, if you're providing good service and charging good, honest rates, paying people good rates, and just making sure that the well-being of each individual client and the community as a whole is taken care of. Kelly: Kind of jumping forward here, what happens in a community when a community bank ends up getting acquired by a national bank or a large regional bank? Does that go away do you think? Sammie: It does to some extent. You've got someone outside of the individual community that really doesn't understand what's important, making decisions or providing budgets to the local leadership of that regional or money center bank. And they cannot react as quickly to the needs of the community. Whereas your community banks are able to really provide a nimble outlook. And by that I mean that if there's something happening that needs to be taken care of. The decision can be made within 5 minutes and let's get the problem squared away, from supporting one of the individual not-for-profits that are providing services to our community to the hospitals, the school system. It's having that ability to make a decision on the ground floor. Kelly: That's a segue into maybe the bigger picture here. That dynamic doesn't just relate to non-profit involvement, but it gets at the for-profit activities that a bank is involved in. When you're not part of that community, you can't respond as quickly, whether it be granting a commercial loan or that sort of thing. Talk about that a little bit. How is that impacted? Sammie: Every business is nothing more than a story with substance behind it. Having people and having the executive leadership having the opportunity to not only listen and hear the story, but live it. You get to see what they do each and every day and you're able to make decisions and make judgments in extending credit; what type of depository services they need; and there's nothing about a story that fits in a box. Every one of them is different. Every individual character, if you want to say, within the story is different. Having that ability to take the time, sit down, understand what the story is and where it's going, gives us an opportunity to make very quick and rational decisions that helps each individual business that then helps the community. Kelly: You mentioned story. What's your story? What's Prime Meridian's story? Sammie: Well, Prime Meridian Bank is a newer bank, one of the last in the state of Florida to get chartered. We opened our doors February 4th, 2008. We initially capitalized with about $12.9 million dollars. We have now since grown in excess of $275 million, over the last 8 years. We decided to start the bank, myself and Chris Jensen, and we thought we could provide service to our clientele, and decisions that would help them move more prudently and faster. Kelly: You saw a need specifically in the Tallahassee market? Sammie: We did. We thought that we could provide service and compete with everybody in town. We didn't have a group of people come together and say, "Let's start a bank." We put our story together and put our model together, and went to individual business leaders within town, here in Tallahassee and said, "We're going to start a bank we'd like you to be a part of," and that was the genesis of Prime Meridian Bank. Kelly: Was there a lot of consolidation and acquisitions that had gone on prior to that, and so that kind of created this market opportunity for you guys? Sammie: No. You had several community banks here in town already, most of your southeastern regional banks and your money center bank. We just thought there was an opportunity for us to come in and provide a little different level of service that would make us a profitable entity and serve Tallahassee very well. Kelly: Let's talk about the name Prime Meridian. You do know that you're not on the Prime Meridian? You do know that you're 84 degrees west, right? Sammie: I do, but the Prime Meridian for all metes and bounds in the state of Florida is here in Tallahassee. Kelly: Oh, got it. Sammie: If you look at the Prime Meridian, what is it? It's a starting point of the metes and bounds here for the state of Florida, and starting point of time, or the starting point of a new financial institution. The Meridian line is an unwavering line going over the Earth. We're unwavering in our outlook and care of our shareholder's money, but more importantly, our clients. Kelly: The Brits claimed Greenwich was the Prime Meridian. They don't own that, so you'd redefine Tallahassee to be the Prime Meridian. Sammie: At least for a new financial institution. Kelly: Very good. Continue with the evolution of the bank and the challenges you've faced in the past, as you went from de novo Bank? You didn't acquire another bank, right? Sammie: Right. Several things that we're proud of through the evolution of our company. Number one, which goes back to the quality of our team. When we started our bank, the average startup cost was about $800,000. The day that we opened the doors and took the write-off to capital for the expenses, we wrote off $395,000. That goes to the knowledge and expertise of our team of not having to hire a lot of consultants, and understanding each and every thing that we did. Going on to 2012, four years after we opened, we looked around with the team that we had, and realized that we could do our own data items processing. Instead of having a service bureau that was processing our checks, we decided we would do it ourselves. That added an immediate $8,500 a month to the bottom line. Kelly: Wow. Sammie: That same year, we also became cumulatively profitable. That was pretty exciting for us. And then in December 11th of 2013, we became an effective SEC registered company and then started listing our stock in 2015 on the OTCQX. So those are some of the things that we have done and we're very, very proud of. Dealing with the SEC, we went through a full review, when we filed our S1, our initial going public document. Our comment letter back from the SEC was simply 2 1/2 pages, which goes to say just how good our team is, and how detailed we are in each and every thing that we do. Kelly: Yeah. I know access to capital has been good once you go public, but it's quite a task to a) go public, and b) maintain that. The requirements are immense as you know. Was it worth it, do you think? Sammie: Absolutely. We went public for 3 reasons. Number one is we could raise our capital the way that we wanted to. We didn't have to worry about an accredited offering or anything of that nature. Number two is we're looking to grow the company and grow outside of the Tallahassee MSA, and if we do that we want to have a currency that we can use. In order to have your stock act as a currency, you've got to have a market for it, and the only way to do that was to be an SEC registered trading company. Then number three, when we decided to do it, our bank is still very clean. We do not have many non-performings or any crazy things on the books. It would never be easier to go through and do it. And we look at it like these days, with capital, you can't say, "Okay, we're going to go buy someone or do something. Now let's go get approval and say, 'Okay, if you give us approval we'll get the capital.'" You've got to have capital already on hand. There's no more just in time capital. And the same way we look at it is there's no just in time human capital. Kelly: Let's talk about human capital for a minute. How challenging is it for you to compete for new talent and retain existing talent with the compensation structure that community banks have to deal with? Sammie: Well, Kelly, that's been one of our strong points. When we started the bank in 2008, we were the new kids on the block. Nobody knew us. All we had was a story. It was nothing but air. So going out and getting the top absolute talent was difficult. People had their banks, things were going well. So we decided that we would start building our own bankers. And being here in Tallahassee and having Florida State and FAMU and TCC here, gave us the opportunity to go get a lot of talented younger folks to bring in, that had the capacity, train them, educate them. And one thing that we've done is we've been very transparent with our team. Up until we went public, we went through our financials with our entire team once a month. Now that we're a publicly traded company, we do it once a quarter. But giving them the exposure, I cannot give them experience, but giving them the exposure to what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we're doing it, is as important as finding experienced people. And our entire culture is surrounded by a one-word question and that's “why”. Any teller, relationship manager, operations person, whoever, can ask me or anybody in the bank why are we doing something. And that causes two things. Number one, the hardest thing to get people to do is think. If they're asking you questions, then they're thinking. And if you answer their questions: Why did we go public? Why did we raise capital? Why are we looking to acquire banks? What does that mean to the bottom line? Now, all of the sudden you've created an inclusive ecosystem, as you say, that people can buy-in. The biggest thing people want is to be a part of something, and what we've afforded a lot of folks to do is come in and be a part of building something from the foundation up. And constantly giving them that transparency of what we're doing and why we're doing it, is very, very inclusive. And we listen. I can't tell a teller how to make a teller line more efficient. So if I can't listen to what they're doing like I ask them to listen to me and do what I say. If we don't have a partnership there, we're not going to get any better. That's the number one. Number two, if someone asks me a question. Why are we doing this? and I can't answer it, then I might need to rethink what I'm doing. Does that make sense? Kelly: It certainly does. Have you used non-qualified benefit plans as part of that overall compensation structure? This is not a pitch for that. I was just curious if you'd ever talked about that. Sammie: Yes. We're in the process of looking at our entire compensation structure now, and figuring out how to better enhance it to a) retain, b) attract, and c) incentivize. Kelly: So say another side of say the balance sheet, since we're talking about that, municipal bonds. Anything that you've seen change here since the 2008 Dodd-Frank and all this other stuff of municipal bond rating agencies? Have you guys had to modify any of your practices on that? Sammie: We're using a third party right now to monitor our municipal portfolio. So in the old days of just buying bonds and putting them on the books, we actually have a quarterly review of all of our municipalities. Kelly: So you've had to upgrade that since the regulatory changes? Sammie: We have. And I don't think it's all that bad from the standpoint that you look at a lot of municipalities out there that are having weakness due to the down-turn, and the one thing that we have made the decision from day one, is we take risk, and there's risk in everything you do, but we take the real risk in our loan portfolio. We do not want any risk in our investment portfolio. We're looking at it as simply a hedge against interest rates, and also as just a liquidity source. Kelly: Well then you better load up with bank-owned life insurance. You've got about 50% of your financial assets in muni’s and I like the lower balance sheet risk that BOLI offers. That’s another discuss with you and Glenn. What's the future look like for community banking in general, threats that you see, opportunities? For example, 80% of millennials haven't even walked into a bank before. Sammie: Let's stop right there for a second and talk about the millennials for a minute. Number one, I talked about how we hire and what we do. The average age of our bank is 38. The average age of our management team is 41. As far as dealing with millennials and all, one thing most people have forgotten is most millennials have yet to start a company. A lot of them, due to the recession, still live with their parents. So therefore, they really haven't needed to walk into a bank. Now a lot of the millennials that we have found, and we talk with, and we do this a lot. They want to be a part of something. And they're much more community driven and doing something for the greater good. Once you are able to show them from a teammate standpoint what we're doing, they buy in. Once they actually need something other than just a regular checking account, i.e. buy their first house; buy a business or trying to finance the start of a business, they need to sit down and talk with someone who understands the market. And we have found, we've been very successful with millennials. Now we're not out there with everything online, rocket mortgage and things of that nature. We're finding a lot of success dealing with the millennials. What that comes back to is we generally don't get them until they need something. And every individual, every household is nothing different than a story too. Where's your income coming from? Is it going to be sustainable? Can you afford whatever asset you're trying to purchase? That has been very, very beneficial to us. As far as whether or not banks are going to be here, I've talked with bankers that go back to the '60s that said the community bank's not going to be around much longer. Well, as long as you have people, there's a certain segment of the population that wants to talk with people, when it comes to their financial situation. Coming up from a small town in south Georgia, and growing up the 3 most important people in the town was your doctor, your preacher, and your banker; your health care, your faith care, and your financial care. And you generally didn't do that via an email. I truly believe that there will always be a place for the community bank. Now with the regulations and thought process out there, there's going to be fewer and fewer community banks due to the fact that what we're required to do. We're operating in most cases from an asset-liability standpoint, overall balance sheet management standpoint, like a larger bank. However, we don't have the economies of scale to do it. So we have to be more innovative and more nimble. And that goes right down to talking with your regulators on a consistent basis to understanding what the rules are. If you're going to form a hospital, or if you're going to start a power company, there's regulations you have to abide by. As a community banker, you had better understand the rules and abide by them or find something else to do. That's just the approach that we've taken. And it creates a lot less heartache and stress, when you come at it from that standpoint, versus saying, "The regulators are going to kill me." Regardless what they're going to do, they're going to do it. So you better find out or figure a way to cope with it. Kelly: Great. What's the biggest threat, other than let's say cyber-security risk, which probably keeps you up at night…other than that, what's the biggest risk or fear that you have, say for the next 10 years? Sammie: As we expand, finding the human capital, finding the talent, the teammates. Kelly: Really? Sammie: The human capital. Kelly: So in Tallahassee or in some of your outlying branches? You have access to plenty of talent there, right? Sammie: There is a good supply, and it's just finding the right people that believe in what we believe in. Our culture is the most important aspect of what we do each and every day, and I go back to the question “why”. If you're questioning why we're doing something, some people look at that as somewhat of a negative. We look at it as a positive, because if you cannot explain what's going on, and you cannot understand it, then the “how” really doesn't matter. Kelly: What's the biggest opportunity that you see? What gets you up every morning after you've had a sleepless night worrying about cyber-security risks? What gets you going? Sammie: The opportunity to grow, to build our franchise here within Tallahassee; the opportunities outside of Tallahassee. Within our investor presentation, we show that we don't want to go any further north than Macon, south of Ocala, east of the Atlantic and west of the eastern border of the state of Mississippi. That is south Alabama, south Georgia, and north Florida. The opportunities to be there are endless. And that is something to get excited about and get out of bed every day, and figuring out a new challenge to go build upon. Kelly: That's great. All right. In closing, I always like to ask either your favorite quote and/or the stupidest thing you've done in your business career. Sammie: I will give you my favorite quote, and it's on our boardroom wall, and it is by a retired General, Eric Shinseki, who has been re-retired. The quote is, "If you do not like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less." Shinseki is the most recent former head of the VA. He's pretty irrelevant right now. Kelly: I would say so. Alright. Very good. Anything else you want to add Sammie, or should we sign it off? Sammie: You tell me. Thank you. Kelly: I think we're good. Thank you very much for your time. It was a pleasure talking to you. I wish you well, Sammie. Stay safe! And that’s it for my interview with Sammie Dixon from Prime Meridian Bank in Tallahassee, Florida. Thank you.

Kelly talks to Chris Carlson, CEO, Narrative Pros, about what business leaders can learn from a stage and theater actor about presentations to small and large audiences.   Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: I’ve got my friend Chris Carlson CEO of NarrativePros on the line, Chris are you there? Chris: I’m here. Kelly: Great, Chris and I have known each other for many, many years. Chris is an actor at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis He’s also a lawyer and an entrepreneur, and I’m a big fun of his. Listeners are saying, why does he have a starving actor, lawyer on here? Before we get to your connection in to the banking ecosystem. A little bit of personal background. Chris: Minnesota residence, most of my life, three kids, I’m 46. I’ve been, as I said earlier acting professionally for 22 years. I’ve been an attorney for about as long. Kelly: Well let’s get into why I have you on BankBosun and your connection to the banking echo system. If you recall, I asked you to give a talk at a conference my company was hosting for banks and investment managers. I think we had like six or seven speakers there over a two day period, probably eight or nine I suppose. You got the highest rankings of anybody in terms of popularity. Tell me why you think that happened and what your value proposition, if you will, to the banking industry is. What was it that resonated with these bankers in that message? Chris: Absolutely, and I to think to answer as many of those question as efficiently as I can, it has to do with the value of genuine connections between individuals, whether that’s one on one or one to many, or many to one. The expertise that I have amassed over the years, is to how to efficiently create that. How to make that efficient, how to maximize the feedback that you get from any communication. Kelly: What does that really mean? Chris: Let me give you an example, bankers are smart guys. They tend to live in their heads when it comes to ideas. They believe if they have a great piece of advice, that that’s the end of their value. That I tell you to invest in stock A, because that will help you. But the real world has as much to do about that conversation and whether or not you say invest in stock A, in a way that is meaningful, whether it makes sense to them. Whether you’re rude, whether you’re cold or indifferent. The value of advice when it’s person to person, which is at the center of any banking relationship, depends on the connection between two people. It’s not whether or not I like you necessarily, but it’s I have to trust you. I have to respect you. I have to understand you absolutely. It has as much to do about that as anything. Kelly: How I perceive you or how a customer perceives a banker. Not necessarily how he really is. Chris: Well actually I would say that the goal is to have them perceive you as you really are, and we are many different people to many different audiences. You yourself are a father, a friend, a boxer. You will behave differently in the ring than with a client. What you need to do is harness what will be of the most value, and make the strongest connection with the audience that you’re in front of. That has to come from somewhere that’s true. One of the things that people often mistake is that acting is fake, and it actually has all to do with truth. If you see a good actor, you get them, you buy them, you connect with them. If you see a bad actor, you absolutely reject them. You don’t get it. It’s not real. Kelly: I think what you’re saying is that you learned this in your acting career. And as a lawyer, you practice this. But you learned this through your acting training to be real. Two scenarios, one is making a one on one presentation, and another is giving a talk to 20 people. What does your advice do in those two scenarios? Chris: My advice hopefully will encourage people to understand that their impact on their audience, whether it’s one person or 20 people, has more to do with how they say their message, and how they’re able to let people connect with them as real individuals. How they’re able to be themselves in a very genuine and authentic way, and then share the advice that they have. Far too often people, I call them left brain professionals. People who think a lot will sit in front of their computer and work on their outline in their PowerPoint and then get up and give it, without really spending much time on whether or not they’re giving it in a way that incorporates who they are. I think you, Kelly, are a good example of an effective delivery. That’s you, when I hear you talking, that’s the same Kelly that I hear when I’m having a conversation with in the coffee shop. People are drawn to that. For a banker to have an interaction with somebody, the more genuine they can be, the more that they can focus on that individual as a human being, and also share with them, themselves as a human being. That will make the advice that they give, that much more meaningful and valuable. In many ways it’s the same thing when they stand up in front of 20 people. It‘s genuine and real and to a degree vulnerable. That has a lot to do with fear that is natural, standing in front of a group of people or a high pressure sale. Anyway that you can wrestle that fear, and you kind of say look, “This is me, and this is what I have to say and I think it would be great if you used it, or bought, but if you don’t I understand.” That’s incredibly attractive for people to be around that kind of energy versus, “Look you really got to buy this and it’s really important to me. I don’t know what I’m going to do if you don’t, if you don’t buy this, if you don’t listen to me.” Even though it is important what the person thinks about you, or whether or not they take your advice or buy it. Showing that, gets in the way of who you are and their comfort quite honestly. Kelly: Give me a couple of takeaways that relate to preparing for a presentation and then three or four related to the actual presentation itself, beginning, middle and end that kind of thing. We’ve got some real solid takeaways, I can put some guiding principles here. Chris: Let’s start with the content, that’s where everyone’s comfort is, and most people will spend 100% of their preparation time working on their PowerPoint slides, and you definitely have to work on some kind of presentation, outline and some visuals do help. Number one, when it comes to the visuals, speaker support, PowerPoint, I would work as hard as you can to get rid of all the words quite honestly and just focus on graphs and charts, and pictures or visual creatures. There is a huge disconnect when somebody puts up a bunch of words on a slide, and reads them, or makes the audience read them. It’s just counterproductive and disingenuous to a live environment. You as the speaker need to be considered to be value bringer and you have to explain these things. I would say as few words as possible on any kind of visual support. The content in what someone says, you should outline in bullet points, words or phrases, but not in complete sentences. Don’t lock yourself into phrasing them, in any particular way. Let yourself react to those ideas and explain them, and that’s come off and it’s very authentic and genuine. Kelly: No words on slides. Chris: No words on slides. I would join the audience in cheering if I were to see less words on slides. It’s easy to do, and I think it’s actually fear. People are insecure and they’re like, ”Ah, I got to put all these words on here.” Well take the words off and say the words to people. Kelly: No words on the slide, that’s number one. What was number two? Chris: Number two outline your points in a way that you can speak to them in a genuine way instead, for example, I have been involved in the banking ecosystem since I was 22. Instead of writing that out and then reading it, you might just have something that says 22. You look at it and you say, “Ever since I was 22, I’ve been working in banking.” Let those words, let you work through the thoughts, so that the words come to you at that time. You have to have good notes but it will force you to pick the words authentically and people will hear that. That’s number two. Number three is when you pick these ideas and when you explain them, pretend you’re explaining them to your 92 year old father, or your grandma next door. In other words avoid jargon, you’ve got to be simple, direct and accessible, and I think that people who work in the idea profession tend to be complicated, inaccessible and you always want to be as clear as possible. Simplicity is not easy, it’s very difficult and working on that simplicity is an incredible investment in giving your audiences, who’s paying attention, a return of interest. They will appreciate you, summarizing things very simply and to button this third point off. Work very hard to summarize the single point that you have to make in one sentence. Imagine that your audience is walking out the door, and they don’t have time to hear your whole speech, what would be the one thing you would want to tell them. If you complain, oh no it’s too complicated, it can’t be distilled into one sentence, I would say to you that your audience is doing that anyways. After they walk out, someone’s going to say, “What did Kelly Coughlin talk about?” “Oh, Kelly is working on this cool BankBosun thing, that it’s needed, it helps out C-suite Executives in the banking industry.” They’re summarizing what you’re saying anyways. If you jump into their shoes and try to say all right, “What is the one takeaway from this? You’re going to help them do that. Kelly: That’s good, I recall again from that conference you spoke at. There was some prep work that you recommended. Chris: Sure, let me focus on one of them. A lot of acting technique or approach is focused on combating the nerves and stress of performing. That we appear, genuine, authentic relaxed. One of the truths of performing in front of a bunch of people is that you are nervous. It’s human, so what we want to do is make sure that we find another truth to counteract that. The best counter measure to stress is breathing. When we’re with our friends, or when we’re relaxed, or when we’re uncomfortable and not threatened, the human being breathes from the belly, they use … we use our diaphragm to pull in breath, and when you’re very relaxed, and actually if you watch your kids when they’re sleeping, you’ll see their stomachs go up and down. Now their stomachs are going up and down because the diaphragm is pulling in breath. When we’re nervous we tend not to breath from our diaphragm, our belly, we tend to take shallow breathes and it makes us more nervous and it changes our voice. Someone who’s really relaxed would sound like this, but if they were breathing … their voice goes up a little bit, and it gets a little breathy, and it’s just not as grounded. We can hear that, we feel that someone has a breathiness to their voice and it’s a little higher in pitch, but if you take a breath, and breathe from your diaphragm, not only does the pitch go down, but you can also project your voice further. You can talk louder. So breathing, putting your hand on your stomach and trying to train yourself to breathe so that your stomach flops out when you breathe in, is one of the most effective counter measures to stress and to get you back into yourself, to being a relaxed confident genuine person. Kelly: Let’s talk about, what are kind of some of the deal killers out there. The absolute be cognizant that you don’t do this. Chris: We’ve already touched on some them. These things would be anything that disconnect you from your audience; that separate you from them. For example, number one, the minute you start reading off of the slide, you’re not being in front of an audience genuinely. You’ve turned towards the screen, you’re reading something that everyone else is perfectly capable of reading. I mean that’s just a fundamental disconnect with one audience. “Hey buddy, I can see the slide and you’re reading it for me and it doesn’t make any sense.” Another one would be reading your speech which is very similar, and that’s telling the audience, “I’m not going to talk with you. I’m not going to share with you my ideas, I’m going to read what I wrote, and you’re going to listen to it.” At which point the audience feel like, well why don’t you just give me them for the reading, so that I can read it. Something that’s kind of fun, that I’ve uncovered, is that the average person speaks at about 150 words a minute. We can understand and we think at about 800 words a minute. That means that there is an attention gap. Every time someone starts talking over a couple of 100 words, where my mind is running circles around what you’re telling me. You always have to participate in that because if you don’t, if you don’t give them something to think about that is helping you, they’re going to think about something else. Kelly: Well don’t the non-verbal clues fill that void to a certain extent? Chris: They can, or they cut against it. Something that I was just doing some research on, hand gestures and body gestures. It’s fascinating, the neuro-scientists have studied it, and we use specifically our hands to make gestures, to help us think of a word, and so if we’re genuinely using our hands it’s because we’re trying to think of how to say something, but if you want someone who has prepared a hand gesture like a politician or a bad speaker. The hand gesture comes at or after what they’re trying to say, not before. In the real world, the hand gesture comes a little bit before what it is that they have to say. That’s what the hand gesture is for. When someone plans it, when someone says, “I think it would be good if I moved my hand like this.” They tend to do it in a way that’s very disconnected and fake, because we can tell that. Instinctively, they do it as you’re saying the word or phrase, or after it. That’s an example of another disconnection with an audience where they get the sense, and it’s an unconscious sense, it’s not, “My, he moved his hands in a way that was not matching with the phrase. Therefore I think he’s fake.” We’re not aware of that consciously but unconsciously we think to ourselves, “Wow this guy is a … he’s a fake, he’s not being real with us.” It’s very common. Kelly: Tell me about what should people do with their hands as a default, and then how should we stand? One foot, two feet, hands in the pocket, hands by the side? Give us a couple of ideas on that. Chris: It’s hard to do, but you forget about your hands. Don’t plan any gestures, let your hands go. Just like I was suggesting with your words to jot a note, and then let the specific words you use to express that idea come out in that moment. The same thing should be with your hands. Let your hands make whatever gesture. If you’re an Italian, outspoken hand gesturing person, that’s what you have to do. Kelly: Even if it’s a distraction I’ve been to talks where somebody will be using their hands, you end up following their hands the whole time. Chris: I would say to you that hands gestures become distracting when they’re not connected with what they’re saying. If they’re connected with what they’re saying, you’re not even going to notice them. You become attracted when they’re not connected. If someone has a non-verbal tick, if they’re just moving their hands and it has no connection with what they’re saying, yes it becomes repetitive and it’s a distraction. It’s just like someone who says, has a verbal tick and says um, um all the time and it’s distracting because it’s getting in the way of um, um what you’re trying to say. Kelly: What about movement on the stage? Chris: Less is more, when you start moving around, there’s a huge temptation because of nerves, the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight reaction kicks in, and people want to move and I see this so frequently with inexperienced presenters. They’ll start wondering around the stage, or they’ll shift away back and forth on their feet, and that is not connected with anything they’re saying 90% of the time…99. They’re just moving because they’re full of adrenaline and they feel like they should move. But, if it’s not connected with what they’re saying, it is inherently destructive. Why is someone pacing back and forth on the stage? It’s funny because I’ll get push back on that, people will say, “Well I’m trying to be more interesting and dynamic on the stage.” I have no problem with being interesting and dynamic, I have a problem, if it’s not connected with what you’re saying. When in doubt, you need to practice standing still because you’re going to want to move. Move if there’s a reason, move if it makes sense. For example, if you’re separating a point. In the first situation, the FED needs to do XYZ and I’m going to talk about this for a while. In the second situation, and then you can move on that, that might make sense. That’s an example, but that requires practice and planning. So I always recommend that people just stand still. Kelly: Do you prefer microphone that is attached to you versus attached to a podium, because you’re kind of stuck and glued to the podium, but is that your preference? Chris: Yes, a lapel or lavalier microphone allows you to forget about the microphone and that’s what you need to do with a majority of the technology that’s helping support you. Some microphone on a podium tends to trap you behind the podium, which is bad for a number of reasons. You have a temptation to lean on the podium, you’re blocked and a lot of your body language from the audience. You might have more of a tendency to look down. A lavalier microphones will allow you to just take one step to the right or left of the podium, and to find a comfortable position in front of the audience and be accessible. Kelly: That’s terrific, I appreciate that. Chris do you have a favorite quote to finish off here? I always like to get one Chris: Any good quote. Kelly: Good quotes. Chris: Good quotes. “In law, what place are tainted in corrupt but being seasoned with a gracious voice obscures the show of evil.” Kelly: Good one, Chris I appreciate your time on this, and good luck to you with NarrativePros, and we’ll be in touch. Anybody wants to contact Chris, feel free, Narrativepros.com, is that the website? Chris: That’s it. Kelly: Thanks Chris We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin. .  

Kelly Coughlin is interviwed by Chris Carlson. Chris is a lawyer and actor in Minneapolis and applies his Socratic method to extract from Kelly what the heck he is doing with BankBosun. Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Hi, this is Kelly Coughlin. I’ve got my long-time friend Chris Carlson on the line. He’s CEO of Narrative Pros. Chris, are you there? Chris: I am. Kelly: Great. How are you doing? Chris: I’m pretty good. How about you? Kelly: I’m terrific. Chris and I were catching up. We haven’t talked with each other in a while, and we were catching up on what’s going on. Chris had a bunch of questions about what we’re doing at the Bank Bosun, and we thought, “Well, let’s turn this into a podcast.” Rather than me talking to Chris about what I’m doing, he’s going to ask me some questions so it will help him and the audience better understand what we’ve got going on. Chris I’m going to turn it over to you. Chris: All right. Well, I think first up on the order of business is letting everyone else know a little bit more about who you are. I’ve known you for a while, but why don’t you let people know a little bit more about yourself. Kelly: I’m 58, 4 daughters, 4 granddaughters, and I don’t know if you knew this, I have one grandson. Finally a male in the family. Chris: Oh, congratulations! Finally! Kelly: CPA. Went to Gonzaga University. My uncle is Father Bernard J. Coughlin who is President. Go Barney! He’s 92 now, and I always give him a shout-out when given the opportunity. I also got my MBA from Babson. Let’s see, I worked for PWC when it was Coopers and Lybrand, and then Lloyd’s Bank, CEO of an investment and financial technology company that I founded, managed, and sold. I don’t if I’ve touched base with you since I’ve started working with Equias Alliance as a risk consultant. They do bank-owned life insurance (BOLI) and non-qualified plan programs for banks. I don’t think we’ve really touched base since I started with them. Chris: No. It’s interesting. Kelly: Yes, it is. Chris: Speaking of which, explain to me this BankBosun. Am I saying that right? I take it it’s a nautical term. Kelly: Yeah. Technically, it’s spelled B-O-S-U-N on the website, BankBosun, but Bosun is actually spelled B-O-A-T-S-W-A-I-N, like boat swain, but it’s pronounced Bosun. Chris: Okay. Kelly: BankBosun, it’s a syndicated audio program, really, that’s designed to bring together executives all throughout the U.S. who are participating in what I call the bank ecosystem. Chris: Wait. I’m not going to let off the hook here. What does a boatswain do? Kelly: The captain of a ship needs help and guidance and support, so the boatswain helps the skipper, the captain of the ship, achieve its mission and purpose. Chris: All right. Yeah, that’s a segue because I’m connecting the dots as we speak as I listen to you. BankBosun helps C-level execs in the way. Is that right? Kelly: Yeah. That’s correct. We’re not dealing with ship captains. We’re dealing with bank officers, chief officers. It’s a clever play on the words C-officers, sea-level officers. Chris: It is clever. It’s very punny. A lot of puns. That’s good though. It keeps the interest. I’m not going to let off the hook with the other fancy term which is banking ecosystem. An ecosystem, if I remember it, that’s like the jungle. Right? What do you mean by banking ecosystem? Kelly: The jungle is one ecosystem, so technically it’s a biological community interacting within a set relationship among resources, habitats, and residents of the area. By this, I mean the residents of the banking community, so it’s all the residents of the banking community interacting among each other. The area is not defined as a physical definition like a pond or an ocean or a jungle. It’s defined as a business industry, and in this case, it’s the banking industry. Chris: Sure. All right. What do they need? I mean, why them? I mean, given your background it makes sense. Kelly: Why the banking ecosystem? Chris: Yeah, why do they need particular help and why are you the one to help direct that assistance? Kelly: Well, bankers are just fascinating, interesting people, aren’t they? Chris: Yes, yes they are. They evidently need a lot of help. Kelly: Well, I’ve been in the banking ecosystem, if we can keep using and then abusing and overusing that term, since I was 22. I started my career at Merrill in Seattle in the early 80’s selling mortgage-backed securities to the banks and credit unions. That was a good introduction to navigating this ecosystem. I would say that I learned a lot from that. Then I was consultant at PWC, and CEO of Lloyd’s at two asset management subsidiaries of Lloyd’s Bank, and then as a CEO of our financial technology company Global Bridge. Our primary market was banks, so I’ve been in this ecosystem, if you will, for many, many years, and I do find it interesting and fascinating. The 2008 crash, or melt down I should say, and several others that we’ve had in history, emphasize that banks are a foundation or bedrock of the economy. Frankly, they need all the help they can get. It’s good for the economy. Chris: These bankers you’re trying to reach, I’m assuming you’re doing it through these podcasts and other high-tech, and you’re pretty comfortable that they’ll be able to get the help they need through that and not be put off by it? It’s a good way to reach them? Kelly: Well, it’s certainly is not something that historically they’re used to and comfortable with. Historically it’s been print media, download reports, print them, stick them in your briefcase, read them when you can. Half the time you don’t read them, or if you do, you read them on the airplane and then chuck them. It’s not something that they’re used to right now, but I know as a CEO of a couple of companies in my past, that we pulled in so many different directions from different constituents whether it be board members or key customers or regulators, employees, suppliers, consultants, accountants, everybody is pulling at us and yanking at our time. CEO’s, generally, and CFO’s, but C-level execs, they need to extract value from all these different sources of information efficiently and effectively. I really am a proponent of the multitasking concept, so the idea was, “Let’s give them some good information, bring together this ecosystem, give them some good information but in a way that they can do other things.” Kelly: Frankly, we’re right in the middle of sporting season, football season and the World Series. I was actually down in Kansas City for the World Series. That was fun. The commercials are ridiculous in these sporting events especially football, so I figured out a way to multitask during these games. Certainly during football games you can read if you want, but also you can listen and learn too. CEO’s, you run your own company. You got a million things going on. Right? You’ve got to figure out a way to maximize the return off of that. Chris: Absolutely. Yeah. You said earlier that you think that it’s a time when banks have a greater challenge than they’ve had in the past, and with your nautical-themed assistance, give me a sense of why now is a particularly challenging time for banks and how you’re going to be able to help us. Kelly: Well, I like the nautical theme for the Bank Bosun. I’ve sailed for many years. I’ve lived in Seattle in the 80’s. To me skippering a boat was, where you have a lot of moving parts and people and weather and tides and currents and rocks and other boats to deal with and coast guard, the regulator, and it really served as a great metaphor for running a business, but especially a bank. I think any executive that’s been in charge of a boat knows exactly what I mean about that. When you’re out sailing in the Puget Sound or the ocean, you use whatever tools and information you can muster up to get you and your crew and your boat to the next point. There are no guide posts. There are no signs. You have to watch weather, currents, tides, all that kind of stuff. All of those principles apply to skippering a company, but especially a bank. Chris: That makes sense. You sold me on the metaphor. Kelly: Good. Chris: Tell me more about where you’re at right now and what the connection is with your Bank Bosun. Are they okay with this new gig? How do they relate? Kelly: Well, Equias is in the bank-owned life insurance space. BOLI is the acronym for that. I came across Equias and the BOLI industry when I was working on a management consulting project. I didn’t know anything about the industry or the product at that time, but after I finished the engagement I thought, “Man, I need to get into this space,” because I love the asset class, if you will. Frankly, it’s an alternative investment for banks’ portfolios. Now, it has to be surrounded by insurance and you have to make sure that insurance is a key part of it, but at the end of the day, it’s a phenomenal asset class. It transfers balance sheet risk. You get a higher return than treasuries, than municipal bonds, and that sort of thing, but I really do like the asset class. Then it has some benefits for funding non-qualified plans. The thing that I liked about it is it reminded me of my early Merrill Lynch days selling mortgage backed securities. At the time, mortgage backed securities were a new, innovative product. They had a few more moving parts involved, and it required me to simplify the value proposition. You really need to focus on the benefits, which everybody needs to do in any business. With any product, you’ve got to focus on the benefits. I always think of the line, “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” Now this is, at the end of the day, a life insurance product. I also love the line by Woody Allen, “I tried to commit suicide one day by inhaling next to an insurance salesman.” There’s always some inherent bias against that. My father sold insurance, and I told that to him when I was about 22 or something. He didn’t find it that funny actually. I find it funny. Chris: It is funny. It’s a funny line. Kelly: Yeah, it is. Chris: It’s funny because the word inhaling is funny. Kelly: You’re going to probably offend somebody. Chris: Probably, but that’s not your target market. Kelly: They’re my colleagues. Chris: Your friends, as it were. Speaking of friends, I haven’t wished you, my friend, a Happy New Year. We’re about a year into it here, and you see all these lists coming out, top movies, top TV shows. Why don’t you give me the top three initiatives for, BOLI, or for the banking ecosystem? Kelly: Okay. Chris: Pick your field. Kelly: Well, I certainly have three, but I’m not going to tell you two of them because I wouldn’t want to tip off our competitors onto what I’ve got up my proverbial sleeve. Chris: Okay. Kelly: Stay tuned. News at 5. Chris: That’s right. Kelly: Let me hear your sales voice say that. Chris: News at 5. Now it’s, News in 5 seconds. I asked you for the top three initiatives for 2016 and you said that you’ll give me one. Kelly: I’ll give you one. Chris: It’s called negotiating? Kelly: Yeah. Chris: Okay. Kelly: The one that I’m intrigued by is a confluence of two things. One is cyber security risk. Chris: All right. Kelly: The other is risk transference of that risk. I want to explore whether it makes sense to pursue a captive insurance program for banks to underwrite cyber security risk. Setup a collective or a community to do that. I think it’s being mispriced now by insurance companies because they haven’t really identified the risk. They haven’t really identified how big the risk is, how to mitigate the risk, and then how to price it. Anytime you have unknowns like that, especially in insurance, you get over, mispricing, I should say. That’s something that intrigues me. Chris: Yeah, it makes sense. Kelly: Yeah. The other two I’m not going to tell you about. Chris: Perfect! In the acting business, we call this dramatic tension, which you’ve done a good job of creating. Kelly: Thanks! Chris: Well it sounds interesting. It’s good stuff. We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.  

Kelly talks to Dan Hill, CEO, Sensory Logic, about how the latest face recognition techniques and technology can tell you many things about people before you agree to do business with them or hire them.   Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Dan, I want to do introduce you and talk to you briefly about what you’re doing with your role as CEO of Sensory Logic, and generally get some of your background and talk about the science of what you guys are doing with this technology. My summary of it is something like you’re using technology to objectively measure 12 human emotions. They range from joy to sadness, and anxiety with the purpose of evaluating personality traits, measuring personality traits, to determine how neurotic or how normal people are for the purpose of identifying matches with whatever the goal might be to using that. Is that a reasonable estimate or summary of what you guys are doing? Dan: We are trying to capture and quantify emotional response and that can apply to consumer’s reactions to the advertising, website, and other touch points of thanks for instance, but if you move over to the more personal side in terms of financial advisors or trying to reduce risks when looking at hedge fund managers, yes, then you start getting into the personality dimensions. Obviously for hedge funds you want to make sure that they are prudent investors and not someone given to overly large risks. There’s both a general consumer application we are talking about here, and one that’s more personnel driven. Kelly: That sounds interesting, using technology to evaluate those things that are clearly has been in the realm of subjective interviews and personal objective evaluation is fascinating. Let’s go over a little bit of your background, Dan. Currently you’re CEO of Sensory Logic, and a little bit about what you are, who you are, and then who Sensory Logic is. Dan: I started the company in 1998, and I got lucky. Someone I knew at IBM sent over to me an article about the breakthroughs in brain science and how much people are emotional decision makers. You may know the conservative estimation is that at least 95% of peoples’ mental activity is subconscious. A lot of what happens to us and for us is below the water line so to speak, and it’s important to access that and the emotional part of the brain sends ten times as much information to the rational part of the brain and vice versa. As to the ratio of emotional to rational in terms of the interactions it is a ten to one ratio. Kelly: Presumably we have a rational mind that’s informing our subconscious mind, correct? Dan: Sure, the mind is very interactive so there is an interplay back and forth, but I think the real thrust of the breakthroughs in brain science in the last 25 years aided by technology and from MRI brain scans for one thing, is that we really have to change our viewpoint. We probably have run for 300 years with Dick Hart’s assumption that we are rational beings. The famous comment, I think therefore I am. Ambrose Bierce, a contemporary of Mark Twain said, “I think therefore I am.” That’s probably a lot closer to the truth. In the financial industry you want to go to the numbers and facial coding gives us a chance to bring numbers to something that otherwise might have seemed rather soft and squishy which is emotions. In reality there’s really two currencies in the business world. Dollars and emotions, and we’re after the second one on behalf of the first one. Kelly: Not to be outdone with your quoting of philosophers, I will reference Aristotle who also used the concept of having, of creating habits that are natural to the human that just make it part of the unconscious, subconscious mind so that your naturally inclined to do, he felt like, the virtuous, the right thing. That took kind of integrating the conscious mind, the rational mind, with the subconscious mind. Is that consistent? Dan: I think the metaphor that Aristotle used actually was that human beings is as if they are in a chariot, and it’s driven by two horses and one’s the rational horse and one’s the emotional horse. He was already acknowledging, obviously, the importance of emotions. I think what the neuro biology advances have suggested is that maybe the darker horse, the emotional horse, may be the stronger of the two, most likely is. Kelly: Dan thank you, you crushed me on your quoting of Aristotle. Thanks, I appreciate that. Dan: That wasn’t my goal, but whatever helps illuminate things for people. Kelly: And I went to a Jesuit school! So let’s talk about your education. You have a PhD. Tell us about your education. Dan: I do have a PhD in English literature, not psychology as some people might assume, but I’m an inquisitive learning sort of guy and really what happened is once I got this article brought forward from the IBM person, I really started on a second education. I don’t have a formal degree, but I have spent a great deal of time reading and talking to experts in neuro biology and psychology over the last 20 years to understand really one of the drivers of human nature and just to give you some feeling for the groundings here. If you go back to Latin motivation and emotion have the same root word, move, to make something happen. That’s how essential emotions are to human behavior, and the person who first realized the importance of emotions was Charles Darwin. In his work on evolution he essentially said to himself, “Okay, emotions must give us an adaptive advantage, otherwise they would have gone away. How can I best capture emotions?” That turns out to be the face, so what we do is use facial coding to be able to bring science to bear on emotions. Kelly: Dan, where do you live? Tell me a little bit about your personal, family life. Do you have any hobbies? Dan: When I have the time, sure. I like to play tennis. I’m an avid movie goer. I enjoy traveling so I’ve been to about 80 countries including a year ago or so was in Botswana on a non-hunting safari. It’s whatever can broaden the horizons. There’s readings, there’s films, there’s tennis, there’s travel, obviously time with my wife, so there isn’t anything remarkable there, it’s just try to be a busy and engaged guy. Kelly: Let’s get down to some business stuff. Tell me in fifteen words or less, roughly, what the value proposition of Sensory Logic is. Dan: Actions speak louder than words, and there are things people can’t or won’t say, and if you can get to emotions you can get below the surface and get to the real thing. Kelly: In terms of the banking ecosystem which is the ecosystem we are navigating through, what is the applicability or this, not necessarily your company, but this technology if you will, that value proposition, how would it benefit, how is it connected? Is it connected now, or is it an area that you guys want to be connected to. Where’s the applicability? Generally speaking. Dan: There’s really two realms. Let’s start with the one we’ve historically been in, because I’ve run my company for 17 years, and we’ve done work for nearly half the world’s top 100 consumer facing companies, so things outside of the industrial realm and so forth. That’s plenty of things in the financial services industry. It’s a long list of banks and institutions, also in the insurance industry, as well that we’ve done work. From that point of view, obviously if you have these touch points with consumers you want to connect effectively. I think the place you have to start is that of course, trust is the emotion of business. Trust is not an emotion you can capture through facial coding, but you can capture its opposite which is contempt. Contempt means I don’t trust you, I don’t respect you. If you’ve ever read Malcolm Gladwell’s best seller “Blink”, facial coding was the only tool described in the book for some 30 pages. At the University of Washington in Seattle they have a love lab where couples come in who are in distressed marriages, they use facial coding to figure out whether they can save the marriage. Contempt is the most reliable indicator that the marriage will fail, so if it’s not good for a married couple you can imagine it’s not good for a company and its clients. We use this in advertising testing and websites to understand how people are responding. There’s several varieties of information that is important. The first one is actually do you engage them. Do they emotionally respond? You don’t want to waste your advertising dollar, you don’t want to just be talking to yourself, you need to make that emotional connection. That’s one of the first things we go after. Kelly: Put yourself in the place of a community bank CEO and they’re in the business of making business loans, by example. How does that CEO or that credit officer, how could that credit officer utilize this technology? Not your company, but the technology. How do you envision that this technology could be employed by a credit officer at a community bank in any city in the USA. Dan: There’s actually a template here. I mentioned Charles Darwin earlier, but there’s a man named Paul Ekman, E-K-M-A-N, who’s been honored by the Smithsonian who has been cited by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet. Paul worked as a colleague at the School of Medicine in San Francisco. Over the course of about 15 years he created what is called the Facial Action Coding System. He figured out from 43 muscles in the face what are the muscle movements, the action units, the activity that reveals seven core emotions which you alluded to earlier. They run from joy, the high end of happiness, through things like fear and contempt. These muscle movements correspond to the emotions, this is relative public knowledge, also in a book of mine, and that information for a loan officer if they were to do their due diligence, and take some homework assignments, and actually study this a little bit, would give them a feel for the person across the table. There is no lie muscle in the face, it’s not that simple, but there are patterns you can look for. Obviously if the person is unusually anxious, if they show contempt, if there’s an unusual rhythm to how they’re emoting, if the emotions seem inappropriate to the conversation. There’s probably a half dozen little ways in which you can get a feel for whether the person is solid and honest, and therefore a loan risk worth taking, or ones that are passed on. Kelly: These quantifiable and emotional metrics, I’m just going to quickly list them. Joy, and they’re more or less in a continuum here, starting with joy going down to anxiety. Joy, pleasure, satisfaction, acceptance, curiosity, alert, skepticism, dislike, contempt, frustration, sadness, anxiety. So you guys can measure these twelve emotional reactions that appear on a person’s face, convert those into a profile. The profile has to equal 100%, so it comes up with a profile. Again, back to the CEO that’s going to potentially do a loan to this business customer. It comes up with that profile and then what? Dan: In our case we were trained directly by Dr. Ekman, so you are right. You get to a pool of 100%, so you distribute which emotions are occurring based on those muscle activities, and as to the output. Once you know the emotional profile of somebody, I would suggest, for instance, they index very high on anger, or what we call frustration, that should be of concern, because frustration obviously is an emotion about I want to hit you. I want to break through barriers to progress, I want to control my destiny. That all sounds good except the hit part, so someone who is violent or combustible, if they index high in frustration, is there a greater chance that someone is at risk? Definitely for you as a banker. If they are really high on anxiety, why are they so anxious? What is going on here? How solid is the scheme in which the bank is taking a chance. I think particularly when you look at the negative emotions you’ve got to be careful, because we have more negative core emotions as human beings than positive ones, not because we’re negative or Dr. Ekman is negative, but rather it’s a survival technique. People hear bad news more loudly because it helps defend themselves. You want to look at negative emotions like the two I just mentioned, also contempt. Frankly it often corresponds to a lack of honesty or a lack of connection back to you as a banker. If I had to highlight three, those are the one I would probably go to. Although I will say that someone who is overly happy, it’s a nice emotion in terms of it’s embracive, it’s accepting, but a really happy person can be sloppy with the details, so strangely enough, there, too, a banker might face a bit of a risk factor. Kelly: You also have the external environment, for instance, that can influence a person’s behavior on that given day. Could be they just got in a fight with their wife that morning, or their favorite football team lost so they’re having a proverbial bad day. Especially if you have this human subjectively scoring this stuff. I’m intrigued by that, so you have some kind of de facto shrinks up there kind of ticking off, watching the video saying, “Oh look at that he frowned, we’re going to check off he dislikes this,” or “Look at her eyes. She looks a little sad, we’re going to mark her down a little bit for sadness.” It scares me a little bit that police interrogation might be using this. Dan: Quite often that cat’s already out of the bag. Dr. Ekman has done training of the CIA and the FBI. We worked a bit with a company trying to automate facial coding for the TSA, so yes, this is a huge interest, obviously, to anyone involved with national security or policing matters. Whether it’s used properly, whether inaccurately, whether it’s done within the boundaries of the law. That’s really outside of our purview, that’s not how we’re trying to use facial coding, but there’s no doubt that obviously every angle of life people are looking for advantages and security, and because if you’ve never been lied to in your life, congratulations. Facial coding gets you past the lip service to behavior, to actions, as to how people respond based on what they reveal in their face. It’s going to be of interest to a lot of parties. Kelly: From this data that these scores are measuring they are taking that data, and then scoring it. I’ve seen some stuff that talks about the big five model, ranging from extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, to neuroticism. Tell me about that. Dan: I have ten US patents, most of them related to facial coding, and one of them does involve personnel. I have been at work for a few years now looking to see if we can come up with an emotional formula and algorithm so to speak, that can match these big five personality traits. I wouldn’t say we have anything definitive at this point, but I am making the effort because the one thing that bothers me about all manner of these self-reported psychology personality profiles is that it is self-reported. Self-report is a big problem. People tell lies. Dr. Ekman has estimated the average person tells three lies per ten minutes of conversation, but the biggest lies in life are the ones we tell ourselves. I’m reasonable, but everyone else in this meeting is crazy, etc., etc. Self-reporting is rather dubious, and so yes, we are looking for a way around that to say that by picking up these muscle activities, which by the way, all have numbers to them, and I realize you might feel it’s subjective, but we’ve done coder reliability. We have been trained by Dr. Ekman, so we know which muscle movements correspond to which emotions. Studies would indicate that human coders well-trained and versed in doing this will be over 90% accurate. Kelly: What would the goal be for this credit officer, he probably does this subconsciously anyway, but he certainly is making some judgements alright, how normal, how neurotic is this guy. Am I able to pry this data out of him and he’s in charge of sales? What’s the likelihood that this company is going to be successful if I have to pry this stuff out of him.” Same with openness, right. Agreeableness. I don’t know how you would determine conscientiousness. Does he show up to the meeting on time, and doesn’t care, I mean that’s kind of a real fuzzy one, that conscientiousness. Dan: Actually that’s one of the traits where we have some of the inklings of an algorithm or a correspondence. You’re not going to want someone who is overly happy and blissful. I already mentioned that if you really index high in joy you tend to be a bit more of free thinker, which is great, but you can also be sloppy with the details, so that doesn’t square very well with conscientious. Being hot-headed and having really intense anger doesn’t work, but actually the face shows eight different versions of anger, from slight annoyance to outrage. The lower grade versions of frustration can actually be helpful from a conscientiousness point of view, because one of the definitions or understandings of frustration is I want to be in control of my life and I want to make progress. If that is done in a way that is not overly combustible then you have the makings of someone who might indeed, if it’s leavened by some other emotions, be conscientious. Kelly: Give me the three to five takeaways that a bank CEO should take from this. Dan: One is they’re going to be making some outreach to people so let’s start on the marketing side. Presumably they’re going to have a website. It’s easy for someone inside the organization to think that their website is really clear, and I can tell you from doing usability tests for all sorts of companies on websites, that it’s often about as clear as mud. So I would say the first takeaway is they should think if their website a lot more like it’s the drive through lane of a fast food joint. That may seem demeaning to them, but these people know how at quick service restaurants to get it across to people and quickly and let them keep moving. If they look at their website from that perspective, and it doesn’t resonate, and it’s not quickly understandable, they’ve got a problem. The joke that has to be explained to you in life is never as funny as the joke you just get, so think in terms of hut, hut, hike. If the connection isn’t about that readily done, you’ve got a problem. The second thing I would suggest is probably a lot of banks will at least, if nothing else, have some print ads or some mailers at times. We’ve discovered that if you put your company logo in the lower right hand corner which is where ad agencies love to put it, that is typically about the second to last place anybody will look at on a piece of paper. That’s bad news because we’ve found that people read quickly, they barely read at all. The banker, the CEOs, the bank may think that people are going to study my marketing material closely, read it word-by-word, not the case. Likelihood is they’re going to spend three to fifteen seconds on it. If you advertise for yourself and it’s unbranded in effect because they don’t get to the logo, then you’ve got a problem. I’d say that’s the second one. Third one is you’re in the people business. If they come into the bank or the bank branches, we respond to nothing more strongly than other people. We can tell the difference, human beings. There is a difference between a true smile and a social smile. Social smile is clearly less authentic than the true smile. It is hard for employees to be able to manage a true smile repeatedly during the day, especially on demand, but knowing that that emotional connection with the customer is important. I sit on airplanes often for my business, and I facially code the people who are serving us in the isles, and look for those little moments where they give away weariness, or something else that’s a little off putting sometimes. Dan: That’s three for you. I think we’ve already touched on the loan officer, so I’ve got you up to four. I guess the fifth one would be, frankly, who you hire, and taking a little more care. Not just look at their credentials, but look at their personality which is what Southwest Airlines does. Kelly: What does Southwest airlines do, briefly? Dan: They actually have their people look for a sense of humor. They ask them to tell little stories about themselves, or incidents, or I think even, if I’m not mistaken, at times literally play comedian for a bit, and try to tell a joke. They don’t want to hire somebody who’s just ultra serious and has no levity to them because if you have no levity you can’t be flexible, and if you can’t be flexible you can’t adjust to your customer’s needs. Kelly: To that end, I’m going to ask you what’s the stupidest think you’ve ever said or done in your business career? Dan: That would be numerous no doubt. I would say one is, someone asked me once if I was quote/unquote a “rebel” and that’s the way they phrased it. I simply said, “I suppose so.” That’s not the answer I should have given. The truth is I’m a reformer. I’m not interested in rebelling against something, I am interested in improving something. Whether it’s market research or in the financial sector, making sure your advertising dollar is not wasted, and that your customer service is better, I go back to my earlier quote. “There’s two currencies: dollars and emotions, and you need both of them and they interact with another.” I’m not a rebel, I’m a reformer and someone who is eager to make sure that people aren’t inefficient, don’t waste their money, make the best progress, the best connection they possibly can. If you step closer to the customer you can step ahead of the competition. Kelly: And since you’re an English lit PhD, I’m going to see if you can identify it. If you can’t, I will think very lowly of you. Dan: Wonderful, wonderful. Kelly: “Arise and go now. I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree.” Dan: That would be Yates. Kelly: Very good. He’s my favorite writer. Dan: Yates is a tremendous poet. I was in Dublin a couple of years ago, there was special exhibit on Yates’ poetry, and I fell in love with all over again. Kelly: Good for you. Now I’m uber impressed. Do you have a favorite quote? Dan: I have so many favorite quotes. It’s probably one of them is from Groucho Marx, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” Kelly: Very good. Dan, I appreciate your time. CEO of Sensory Logic. How can people get hold of you? Dan: We’ve got a website, of course. Sensory Logic.com should be able to do the trick We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.

Kelly Coughlin interviews Donald Moore about generating more revenues from trust and wealth management clients and managing risk in that business line. Moore is a former OCC examiner.   Donald Moore Jr., CEO of Bearmoor, LLC has over 20 years of experience in the asset management and fiduciary industry. He has served in senior fiduciary positions with various US Treasury agencies, as well as a leading financial services consulting firm. He began his career as a Trust Examiner with Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. He has examined over 50 trust divisions, including the lead position at two of the nation’s largest trust institutions. He has assisted in the development of national policy and guidelines at both the Comptroller’s Office and the Office of Thrift Supervision. Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: I’ve got Don Moore CEO of Bearmoor LLC. Don, how are you doing? Don: I’m doing well, thank you Kelly, I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you today. Kelly: Don, you’re in Boulder? Don: I’m not quite in the Republic of Boulder, I’m a little bit closer to the Breckenridge area up in the hills of Colorado. Kelly: You’re happy because the Broncos just won the Super Bowl, I take it. Don: I’m slightly indifferent to the Broncos winning, although they had their ginormous parade yesterday down in Denver. Everyone’s excited that Peyton got his Super Bowl, but again, I think it was the defense that won it for him. Yeah, we’re happy here in the state. No one’s going off the edge yet. Kelly: Let’s get right into it. Tell me what Bearmoor does. What’s your value proposition? Don: Basically, it’s the optimization of risk-adjusted revenue from an organization’s existing fiduciary activities portfolio. It’s basically their personal trusts, their investment management accounts, their retirement accounts, foundation endowments and custody. All those off-balance-sheet activities within the fiduciary world. Again, the optimization of their risk-adjusted revenue from their existing portfolio. Kelly: First of all, it’s banks that are in the wealth management business. They have trusts, they have wealth management capabilities, correct? Don: Correct, a lot of organizations that are clients, their definition of wealth management differs, but it does include trusts, insurance, and private banking. Kelly: You help those kind of banks do what? Don: Optimize top-line revenue. What we mean by that is, I like to use a quote from Bono, the lead singer for U2, he was up at his concert and doing one of his social announcements where he was clapping his hands and he said, “Do you know, every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies?” And someone screamed out, “Stop clapping your hands.” We don’t focus in on expense because for the past 10 years in the industry, the industry’s been focused on nothing but expenses. The expenses have outpaced revenue growth 6 out of the last 10 years. Their focus on expenses I don’t think, has been all that fantastic. We like to say, “Well you’re already focused on expense reduction, we want to help you grow top-line revenues.” Our value proposition leads to an increase to revenue top-line. Kelly: Before we get into how you do that, let’s talk about some personal background. Don: All right, I’ll start out with education. I went to school, got a degree in finance and accounting, after I graduated from that I went to work for the United States Treasury Department as an examiner with the Office of the Comptroller. The currency, the OCC, I found an opportunity to begin examining in the fiduciary world and I became a fiduciary examiner. Through that, I went to Washington, DC. For those of you in the fiduciary world that have an understanding of Regulation 9, when I was in Washington, DC I helped draft and write that regulation that now national banks follow. For most states, it’s been adopted verbatim on that. I left there, and went over to another Treasury Department, the Office of Trust Supervision, which has now been rolled into the OCC and wrote their fiduciary training program and some of their examination procedures over there in a fellowship capacity of 18 months before leaving and going to the consulting world, and focused on consulting in the fiduciary world, and that brings us to where we are right now. I am married to my wife Toni, we live out here in Colorado, we have four children. Hobbies; I would say right now we’re doing lots of skiing, got some good snow out here in Colorado, so that’s one of my hobbies. Do a lot of running, outdoor activities is me. That’s who I am, I’m 52 years old and I feel it every day. Kelly: Don and I have known each other for probably 15 years, and we made a good connection when we found out you grew up in Minnesota, correct? St. Louis Park? Don: Yeah, sure, you betcha. Kelly: Let’s talk about the business. How do you help these banks make money? How do you help a wealth management bank make some money? I want to come up with let’s say five take-aways on how our listeners can make money through what company like yours offer. Don: Let’s start out with, the opportunities for increasing top-line revenue within your fiduciary activities exist. They are out there. I like to use the phrase, “You’re standing on a whale, fishing for minnows,” because there’s already opportunities to increase your top-line revenue within our organization. What we mean by that is we go through and do an analysis account by account basis and identify opportunities in three phases: one, gap analysis which is, “Hey, where are you missing it?” From the standpoint of what you think you’re getting. You may have some system errors, system inaccuracies that can help you identify opportunities, that’s one phase. Second one is competitive analysis. Where is it that you would like to beat your competition, and where is it that you actually are? We ask you what your business’s strategic plans are, we go out and do mystery shopping and competitive shopping for the organization to make sure that they understand where they are and where their competition is, and where they can go with their current level of pricing. The third analysis is a regulatory analysis. What’s changed in regulation that allows you to either understand the regulation and generate additional revenue, or do we have some risk there? Again, gap analysis, competitive analysis, regulatory analysis to help you identify those opportunities, because they do exist. I would say that’s the first area. Kelly: You exposed that just recently, gap analysis. You’re looking at pricing, and how competitive they might be in pricing in addition to more of a qualitative, these are the type of services they would offer? Don: Along the lines of both, Kelly, with regards to the types of services we want to break it down so we understand the types of services they offer. Then the pricing that they have on each of those services. When we talk about pricing, we all know that there are committees, and then there are boards, and we’re talking about the board-approved pricing for these services. Kelly: This is for wealth management services. These are the basis points. This is how much we charge for a $5,000,000 fiduciary trust account, correct? Don: Correct. Absolutely. Those are established by, I would say, the business line which then goes to the committee and the boards approve. These are the pricing and it would include not just basis points, but it would include minimum account fees, it would include fees for ancillary services such as real estate administration, closely held business administration. Maybe there’s a tax prep fee or a tax information letter fee. Maybe there’s a stand-alone fee for extraordinary type services. All the fees charged for the services provided within wealth management on the fee schedule. We then go through and see what accounts are actually on that schedule, and what accounts are not, what accounts have customization, what accounts have discounts. It doesn’t make sense for the level of service being provided. What’s critical with that, from a Bearmoor perspective, is what I would say would be the second take-away, which would be a risk understanding of your accounts. If you haven’t done a risk assessment on an account by account basis, it would be highly recommended that you do so. This would allow you to identify the level of risk for each account and type of account using system information. This isn’t something that’s subjective, it’s based upon system criteria that you’ve established and put risk weightings on it. Let’s say you have an account that is an irrevocable trust account with two co-trustees, five beneficiaries, some unique assets in there, and maybe it’s over $2,500,000. You would assign various risk criteria to each one of those factors. Maybe that has a higher risk than a revocable trust. Kelly: You’re not talking about portfolio risk, you’re talking about risk of an unhappy client (other than portfolio volatility). Don: Correct. What we’re seeing is a fair amount of, I hate to go back to the regulatory side, but a fair amount of regulators are saying, “Hey, we can risk rate loan accounts on the banking side, why can’t we individually risk rate these off-balance-sheet trust accounts from an administration standpoint, from a level of risk?” and then get some understanding about what may be some levels of capital might be for this entire portfolio. It’s not investment portfolio risk management, for lack of a better term it’s complexity rating the account. Kelly: Give us three things that you like to look at, that might go into the calculus of that. Don: I would say type of account. Kelly: The fiduciary, non-fiduciary. Don: Correct, you would have the fiduciary accounts would be those revvocable and irrevocable trusts, investment management accounts, foundation endowments, IRAs. Then the non-fiduciary lower risk would be a custody account, where you don’t have any investment management responsibilities. Another item would be the type of assets in there, so maybe less risk would be a mutual fund portfolio, that’s made up of a bunch of mutual funds to meet the account’s objective. A higher risk would be, “Hey, it’s a stand-alone investment in a large piece of commercial real estate.” High risk on that. The third thing would be type and/or number of beneficiaries. The larger the beneficiary pool, the more risk you may have because you have different competing objectives. Some of those might be income beneficiaries, others might be remainder beneficiaries, or growth beneficiaries. Kelly: The high-risk account would be one in which there’s a fiduciary relationship to your holding assets that are perhaps individual securities and not mutual funds and the third? Don: Number of beneficiaries. Kelly: Number of beneficiaries. Is that because the more people you have in the equation, the more likely it is you’re going to have somebody complaining about it? Don: More likely there’s going to be a complaint there, but more likely that there’s going to be conflicts of interest. What I mean by that conflicts of interest is those beneficiaries may all have different needs and you as the fiduciary that’s managing that account, have to take all those into consideration and make sure you treat them equitably and fairly based upon the information you have. Kelly: Tell us how you help the bank make more money. Don: From that account by account analysis on the gap analysis and identifying opportunities within their portfolio. Not just from a best practices from what we’ve seen over the past 15 years of doing this, but also what’s taking place within their lines of business and their strategy. Overlaying that on that analysis and saying, “Hey, here is the opportunity, and here’s how that opportunity impacts each account.” Kelly: This is for your part one you look at the market, you look at competitors, and you say, “Oh, your competition’s charging 200 basis points, you’re only charging 150. You could charge 180,” for example. Don: Correct. If you still want to be the low-cost provider and the lowest-cost provider is charging that 200, and you’re at 150, you could go all the way up to that 200 and charge 190, 180. Right. Kelly: Right. Don: Do that complete analysis. Or your minimum fee is stated to be this, we’ve done in a cost analysis of your portfolio and you’re not even covering your costs with your minimum fee. You’ve got to adjust your minimum fee. Kelly: Don’t you think most banks know their competitor? Let’s say pricing, and their level of service, because they either get clients poached frequently, or infrequently, and if they find out why, then it’s well, his is cheaper, or better service, whatever it was. Don’t you think they know that? Don: That’s what we thought. That’s what we were counting on, but when we started doing the mystery shopping, because we asked our clients who are their competitors, who do they want us to mystery shop. Then we also provide them all the other information that we have. That, other than the actual opportunities, was one of the most highly prized pieces of information that we provided to our clients was, “Oh, look at all this competitor information.” My business partner and I looked at each other and said, “Wow, we didn’t realize how valuable this was. We thought you guys knew it, we’re showing it to you to let you know that we know it.” You would think they would know it, but a lot of times that isn’t the case based upon the information that we were able to gather and the reaction that we get from those. I think they have an understanding of it, but once they actually see the documentation and support for that that we’re able to gather, that brings it full circle. Kelly: I’m intrigued by, and I always have been intrigued by you being a former regulator with all due respect to your former profession, the dark side I suppose, or actually I think when you go into industry, they say you’ve gone to the dark side, I believe. However you look at it, how a former regulator can help on the revenue side is always been amusing to me. I know you do have a pretty good reputation out there, so kudos. You’ve been doing it quite a while, I believe. Don: Yeah, I appreciate those comments. Perhaps my capitalistic views weren’t always the right forum to be a regulator, so maybe I’ve always had to get back to this side. Maybe I was on the dark side and came back to the light. Kelly: Any more takeaways? Don: I would say re-acceptance, and what I mean by re-acceptance is, based upon the information that you have today on your existing accounts, the level of administration, the level of responsibility, the potential problems associated with the risk audit compliance items, the regulatory issues, and the revenue that you’re making on it, would you re-accept the accounts in your portfolio today? If the answer to that is no or maybe, you need to actually go through and do this risk assessment and the revenue opportunity assessment to make sure be able to answer that question yes or these are accounts we no longer need to be a part of. Kelly: It isn’t just no longer be part of, it may be no I wouldn’t accept it under these terms. These terms being pricing, but would you accept it at 50 basis points? No. Would you accept at 150? Yes. Isn’t that as much of a relevant question as acceptance or non-acceptance, it’s how should we price this thing? Don: Proper pricing is critical. We have top 10 risk piece that we do and one of the top 10 risks is appropriate pricing, so you’re absolutely right. “Hey, I wouldn’t re-accept it because of the assets.” That’s one thing. I wouldn’t re-accept this because of the price and the assets. Could we price it accordingly where you would accept it? Absolutely. That’s part of the analysis we do. Kelly: Why don’t you post on our website the top 10 risk pieces in a blog post? Don: Absolutely, I can do that. Kelly: That’d be nice to accompany this. That’s it for now, give us your favorite quote. Don: It’s Milton Friedman the great economist. “The question is, do corporate executives, provided that they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities, other than to make as much money for their shareholders as possible?” My answer to that is, no they do not. Basically, everyone should stay focused on generating revenue for the shareholders for where they have their fiduciary duty. Kelly: What’s the stupidest thing you’ve said or done in your business career? Don: This is classic me, and this took a long time to live down. This was years ago. I basically said, I used another quote when I was giving a presentation because someone asked a question with regards to revenue enhancement and I said in front of this entire group, “Life’s tough, but it’s tougher if you’re stupid.” Yep. Kelly: Good one. Don: I was much younger. Kelly: Don, I enjoyed talking to you, thanks so much for your time. We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.

Kelly interviews Adam Mustafa, Invictus Consulting Group who talks about CECL and some of the challenges banks have in accounting for future credit loss.   elly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Hi, this is Kelly Coughlin with the BankBosun. I’m going to do an interview today with Adam Mustafa, who’s one of the founders of a company called Invictus Group. There’s been so much discussion in the last couple months on this new CECL regulation that’s coming down the pike here this year some time that deals with how banks are supposed to be valuing and estimating their credit loss. I read a report that Invictus put together, a 2016 regulatory outlook. I actually did three blog posts on it, so you can go to the blog section and read those, as well, and then I’ve appended the Invictus report, as well. With that in mind, I’ll get Adam on the line. Adam, we’re going to talk about some things that are relevant to the bank industry. Why don’t you give us some background on yourself, on Invictus. I see a Mustafa name at the top of the letterhead. I assume that’s a family member. Adam: Yes, my father and I co-founded the business, and like I tell everybody I’m the smarter, better looking version of him. I do all the work, and he gets to take all the credit. In all seriousness, we started the firm back in 2008 right after the financial crisis began. Today, our bread and butter is providing community banks with strategic advisory services that focus very heavily on using analytics to get an edge in terms of acquiring other banks, being able to analyze those banks and know those banks better than they know themselves, and using analytics also to customize their own capital requirements with their regulators in the face of increasing regulation and the implementation of Basel III. Kelly: You were with Deloitte Touche for a while. It looked like a number of your other guys came from the banking or investment banking circles. What’s kind of been the genesis of the partners? You and your dad, where did you guys come from? Adam: I’ve been very much an entrepreneur. I consider myself an entrepreneur first and foremost. I did work at Deloitte, and I was in their business evaluations group. I worked on Wall Street as a junior grunt earlier in my career. I’ve seen commercial banking and investment banking from a variety of different angles. My father’s background is far more impressive than mine. In many ways, a lot of the techniques we use today, my father learned from the great Walter Wriston at Citigroup. My father worked at Citibank in the late ’70s through the mid-’80s, where he was responsible for all mergers and acquisitions, including Citibank’s acquisitions of other financial institutions. He is a disciple of Walter Wriston. Again, a lot of the techniques we use today were originated by Wriston, and we’ve just updated it for today’s times. That’s our background. We like to say we put the A back in ALCO. What we do is, on the one hand, innovative, because as soon as the 2008 crises occurred, the conventional techniques for analyzing banks all broke down. We’ve developed new analytics, but at the same time, they go back to the fundamentals of banking. You could trace their origins back to the ’60s and the ’70s when Walter Wriston was running Citibank. Kelly: So now we get at the name Invictus and Invictus Group. Can I assume that it comes from the William Ernest Henley poem, “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul,” that type of Invictus, or is it another genesis? Adam: Yes, sir. You hit the nail on the head. In many ways it was very much a metaphor for the times we were in, circa 2008, 2009, when we were in the depths of the financial crisis. Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen, but everybody knew that the industry was never going to be the same. Kelly: Yeah, one of my favorite stanzas from that poem, it describes 2008 pretty well. It says, “In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.” It describes how many of us went through a very tough period. You also had some experience with the famous Jim Cramer. What was that like? Adam: I was with him long enough to have a cup of coffee. I don’t even think he would remember my name, although he called me Ace for some odd reason. It was a great experience because he is obviously very well-known and very well respected. He’s got a method to his madness, so just being able to observe him, even though he didn’t know my name, to watch him go about his day, watch him go about his process, I learned a heck of a lot from him. I’d actually tell you what I learned was that I don’t want to be a stock picker because that job is not only very difficult but is very short-term oriented. It is very focused on what companies are going to report quarterly earnings better than what the analysts thought. It was very focused on what tomorrow’s economic indicators were. It was too short-term oriented for me. And so if nothing else, I learned that I wouldn’t make much of a stock picker. Kelly: Let’s get right into it. I’ve known about you guys for a number of years, and I have great respect for the work that you do, but what got my attention I’d say most recently was this 2016 Regulatory Outlook. As I was pouring through that, it’s about a fifteen or twenty page report, most of which most CEOs and CFOs won’t read because it’s too long, I went through it and parsed it out into three components. One was a regulatory compliance cyber security thing. Part two was balance sheet risk management, and then part three, which was more board-level issues. Just briefly I want to skip to part two that got my attention. “Invictus research found seven hundred and fifty banks with commercial real estate concentrations above 250%. Regulatory guidance suggests banks have unhealthy concentrations.” That seems a lot. Adam: Yeah, it’s very hypocritical when you think about it, because on the one hand, there is these concentration ratios that are essentially monitoring community banks, in terms of their exposure to commercial real estate, but at the end of the day, that’s what community banks are. They are commercial real estate lenders. That’s what nine out of ten of them do. In many cases, of course they’re going to have concentration ratios in that range. The regulators tend to use 300% as a threshold, and if a bank goes over 300%, that’s when they will examine them a lot more thoroughly, but that’s what community banks do. Community banks, they’re like any other for-profit business. They’re in business to make money, and they have to make loans to make money. If you try to limit the number of loans they can make, then they won’t be able to make enough money, especially in this environment. And then on the other hand, if these ratios start to push them towards other forms of lending, such as C&I, then all of a sudden they don’t have expertise in C&I. It can be very dangerous making loans in areas where you don’t have an expertise in, and then the regulators will come after banks for venturing into lines of business where they may not have what they need from a skill set perspective. If they make too much of the loans that is their bread and butter, then they’re going to come under scrutiny, but if they try to diversify, they’ll come under scrutiny for getting into lines of business that they’re not familiar with. Community banks are in a very tough position. That being said, I understand where the regulators are coming from. When you look at the carnage of the 2008 financial crisis, and you study banks that failed and got into heavy trouble, there was heavy concentration. The key is, let’s evaluate the spirit of what’s happening. The spirit of what’s happening is that regulators don’t want banks to fail, but at the same time, banks got to stick to their bread and butter. At the end of the day and we work with a lot of banks who are over that 300% threshold. At the end of the day, the regulators will be comfortable, and a community bank could have a concentration level at 500% to capital, but they have to demonstrate to the regulators that they have the toolkit from the perspective of risk management, capital management, and the sophistication to manage that type of risk. Kelly: On this CECL business, what is the basic difference between from what banks are doing now in doing some sort of loan loss reserve? There seems to be this discussion on the life of the loan, and replacing and incurred loss approach with a lifetime expected loss estimate. It seems like, on origination, FASB and the regulators are going to say, “Okay, when you originate the loan, we want you to estimate how much you’re going to lose on this loan on origination.” When they do the loan, they’re not really expecting that they’re going to be losing on the life of the loan. Every credit they grant is estimated to be a good credit, so what is the difference here on the approach that they’re doing now, which is a basic allowance system possibly based on past results, versus this lifetime expected loss estimate? Adam: The primary difference is that CECL is designed to be forward looking, whereas the current process for recording a loan loss reserve is backward looking. That’s the primary difference. Kelly: Backward looking on their entire portfolio, not with that particular credit, but their overall portfolio, correct? Adam: Yes. Let’s examine quickly how banks today calculate their loan loss reserve. It’s actually very simple, but you could then see how broken it is. By the way, I’m not advocating here for CECL, but the one thing I can tell you right now is the current way of calculating ALLL (Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses) is a joke. Let’s start with what banks do as first step. They take all of their high quality loans, they call them pass-rated loans, or loans that are currently doing fine, they put them into pools, and they will calculate how much they expect to lose off that pool, but that calculation is based off their historical loss experience. It’s backward looking from that perspective. Then with the loans that are in trouble, they have to actually analyze those loans individually, and they will look at the collateral position of the loan. They’ll look at the borrower’s financials, and they will estimate using that data, which is also backward looking, how much reserve they need to have against those individual loans. Then you’ve got this third bucket. What CFOs will refer to is as is “qualitative factors”. Qualitative factors is the plug right now, the band aid that’s trying to bridge this gap of the ALLL being backward looking, and the idea that their own loss reserve should be forward looking. Essentially, these qualitative factors is like throwing darts at a board. The CFO or the chief credit officer will look at economic conditions locally and then add plus or minus 1, or 10, or 15% to these scorecards, and then they’ll try to use these score cards to pad their ALLL. The irony is that this bucket, these qualitative factors, for most banks is actually representing 90 or 95% of their loan loss reserve. 90 or 95% of bank’s loan loss reserve today right now is based off throwing darts at a board. Frankly, that is not effective. The irony is, is that although studies have shown that CECL would hurt banks and would require banks to add to the reserve, we actually don’t see that. For strong, healthy banks, this bucket of qualitative factors is such a large component of their ALLL. We actually think CECL would help a lot of banks because it would demonstrate with more science and far less art how actually less risky those loans are, depending on where and when they were originated. Kelly: Those qualitative factors that you mentioned, isn’t there a bit of an issue as to how that data is captured. Some of it is captured maybe in memory, some of it’s captured in a Word document, maybe it’s in Excel format. It’s not like there’s a standard input of this type of data, number one, and then number two, isn’t it true that much of that data is kind of subjective? Adam: That’s exactly my point. It’s like throwing darts at a board. It’s highly subjective. It’s 99% art, 1% science at the most, and yet these qualitative factors, the number coming out of that bucket, is representing 90 to 95% of a bank’s loan loss reserve. Kelly: Okay, but they’re still under the duty to try to compile that data, correct? That’ve got to collect it and compile, and then make some decisions based on that, right? Adam: There’s not a lot of data, that’s the problem, for them to collect. Many of them are doing their best to try to collect local or national economic data and try to interpret that, but it is literally like throwing darts at a board. Therein lies the problem. This is why the FASB wants to replace how banks are calculating their loan loss reserves now and replace it with CECL. If you went back to 2008, and you studied what happened in the crisis, a lot of banks didn’t have enough in the reserve. When we’ve done this, if you study failed banks and you looked at their loan loss provisioning, you would see zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, and then a huge spike in one quarter, the quarter where the regulators showed up, and all of a sudden, the banks is under-capitalized and then two quarters later they fail. There was too much volatility. The ALLL itself is highly subjective, easy to manipulate, especially for larger, publicly traded banks. The current system for ALLL completely broke down in the financial crisis, which is why FASB proposed CECL. Kelly: Wouldn’t it be true, though, that the qualitative factors that you mentioned that led to the ALLL analysis or result, those qualitative factors will help guide the CECL analysis, correct? Adam: CECL’s going to replace that, because the regulators know, FASB knows that these qualitative factors are a joke. The qualitative factors right now is a band aid. FASB wants to improve the methodology for the reserve in instead of relying on these qualitative factors. They want to have a lot more science to the process. They want it to be far more forward looking. That’s why they want to implement CECL. Kelly: I was under the impression, though, that some of those qualitative factors were part of the calculus of CECL, though. Adam: The spirit of it, yes. The spirit of the qualitative factors right now in the ALLL is to basically say, “Yeah, we know when we calculate our loan loss reserve off our pooled loans and our individually impaired loans that that number’s not big enough because economic conditions could change, and economic conditions right now are fragile, albeit, we’re in this recovery driven by artificially low interest rates. We know enough to know the environment is fragile. We need to find a way to capture that in the loan loss reserve, so let’s come up with these qualitative factors to fulfill that. It’s not a great approach. Kelly: The basic formula is something like probability of default, times exposure default, times loss of the given default, and that equals CECL. On that probability of default, therein lies the subjective element to that, correct? Adam: Any forward looking model is going to be dependent on assumptions, and assumptions will vary in terms of how much art and science is contributing to them. The methodology you just described, it is one methodology that is being recommended for CECL compliance. It’s probably going to be the most used methodology. The key assumptions such as probability default and loss given default themselves will require some subjectivity or art to it, but there’s a lot more science that can be used in that process. That’s how we work with our clients. Kelly: All right, so let’s move to the bigger picture here. Give us your take on this whole CECL thing. Is it a crisis? Is it something that CFO’s and CEOs and boards should put at the absolute top of the front burner? What’s your take on it? Adam: I think CECL doesn’t need to be so complicated. I think there are vendors who stand to benefit from CECL, who are either subconsciously or consciously creating the perception that CECL’s going to be far more complicated than it really need to be. Kelly: Both of us worked at Big 6 accounting firms in our early careers. I can picture, I was at PWC, and you were at Deloitte Touche? I mean these guys must be licking their chops at the size of some of these engagements, don’t you think, to get in there and help these banks out? Adam: Yeah, absolutely. Take your typical community bank where it’s hard enough to make money in this environment. Our perspective on it A) this could increase my loan loss reserve, which is going to decrease my earnings and my capital, and B), the cost of putting the system in place for even doing that calculation’s going to cost me money now. From a community bank’s perspective, I completely understand the concern. That being said, let’s set the record straight. CECL hasn’t yet been passed. They’re talking about early half of this year where they’re going to make a final decision on it, although, they hinted at the end of last year it’s likely going to happen. They also said there’s going to be a five year runway for compliance. So I don’t think community banks need to overreact to CECL. I think they need to develop a plan for CECL readiness, but I don’t think they need to rush into anything. I don’t think they need to panic about it. At the end of the day, CECL does not change the actual risk of a loan. If I make a loan to you today, the risk of that loan hasn’t gone up because of CECL. Maybe how I account for that risk has changed, but it doesn’t change the spirit of making loans. That all being said, here’s some things that community banks should be aware of. You know we talked about the life of the loan, but the other thing that community banks need to be aware of is the vintage of the loan matters. If you have a properly built CECL model, what you will find is that the risk profile of loans made during the early part of a credit cycle will actually be very low, but if you’re making a lot of loans in the late part of a credit cycle, the risk could be very high. If you’ve got the system in place, you’ll be able to analyze that and not just have the accounting treatment reflect it, but more importantly, it will highlight your strategic decision-making, and it will help provide community banks with a sense of the risk/reward trade-off of making new loans in different environments. What we found is, the time to make new loans is in the early part of a credit cycle and not the second half of a credit cycle, and CECL will just bring that point to the surface, but it doesn’t change the actual risk profile of the loan itself. Kelly: All right, let’s wrap it up. Do you have three to five takeaways you want to leave the bankers with? Adam: I’m just going to leave you with one takeaway. It’s a quote that summarizes everything that we’re seeing in this environment, CECL being one aspect of it, which is, “The worst loans are made in the best of times.” The opposite of that is actually also true. A CECL model will quantify that point, but with or without CECL, that point holds true, and community banks, from a strategic planning perspective, really need to think hard about that. Kelly: That’s a good one. We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.

Kelly Coughlin interviews Wes Sierk, President and Co-Founder of Risk Management Advisors. Wes is the author of the book Taken Captive: The Secret to Capturing Your Piece of America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Insurance Industry. Wes is a recognized expert in using captive insurance strategies to manage and fund certain types of risk. Kelly Coughlin believes that such a strategy could be used to manage and fund cyber security risk. This is the first in a series of three podcasts covering captive insurance and cyber security risk management.   Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Hello this is Kelly Coughlin with the BankBosun. This is the podcast that’s the first in a series of three podcasts that are going to be related to using captive insurance strategy to manage and ensure cyber security risk and loss. I’ve talked to many bankers over my 25-year career and I have observed in the past five years cyber security going from a concern of IT guys and techno geeks to top of mind attention and concern of CEOs, CFOs and boards of directors. In fact, I was at a conference in Kansas a while back, and a number of the sessions were on cyber security risk. I was thinking, “Well, should we go to that? Should we not go to that?” We talked to C-level execs. These sessions were all standing room only, completely filled with C-level execs. It occurred to me that in this environment, we have potentially overpricing of all services related to the risk management of this risk including prevention, detection, hardware, software, consulting. I thought the subject of these 3 podcasts would be the transference of this risk. I think one of the areas that I detect as potentially being mis-priced is the cost of insurance, partly because the risk of loss is all over the map. We thought, “Let’s explore cyber security risk through a captive insurance enterprise.” To help kick this series off, I am interviewing Wes Sierk, President and Cofounder of Risk Management Advisors. I came across Wes through a book that he wrote, exciting title called, Taken Captive. That sounds good so far. Here’s where it goes downhill: “The secret to capturing your piece of America’s multi-billion dollar insurance industry.” I’m interviewing Wes remotely. He’s in Long Beach, California. Wes, you heard my introduction, and the reason you would be on this call, but let’s start with a couple of minutes on your background, how it would connect to bank cyber security risk management. Wes: Well first of all thank you for having me on the show. I started out in the insurance business in 1993 in a division of Northwestern Mutual, which was a life insurance company called CCI, Compensation Consulting Inc. Mostly what we did there is qualified and non-qualified planning, retirement plans and deferred comp, things like that. I came across captive insurance companies in 2000. My first thought was, it was a perfect alternative to deferred comp. That’s how I got into it. My background is … I’m a researcher, so I started digging into why life insurance was all the same. It was you go to a life insurance company and you get a 45-year-old male, and you say, “How much is a million dollars of coverage?” The insurance company prints out that ledger. If you had ten agents going to the market, they would all come back with the same quote. PNC is completely different. You actually have one broker who goes to the market for you and it’s much more of a negotiation, which leads into the pricing issues that you alluded to earlier in your call. My partner Jared and myself went on to form Risk Management Advisors in 2004 and all we’ve been doing since is just the design, implementation and management of captive insurance companies. On a personal side, married for about 24 years, two kids, I coach baseball, and Risk Management Advisors has a Nascar team. Kelly: Give us a definition in two sentences of captive insurance. Wes: It’s an insurance company that a business sets up to insure their own risk. It’s pretty simple. Kelly: It could be a bank? Wes: Yes. Instead of them buying their general liability, their cyber, their property, all of their coverage from AIG, Zurich, Liberties of the world, they actually form their own licensed regulated insurance company and they pay those premiums to their own company. They deduct those premiums, just like they would by paying any other company. Kelly: All right. In terms of primary motivations, my research shows that one, you’ve got access to cheap insurance rates because you’re paying them directly to your own carriers so to speak, right? You’ve got first dollar loss coverage, you can accelerate loss deductions, which appears to be a fancy term for you can over-fund the risk premium and build up tax deductible reserve. Are those the three core motivations to do this, or are there others? What’s the primary motivation to do this? Wes: I think you hit the nail on the head. One thing it does give you, if you’re an insurance company, is it gives you access to the reinsurance marketplace. Kelly: How much would a bank be saving? Are you talking 5% or are we talking 40%? Wes: Well it depends on the kind of policies they’re writing and the amount of risk that they’re willing to take. One thing is, the reason why reinsurance is less expensive is because the insurance industry, insurance companies, have thousands of employees. I read somewhere that the insurance industry has three times as many employees as the US Post Office. They do a lot of the processing of paperwork and claims and things like that, so they have higher overhead. A re-insurer can get away with having 5% of the employees of an insurance company, because they only attach at a certain level whether that’s 50, 100, 250, a million, whatever. They’re not getting involved in the day-to-day operations of the insurance company and the day-to-day pay out of claims. That’s left to the insurance company level. We see, for regular insurances, I would say you could see a 30% savings over your traditional insurance. Kelly: In the banking business we have what are called banker’s banks, and they provide banking services to banks. They don’t do anything directly with the public. So would a reinsurance company be an insurance company’s insurance company where they provide services only to another insurance company, so you cut out all of the sales process I suppose, the distribution expenses? Aren’t those the core things that are cut out plus the servicing part because they’re not dealing with million to 20 million dollar cases, they’re dealing with whatever the number is, 50 million or above, the larger ones? Wes: You’re exactly right. Your analogy is very good. Where bankers have banker’s banks, this would be like an insurance company’s insurance company. Kelly: If one were going to set up a captive, that entity would have to also sign up, unless they were going to absorb all of the risk themselves, which is unlikely. If they want to transfer or share some of that risk, they have to set up relationships with reinsurance companies, correct? Wes: Correct, unless they want to take that risk themselves, which we don’t usually recommend the first couple of years. Kelly: I suppose companies like you, this is not an infomercial for your group, but is that part of what you do, is you have these relationships and there’s probably some vetting process that you would go through to bring on a new captive client, I suppose, and introduce them and negotiate terms, etc with the reinsurance company. Is that one of the roles that your company provides? Wes: Yes it is. Clients come to us because they want us to set up and manage their insurance company for them; deal with the departments insurance; do all of the regulatory filings and in most cases, not all cases but most cases; they’ll have us go and negotiate the reinsurance contracts for them. The good thing about reinsurance, reinsurance is always sold net of commissions, unlike an insurance policy where you pay an insurance agent, we’re just negotiating on behalf of the insurance company as a manager of the insurance company. Kelly: That’s where the big savings comes from. Wes: Yeah, there’s a lot of savings in that. I’m not going to begrudge brokers because brokers bring a tremendous amount of value to clients. Kelly: There are a couple of ways to set these things up from what I can tell. You could set them up as a single parent captive or a group pooled collective type where you have a group of banks. You have a single bank, Bank A that decides, “We’re going to set this up.” It’s only one bank in there. Then you have a pooled or group approach where you have Banks A and B setting up the collective. They either do it alone or with others, like kind business I suppose, right? Is that a fair assessment? Wes: Yeah, they either do it by themselves or they do it with other people. Then within the other people, there is many different ways they can do it. Kelly: You know the context and setting that this call is about. It’s specific community banks, cyber security risk, captive insurance. If you had to Google this, those three terms would be in there. One other risk if you do it as a group or collective, let’s just say there are two banks in the collective – you have Bank A and B that are, let’s say they’re putting in an equal amount. Let’s say Bank A has great internal controls and risk management processes, Bank B has terrible ones. Bank B incurs all the loss and Bank A has insured it all. There part of the reason was to put in a bunch of excess premium perhaps, build up this reserve. Then you have Bank B eating up all the reserves. Is there a way that a bank can set up a hybrid of this where they could share say, the operating expenses, maybe consulting expenses, a number of things related to the entity? It could be another class of stock, something where the actual risk is only absorbed by the individual bank and ultimately a reinsurance carrier downstream. Wes: There could be, but I wanted to go back to one point you made, which was Bank A has great internal controls and Bank B doesn’t. The issue with cyber security is many banks have good security or great security, but it’s also the luck of the draw. The person with bad security could be fine and the one with great internal controls could have that one in a million chance where somebody comes in and breaches their security or takes millions of dollars out of their company. Within the group captive there’s also cell companies. You can have a cell captive. A cell captive is one where it basically looks at and smells like one large insurance company but each individual bank has its own cell, so they kind of wall off the assets and liabilities on a bank by bank or cell by cell limit. That could go a long way to protecting the bank. Then you go get one reinsurance treaty for all of the banks, and then you carve it off. You go get 100 million dollars of coverage and you carve it off at 5 million dollars per bank for twenty banks. The insurance companies like that because they know that if they’re writing 100 million dollars in coverage and they basically divided it at 5 million between twenty banks, they know their chance of loss is actually smaller. The frequency may be higher but the severity probably wouldn’t, and that’s where they get into the pricing. They’d much rather spread it 5 million over twenty banks, than one bank have a 20 or 25 million dollar claim. Kelly: I accept your point that Bank A may have great controls and Bank B not, but Bank A could be hacked, right? I understand that’s a valid point, but I think in this environment what is going to happen is certainly you have the Top 10 banks, they’re the high-value targets of cyber criminals. They have the budget to always attempt to put up the adequate defenses to that. I fear what is going to happen is the less target-rich environments like community banks will, as the Top 10 banks for instance, get better at defense, then the smaller community banks are going to be the target and they don’t have the resources to fund that. It’s an expensive undertaking. where you’ve got hardware expenses, software, consulting, insurance, all of this stuff, and staff of course. My thinking was that you set up this captive and you develop best practices. I’m going back to my PWC days in consulting, where in consulting business you’re always looking for best practices, but you develop best practices and you share the costs. You buy them properly, buy them at the right price, right terms, etc, and then you share the cost over twenty entities and not one community bank. The reality is these banks can’t afford to set up the high-level controls that a Top 10 bank can do it. Wes: You’re exactly right. It’s the philosophy of build your ark before the flood comes. By creating their own insurance company and warehousing dollars today, because of the way the policies are written, they basically expire every 15 months. If they are the targets of cyber criminals three years from now, they would have already stockpiled a ton of money, so they can weather a claim if they have it and maybe not have to hit their reinsurance. To your point, we both know what’s happening in the cyber marketplace as far as the premium dollars in the traditional market. The reason why … it’s because insurance companies are doing the exact same thing. They’re charging exorbitant fees today because they don’t know how big this is going to be. It reminds me of the old asbestos claims. Remember when asbestos started being a problem? All of the insurance companies started raising their rates dramatically. Then what happened was, a couple of smart insurance guys said, “You’re charging $700,000 for a million dollar general liability policy for asbestos, but if the people actually get hurt, it’s going to be a worker’s comp claim.” It’s not going to be a general liability claim, but the insurance company hadn’t thought that far ahead. They just wanted to get as many dollars in their coffers as they could in case they got hit. For cyber, you went to that conference … you’re exactly right. Five years ago it would have been just the IT people and you’d have fifteen people in the room. Now it’s actually the C-level. It’s CEO, CLO, CFO that are doing this. Kelly: The board members are the ones that are saying, “Get to the conference. I want you there.” They’re telling their CEOs to get there. Wes: It’s huge. It’s such a huge problem. I was just reading an FBI report on cyber crime. Their prediction is all businesses in the next five years will be spending at least 10% of their gross income on cyber for protections and hardware and software, and everything. You can’t even fathom that today, but it’s coming. Now we have passwords on top of passwords to get into password programs. They listed off that the FBI did a study and they went into the Apple iTunes store where people get the applications and they have all these password programs. 10 of the top 20 were programs that were sold that said, “Number one password protector.” They were sold and designed by organized crime, downloading these programs for their iPhone and their Androids, putting all their passwords in, all their banking information, and all that stuff was being directly fed to Russian organized crime. They don’t have to steal cartons of cigarettes anymore when they can make 20 to 30 million dollars in one financial transaction. Kelly: Absolutely. Wes: It’s staggering. I can see why these board members and CFOs and everyone else would be concerned about it. It’s a big issue. One of our clients was just hit with it. Kelly: Let’s say we set up Newco captive insurance for community banks. You set up as part of this synthesis of best practices and captive insurance for cyber security. I’m going to throw in another term, “best practices.” I don’t necessarily think they’re into gouging. They just can’t efficiently price it because the risk parameters or the level of risk that they’re taking on an entity basis per entity, per insured, is all over the map. When you take in a company to join the captive … would you call them a shareholder? Wes: Yes. Kelly: Okay. When you take a shareholder, they have to adopt the best practices standards that the new captive insurance carrier says. Does that make sense, that would be part of the admission process? Wes: I would say you definitely want to do that. Some insurance companies, it’s really a risk assessment for cyber preparedness. There are some insurance companies that have done a great job at this. In fact, one of them, these people developed this cyber preparedness company for Ace and Chub insurance company, as freelancers. They said, “Well we want this to make sure.” For them they realized that, “Hey, there’s a real market for this.” They basically bought company back for nothing. This was a few years ago. They’re like, “Well this isn’t going to be as big as we thought it was.” That’s all they do is analyze cyber preparedness. They give you a full report. We just had them come into ours because we have a lot of data in our stuff. We have a lot of HIPPA stuff because we run insurance companies for medical, for example. They gave us a whole big report of change this, change this, change this, and some stuff you’d never even think about. You’re like, “Whoa.” The cost to do it … I thought it was going to be very expensive but it was nothing on the scale of things. Kelly: You just hope that they’re not owned by the Russian mob, right? Wes: Yeah, exactly. Three of my clients had used them and the one that just got hit for cyber, their system was set up in such a way where they were instantly notified that this was happening. This was a server in Toronto. Instantly they had to switch the whole thing offline. They flew two of their internal programmers from here in California up to Toronto. They were back online in under 24 hours without an ounce of data. I’m like, “You know what? I’ve got to have your people come in and do this.” This is a company that does 100 million dollars in sales. I think everyone should be requiring this. Kelly: I think there’s some really cool things you could do when you have many entities splitting the cost of this. I’m certainly set up best policies, procedures, all that kind of stuff. You could buy licenses. You get quantity discount, volume discounts there. There’s a lot of benefit to having a larger group in there. Even just the project team, these banks don’t have the resources to have a really good project team to do a good vendor search, for instance. That’s a costly undertaking in and of itself is, “Well what email provider should we do?” They just don’t have the resources free to do that. You threw out the 10% number. My goal would be to let’s set it up so the goal we could make that a 5% of revenue number, not 10. Wes: Or 1%. What I was saying was, that was what the FBI’s projection of what people would be spending on their cyber stuff was. In my business, I can’t even fathom that. We spend all this money a year on hardware and software, and our business is X. If I were to extrapolate that out to say, “Well how much would we do if we did 10%?” There’s like, “There’s no way.” We could buy server hubs. We could buy everything. I guarantee you if you picked ten of your banks who listen to this, one of them is doing something great that the other nine aren’t, and so having a depository … You say, “Hey this was a great idea that this bank is doing and then you could take it over to the other one.” Kelly: Yeah, but what happens, Wes, is that everybody is going to these conferences. They get the heck scared out of them, they come back and they talk to their IT guy and say, “You know I just went to a conference. We’ve got to start controlling this risk.” Then they look at it and realize that, “Oh this is going to cost $100,000? Oh I guess we can’t afford that.” There’s plenty of ideas out there. There are some great ideas and there is some not great ideas, but there’s loads of ideas. Taking the idea and having the resources to actually implement is the big challenge. I believe that the captive program is a way to pull those things together buy cost-efficiently, do vendor searches efficiently. It all comes together there through that thing. Yeah, there are some tax benefits by throwing in higher premiums, that kind of thing. That’s great but I don’t think this is primarily a tax-driven … It just so happens that taxes will be favorable … favorable tax treatment. I really think it’s the cost-effective way to manage risk and to get best practices adopted in community banks throughout the country that otherwise just can’t quite afford it in their budget. Wes: I was going to say, and you’re using double duty dollars. Right now if they buy cyber insurance from AIG, they’re not getting internal controls, they’re not getting all of this due diligence, they’re not having somebody come in. They pay them and then if there is a claim … They still on top of their premiums have to go out and do the best practices and do all of the stuff to make sure they’re secured vs. paying premiums to their own company. Let’s say the insurance company takes 10% of all the premiums that it takes in from all the companies and then uses that to go in and install the best practices and stuff, so you’re actually using money that you would have just given to somebody else to now improve your overall business operation. We’ve had people do that with worker’s comp where, hey they can’t afford a safety guy and their worker’s comp rates have gone up, so they create their own worker’s comp company and now they use the money they were giving to Liberty and AIG and all these other companies to hire their own full-time safety person. That’s actually now just an expense of the insurance company vs them having to take money out of the bottom line of their company. Kelly: One other thought that’s a great image that I have of you is set up this captive, you have fifty banks involved and you also fund a cyber security SWAT team comprised of Navy Seals and Rangers that are deployed in the event of some ransom war type deal, right? Then they get engaged, they’re ready to go, and then they go out and take them down. Wes: Yeah, that’s a great idea. Kelly: Otherwise it’s a call to the FBI and okay, they do great work, granted, but man it’d be nice to have our own team. That could be Phase 2 down the road. Anyway, let’s wrap it up. I really appreciate your time. Let me ask you this. Do you have a favorite quote? Wes: Yeah, well I do but it’s a Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged they talked about Rearden Metal and it was going to be too expensive to rebuild these bridges for the trains using Rearden Metal because of the engineering. The quote was, “When men got structural steel, they didn’t use it to build steel copies of wooden bridges.” Kelly: Good one. Wes: I look at captives and things like that as you can use it as a powerful tool to do something in a completely different way. You don’t have to just use it for the same way you were always doing stuff. I would say that would be the first one that popped into my mind. Kelly: What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done in your business career? Give people a laugh. Give people a chuckle here. Wes: Oh, I have an album on my bookshelf. You know Bill Withers, “Lean on Me”? Kelly: Lean on Me and “Use Me”. Wes: I got an appointment. His wife called and wanted me to come talk about overall financial planning and stuff. I went to see him and I’m like, “I love your music. I love the movie and everything.” They’re just sitting there like uh-huh, uh-huh. The meeting didn’t go well and I left there. I had it confused with Stand by Me instead of Lean on Me. My dad found this Bill Withers album and he said, “Keep this on your bookshelf and any time you don’t know the answer, you won’t make a complete fool of yourself.” Kelly: Oh that’s a great one! That’s very good, I love that one. All right, Wes. I appreciate your time. How can people contact you? Wes: Yeah, my website is Risk Management Advisors. It’s riskMGMTadvisors.com and my email is WSIERK@riskMGMTadvisors.com. I create a website that’s not branded by us, but it’s captiveinsurance101.com and it just has general info on captives. You were kind enough to mention my book. The book is called Taken Captive and it’s just takencaptive.com We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.

Kelly interviews Peter Weinstock, Partner, Hunton & Williams, Dallas Office. They talk about bank M&A deals and minority shareholder actions to gain control of bank management. Peter Weinstock’s practice focuses on corporate and regulatory representation of financial institutions. He is Practice Group Leader of the Financial Institutions Section and has counseled institutions on more than 150 M&A transactions, as well as provided representation on securities offerings and capital planning.   Kelly Coughlin is CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C-Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C-Suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover rewards. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly: Hi, this is Kelly Coughln from the BankBosun. Hope everybody’s doing fine. I’m going to do an interview today with a deal guy. He’s with a law firm in Dallas, Texas. We’re going to talk about the types of deals that are getting done. Are they P&A deals? Are they stock deals? There are distressed deals out there, there are strategic ones, and what is he saying in terms of M&A activity in the banking sector. With that, we’ll get Peter Weinstock on the phone, from Hunton & Williams. Let’s talk about deals, Peter. I have kind of a basic question on general trends. In bad banking economies, it seems that we have a lot of P&A deals, where I think the seller is normally the FDIC, correct? Peter: Right. Kelly: We must have had a lot of those in 2008, 2009, possibly up to 2010. Peter: Yeah, I agree. For really almost a four, four and a half year period, there were more deals sold by the FDIC than there were private sector M&A transactions. Kelly: Then today, better economy, better banking environment, we don’t see many of those, correct? Peter: Very few. Kelly: Would you say that the number of P&A deals is a leading indicator, lagging indicator of economic conditions of banks in general? Peter: Yeah, it’s certainly a lagging indicator, just like capital as a protection is a lagging indicator because what tends to happen is asset quality issues or concentration levels or interest rate risk, some of those other factors, the metrics indicating those issues are becoming problematic kick in long before capital starts declining and capital starts declining generally long before or moderately before problem banks are looking to sell or the FDIC takes over. The number of P&A transactions, which again, we’re down to very few, are more reflective of the fact that the economy seemed to turn sometime in 2012 and we’ve had now three full years of, even though it’s not a great recovery, we’ve had some recovery. Kelly: How many P&A deals have we seen in three years? Peter: I think we’re only up to two so far this year, where we were, in 2009 through 2011, we were having dozens and in one of those years over one hundred bank deals. Kelly: The two this year, are they in, say, oil patch regions that are struggling economically or somewhere else? Peter: That’s an outstanding question because the answer is, it’s not. That’s not to say that the oil patch or the commodity price areas are not under stress. Certainly, the ag economy is under some stress, but again, it gets back to your first question about lagging indicators. The banks that are failing now are banks that have been circling around the drain for a long time now. They’ve been shrinking to maintain capital ratios, but they can’t get recapitalized because of the legacy assets that they have from the downturn, so we still have a significant number of banks that are undercapitalized and unless something happens, they could fail because they have elevated problem asset levels and those problem asset levels are what would bring them down. At December 31 there were 78 banks that were still somewhere undercapitalized or only adequately capitalized, which is down from, at one point, the problem bank list was over 600, but the 78 institutions that are adequately capitalized or worst, as of year end, are ones that are suffering from the last downturn, rather than the next one. Kelly: All right, you mentioned 78 that are undercapitalized. What’s the metric that you use? Peter: These are banks that are not well capitalized, so they’re adequately capitalized or lower, which is they have to have a leverage ratio of 5% in order to be well capitalized. Then you have the Basel III metrics. Right now, you’re talking about a total risk-based capital ratio of under 10% and total leverage ratio of under 5% to be adequately capitalized or, in that case, undercapitalized. It’s not an incredibly high bar that they’re not able to chin, so these 78, you would think that they would be able to recapitalize themselves, but the big challenge that they have is their elevated asset quality levels. Kelly: You have these 78 banks. Are brokers out there, investment bankers out there trying to get them to sell? You guys probably don’t do that. Lawyers don’t hustle for business like that, I don’t think, right? You’re not making cold calls? Peter: We’re purist, man. We would never do such a thing. I’m sure that all 78 of them have been shaking the trees and have talked to anyone and everyone who they think could be an avenue for capital and for addressing their problems, but at some point, if you’ve got capital of 5 million but you have problem assets of 15 or 20 million, at some point the numbers don’t make sense for an investor and that’s why these institutions are still on the list, some of them. Kelly: Let’s talk about the good side of the market, not the problem areas. Let’s say last year, you being a proxy for the market, how many deals were related to distressed banks and how many were for strategic acquisition reasons or market expansion? Peter: I would tell you the vast majority of them were strategic and few were problem bank acquisitions. What I mean by strategic isn’t necessarily that the seller was in great shape and they sold for a very high price. What we’re seeing is a number of sellers are kind of giving up the ghost because in this interest rate environment, with anemic loan demand, very competitive loan pricing, there are sellers that look at their compliance costs and their IT costs and their personnel costs and they’re saying, “We’re not big enough to do a deal. We’re not big enough to survive on our own and make our shareholders a fair return, so we need to look at doing something else.” The something else is not necessarily selling for cash and going on down the road. One of the biggest trend lines we’ve seen in the last two, three years, is the willingness of sellers to take illiquid stock, stock from a privately owned financial institution. Kelly: In the acquiring company. Peter: To take illiquid stock from an acquiring company, that’s another community bank like they may be, sellers are much more willing to do that than they ever have been before in my 30+ year career. I think the biggest driver of that is that on the operational standpoint, the challenges of being a bank are such that skill matters and then on the shareholder valuation standpoint, I think they recognize that this may not be the greatest pricing time to sell out, so they look at doing some kind of strategic combination to be part of a bigger, more profitable organization, even though the stock is illiquid. Kelly: Let’s say, in those situations where you’ve got a reasonably healthy bank, they see that if they don’t do something they might be in part of the 78 again, but they might go down that way, so they’re proactive. As a part of that, they have to lock up some of their good producers, right? Their good credit officers and those things. One of the thing we do in our business is help with non-qualified plan benefits to try to use that as a way to lock in good senior management. Do you see much of that going on as part of the deal criteria? Peter: It surprises me that more banks that are potential sales candidates don’t do more. In community bank America, it almost doesn’t matter how big you are, you’re a potential target. I’ll give you an example. One of my clients is a $5 billion bank in California and they merged with an $8 billion bank in December, they announced it. The reason is because our client, that’s $5 billion, felt that they needed to get bigger in order to compete. The $8 billion bank felt like they needed to be bigger to compete, so now they’re going to be $13 billion. If you’re not an $8 or a $5 billion bank, if you’re smaller than that, you might say to yourself, I don’t need to be bigger to survive, but my efficiency ratio sure as heck would improve if we got bigger. I would tell you that almost every bank is a candidate to be sold, they’re a candidate to buy and they’re a candidate to be sold. KPMG did a survey in 2014 and it indicated that over 50% of the banks thought they would engage in an acquisition, but 3% of banks thought they would sell. The numbers wound up in 2015 being something like 4.4% of all the banks sold. Every bank out there, it seems, is thinking about doing an acquisition, but every bank and community bank America is a potential candidate. A long way around to your question is because the banks are all potential merger candidates, then they really should look at putting in place protections for their employees and really locking them up, but when they’re doing that, they also need to think about not hurting shareholder value. The way you could hurt shareholder value is you provide some kind of agreement, let’s say a change in control agreement, that provides on a change in control the employee gets paid if they leave the bank. Now we hurt shareholder value because the buyer knows that they could lose that person because there’s an incentive for that person to leave. Really, it takes somebody like you to think through not just how to protect the person, not just how to lock them up, but also to do it in a way where it creates or at least preserves shareholder value because the buyer is not looking at that contract and saying that that contract harms me because I’m going to lose a valuable producer. Your question is a good one and I would even go further and I’d say what exists gets paid. If people want agreements to be in place, they need to put them in place because if they exist they’ll get paid, where if you wait until a potential acquisition, then what’s going to happen is the acquirer is going to say, “You can do that, but if you do that it comes out of the shareholder’s purchase price,” and I don’t think you want to be negotiating those types of agreements with another person with their elbows on the table. Kelly: I’ve got a lot of experience in other financial sectors like financial advisors and broker dealers and the common theme with them is you’ve got much more highly paid execs, but the notion that the assets go down in the elevator every day. It’s more or less the same thing with many banks and not locking them up one way or another in an acquisition, it always kind of surprises me. Let’s talk about surprises in an acquisition landmines. It seems to me that when we’re talking about banks that are not a huge footprint, a community bank that’s got 1 to 15 branches, isn’t it a fair statement to say that more of the acquirers or interested acquirers are going to be a current competitor of that bank and doesn’t that always present a bit of a due diligence challenge or problem, where you’re going to release sensitive, confidential information to your competitor? Peter: That is absolutely correct that that’s a possibility. The reason for that is because most financial institution mergers are driven by cost savings. Where do you get the most cost savings? In a market deal or an adjoining market deal. It is very likely the party that can pay the most is going to be an existing competitor. That absolutely presents challenges in terms of protecting your employees and your confidential information. Obviously you’re going to negotiate the heck out of the non-disclosure agreement, if that’s likely buyer, if you’re the seller. The other thing is you’re probably going to want to hold back on when you deliver information until there is an agreement on all of the relevant terms and then the due diligence becomes more in the way of confirming diligence than it does in terms of setting the price. You’ll release some key information, including whether there’s a termination fee as a result of the transaction on your data processing agreement, changing control agreements with employees, give all of that pricing type information, but you might hold back the loan review and the customer review until the deal is essentially set. Kelly: The customer name is withheld until the deal is a little more mature. Peter: We’ve also done it where you redact the customer names, but in an in-market deal it doesn’t take a lot of information for the buyer to know who that player is. Kelly: Yeah, right. Back to my other question that we started on. Surprises? Peter: I’d say the biggest surprise to buyers is that the seller’s compliance issues could infect them. I’ll give you an example. When MB Financial was acquiring Cole Taylor, Cole Taylor had a major compliance issue and the transaction was held up for about a year, while the regulators got comfortable with the resolution of that compliance issue. Similarly there have been a number of red-lining cases and BSA cases where the compliance issues of the target have held up the deal. I think that’s a surprise for a number of buyers because if you’re engaged in a potential transaction, you’re locked into that transaction. You’ve agreed to try to get that deal closed. If you wind up with an extended regulatory approval time period, that could prevent you, preclude you from going after a deal that becomes available six months, a year later that might be a better deal for you. Similarly for sellers, even in cash deal, if there’s a surprise that the buyer’s compliance issues can be such a hold up and what we’ve seen is we’ve seen AML, BSA, KYC issues that have held up approval of deals for two or three years in UDAP and some other consumer compliance issues that similarly have held up deals. As a seller, you have to perform some reverse due diligence, some extensive reverse due diligence on the buyer, even in the transaction that’s a cash deal. For a lot of sellers, that’s a surprise to them. Kelly: Do regulators hold up the deal or does the buyer intentionally hold that up? Peter: Generally it’s the regulators because from the buyer standpoint, they become aware of the issue and they adopt a plan of remediation for the issue. It’s one thing for a private sector party to get a handle on an issue and have a plan of remediation and feel good that they can implement it. It’s a whole other thing for an agent, say, to get their arms around it in a time frame that seems reasonable. The Federal Reserve has two analysts in Washington who handle compliance issues with regard to applications. Kelly: The buyer would just haircut the valuation. At the end of the day it’s a contingent liability, right? They would just haircut the valuation on it. Peter: If it’s a known risk and it’s one that they have presumably priced in. If it’s not a known risk and they become aware of it, then they may go back to the seller and say, “We’ve got all of these costs related to it, we need to reduce the price,” or if it’s significant enough, they could decide to walk the transaction. Kelly: In terms of surprises, known compliance issues and I suppose the ‘know what you don’t know,’ whatever that term is. You know those issues, it’s the unknown compliance regulatory issues. Any ideas on pre-detecting, early detection of those things? Peter: That’s really you just have to engage in some pretty thorough diligence of the other party to really understand where the risk areas are. Kelly: I suppose you look at their internal controls and their timely filings or substantiation and all of those things on the control structure. Peter: You do. Something that I like looking at as a starting point for diligence is nowadays banks have to do risk assessments. Seemingly a banker can’t walk out doing a five-page risk assessment. Those risk assessments are the other party’s self-confessing, if you will, where they see their own challenges or concerns. The beauty of that for the other party is that gives them a roadmap of things to look at in diligence. Kelly: I was director of risk management for asset management subsidiaries of Lloyd’s Bank out of London, and this was many, many years ago. Regulatory issues and compliance back then just didn’t quite get the importance. They actually did in the UK, but things have ramped up in the US quite a bit, that it’s probably more on par with what it was with the British banks back then. Peter: If you parachuted back, if you were Mr. Peabody and you got in the Wayback Machine and went back to 2000 and you had a full-time, dedicated BSA officer, and how many banks had full-time, dedicated compliance offer and how many banks had a full-time, dedicated risk officer, and how many banks had a full-time, dedicated IT person, and you compare those numbers to the way they are now, it’s just shocking. The bigger the acquisition, the more you want to look at areas that you might not want to spend the money on if you’re a smaller institution. In a bigger deal, you absolutely want to evaluate IT exposures and make sure that there have not been or in place potential breaches. Kelly: Why don’t you give us parting thoughts you’d like to give. Speak to both buyers and sellers. Peter: One thing we’re seeing for banks that may not want to be a seller is there is a lot more activism. We had six private banks in the fourth quarter that had proxy sites, tender offers. One even had a TRO, a temporary restraining order, filed against them. That’s continued in the first quarter of 2016. One thing is to put in place protections and recognize that your risks can be from your existing shareholder base or people who buy in. The world’s awash in money and people out there know if they could buy stock of a bank at eight-tenths of book or book and then wrestle control of the board and get control, then the bank on the sale might be worth book and a quarter or book and a half, book seven, where they could potentially even more than double their money, buy the stock and flipping it in a control situation. We’re seeing activism creeping down into the community bank, into the private bank sector, and that’s something clearly you want to watch. Kelly: You’re not talking political and social activism. You’re talking about business acquisition, venture capital, investment activism. Peter: Absolutely. We’re talking shareholder activism. Then just another thing that we’ve seen on the buyer’s side is buyers tend to be most focused targets who are of sale who sent them books. We talked about some of the compliance challenges of the application process. Just because somebody sends you a book and the book says, “We’re for sale,” doesn’t mean that they’re the greatest candidate for you to buy. What you want to be careful about is being locked up on a deal in the regulatory process that is somebody who doesn’t really move the needle for you. It’s got something that obviously is worthwhile, but maybe it’s really not consistent with your strategic focus. We’ve seen potential buyers almost shift their strategic focus just because an investment banker sends them a book on a potential target. Kelly: Two good points. I always like to finish with two things: Your favorite quote and the stupidest thing you’ve either said or done in your business life. Peter: There are a lot of the latter. Upon the former, I like the Warren Buffet quote, which it really resonates when you’re talking about shareholder activism. He said, “I prefer to manage my business for the shareholders who want to stay in and not the ones who want to get out.” I may be paraphrasing it, but that’s the thought. I like that quote a lot because that’s actually directors of the bank. Those are the people they have a duty to. The second one is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my career? Kelly: Yes. Peter: One thing that I learned a long time ago not to do is something that’s emotionally gratifying because in business it almost always is a bad decision. Early on in my career I would get testy with regulators and that’s never a good strategy. Gray hair and maybe even the loss of hair and some experience, I’ve learned the wisdom of working together with regulators a lot more than trying to beat them up. Kelly: Can you recall one that you said something to? Peter: I remember when I was a third-year lawyer, I went to a meeting with the Federal Reserve and I’m not exactly sure what I said at the point, but this person with the Federal Reserve got up and it wasn’t quite Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table, but he was animated. Kelly: All right, Peter. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. I wish you the best. We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced by Kelly Coughlin, Chief Executive Officer of BankBosun, LLC; and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination LLC, with the help of Kevin Boyle. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. Kelly provides bank owned life insurance portfolio and nonqualified benefit services to banks across the United States. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any other way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier of Kelly Coughlin.

If you haven’t noticed, I had a nice vacation in Japan (see HC’s Instagram), but now I’m back, ripping through the archives of unpublished reviews, interviews and mixes. To cleanse the palette a bit from the usual Headphone Commute fare, we invite you to check out this hour-long mix by Alastair Kelly, who has previously graced us with Ryde to Portsmouth. Unlike the latter, Let Your Light Glow is more of a deep and dubby techno journey, full of clocking rhythms and rolling bass, across an excellent selection of favorite artists. Please enjoy responsibly and support the featured artists! For full track listing and more information about this mix, please visit headphonecommute.com