Podcasts about like mark

Kiera is joined by Mark Rasmussen, CEO of Moolah, to talk about the landscape of credit card fees and how to reduce them, membership discount plans, and other bonus features offered by the dental payment tech company. (Pssst, Mark was last on episode 866, It's Time to Modernize Payment Processing!) Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript Kiera Dent (00:00) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today I am super jazzed because I have a guest here who's going to help us with cashflow leaks, modernizing your practice, figuring out those membership plans, all the things that you need and want. We're going to talk about some case studies. This is one of my absolute favorite guests, Mark Rasmussen, CEO, owner, founder, Moolah. How are you today, Mark? Welcome to the show.   Mark Rasmussen (00:22) Hey, Kara, I'm doing fantastic. I'm doing awesome. So, so, so it's connected with you and your listeners and excited to get into all this juicy good stuff about revenue and payments and modernizing things. Let's do it. I love it.   Kiera Dent (00:31) Yeah.   Let's   do it. So I have a slight crush on Moolah. Like truly you guys like just make credit card processing easy. And so what I want to start off, if you guys don't listen, Mark and I have done other podcasts in the past together. ⁓ But I don't know, Mark, what you guys say on your email subject lines, like on your little, what is it your signature, but I feel like it should be like your new favorite credit card processing company. Like that's what I feel like Moolah's tagline should be because I wanted to do a couple case studies with you since we last chatted.   Mark Rasmussen (00:40) Hahaha   Kiera Dent (01:05) ⁓ Mark knows, like, I do have a crush on Moolah. I try to get them to come and be our processor too.   Mark Rasmussen (01:10) I need to like soundbite clip that,   like I have a crush on Moolah just like everywhere in social. I love that.   Kiera Dent (01:15) I   do. do because I like companies that make things easy, but also are like the cheapest on the market and credit card fees are one of my biggest beefs. Like really truly I get annoyed when I look to see how much credit card fees are charging. And when you guys, ⁓ deadly team listeners, just so you know, I'm going to throw it out there. Like anybody who goes through our link literally saves 10 basis points. ⁓   on it, which is huge to get anywhere in the credit card industry. So you're getting below that 2.99. So you're getting 2.89 on cards not present and 2.39. And I hope that Mark, I'm allowed to say that because I'm just going to be bold and brazen. And if not, we'll cut that out. So don't stress about that.   Mark Rasmussen (01:52) No, no, no, for sure. And   not only that, it's like, that's not just a like teaser rate, like they look, your practices will get that preferred rate forever, right, which is awesome. And, and it's like you and I were talking a little bit earlier, too, of like, a bit of shock and awe of like, I and myself as well, I've been seeing like some statements from potential practices. And I'm like, ⁓ my God, I'm like, I'm seeing like,   Kiera Dent (02:03) which is so big and you don't add extra heat.   Mark Rasmussen (02:19) six, seven, eight percent, like net effective rates. I know you were saying you have been seeing even higher. It's crazy. Yeah, that's crazy. It's almost criminal.   Kiera Dent (02:25) Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it   does feel criminal because like here's the thing like you might get a cheaper rate somewhere else but when you look and dig into the details and this is where it feels annoying and obnoxious to me and doesn't happen right away it happens like when you've stopped looking at it you're like I've checked my credit card company for years they don't do anything and then all of a sudden it starts creeping up and being eerie and that's where I just get annoyed and that's why like I have a crush on Moolah because you guys don't do it and you guys stay consistent for it so   I felt Mark and I, you didn't listen to our last podcast, we'll definitely link it in the show notes for you. But Mark, I felt we should kick today off with some case studies because I have some clients that I've recommended over to Moolah. And I think my favorite one is we were looking and I had a practice and our overhead was high. So like this practice, they don't love to like look at numbers. They have an amazing CPA. Like I will say we do look at numbers, but they're kind of like, yeah, carry it. We'll just like out produce our problems a little bit. And that's fine. Like anybody can have that. But I said, Hey,   Mark Rasmussen (03:17) Alright.   Kiera Dent (03:21) Your credit card fees are really high. think that they were honestly like 10%. And I'm like, is that really true? Like that just seems outlandish. And they said, well, Kiera, we're in a contract. Mark, do you want to throw up with contracts? Tell me about credit card contracts.   Mark Rasmussen (03:33) Oh, I hate contracts. I hate contracts   like really in anything in my life. I don't know. So yeah, but that's, it's just crazy. The industry for the longest time has like felt the need to like lock these business owners and not just Dennis, but business owners in like these typically it's like three year contracts. And then, you know, they'll have like termination fees. And so they take advantage of that. And like you were saying, I talked to so many practices are like, Oh, I'm paying X and you know, they were paying X the first month that they signed up.   And then they didn't look at it, like you said, and then six months later, eight months later, the processor started like nudging it up, nudging it up, nudging it up. And to the point where when you look at what their rates are, you know, two years from when they signed up, it's like almost 180 degrees difference. So yeah, please you guys out there, please make sure you stay on your credit card processing. Look at those month end statements. Look at, you know, what is being nudged up because   Kiera Dent (04:19) Yeah.   Mark Rasmussen (04:28) You know, they'll just slip it in a little statement message. They're not forthcoming about it. I promise you they're not like, shooting you multiple emails or calling you and be like, hey, we're going to increase your rate. No, no, no, no, no. They're going to slip it under the table and hope that you never pay attention to it, which is really what happens because you guys are all busy. You guys are all doing amazing care on patients and you're not paying attention to that. That's the reality.   Kiera Dent (04:49) And it's creepy to me because it's also done on things that don't make sense. Like I feel like reading a credit card statement with what they're charging is like reading very highly processed foods. And I'm like, I have no clue what 90 % of these words are. And I feel like it's the same thing when you come to a credit card statement. And so back to this practice, what we did, there's two case studies I wanted to bring to the table today that are my own personal clients that I've referred over to Moolah that I signed up with Moolah. So this practice, again, overhead, let's out produce our problems.   Mark Rasmussen (05:00) That's a good comparison, I like that.   Kiera Dent (05:18) And it was wild because the first month they switched to Moolah, their CPA sent a letter to all of us and said like, hey, what'd you do? Did you switch credit card companies? Your fees are so much lower. Like that fast first month drop down. So we went from about a 10 % fee on what they're producing and collecting to then dropping it down to this 2.89 to 2.39, depending upon if card was present or not, which is super awesome also because then you can get cards.   Mark Rasmussen (05:28) guys.   Kiera Dent (05:44) on auto renew, like on just processing internally and you don't have to, like you can have cards present or not present within the practice, which is so awesome. ⁓ But I was shocked like that fast. And then another practice that we brought to Moolah, they were locked in with another credit card company. And so I didn't know you couldn't do this, Mark. So this was like rookie mistake on me. Like I was, I'm scrappy and I thought, well, okay, fine. You guys are in a contract. So.   just stop processing through that processor, switch everything over to Moolah. Well, you know this Mark and I was rookie so you know what happens. Do you know what happens with those companies?   Mark Rasmussen (06:21) No,   listen, I said that a lot too because technically, really, if the practice is in a contract, and I've said that before, you probably have these miscellaneous junk fees, these monthly minimums that are gonna hit maybe 20, $30 a month. But even if you're paying that minimum and you saved thousands over here, who cares? Pay that minimum, just write that contract out. What happened here in this scenario? Okay.   Kiera Dent (06:44) That was exactly what I said too. So   that's what, cause I was like, why not? I thought the exact same thing. I'm like, okay, if we're looking at, you're able to save 3%, 4 % like higher amounts and we're processing, even if you're processing a hundred thousand or 200,000, like that extra two, 3 % do the math. Like that's surely going to offset the cost. Well, what happened is we actually did that. So a client signed up with you guys. They did that. And we got a letter from the other processor saying,   Mark Rasmussen (06:54) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (07:11) that, we have a minimum and if we don't hit it, it was going to be substantial and to get out of contract, it was going to cost us a thousand dollars. So we literally said, fine, take the thousand dollars because we'd already saved that much through Moolah's savings to be able to like, we're just like, like it's a done deal. Like they were trying to threaten them with this thousand dollar fee, but we were like, that's so minimal to get us out of this contract based on how much we were saving. Now this practice was processing a decent chunk.   Mark Rasmussen (07:32) Right. Right.   Kiera Dent (07:38) But I think even if you're processing like 70,000, 80,000, that one, 2 % stacks up. Like it's insane how much we pay in credit card fees. So those are like the two that I wanted to bring to the, like I said, this is why I have a crush because I hate credit card fees so much. And that's going to lead into our next topic. But Mark, anything you want to add? Cause these were two cases that I've watched since we last met.   Mark Rasmussen (07:45) yeah.   I love that.   Kiera Dent (08:00) ⁓ I'm constantly on the prowl for cheaper people. I love that you guys don't charge for the terminals. You have it set up the next day. There's no contracts. Like that's where I said, like it's your new favorite, like credit card processing. You don't increase the fees. You give our clients reduced rates. If you have multi locations, you guys also take care of those practices. Like it's amazing what you guys do. So that's my like pitch for Moolah, but if you want to add anything else.   Mark Rasmussen (08:22) I love that. wanted to, because you just   like rang a memory. So what you were referring to in that practice, right, where like, okay, you can't just skate by and just pay the minimum, right? Or they were gonna hit him with his fee. Well, another thing I'm gonna tell your listeners out there is, listen, if you don't go with Moolah, great, do your homework. But one thing to look out that I've seen in contracts, which is crazy, is that sometimes you'll see a contract, all right, if you cancel early, it's like a 350 termination fee. Okay, fine.   but I've seen others out there where the processor says they try to enforce liquidated damages. So the processor will say, oh, we've been making, you're in a three year contract, on average we're making like, whatever, $500 a month on your processing. If you leave us now, it's not early termination fee, we're gonna calculate that $500 for the remaining 16, 17 months and they hit you with this liquidated damages thing, crazy. So just be on the lookout for that. If you're doing anywhere that's a contract,   Kiera Dent (08:57) No.   Mark Rasmussen (09:20) Look out for liquidated damages, that's no bueno, but better yet, find somebody that's just not gonna put you in a contract. Much easier.   Kiera Dent (09:26) Yeah. And   also like, okay, Mark, help me understand. And maybe you don't know because you guys don't do this and that's okay. But to me, it feels really funny that I signed a contract with them and there's got to be something in the fine print because I'm like, how did they go from what they told me to being able to add all these extra surcharges later on and increase it when we're in a contract?   Mark Rasmussen (09:43) for sure it's in the fine print.   yeah. It says that any, it basically says that any time at our discretion with 30 days notice, we can make an adjustment to any of your pre-schedule. And so they'll just do that. And then they'll just put a little message, you know, really small font in whatever kind of notification. And you know, in their minds, right? All right, well, we checked off the box. It's super shady. It sucks, but it's, you know, it's out there. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (10:05) Yeah, it is what it is. And I would say   they'll like look at it because two clients that were in contract, we were able to send over every person that I've sent to you guys have just loved who you are, that it's easy, that it's fast, that it's the cheapest processing. And there's a few other features that I think we should talk about. I feel like I'm on like a Moolah sales pitch right now. Like I'm truly not. I just get giddy. Like if you guys hear me talk about Swell,   Mark Rasmussen (10:27) Ha   Kiera Dent (10:30) was Zeke and Google reviews. I have a crush on Swell. They just do Google reviews better than anyone else. And right now, Moolah for sure, you guys are taking the cake on being able to do credit card processing better than any other company that I've come across, which I think is amazing. And so something else that I think is ratcheting fees on practices when we're looking for some of these cashflow leaks is on membership plans. Now, I'm a huge proponent of membership plans. I also think with the economy, with where insurance is reimbursing, ⁓ people are starting to look at like   should we be going out of network? And my big proposal is, hey, yeah, of course, if you want to do that rock on, membership plans really can help with that. But ⁓ there are some membership companies that actually charge pretty outlandish fees. I never wanted to pay for that. I was scrappy in a practice. So what I did is I just charged the patient an annual fee. Well, that was like eight years ago that I was charging an annual fee. And I think you look at today's world, no one wants an annual fee anymore. They just want like a monthly fee and they want it to be low.   Mark Rasmussen (11:02) for   Right. Right.   Kiera Dent (11:28) But managing that is nonsense on my own paying for it. And Moolah, like I've heard through the grapevine, you guys are doing something with membership fees. Can we talk about the membership plans? Talk about how you guys do this. Is it easier? Is it something we can do? Because I think membership plans have to come into play with the insurance situation that offices are in. And also possibly a cash leak if you're paying for heavy management fees on your membership plans.   Mark Rasmussen (11:37) Yeah, yeah, absolutely.   Yeah. So listen, membership discount plans. I've since I've been, I've only been in the industry, you know, dental industry for about four years now. And every year I feel like it's getting traction. More practices are asking about us. I have practices that are doing demos with us and they're like, Hey, I'm doing this demo is driving it because I heard you guys do, you know, membership, discount plan management. And so yes, the answer is we do. ⁓   And as you were looking to, there's a lot of great vendors in this space that just do that, right? And I'm not going to name any names, but there's a lot of great vendors, but they're not inexpensive. Like, you know, there's some decent SAS fees and then you pay per patient enrollment. ⁓ And so when it's, you know, when you look at the net net and you're like, okay, is this really making sense? So what's nice is that we have complete membership discount plan management built into the platform. You can create all your plans. ⁓ You can easily onboard the patient into the system.   Kiera Dent (12:21) Mm-hmm.   Yeah.   Mark Rasmussen (12:48) whether the patient wants to go monthly or annual, like you said, you were doing annual and a lot of the practices that I run into have historically been doing it annually, right? Because to think about billing it on a monthly basis has you like pulling your hair out. But the reality is that the patients and the consumers in the world that we live in, ⁓ everybody looks at whatever they're gonna bring into their life, whether it's a Netflix subscription or it's a car payment or it's anything else, everybody kind of looks at at a monthly basis.   Kiera Dent (13:02) Too hard.   Mark Rasmussen (13:17) And so that is what you want to be delivering. And so with the Moolah platform, you can absolutely manage an in-house membership discount plan and offer both annual and monthly options and truly set it and forget it. Not have to think about it. The system's going to run. The system's going to automatically post that payment into the ledger. In open dental, we even go a step further where when you enroll the patient into the membership, not only are we handling the billing element of it,   But we're also going into the PMS and we're associating that patient to that membership discount plan and keeping track. You know, that's what's really doing all the heavy lifting of keeping track of whatever the one free cleaning of the 10 % off services. And we keep that in lockstep. So if there was like a billing issue, we automatically disassociate the patient from the plan to really just kind of make it pain free. you know, membership discount plans are phenomenal. It's a win win for patients and practice. First of all, it brings some really great reoccurring   Kiera Dent (13:51) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (14:14) like trackable revenue into the practice, right? Number two, it's bringing patients like butts in seats ⁓ as well. ⁓ Because the patient looks like, I'm paying $40 a month. I should use it. I should be in there. ⁓ And it's bringing value to the patient. So it's literally just a win-win all around. I really love that for, you know, when you're looking at out of network patients ⁓ and the absolutely, you know, the platform has it built in. So you guys, please, if you're looking at discount plans, memberships,   I encourage you to look at some of the other great vendors out there and then come take a look at us last and see like the value that you get that's included.   Kiera Dent (14:49) That's awesome. Yeah. And again, like there are so many great people out there that are doing it. I just feel, ⁓ when I heard that you guys were doing membership plans, I was like, well, it kind of makes sense because you're already processing credit cards. Like you're already doing the processing. So now something else that is doing a processing is in my processor, into my software, which I just, that was so incredibly clever. And, ⁓ like again, I had another client who, who scoped you against other companies and they were like, gosh, like there's no fees.   Mark Rasmussen (15:03) Great.   Kiera Dent (15:17) compared to other companies with moolah. So that was something I was really excited about. I'm big on just, it's like my insurance. I've been with State Farm forever. And Jason and I giggled, we're like, we need to go and actually like assess and make sure that we're truly getting the best plans. And so I just think like it's good to periodically go and assess and make sure our credit card fees, what they were when we set up.   our membership plans making sense? Is it time to look to possibly renegotiate some certain things? And again, I'm not here to propose one company over another. Like Mark said, do your homework, figure out what's best because there's so many great companies out there. I just really love when it's simple and easy. And that's something I love about you guys, Mark, you guys have the fact that we can send patient statements and like have payments online and they can pay it all times of the day. Like just that alone boosts offices, collections with Moulin. So Mark, I want to go into a dicey topic with you though.   because this one's hot. We had it in our in-person ⁓ doctor and leadership mastermind when we were in Arizona and I loved it. It was like a hot, hot topic and heads up like this might be awkward for you. I don't think it will because of who you are, but there's the question of, and it was hot, like the room was split of people who were pro and con. So the question is with credit card fees being as much as they were, we talked about at the beginning, like ways that we can reduce it.   Mark Rasmussen (16:10) Let's do it.   I know, I wanna hear what the feedback was, because I know where you're going.   Kiera Dent (16:40) Then we talked about reducing membership plans. Now there's a question of, should we actually charge patients the credit card fees? Like this is becoming really popular and I don't blame businesses because inflation's high, labor is higher. So now we're trying to figure out like where could we cut? And so people are like, well, sweet, we're just gonna pass on the credit card fees to our patients. And the room was spicy. There was like people that were so pro and people that like literally people were bristly and it was a...   Mark Rasmussen (17:05) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (17:06) It was quite interesting. So your credit card company, which is where I feel like it's a little awkward to ask you this question, but I want to know, we pro, are we con? Should we charge the patients from your perspective? We're in 2025. So many companies do this. Should people be charging patients the credit card fee? Should they just raise their fees and bake it in? Like, what are your thoughts on this? Because my room was 50 50 split. And I will tell you some of the feedback if you want to hear it, cause it was quite interesting.   Mark Rasmussen (17:13) Yeah.   Okay, okay.   I do. Okay, so the first   thing I want to point out is I expect you to say that the room is split, right? Like half of them are like, yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm not paying for my patients' reward points. And I think the other half of the room was like, yeah, but I'm worried about the optics. Does it look like we're trying to be cheesy or nickel and diming our patients, right? Those are the two ends that are battling each other. The interesting thing is that this hot topic, ⁓ if you would have asked that just three years ago,   Kiera Dent (17:38) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm. No.   Mark Rasmussen (18:01) it wouldn't have been 50 50. It   would have been like 80 90 % saying no way and 10 % made me do it. So the trend is is like it is going right and two or three years from now I have a feeling it's going to be like 80 % are doing it and 20 % are not doing it. So the cat is out of the bag. Let's just get that you know right out there in the open. What do I think about it? I'm to be super Switzerland about this and I'm going to say that I think   Kiera Dent (18:06) Agreed. 100 % agree.   I would agree with you.   Remember he's   a credit card processing company.   Mark Rasmussen (18:31) Well,   no, I'm going to say that I think that as a vendor who delivers credit card processing service, I think that I should enable our practices to make that choice for themselves. I think whatever you think you should do for your practice, I want to support it. So if you don't want to do surcharging, great, we love that. If you do want to do surcharging, great, I love that. I just want to give the tools to the practice so they can make that decision. Now, aside what I think about it,   It's a very interesting topic to talk about. Well, what is the net result? I like, all right, how does it work? What does it save? Let's get into it if I may. Okay, so there's a couple ways. There is absolutely there. There is, and there's a couple flavors to this. There's a couple flavors to this. ⁓ there, the, the, what that we do, let me talk about that first. So what we do is what's referred to as compliance surcharging and with compliance surcharging, what is, what you're doing is that   Kiera Dent (19:06) I agree. Cause like, are there rules around it? Like, you actually have to do anything? Okay. I have no idea. Okay.   Mark Rasmussen (19:28) When a customer's paying you with a credit card, the system, system, I'll just speak to our system, most others are similar, but when a patient is paying you, whether it's in practice on the device or whether you sent a text to pay or it's an online payment, our system automatically, real time, looks at the number that the patient put in or used on the terminal. And within a half a second, we're looking back at the credit card network before we even charge it, and we say, is this a credit or is this a debit? If the patient is paying with a credit card,   We then pop on the screen, either on their mobile device or on the terminal, we say, hey, we see you're using a credit card. We're going to add 2.99 % as a fee to you for using a credit card. If you want to use a debit card, you will avoid that fee. So in Compliance Surcharging, what I really like about that is that you're not charging us fee across debit and credit, right? You're still giving your patient the convenience of being able to pay with plastic.   Kiera Dent (20:19) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (20:25) and still use a debit card because the reality is if you have a credit card in your wallet, there's probably 99 % chance you've got a Visa debit card in your wallet as well. And so you're not pulling away that convenience of them being able to pay plastic and just saying, hey, if you want to avoid that fee, pay cash or check. That's kind of archaic. So with compliance surcharging, you are going to offload your credit card fees to the patient, only the credit card fees. When they pay with a debit card, you will still pay for that, okay?   Kiera Dent (20:43) I agree.   Mark Rasmussen (20:55) With doing that with Moolah, if you're going to pay the debit fee and not pay the credit card fee, we see that the overall net effective rate for the practice ends up being below 1%. It ends up being like, I'm going to throw out a weird term that people are going, what the heck is that? It's usually going to be around 75 or 80 basis points. About three quarters of 1 % is going to be your net overall cost, which is huge savings, right? Huge savings.   Kiera Dent (21:07) No.   Crazy, like insane. Just do   some math. If you did a million dollars and you were able to basically save, gosh, so much.   Mark Rasmussen (21:28) No, let's just say,   the reality is you're probably saving one and a half percent. So on a million dollar practice, that practice is gonna put about $15,000 back to their bottom line. Like, and that's it, and it was painless. And you're still not really, yeah, exactly.   Kiera Dent (21:37) Exactly.   And that's also for payments you're already collecting. Like this is already   money we're collecting, we just get to keep more of it rather than having the credit card processing fee.   Mark Rasmussen (21:47) Yes.   And it doesn't need to like, you know, break brain cells for you to try and figure it out. Like the system is going to automatically calculate it. We're going to organize it. ⁓ It's just, it's painless. We're handling it in the PMS correctly. listen, the savings cannot be ignored. Like we talked about the cats out of the bag. You're going to see more businesses across more different verticals. ⁓ And the reality is   We've all been around it for a long, long time, right? Who's been doing it forever? Gas stations, right? We've seen it on there. Cash credit, right? That's been there forever. And we're all used to it. And you also typically see a lot when you're dealing with like state or federal agencies, you ever gone on and make an online tax payment, they usually charge a fee there. So it's just now getting more, you know, ⁓ rolling out. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (22:40) Nail salons for the girls out there. We all know the   nail salons. They'll say like, it's a 3 % charge if you use credit card. I'm like, here's your cash. Like it's clever. They push us to what they want.   Mark Rasmussen (22:49) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.   So it is listen. So I, I believe in delivering the technology to our clients, I don't have an opinion one way or the other, whatever you feel is good. I will tell you though that I think a lot of practices, especially on the on the one half of the room that are like against it. I think what we're finding is that people are not pushing back as much as   you think they are because consumers are just getting used to it. And again, the fact that at least with our practices, you're still giving your patient the ability to have that convenience and pay with a debit card and not have the fee. If they were doing like the model where they call it, know, cash discount, where you're going to hit the debit card and you're going to hit the credit card, I think you get more pushback on that, but you're still giving that convenience. So yeah, I'm a fan of it. We get, like I said, more and more requests of it. ⁓   It's not going anywhere. yeah, we're here to support your practice. If you guys want to try it out, try it out and listen, here's the thing.   Kiera Dent (23:50) Yeah.   How does it work in practice   though? Like, so someone's standing in front of me at a terminal, I'm collecting money in person. How does this work? Because it's not gonna pop up on my like treatment plan that I just gave them or on my ledger. So how do I do that?   Mark Rasmussen (24:00) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.   It'll pop up on the terminal.   so first thing we do, we give the practices, ⁓ you know, some template messaging and they'll just want to put up something by the front desk. And it says something to the effect of that, you know, this office adds a surcharge when using a credit card, ⁓ not beyond, you know, what our costs are, right? This is not a money, additional money revenue is trying to like, you know, make arbitrage between costs and no, I'm only going to pass off. And so.   Kiera Dent (24:32) Great.   Mark Rasmussen (24:35) the patient is aware of it, they've seen it, and then when they go to use it on the terminal, if they're in practice, when they go to run the credit card, it will pop up on the screen and your team can just show it to the patient, they'll see it, that it's adding it because they're using the credit card. And it'll give them an option if they want to accept it or if they want to back out of it and try again with a debit card and avoid the fee, really easy.   Kiera Dent (24:58) Okay, that's actually really helpful. And now I have a question because I don't know this. How does this work? Because technically the practice is collecting more money, right? Like we are taking the fee plus the credit card fee. ⁓   Mark Rasmussen (25:10) Let's say it's $100 and let's just say we're   adding that surcharge so now it's $103. Okay? Yeah. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (25:14) Right, so that's $3 more per $100 transaction. But   does that impact them in tax? I would think no, because credit card companies still charging us the 3%. Like, how does this work? Are you following what I'm saying? how does this impact you?   Mark Rasmussen (25:26) Yeah, I do. So you   don't have anything else to like, you know, break your brain on that. Our system, first of all, will break out the surcharge in the reporting. Okay. So it's really clean. Furthermore, the addition, the $103, right, like the customer got charged, the patient got charged $103. But our system automatically calculates it, that you have a fee of 3 % and that you surcharge the patient 3%. So the practice is still just going to get the full $100.   Kiera Dent (25:36) Mm-hmm.   Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (25:56) It's as if they took a cash payment. So it's easy for them. They're not getting 10.99 at the $103, so to speak. It's just still truly only taking $100, which is great.   Kiera Dent (25:57) Gotcha. Okay.   Mm-hmm. ⁓   Yeah, because that's what   I was curious like, and like some things have sales tax. So didn't know like surcharges, do they get taxed differently or is it just like accepting cash, same thing for a practice? Okay. Now, so that's really helpful. And that helps me see on the ledger. So are you guys synced into the PMS for it to say, because like if my ledger says a hundred dollars, but I'm now doing 3 % surcharge on it.   Mark Rasmussen (26:18) Exactly, total amount, total amount, yeah.   Yes.   Kiera Dent (26:35) I'm going to be posting $103. How do I make sure that all of my ledgers match up?   Mark Rasmussen (26:40) So   we'll post $100 in the ledger, okay? And then we'll have a procedure code for the surcharge. And then we'll also have an offsetting so that it doesn't mess up your balance. So you can easily run reports based on the procedure code. I can see what my surcharge is, but it's not messing up and showing that, I took in $103 on this $100 transaction. So your ledger is gonna stay nice and clean.   and not be a nightmare, 100%.   Kiera Dent (27:10) Okay,   because that's I was like, Oh, great. Because there was another office that I heard about. And Mark, I'm just curious about your opinion on this. And then we're gonna get back to this like spicy and thanks for walking through this. There was another practice, I've literally never heard of this before. So I'm curious if you have or if you recommend or don't this practice. So let's say a patient, the total is $100, they pay the $100, the practice literally posted on the ledger.   Mark Rasmussen (27:28) Mm-hmm.   Kiera Dent (27:38) instead of being $100 because now they lost $3, they posted $97 on the ledger and they were taking out the surcharge. Have you ever heard of that? Because I had never heard it. I was, do you recommend that? Because I've never recommended that, right? And I think as a patient, I'd feel really angry though. no, I gave you 100 bucks, but you gave me 97. Like I would just.   Mark Rasmussen (27:48) I haven't.   That seems wonky. Yeah.   Right. Or   continue that on. How about now all of a sudden a week later you go to refund it and we're we're refunding you 97. You're like, no, no, no, I paid you 100. It's gonna be messed up in so many levels.   Kiera Dent (28:09) Right. I was just curious.   I was like, I mean, maybe I'm archaic on how I do this. I used to just do it that way and then accept that that would just be a cost on my PNL. But now there's a way for you to actually offset it with the process. So my question is going back to that, that's actually helpful. Thank you. So if you're doing that, definitely recommend not doing that anymore. ⁓ But I was like, Hey, I've never heard of this. Maybe that is the right way to do the accounting on it. But it felt very messy to me. Now,   Do we as the practice need to put in the surcharge as that procedure code when we're charging that out or does Moolah automatically sync it in and put the surcharge of the procedure code?   Mark Rasmussen (28:48) We have, yeah,   automatically done. There's nothing for you to do. Yeah. So during onboarding, we will set up, we will work with the practice, obviously. We'll make sure that we have a procedure code set up for them. And so during the onboarding, we'll have that so that when you do run a surcharge transaction like that, there's nothing you need to do. It'll all be handled in the ledger correctly.   Kiera Dent (28:51) Amazing. I love it. This is why I said I have a preference on you.   and you're in all softwares. What softwares does Moolah sink into?   Mark Rasmussen (29:10) Yes, so ⁓ Open Dental, ⁓ Dentrix, G7, and ⁓ newer server-based, not Ascend. And we're actually going to be ⁓ releasing, finally, this has been a long time coming, we're finally going live with Eagle Soft ⁓ Beta at end of next week. So Open Dental, Dentrix, and Eagle Soft. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (29:28) Awesome.   That's awesome. Okay, very cool. And   then if you're not in one of those and you can just obviously add this in, it wouldn't be automatically synced. And I think like of those ones though, huge win this way. Okay, now we'll go back to the spicy. I will tell you guys how the room was divided. The room was divided, I'll be right. The do it, don't do it. And then the like, there's a middle ground, which I thought the middle ground was kind of convenient. ⁓ There wasn't, but I did see people like it. I did feel like it was like,   Mark Rasmussen (29:45) Yes.   Was there any physical fighting going on? Okay.   Kiera Dent (30:00) like politics and religion status. Like it was like very cut through the room. I do agree with you. And that's what I said. I was like, you guys, this 2025, this is going to take place in the future and it will be very common. just, think our early adopters going to stay or not. It's your choice. Um, I've always been of the opinion like, no, just bake it into your fee. And now I'm like, well, everybody's starting to charge for it. Like, why not? Um, so it was don't charge for it now. Another was like, no, put it in. People are doing it anyway. And the middle ground, which I thought was   Mark Rasmussen (30:02) Right. Right, right, right.   Kiera Dent (30:30) of a good way to do it is in person. They didn't charge a fee, but any of their online statements, they did charge a fee because they said most people who pay online know there's usually a service fee associated with it. So I thought that was kind of a, an easy way. If you guys are looking for a navigation through it. ⁓ but I think like, honestly, it's just like anything else, train your patients if you want to, but don't feel like you have to, I think it'd just be something to consider. So, but again,   Like get the reduction, like if nothing else, like switch to a processor that's going to be reduced fees anyway. So even if you want to continue offering it, you're still saving on that. Mark, I have one last thing that I wanted to dive into. I'm hearing from a lot of like integrated softwares. So like dental Intel and Flex and some of these other ones that literally make practice lives easier. They're having processors in there that are just integrated right into that. They're using it all the time.   Mark Rasmussen (31:20) Yeah.   Kiera Dent (31:25) How does Moolah play in those worlds? Like, do you get the same pricing? Do we not get the same pricing? Are some of those better because they're already bundled in? Again, I'm putting you on like really awkward topics, but I just want to know. I want to know how does this work.   Mark Rasmussen (31:35) No, no, not at all. So listen, you mentioned Flex. We   love Flex, okay? I love Flex, not just because, yes, they're a partner of ours, right? And yes, your Mool account works beautifully and integrated with Flex. But I love Flex just because I think they're like cut from the same cloth that we are. Like we just, at the end of the day, we want to over-deliver, right? We want to over-deliver, whether it's technology, whether it's value, and they have that mindset. And so I love the Flex team. Full disclosure.   ⁓ And so we've been an integrated partner with Flex for, gosh now, I think three years. So yeah, I think they deliver a ton of value to any open dental practice. So anybody out there for sure should check out Flex. They are amazing. Dental Intel. So we used to be, ⁓ not to bore the audience, but like we used to have an integration with Modento and then Dental Intel acquired Modento.   Kiera Dent (32:33) Yep.   Mark Rasmussen (32:33) and   then Dental Intel wanted to roll up their own integrated credit card processing. And so they have now. so, listen, ⁓ we wish Dental Intel the best, wish them well, but yeah, we're no longer integrated with Dental Intel, but yeah, Flex, we love Flex.   Kiera Dent (32:49) Okay, because I was just curious. Now, I feel if it's bundled, is this a time where offices should just be strategic? I'm not saying anyone's doing it. I haven't looked at it. So I'm not here to like cast judge or I just want to make sure offices are being smart. I would think when they're bundled or they're integrated, offices should still check even using MULA. They should still be watching their credit card statements every single month, right? Like no matter what, just to always make sure things are staying clean and also before we sign up with anybody.   Mark Rasmussen (33:08) Mm-hmm.   100%.   Kiera Dent (33:19) Like literally read the fine print and look for it. Yes. No. I from like, let's just go all the way back.   Mark Rasmussen (33:23) Yeah.   And I would always say that, you know, let's just take the Flex example. Flex has, you and I won't name anything, I'll let you guys out there, you go check it out to yourself, but there are three options. I encourage you, especially when we're talking about a vendor that you're looking at, and especially when this vendor that you're looking at revolves around your cashflow, right? Like it's a pretty integral part of a vendor that you're bringing into your ecosystem. call them, talk to them.   Kiera Dent (33:46) Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (33:54) Call in the middle of the day. Do they pick up the phone? Do they answer? Can you talk to somebody very easily? Like really pop the hood and take a look at who you're going to get in and do business with, especially when it's, you know, that vendor is like controlling your cash flow on a daily basis. So yes, please you guys out there, do your homework, look at the agreements, ask questions, and see what's right for you. Yeah.   Kiera Dent (34:10) Yeah.   That's awesome. just, again,   I wanted to like go into it because these are things I'm hearing. I'm hearing people say like, this seamlessly integrates. I know you seamlessly integrate. I know you guys are constantly working to refine, to get into more and more practice management softwares to make it easier. Just Mark, as we wrap up, like this has been fun. I love the like, thanks for going into some of the spices with me. ⁓ But just as a quick rundown, like what are some of the features that Moola does? We talked about the membership plans. We did talk about that Dental A Team clients get 10 % basis points less for card present or card not present.   Mark Rasmussen (34:33) Always is.   Yep.   Kiera Dent (34:47) Which to me that alone, I would just look into it and see, like I said, two clients literally saved money by like dumping their contracts and moving over, which I think to me, like before I can have a crush on a company, I test them pretty heavily. So to see the proof in the pudding, I was so just elated and it made me even like you guys more. But what else does Moola do? Because I know you guys do a lot of other things that just make life easy.   Mark Rasmussen (35:05) I love that. yeah, yeah. So   at the end of the day, we do a lot, but it's all payment related and will always be payment related, right? So we're focused on being like, we try to be like the end all be all payment solution for dentists. And so when you look at like, what does a dental office need from a payment perspective, ⁓ it's in practice payments, right? So we provide you guys the physical devices. So   No more having to buy rent or lease those terminals. We're going to include them. you know, not only, yeah, they're wireless. Yeah, they're really cool. Aesthetically, they look really good. Yeah. And, and here's the other great part too, that I think it's kind of underrated ⁓ is of course, not only did we include them. the practice didn't need to buy them, but like normally, you know, with our peers, you have to buy these devices and then you buy them and then it's like one year warranty, right? And then like Murphy's law always kicks in.   Kiera Dent (35:37) They're awesome too. They're portable. They can go back to the hygiene operatories. It's amazing. So your hygienist can take it. Like they're awesome. It's so great.   Mark Rasmussen (36:01) like it loves to do. like, okay, month 14, the device just, you know, went out on you. And then you're gonna sorry, you got to buy another five $600 device with mula you guys will literally never have hardware expense ever because we give them to you on the front end. And we will warranty them forever. As long as you're with us. I don't care four or five, six years. If there's new devices that come out and your guys age out, we're going to replace them. Even if you drop it off the counter and crack the screen.   We don't care, we're gonna replace it for you. There's no fear or premium. So, in practice payments, we have you covered there from a technology standpoint as well as a hardware standpoint. Moving on, there's also, have the ability to, like you were talking about earlier, store patient cards securely tokenized. Nothing's ever touching the practices servers. It's all on our servers, but it's giving you the convenience of having those stored cards for the patient. You can have as many stored cards as you want. You can even send a request to the patient.   before their appointment and the patient from easily from home from their mobile device could add their credit card. And so when they come in, it's already stored and it's available to use. So stored cards, yeah, yeah, yeah.   Kiera Dent (37:07) With that, can I ask, do you guys have   the compliance paperwork? Is there anything you have to do to get a patient to have a stored credit card that we can run for future payments? once insurance pays, because I know that's a big thing of storing cards on file, do you have anything with that? Because I know that this is a zone.   Mark Rasmussen (37:23) Yep. What I...   Yeah, no. So it's very obvious as far as the process of the patient adding the card. Like when you send the message, it says, hey, would you like to securely store your card on file? Right? Beyond that, what I've seen some practices do is just they'll just include it in their overall like new patient intake forms and kind of include it in their terms of service of that. Hey, listen, if you want to store a card on file with us, you can. And you allow, once you store a card, you're giving us the authorization to utilize that card.   Kiera Dent (37:35) Mm-hmm.   Mark Rasmussen (37:51) for other future balances. As simple as that, that's all you need to do.   Kiera Dent (37:54) which is so smart you   guys think about it. This is where so many other industries do this. They have a card on file. I mean, I go to the spa, my cards on file, they run that card when I'm gone, like I authorize it to happen. So they never out of money. They're never chasing money down. Like it just to me makes so much more sense of a way to process.   Mark Rasmussen (38:12) Can you imagine if   Netflix or all the other subscriptions, if they had to wait for a payment every month and wait, come on, no. Subscription is the way, 100%. So, okay, so store card on file they get. The other thing they get is the ability to create and manage in-house payment plans. And of course, automatically post those payments to the ledger. We have some great things where if the payment fails, right? They're into the plan for three months and all of sudden the July payment fails.   Kiera Dent (38:18) No. No.   Yeah.   Mark Rasmussen (38:41) our system will automatically notify the practice, notify the patient, and what's cool is that the software will allow the patient to self-administer and fix it. So the software is not telling the patient, your card failed, call the front desk. No, we're gonna save a phone call there. The software will allow the patient to tell the software, okay, either A, try to charge that card again, or B, they can actually upload a new card on file.   So the cool stat on that is that in failed transactions in our payment plans, we see patients solving it between themselves and software within the first 24 hours at a rate of over 80%, which is huge. So payment plans, and then we talked about earlier, you also get the ability to manage any of your in-house membership or discount plans. ⁓ We have the collecting on a balance when the patient is out of practice, ⁓ sending a payment request either   Kiera Dent (39:20) Holy cow, it's amazing.   Mark Rasmussen (39:37) allocated or unallocated payment request can attach a statement. ⁓ We also have the ability to host a payment page on their website. So if you want to put a little navigation, click here to make an online after hours payment, we'll host that page for the practice. ⁓ So yeah, we really kind of just looked at it a full circle of like, where are all the payment touch points that our practice is dealing with, and just trying to deliver these really amazing tools. And again, as you know, our model.   ⁓ There's never any monthly fees. There's never any set up fees. There's never any annual fees ⁓ All there are these two simple flat rates and again, you can cancel it anytime you want never locked in anything   Kiera Dent (40:18) That's awesome. Mark, I appreciate this so much. How do people, like know they just connect with you, schedule a demo. You guys will look at their credit card processing, see how you guys can fix it. How do they connect with you specifically if they're interested? And specifically The Dental A Team, The Dental A Team, perks.   Mark Rasmussen (40:33) I would recommend and maybe we can list this in the podcast, but there will be a specific Moolah URL. It's like forward slash The Dental A Team They should go there and then they can schedule a demo. And then if they go there, then we're going to know it came from you guys. That way we can get them that 10 basis point savings forever. So just schedule a demo with us and no pressure. We're like the most like   the least salesy organization I think that you guys will ever run into. All we wanna do is inform you. We wanna show you what we have. We're not for everybody. ⁓ But assuming that you guys love what you see, we encourage you to try us out and check us out and see if we're gonna be a great fit for your practice.   Kiera Dent (41:13) Yeah, for sure. You guys, honestly, I love Moolah They're incredible. So on our website, we will link it. So the way you get to Moolah, it's on our website, TheDentalATeam.com. And then you can click on the About Partnerships Mulas right there. ⁓ And the actual, like if you guys want our direct link here, it would be TheDentalATeam.com slash partnerships slash Moolah. And that should take you right to Moolah's page. It's also mula.cc slash partners.   So that helps you guys will also link that in the show notes mark. I appreciate you guys so much Things are being on the podcast things are going through the spicy with me. I appreciate you so much   Mark Rasmussen (41:52) Any time, love you guys, you guys are the best and ⁓ have a great rest of day.   Kiera Dent (41:58) Hey, you too, for all of you listening. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team Podcast.  

Faith looks like... What exactly does faith look like according to Jesus? And how do we show that we have faith? "I believe but help me with my unbelief!"

Full episode on www.patreon.com/benbankasTickets & Tour Schedule: www.benbankas.comThis episode Ben touches on being in Canada during the election. In the full episode on Patreon Ben talks about how he was supposed to go on Katie Couric and Breakfast Television in Canada but had his appearances cancelled at the last second. Ben talks about the love of comedy and how the moments he's having now elicit feelings he had when he did his first open mics.

Episodes 1-3 of The Iran Breakdown drop on Wednesday, March 19. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts, including on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.About this exclusive sneak peekIn this special edition of Foreign Podicy, we're excited to introduce FDD's new podcast series hosted by Mark Dubowitz: The Iran Breakdown. Episodes 1-3 drop on Wednesday, March 19, but Foreign Podicy followers can enjoy the below exclusive preview of The Iran Breakdown, Episode II. In this sneak peek, Mark gets a masterclass on the Iran nuclear file from his FDD colleague Rich Goldberg, who previously served as the White House National Security Council's director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Rich helped coordinate key elements of President Trump's maximum pressure campaign against Tehran, aimed at denying the regime pathways to nuclear weapons. Like Mark, Rich is sanctioned by the Islamic Republic of Iran.About The Iran BreakdownTehran's fingerprints are on some of the most critical challenges that the world grapples with today. Because its illicit activity spans the globe, the Islamic Republic dominates international headlines. From exporting terrorism and racing for the nuclear bomb to brutal human rights violations, news on Iran is often dark and convoluted. Further widening this information gap, many consequential stories from inside Iran—like the regime's decaying legitimacy and the restless population's insatiable hunger for freedom— don't always make it out of Iran. That has regime fingerprints on it, too. The international community's conflicting views on 'the Iran threat' also muddy the water. To make it make sense, Mark sits down with some of the top voices on Iran to unpack and explore the fundamental dynamics that shape it. In 10 episodes of The Iran Breakdown, viewers and listeners will build a sturdy foundation for responsible Iran-watching.Episodes 1-3 of The Iran Breakdown drop on Wednesday, March 19. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts, including on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Episodes 1-3 of The Iran Breakdown drop on Wednesday, March 19. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts, including on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.About this exclusive sneak peekIn this special edition of Foreign Podicy, we're excited to introduce FDD's new podcast series hosted by Mark Dubowitz: The Iran Breakdown. Episodes 1-3 drop on Wednesday, March 19, but Foreign Podicy followers can enjoy the below exclusive preview of The Iran Breakdown, Episode II. In this sneak peek, Mark gets a masterclass on the Iran nuclear file from his FDD colleague Rich Goldberg, who previously served as the White House National Security Council's director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction. Rich helped coordinate key elements of President Trump's maximum pressure campaign against Tehran, aimed at denying the regime pathways to nuclear weapons. Like Mark, Rich is sanctioned by the Islamic Republic of Iran.About The Iran BreakdownTehran's fingerprints are on some of the most critical challenges that the world grapples with today. Because its illicit activity spans the globe, the Islamic Republic dominates international headlines. From exporting terrorism and racing for the nuclear bomb to brutal human rights violations, news on Iran is often dark and convoluted. Further widening this information gap, many consequential stories from inside Iran—like the regime's decaying legitimacy and the restless population's insatiable hunger for freedom— don't always make it out of Iran. That has regime fingerprints on it, too. The international community's conflicting views on 'the Iran threat' also muddy the water. To make it make sense, Mark sits down with some of the top voices on Iran to unpack and explore the fundamental dynamics that shape it. In 10 episodes of The Iran Breakdown, viewers and listeners will build a sturdy foundation for responsible Iran-watching.Episodes 1-3 of The Iran Breakdown drop on Wednesday, March 19. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts, including on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Genevieve Hayes Consulting Episode 53: A Wake-Up Call from 3 Tech Leaders on Why You're Failing as a Data Scientist Are your data science projects failing to deliver real business value?What if the problem isn’t the technology or the organization, but your approach as a data scientist?With only 11% of data science models making it to deployment and close to 85% of big data projects failing, something clearly isn’t working.In this episode, three globally recognised analytics leaders, Bill Schmarzo, Mark Stouse and John Thompson, join Dr Genevieve Hayes to deliver a tough love wake-up call on why data scientists struggle to create business impact, and more importantly, how to fix it.This episode reveals:Why focusing purely on technical metrics like accuracy and precision is sabotaging your success — and what metrics actually matter to business leaders. [04:18]The critical mindset shift needed to transform from a back-room technical specialist into a valued business partner. [30:33]How to present data science insights in ways that drive action — and why your fancy graphs might be hurting rather than helping. [25:08]Why “data driven” isn’t enough, and how to adopt a “data informed” approach that delivers real business outcomes. [54:08] Guest Bio Bill Schmarzo, also known as “The Dean of Big Data,” is the AI and Data Customer Innovation Strategist for Dell Technologies' AI SPEAR team, and is the author of six books on blending data science, design thinking, and data economics from a value creation and delivery perspective. He is an avid blogger and is ranked as the #4 influencer worldwide in data science and big data by Onalytica and is also an adjunct professor at Iowa State University, where he teaches the “AI-Driven Innovation” class.Mark Stouse is the CEO of ProofAnalytics.ai, a causal AI company that helps companies understand and optimize their operational investments in light of their targeted objectives, time lag, and external factors. Known for his ability to bridge multiple business disciplines, he has successfully operationalized data science at scale across large enterprises, driven by his belief that data science’s primary purpose is enabling better business decisions.John Thompson is EY's Global Head of AI and is the author of four books on AI, data and analytics teams. He was named one of dataIQ's 100 most influential people in data in 2023 and is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan, where he teaches a course based on his book “Building Analytics Teams”. Links Connect with Bill on LinkedInConnect with Mark on LinkedInConnect with John on LinkedIn Connect with Genevieve on LinkedInBe among the first to hear about the release of each new podcast episode by signing up HERE Read Full Transcript [00:00:00] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Hello, and welcome to Value Driven Data Science, the podcast that helps data scientists transform their technical expertise into tangible business value, career autonomy, and financial reward. I’m Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and today I’m joined by three globally recognized innovators and leaders in AI, analytics, and data science.[00:00:24] Bill Schmarzo, Mark Stouse, and John Thompson. Bill? Also known as the Dean of Big Data, is the AI and Data Customer Innovation Strategist for Dell Technologies AI Spear Team, and is the author of six books on blending data science, design thinking, and data economics from a value creation and delivery perspective.[00:00:49] He is an avid blogger and is ranked as the number four influencer worldwide in data science and big data Analytica. And he’s also an adjunct professor at Iowa State University, where he teaches AI driven innovation. Mark is the CEO of proofanalytics. ai, a causal AI company that helps organizations understand and optimize their operational investments in light of their targeted objectives, time lag and external factors.[00:01:23] Known for his ability to bridge multiple business disciplines, he has successfully operationalized data science at scale across large enterprises. Driven by his belief that data science’s primary purpose is enabling better business decisions. And John is EY’s global head of AI and is the author of four books on AI data and analytics teams.[00:01:49] He was named one of DataIQ’s 100 most influential people in data in 2023. and is also an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan, where he teaches a course based on his book, Building Analytics Teams. Today’s episode will be a tough love wake up call for data scientists on why you are failing to deliver real business value and more importantly, what you can do about it.[00:02:17] So get ready to boost your impact. Earn what you’re worth and rewrite your career algorithm. Bill, Mark, John, welcome to the show.[00:02:25] Mark Stouse: Thank[00:02:26] Bill Schmarzo: Thanks for having us.[00:02:27] John Thompson: to be here.[00:02:28] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Only 11 percent of data scientists say their models always deploy. Only 10 percent of companies obtain significant financial benefits from AI technologies and close to 85 percent of big data projects fail. These statistics, taken from research conducted by Rexa Analytics, the Boston Consulting Group and Gartner respectively, paint a grim view of what it’s like working as a data scientist.[00:02:57] The reality is, you’re probably going to fail. And when that reality occurs, it’s not uncommon for data scientists to blame either the executive for not understanding the brilliance of their work, or the corporate culture for not being ready for data science. And maybe this is true for some organizations.[00:03:20] Particularly those relatively new to the AI adoption path. But it’s now been almost 25 years since William Cleveland first coined the term data science. And as the explosive uptake of generative AI tools, such as chat GPT demonstrate with the right use case. People are very willing to take on AI technologies.[00:03:42] So perhaps it’s finally time to look in the mirror and face the truth. Perhaps the problem is you, the data scientist. But if this is the case, then don’t despair. In many organizations, the leadership just don’t have the time to provide data scientists with the feedback necessary to improve. But today, I’m sitting here with three of the world’s best to provide that advice just for you.[00:04:09] So, let’s cut to the chase what are the biggest mistakes you see data scientists making when it comes to demonstrating their value?[00:04:18] Mark Stouse: I think that you have to start with the fact that they’re not demonstrating their value, right? I mean, if you’re a CEO, a CFO, head of sales really doesn’t matter if you’re trying to make better business decisions over and over and over again. As Bill talks about a lot, the whole idea here is economic,[00:04:39] and it is. About engaging, triggering the laws of compounding you’ve got to be able to do stuff that makes that happen. Data management, for example, even though we all agree that it’s really necessary, particularly if you’re launching, you know, big data solutions. You can’t do this sequentially and be successful.[00:05:04] You’re going to have to find some areas probably using, you know, old fashioned math around causal analytics, multivariable linear regression, things like that, to at least get the ball rolling. In terms of delivering better value, the kind of value that business leaders actually see as valuable[00:05:29] I mean, one of the things that I feel like I say a lot is, you have to have an understanding of your mission, the mission of data science. As somebody who, as a business leader champions it. Is to help people make those better and better and better decisions. And if you’re not doing that, you’re not creating value.[00:05:52] Full stop.[00:05:53] Bill Schmarzo: Totally agree with Mark. I think you’re going to find that all three of us are in violent agreement on a lot of this stuff. What I find interesting is it isn’t just a data scientist fault. Genevieve, you made a comment that leadership lacks the time to provide guidance to data scientists. So if leadership Is it treating data and analytics as an economics conversation if they think it’s a technology conversation is something that should be handled by the CIO, you’ve already lost, you’ve already failed, you already know you failed,[00:06:24] Mark mentioned the fact that this requires the blending of both sides of the aisle. It requires a data scientist to have the right mindset to ask questions like what it is that we’re trying to achieve. How do we create value? What are our desired outcomes? What are the KPIs metrics around which are going to make your success?[00:06:39] Who are our key stakeholders? There’s a series of questions that the data scientist must be empowered to ask and the business Leadership needs to provide the time and people and resources to understand what we’re trying to accomplish. It means we can go back old school with Stephen Covey, begin with an end in mind.[00:07:01] What is it we’re trying to do? Are we trying to improve customer retention? We try to do, you know, reduce unplanned operational downtime or improve patient outcomes. What is it we’re trying to accomplish? The conversation must, must start there. And it has to start with business leadership, setting the direction, setting the charter, putting the posts out where we want to go, and then the data science team collaborating with the stakeholders to unleash that organizational tribal knowledge to actually solve[00:07:32] Dr Genevieve Hayes: think a lot of the problem comes with the fact that many business leaders see data science as being like an IT project. So, if you’ve got your Windows upgrade, the leadership It gives the financing to IT, IT goes along and does it. And then one morning you’re told, when you come into work, your computer will magically upgrade to the latest version of Windows.[00:07:55] So no one really gets bothered by it. And I think many business leaders treat data science as just another IT project like that. They think they can just Give the funding, the data scientists will go away and then they’ll come in one morning and the data science will magically be on their computer.[00:08:15] Bill Schmarzo: Yeah, magic happens, right? No, no, magic doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. There has to be that leadership commitment to be at the forefront, not just on the boat, but at the front of the boat saying this is the direction we’re going to go.[00:08:29] John Thompson: That’s the whole reason this book was written. The whole point is that, analytics projects are not tech projects. Analytics projects are cultural transformation projects, is what they are. And if you’re expecting the CEO, CFO, CIO, COO, whoever it is, to go out there and set the vision.[00:08:50] That’s never going to happen because they don’t understand technology, and they don’t understand data. They’d rather be working on building the next factory or buying another company or something like that. What really has to happen is the analytics team has to provide leadership to the leadership for them to understand what they’re going to do.[00:09:12] So when I have a project that we’re trying to do, my team is trying to do, and if we’re working for, let’s say, marketing, I go to the CMO and I say, look, you have to dedicate and commit. that your subject matter experts are going to be in all the meetings. Not just the kickoff meetings, not just the quarterly business review, the weekly meetings.[00:09:36] Because when we go off as an analytics professionals and do things on our own, we have no idea what the business runs like. , we did analytics at one company that I work for. We brought it back and we showed it to the they said, the numbers are wildly wrong. And we said, well, why? And they said, well, you probably don’t understand that what we do is illegal in 10 US states.[00:10:00] So you probably have the data from all those 10 states in the analysis. And we did. So, we took it all out and they look down there and go, you got it right. It’s kind of surprising. You didn’t know what you were doing and you got it right. So, it has to be a marriage of the subject matter experts in the business.[00:10:17] And the data scientists, you can’t go to the leadership and say, tell us what you want. They don’t know what they want. They’d want another horse in Henry Ford’s time, or they glue a, a Walkman onto a radio or something in Steve Jobs time. They don’t know what they want. So you have to come together.[00:10:36] And define it together and you have to work through the entire project together.[00:10:42] Mark Stouse: Yeah, I would add to that, okay, that a lot of times the SMEs also have major holes in their knowledge that the analytics are going to challenge and give them new information. And so I totally agree. I mean, this is an iterative learning exchange. That has profound cultural implications.[00:11:11] One of the things that AI is doing right now is it is introducing a level of transparency and accountability into operations, corporate operations, my operations, your operations, that honestly, none of us are really prepared for. None of us are really prepared for the level of learning that we’re going to have to do.[00:11:36] And very few of us are aware of how polymathic. Most of our challenges, our problems, our objectives really are one of the things that I love to talk about in this regard is analytics made me a much better person. That I once was because it showed me the extent of my ignorance.[00:12:01] And when I kind of came to grips with that and I started to use really the modicum of knowledge that I have as a way of curating my ignorance. And I got humble about it made a big difference[00:12:16] John Thompson: Well, that’s the same when I was working shoulder to shoulder with Bill, I just realized how stupid I was. So, then I just, really had to, come back and, say, oh, God nowhere near the summit, I have a long way to go.[00:12:31] Bill Schmarzo: Hey, hey, Genevie. Let me throw something out there at you and it builds on what John has said and really takes off on what Mark is talking about is that there is a cultural preparation. It needs to take place across organizations in order to learn to master the economies of learning,[00:12:48] the economies of learning, because you could argue in knowledge based industries that what you are learning is more important than what you know. And so if what you know has declining value, and what you’re learning has increasing value, then what Mark talked about, and John as well, both city presenting data and people saying, I didn’t know that was going on, right?[00:13:09] They had a certain impression. And if they have the wrong cultural mindset. They’re going to fight that knowledge. They’re going to fight that learning, oh, I’m going to get fired. I’m going to get punished. No, we need to create cultures that says that we are trying to master the economies and learning and you can’t learn if you’re not willing to fail.[00:13:29] And that is what is powerful about what AI can do for us. And I like to talk about how I’m a big fan of design thinking. I integrate design thinking into all my workshops and all my training because it’s designed to. Cultivate that human learning aspect. AI models are great at cultivating algorithmic learning.[00:13:50] And when you bring those two things together around a learning culture that says you’re going to try things, you’re going to fail, you’re going to learn, those are the organizations that are going to win.[00:13:59] John Thompson: Yeah, you know, to tie together what Mark and Bill are saying there is that, you need people to understand that they’re working from an outmoded view of the business. Now, it’s hard for them to hear that. It’s hard for them to realize it. And what I ask data scientists to do that work for me is when we get a project and we have an operational area, sales, marketing, logistics, finance, manufacturing, whatever it is.[00:14:26] They agreed that they’re going to go on the journey with us. We do something really simple. We do an exploratory data analysis. We look at means and modes and distributions and things like that. And we come back and we say, this is what the business looks like today. And most of the time they go, I had no idea.[00:14:44] You know, I didn’t know that our customers were all, for the most part, between 70 and 50. I had no idea that our price point was really 299. I thought it was 3, 299. So you then end up coming together. You end up with a shared understanding of the business. Now one of two things is generally going to happen.[00:15:05] The business is going to freak out and leave the project and say, I don’t want anything to do with this, or they’re going to lean into it and say, I was working from something that was, as Bill said, declining value. Okay. Now, if they’re open, like a AI model that’s being trained, if they’re open to learning, they can learn what the business looks like today, and we can help them predict what the business should look like tomorrow.[00:15:31] So we have a real issue here that the three of us have talked about it from three different perspectives. We’ve all seen it. We’ve all experienced it. It’s a real issue, we know how people can come together. The question is, will they?[00:15:46] Dr Genevieve Hayes: think part of the issue is that, particularly in the area of data science, there’s a marked lack of leadership because I think a lot of people don’t understand how to lead these projects. So you’ve got Many data scientists who are trained heavily in the whole technical aspect of data science, and one thing I’ve come across is, you know, data scientists who’ll say to me, my job is to do the technical work, tell me what to do.[00:16:23] I’ll go away and do it. Give it to you. And then you manager can go and do whatever you like with it.[00:16:29] Mark Stouse: Model fitment.[00:16:31] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Yeah. And then one thing I’ve experienced is many managers in data science are, you know, It’s often the area that they find difficult to find managers for, so we’ll often get people who have no data science experience whatsoever[00:16:46] and so I think part of the solution is teaching the data scientists that they have to start managing up because they’re the ones who understand what they’re doing the best, but no one’s telling them that because the people above them often don’t know that they should be telling the data[00:17:08] John Thompson: Well, if that’s the situation, they should just fire everybody and save the money. Because it’s never going to go anywhere. But Bill, you were going to say something. Go ahead.[00:17:16] Bill Schmarzo: Yeah, I was going to say, what’s interesting about Genevieve, what you’re saying is that I see this a lot in not just data scientists, but in a lot of people who are scared to show their ignorance in new situations. I think Mark talked about this, is it because they’re, you think about if you’re a data scientist, you probably have a math background. And in math, there’s always a right answer. In data science, there isn’t. There’s all kinds of potential answers, depending on the situation and the circumstances. I see this all the time, by the way, with our sales folks. Who are afraid we’re selling technology. We’re afraid to talk to the line of business because I don’t understand their business Well, you don’t need to understand their business, but you do need to become like socrates and start asking questions What are you trying to accomplish?[00:18:04] What are your goals? What are your desired outcomes? How do you measure success? Who are your stakeholders ? You have to be genuinely interested In their success and ask those kind of questions if you’re doing it to just kind of check a box off Then just get chad gpt to rattle it off But if you’re genuinely trying to understand what they’re trying to accomplish And then thinking about all these marvelous different tools you have because they’re only tools And how you can weave them together to help solve that now you’ve got That collaboration that john’s book talks about about bringing these teams together Yeah[00:18:39] Mark Stouse: is, famously paraphrased probably did actually say something like this, . But he’s famously paraphrased as saying that he would rather have a really smart question than the best answer in the world. And. I actually experienced that two days ago,[00:18:57] in a conversation with a prospect where I literally, I mean, totally knew nothing about their business. Zero, but I asked evidently really good questions. And so his impression of me at the end of the meeting was, golly, you know, so much about our business. And I wanted to say, yeah, cause you just educated me.[00:19:21] Right. You know, I do now. And so I think there’s actually a pattern here that’s really worth elevating. So what we are seeing right now with regard to data science teams is scary similar to what happened with it after Y2K, the business turned around and looked at him and said, seriously, we spend all that money,[00:19:45] I mean, what the heck? And so what happened? The CIO got, demoted organizationally pretty far down in the company wasn’t a true C suite member anymore. Typically the whole thing reported up into finance. The issue was not. Finance, believing that they knew it better than the it people,[00:20:09] it was, we are going to transform this profession from being a technology first profession to a business outcomes. First profession, a money first profession, an economics organization, that has more oftentimes than not been the outcome in the last 25 years. But I think that that’s exactly what’s going on right now with a lot of data science teams.[00:20:39] You know, I used to sit in technology briefing rooms, listening to CIOs and other people talk about their problems. And. This one CIO said, you know, what I did is I asked every single person in my organization around the world to go take a finance for non financial managers course at their local university.[00:21:06] They want credit for it. We’ll pay the bill. If they just want to audit it, they can do that. And they started really cross pollinating. These teams to give them more perspective about the business. I totally ripped that off because it just struck me as a CMO as being like, so many of these problems, you could just do a search and replace and get to marketing.[00:21:32] And so I started doing the same thing and I’ve made that suggestion to different CDOs, some of whom have actually done it. So it’s just kind of one of those things where you have to say, I need to know more. So this whole culture of being a specialist is changing from.[00:21:53] This, which, this is enough, this is okay , I’m making a vertical sign with my hand, to a T shaped thing, where the T is all about context. It’s all about everything. That’s not part of your. Profession[00:22:09] John Thompson: Yeah, well, I’m going to say that here’s another book that you should have your hands on. This is Aristotle. We can forget about Socrates. Aristotle’s the name. But you know. But , Bill’s always talking about Socrates. I’m an Aristotle guy myself. So, you[00:22:23] Bill Schmarzo: Okay, well I Socrates had a better jump shot. I’m sorry. He could really nail that[00:22:28] John Thompson: true. It’s true. Absolutely. Well, getting back , to the theme of the discussion, in 1 of the teams that I had at CSL bearing, which is an Australian company there in Melbourne, I took my data science team and I brought in speech coaches.[00:22:45] Presentation coaches people who understand business, people who understood how to talk about different things. And I ran them through a battery of classes. And I told them, you’re going to be in front of the CEO, you’re going to be in front of the EVP of finance, you’re going to be in front of all these different people, and you need to have the confidence to speak their language.[00:23:07] Whenever we had meetings, we talk data science talk, we talk data and integration and vectors and, algorithms and all that kind of stuff. But when we were in the finance meeting, we talked finance. That’s all we talked. And whenever we talked to anybody, we denominated all our conversations in money.[00:23:25] Whether it was drachma, yen, euros, pounds, whatever it was, we never talked about speeds and feeds and accuracy and results. We always talked about money. And if it didn’t make money, we didn’t do it. So, the other thing that we did that really made a difference was that when the data scientists and data scientists hate this, When they went into a meeting, and I was there, and even if I wasn’t there, they were giving the end users and executives recommendations.[00:23:57] They weren’t going in and showing a model and a result and walking out the door and go, well, you’re smart enough to interpret it. No, they’re not smart enough to interpret it. They actually told the marketing people. These are the 3 things you should do. And if your data scientists are not being predictive and recommending actions, they’re not doing their job.[00:24:18] Dr Genevieve Hayes: What’s the, so what test At the end of everything, you have to be able to say, so what does this mean to whoever your audience is?[00:24:25] Mark Stouse: That’s right. I mean, you have to be able to say well, if the business team can’t look at your output, your data science output, and know what to do with it, and know how to make a better decision, it’s like everything else that you did didn’t happen. I mean it, early in proof, we were working on. UX, because it became really clear that what was good for a data scientist wasn’t working. For like everybody else. And so we did a lot of research into it. Would you believe that business teams are okay with charts? Most of them, if they see a graph, they just totally freeze and it’s not because they’re stupid.[00:25:08] It’s because so many people had a bad experience in school with math. This is a psychological, this is an intellectual and they freeze. So in causal analytics, one of the challenges is that, I mean, this is pretty much functioning most of the time anyway, on time series data, so there is a graph,[00:25:31] this is kind of like a non negotiable, but we had a customer that was feeding data so fast into proof that the automatic recalc of the model was happening like lickety split. And that graph all of a sudden looked exactly like a GPS. It worked like a GPS. In fact, it really is a GPS. And so as soon as we stylized.[00:26:01] That graph to look more like a GPS track, all of a sudden everybody went, Oh,[00:26:10] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So I got rid of all the PTSD from high school maths and made it something familiar.[00:26:16] Mark Stouse: right. And so it’s very interesting. Totally,[00:26:21] Bill Schmarzo: very much mirrors what mark talked about So when I was the new vice president of advertiser analytics at yahoo we were trying to solve a problem to help our advertisers optimize their spend across the yahoo ad network and because I didn’t know anything about that industry We went out and my team went out and interviewed all these advertisers and their agencies.[00:26:41] And I was given two UEX people and zero data. Well, I did have one data scientist. But I had mostly UX people on this project. My boss there said, you’re going to want UX people. I was like, no, no, I need analytics. He said, trust me in UX people and the process we went through and I could spend an hour talking about the grand failure of the start and the reclamation of how it was saved at a bar after too many drinks at the Waldorf there in New York.[00:27:07] But what we’ve realized is that. For us to be effective for our target audience was which was media planners and buyers and campaign managers. That was our stakeholders. It wasn’t the analysts, it was our stakeholders. Like Mark said, the last thing they wanted to see was a chart. And like John said, what they wanted the application to do was to tell them what to do.[00:27:27] So we designed this user interface that on one side, think of it as a newspaper, said, this is what’s going on with your campaign. This audience is responding. These sites are this, these keywords are doing this. And the right hand side gave recommendations. We think you should move spend from this to this.[00:27:42] We think you should do this. And it had three buttons on this thing. You could accept it and it would kick into our advertising network and kick in. And we’d measure how effective that was. They could reject it. They didn’t think I was confident and we’d measure effectiveness or they could change it. And we found through our research by putting that change button in there that they had control, that adoption went through the roof.[00:28:08] When it was either yes or no, adoption was really hard, they hardly ever used it. Give them a chance to actually change it. That adoption went through the roof of the technology. So what John was saying about, you have to be able to really deliver recommendations, but you can’t have the system feel like it’s your overlord.[00:28:27] You’ve got to be like it’s your Yoda on your shoulder whispering to your saying, Hey, I think you should do this. And you’re going, eh, I like that. No, I don’t like this. I want to do that instead. And when you give them control, then the adoption process happens much smoother. But for us to deliver those kinds of results, we had to know in detail, what decisions are they trying to make?[00:28:45] How are they going to measure success? We had to really understand their business. And then the data and the analytics stuff was really easy because we knew what we had to do, but we also knew what we didn’t have to do. We didn’t have to boil the ocean. We were trying to answer basically 21 questions.[00:29:01] The media planners and buyers and the campaign managers had 21 decisions to make and we built analytics and recommendations for each Of those 21[00:29:10] John Thompson: We did the same thing, you know, it blends the two stories from Mark and Bill, we were working at CSL and we were trying to give the people tools to find the best next location for plasma donation centers. And, like you said, there were 50, 60 different salient factors they had, and when we presented to them in charts and graphs, Information overload.[00:29:34] They melted down. You can just see their brains coming out of their ears. But once we put it on a map and hit it all and put little dials that they could fiddle with, they ran with it.[00:29:49] Bill Schmarzo: brilliant[00:29:50] Mark Stouse: totally, totally agree with that. 100% you have to know what to give people and you have to know how to give them, control over some of it, nobody wants to be an automaton. And yet also they will totally lock up if you just give them the keys to the kingdom. Yeah.[00:30:09] Dr Genevieve Hayes: on what you’ve been saying in the discussion so far, what I’m hearing is that the critical difference between what data scientists think their role is and what business leaders actually need is the data scientists is. Well, the ones who aren’t performing well think their role is to just sit there in a back room and do technical work like they would have done in their university assignments.[00:30:33] What the business leaders need is someone who can work with them, ask the right questions in order to understand the needs of the business. make recommendations that answer those questions. But in answering those questions, we’re taking a data informed approach rather than a data driven approach. So you need to deliver the answers to those questions in such a way that you’re informing the business leaders and you’re delivering it in a way that Delivers the right user experience for them, rather than the user experience that the data scientists might want, which would be your high school maths graphs.[00:31:17] Is that a good summary?[00:31:20] John Thompson: Yeah, I think that’s a really good summary. You know, one of the things that Bill and I, and I believe Mark understands is we’re all working to change, you know, Bill and I are teaching at universities in the United States. I’m on the advisory board of about five. Major universities. And whenever I go in and talk to these universities and they say, Oh, well, we teach them, these algorithms and these mathematical techniques and these data science and this statistics.[00:31:48] And I’m like, you are setting these people up for failure. You need to have them have presentation skills, communication skills, collaboration. You need to take about a third of these credits out and change them out for soft skills because you said it Genevieve, the way we train people, young people in undergraduate and graduate is that they have a belief that they’re going to go sit in a room and fiddle with numbers.[00:32:13] That’s not going to be successful.[00:32:16] Mark Stouse: I would give one more point of dimensionality to this, which is a little more human, in some respects, and that is that I think that a lot of data scientists love the fact that they are seen as Merlin’s as shamans. And the problem that I personally witnessed this about two years ago is when you let business leaders persist in seeing you in those terms.[00:32:46] And when all of a sudden there was a major meltdown of some kind, in this case, it was interest rates, and they turn around and they say, as this one CEO said in this meeting Hey, I know you’ve been doing all kinds of really cool stuff back there with AI and everything else. And now I need help.[00:33:08] Okay. And the clear expectation was. I need it now, I need some brilliant insight now. And the answer that he got was, we’re not ready yet. We’re still doing the data management piece. And this CEO dropped the loudest F bomb. That I think I have ever heard from anybody in almost any situation,[00:33:36] and that guy, that data science leader was gone the very next day. Now, was that fair? No. Was it stupid? For the data science leader to say what he said. Yeah, it was really dumb.[00:33:52] Bill Schmarzo: Don’t you call that the tyranny of perfection mark? Is that your term that you always use? is that There’s this idea that I gotta get the data all right first before I can start doing analysis And I think it’s you I hear you say the tyranny of perfection is what hurts You Progress over perfection, learning over absolutes, and that’s part of the challenge is it’s never going to be perfect.[00:34:13] Your data is never going to be perfect, you got to use good enough data[00:34:17] Mark Stouse: It’s like the ultimate negative version of the waterfall.[00:34:22] John Thompson: Yeah,[00:34:23] Mark Stouse: yet we’re all supposedly living in agile paradise. And yet very few people actually operate[00:34:30] John Thompson: that’s 1 thing. I want to make sure that we get in the recording is that I’ve been on record for years and I’ve gone in front of audiences and said this over and over again. Agile and analytics don’t mix that is. There’s no way that those 2 go together. Agile is a babysitting methodology. Data scientists don’t do well with it.[00:34:50] So, you know, I’ll get hate mail for that, but I will die on that hill. But, the 1 thing that, Mark, I agree with 100 percent of what you said, but the answer itself or the clue itself is in the title. We’ve been talking about. It’s data science. It’s not magic. I get people coming and asking me to do magical things all the time.[00:35:11] And I’m like. Well, have you chipped all the people? Do you have all their brain waves? If you have that data set, I can probably analyze it. But, given that you don’t understand what’s going on inside their cranium, that’s magic. I can’t do that. We had the same situation when COVID hit, people weren’t leaving their house.[00:35:29] So they’re not donating plasma. It’s kind of obvious, so, people came to us and said, Hey, the world’s gone to hell in a handbasket in the last two weeks. The models aren’t working and I’m like, yeah, the world’s changed, give us four weeks to get a little bit of data.[00:35:43] We’ll start to give you a glimmer of what this world’s going to look like two months later. We had the models working back in single digit error terms, but when the world goes haywire, you’re not going to have any data, and then when the executives are yelling at you, you just have to say, look, this is modeling.[00:36:01] This is analytics. We have no precedent here.[00:36:05] Bill Schmarzo: to build on what John was just saying that the challenge that I’ve always seen with data science organizations is if they’re led by somebody with a software development background, getting back to the agile analytics thing, the problem with software development. is that software development defines the requirements for success.[00:36:23] Data science discovers them. It’s hard to make that a linear process. And so, if you came to me and said, Hey, Schmarz, you got a big, giant data science team. I had a great data science team at Hitachi. Holy cow, they were great. You said, hey, we need to solve this problem. When can you have it done?[00:36:38] I would say, I need to look at the problem. I need to start exploring it. I can’t give you a hard date. And that drove software development folks nuts. I need a date for when I, I don’t know, cause I’ve got to explore. I’m going to try lots of things. I’m going to fail a lot.[00:36:51] I’m going to try things that I know are going to fail because I can learn when I fail. And so, when you have an organization that has a software development mindset, , like John was talking about, they don’t understand the discovery and learning process that the data science process has to go through to discover the criteria for success.[00:37:09] Mark Stouse: right. It’s the difference between science and engineering.[00:37:13] John Thompson: Yes, exactly. And 1 of the things, 1 of the things that I’ve created, it’s, you know, everybody does it, but I have a term for it. It’s a personal project portfolio for data scientists. And every time I’ve done this and every team. Every data scientist has come to me individually and said, this is too much work.[00:37:32] It’s too hard. I can’t[00:37:34] Bill Schmarzo: Ha, ha, ha,[00:37:35] John Thompson: three months later, they go, this is the only way I want to work. And what you do is you give them enough work so when they run into roadblocks, they can stop working on that project. They can go out and take a swim or work on something else or go walk their dog or whatever.[00:37:53] It’s not the end of the world because the only project they’re working on can’t go forward. if they’ve got a bunch of projects to time slice on. And this happens all the time. You’re in, team meetings and you’re talking and all of a sudden the data scientist isn’t talking about that forecasting problem.[00:38:09] It’s like they ran into a roadblock. They hit a wall. Then a week later, they come in and they’re like, Oh, my God, when I was in the shower, I figured it out. You have to make time for cogitation, introspection, and eureka moments. That has to happen in data science.[00:38:28] Bill Schmarzo: That is great, John. I love that. That is wonderful.[00:38:30] Mark Stouse: And of course the problem is. Yeah. Is that you can’t predict any of that, that’s the part of this. There’s so much we can predict. Can’t predict that.[00:38:42] Bill Schmarzo: you know what you could do though? You could do Mark, you could prescribe that your data science team takes multiple showers every day to have more of those shower moments. See, that’s the problem. I see a correlation. If showers drive eureka moments, dang it.[00:38:54] Let’s give him more showers.[00:38:56] John Thompson: Yep. Just like firemen cause fires[00:38:59] Mark Stouse: Yeah, that’s an interesting correlation there, man.[00:39:05] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So, if businesses need something different from what the data scientists are offering, why don’t they just articulate that in the data scientist’s role description?[00:39:16] John Thompson: because they don’t know they need it.[00:39:17] Mark Stouse: Yeah. And I think also you gotta really remember who you’re dealing with here. I mean, the background of the average C suite member is not highly intellectual. That’s not an insult, that’s just they’re not deep thinkers. They don’t think a lot. They don’t[00:39:37] John Thompson: that with tech phobia.[00:39:38] Mark Stouse: tech phobia and a short termism perspective.[00:39:43] That arguably is kind of the worst of all the pieces.[00:39:48] John Thompson: storm. It’s a[00:39:49] Mark Stouse: It is, it is a[00:39:50] John Thompson: know, I, I had, I’ve had CEOs come to me and say, we’re in a real crisis here and you guys aren’t helping. I was like, well, how do you know we’re not helping? You never talked to us. And, in this situation, we had to actually analyze the entire problem and we’re a week away from making recommendations.[00:40:08] And I said that I said, we have an answer in 7 days. He goes, I need an answer today. I said, well, then you should go talk to someone else because in 7 days, I’ll have it. But now I don’t. So, I met with him a week later. I showed them all the data, all the analytics, all the recommendations. And they said to me, we don’t really think you understand the business well enough.[00:40:27] We in the C suite have looked at it and we don’t think that this will solve it. And I’m like, okay, fine, cool. No problem. So I left, and 2 weeks later, they called me in and said, well, we don’t have a better idea. So, what was that you said? And I said, well, we’ve coded it all into the operational systems.[00:40:43] All you have to do is say yes. And we’ll turn it on and it was 1 of the 1st times and only times in my life when the chart was going like this, we made all the changes and it went like that. It was a perfect fit. It worked like a charm and then, a month later, I guess it was about 6 months later, the CEO came around and said, wow, you guys really knew your stuff.[00:41:07] You really were able to help us. Turn this around and make it a benefit and we turned it around faster than any of the competitors did. And then he said, well, what would you like to do next? And I said, well, I resigned last week. So, , I’m going to go do it somewhere else.[00:41:22] And he’s like, what? You just made a huge difference in the business. And I said, yeah, you didn’t pay me anymore. You didn’t recognize me. And I’ve been here for nearly 4 years, and I’ve had to fight you tooth and nail for everything. I’m tired of it.[00:41:34] Mark Stouse: Yeah. That’s what’s called knowing your value. One of the things that I think is so ironic about this entire conversation is that if any function has the skillsets necessary to forecast and demonstrate their value as multipliers. Of business decisions, decision quality, decision outcomes it’s data science.[00:42:05] And yet they just kind of. It’s like not there. And when you say that to them, they kind of look at you kind of like, did you really just say that, and so it is, one of the things that I’ve learned from analytics is that in the average corporation, you have linear functions that are by definition, linear value creators.[00:42:32] Sales would be a great example. And then you have others that are non linear multipliers. Marketing is one, data science is another, the list is long, it’s always the non linear multipliers that get into trouble because they don’t know how to show their value. In the same way that a linear creator can show it[00:42:55] John Thompson: And I think that’s absolutely true, Mark. And what I’ve been saying, and Bill’s heard this until he’s sick of it. Is that, , data science always has to be denominated in currency. Always, if you can’t tell them in 6 months, you’re going to double the sales or in 3 months, you’re going to cut cost or in, , 5 months, you’re going to have double the customers.[00:43:17] If you’re not denominating that in currency and whatever currency they care about, you’re wasting your time.[00:43:23] Dr Genevieve Hayes: The problem is, every single data science book tells you that the metrics to evaluate models by are, precision, recall, accuracy, et[00:43:31] John Thompson: Yeah, but that’s technology. That’s not business.[00:43:34] Dr Genevieve Hayes: exactly. I’ve only ever seen one textbook where they say, those are technical metrics, but the metrics that really count are the business metrics, which are basically dollars and cents.[00:43:44] John Thompson: well, here’s the second one that says it.[00:43:46] Dr Genevieve Hayes: I will read that. For the audience it’s Business Analytics Teams by John Thompson.[00:43:51] John Thompson: building analytics[00:43:52] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Oh, sorry, Building[00:43:54] Mark Stouse: But, but I got to tell you seriously, the book that John wrote that everybody needs to read in business. Okay. Not just data scientists, but pretty much everybody. Is about causal AI. And it’s because almost all of the questions. In business are about, why did that happen? How did it happen? How long did it take for that to happen?[00:44:20] It’s causal. And so, I mean, when you really look at it that way and you start to say, well, what effects am I causing? What effects is my function causing, all of a sudden the scales kind of have a way of falling away from your eyes and you see things. Differently.[00:44:43] John Thompson: of you to say that about that book. I appreciate that.[00:44:46] Mark Stouse: That kick ass book, kick[00:44:48] John Thompson: Well, thank you. But, most people don’t understand that we’ve had analytical or foundational AI for 70 years. We’ve had generative AI for two, and we’ve had causal for a while, but only people understand it are the people on this call and Judea Pearl and maybe 10 others in the world, but we’re moving in a direction where those 3 families of AI are going to be working together in what I’m calling composite AI, which is the path to artificial, or as Bill says, average general intelligence or AGI.[00:45:24] But there are lots of eight eyes people talk about it as if it’s one thing and it’s[00:45:29] Mark Stouse: Yeah, correct. That’s right.[00:45:31] Dr Genevieve Hayes: I think part of the problem with causal AI is it’s just not taught in data science courses.[00:45:37] John Thompson: it was not taught anywhere. The only place it’s taught is UCLA.[00:45:40] Mark Stouse: But the other problem, which I think is where you’re going with it Genevieve is even 10 years ago, they weren’t even teaching multivariable linear regression as a cornerstone element of a data science program. So , they basically over rotated and again, I’m not knocking it.[00:46:01] I’m not knocking machine learning or anything like that. Okay. But they over rotated it and they turned it into some sort of Omni tool, that could do it all. And it can’t do it all.[00:46:15] Dr Genevieve Hayes: think part of the problem is the technical side of data science is the amalgamation of statistics and computer science . But many data science university courses arose out of the computer science departments. So they focused on the machine learning courses whereas many of those things like.[00:46:34] multivariable linear analysis and hypothesis testing, which leads to things like causal AI. They’re taught in the statistics courses that just don’t pop up in the data science programs.[00:46:46] Mark Stouse: Well, that’s certainly my experience. I teach at USC in the grad school and that’s the problem in a nutshell right there. In fact, we’re getting ready to have kind of a little convocation in LA about this very thing in a couple of months because it’s not sustainable.[00:47:05] Bill Schmarzo: Well, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back a second. We talked about, measuring success as currency. I’m going to challenge that a little bit. We certainly need to think about how we create value, and value isn’t just currency. John held up a book earlier, and I’m going to hold up one now, Wealth of Nations,[00:47:23] John Thompson: Oh yeah.[00:47:25] Bill Schmarzo: Page 28, Adam Smith talks about value he talks about value creation, and it isn’t just about ROI or net present value. Value is a broad category. You got customer value, employee value, a partner stakeholder. You have society value, community value of environmental value.[00:47:43] We have ethical value. And as we look at the models that we are building, that were guided or data science teams to build, we need to broaden the definition of value. It isn’t sufficient if we can drive ROI, if it’s destroying our environment and putting people out of work. We need to think more holistically.[00:48:04] Adam Smith talks about this. Yeah, 1776. Good year, by the way, it’s ultimate old school, but it’s important when we are As a data science team working with the business that we’re broadening their discussions, I’ve had conversations with hospitals and banks recently. We run these workshops and one of the things I always do, I end up pausing about halfway through the workshop and say, what are your desired outcomes from a community perspective?[00:48:27] You sit inside a community or hospital. You have a community around you, a bank, you have a community around you. What are your desired outcomes for that community? How are you going to measure success? What are those KPIs and metrics? And they look at me like I got lobsters crawling out of my ears.[00:48:40] The thing is is that it’s critical if we’re going to Be in champion data science, especially with these tools like these new ai tools causal predictive generative autonomous, these tools allow us to deliver a much broader range of what value is And so I really rail against when somebody says, you know, and not trying to really somebody here but You know, we gotta deliver a better ROI.[00:49:05] How do you codify environmental and community impact into an ROI? Because ROI and a lot of financial metrics tend to be lagging indicators. And if you’re going to build AI models, you want to build them on leading indicators.[00:49:22] Mark Stouse: It’s a lagging efficiency metric,[00:49:24] Bill Schmarzo: Yeah, exactly. And AI doesn’t do a very good job of optimizing what’s already happened.[00:49:29] That’s not what it does.[00:49:30] John Thompson: sure.[00:49:31] Bill Schmarzo: I think part of the challenge, you’re going to hear this from John and from Mark as well, is that we broaden this conversation. We open our eyes because AI doesn’t need to just deliver on what’s happened in the past, looks at the historical data and just replicates that going forward.[00:49:45] That leads to confirmation bias of other things. We have a chance in AI through the AI utility function to define what it is we want our AI models to do. from environmental, society, community, ethical perspective. That is the huge opportunity, and Adam Smith says that so.[00:50:03] John Thompson: There you go. Adam Smith. I love it. Socrates, Aristotle, Adam[00:50:08] Bill Schmarzo: By the way, Adam Smith motivated this book that I wrote called The Economics of Data Analytics and Digital Transformation I wrote this book because I got sick and tired of walking into a business conversation and saying, Data, that’s technology. No, data, that’s economics.[00:50:25] Mark Stouse: and I’ll tell you what, you know what, Genevieve, I’m so cognizant of the fact in this conversation that the summer can’t come fast enough when I too will have a book,[00:50:39] John Thompson: yay.[00:50:41] Mark Stouse: yeah, I will say this, One of the things that if you use proof, you’ll see this, is that there’s a place where you can monetize in and out of a model, but money itself is not causal. It’s what you spend it on. That’s either causal or in some cases, not[00:51:01] That’s a really, really important nuance. It’s not in conflict with what John was saying about monetizing it. And it’s also not in conflict with what. My friend Schmarrs was saying about, ROI is so misused as a term in business. It’s just kind of nuts.[00:51:25] It’s more like a shorthand way of conveying, did we get value[00:51:31] John Thompson: yeah. And the reason I say that we denominated everything in currency is that’s generally one of the only ways. to get executives interested. If you go in and say, Oh, we’re going to improve this. We’re going to improve that. They’re like, I don’t care. If I say this project is going to take 6 months and it’s going to give you 42 million and it’s going to cost you nothing, then they’re like, tell me more, and going back to what Bill had said earlier, we need to open our aperture on what we do with these projects when we were at Dell or Bill and I swapped our times at Dell, we actually did a project with a hospital system in the United States and over 2 years.[00:52:11] We knocked down the incidence of post surgical sepsis by 72%. We saved a number of lives. We saved a lot of money, too, but we saves people’s lives. So analytics can do a lot. Most of the people are focused on. Oh, how fast can we optimize the search engine algorithm? Or, how can we get the advertisers more yield or more money?[00:52:32] There’s a lot of things we can do to make this world better. We just have to do it.[00:52:36] Mark Stouse: The fastest way to be more efficient is to be more effective, right? I mean, and so when I hear. CEOs and CFOs, because those are the people who use this language a lot. Talk about efficiency. I say, whoa, whoa, hold on. You’re not really talking about efficiency. You’re talking about cost cutting.[00:52:58] Those two things are very different. And it’s not that you shouldn’t cut costs if you need to, but it’s not efficiency. And ultimately you’re not going to cut your way into better effectiveness. It’s just not the way things go.[00:53:14] John Thompson: Amen.[00:53:15] Mark Stouse: And so, this is kind of like the old statement about physicists,[00:53:18] if they’re physicists long enough, they turn into philosophers. I think all three of us, have that going on. Because we have seen reality through a analytical lens for so long that you do actually get a philosophy of things.[00:53:38] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So what I’m hearing from all of you is that for data scientists to create value for the businesses that they’re working for, they need to start shifting their approach to basically look at how can we make the businesses needs. And how can we do that in a way that can be expressed in the business’s language, which is dollars and cents, but also, as Bill pointed out value in terms of the community environment.[00:54:08] So less financially tangible points of view.[00:54:11] Bill Schmarzo: And if I could just slightly add to that, I would say first thing that they need to do is to understand how does our organization create value for our constituents and stakeholders.[00:54:22] Start there. Great conversation. What are our desired outcomes? What are the key decisions? How do we measure success? If we have that conversation, by the way, it isn’t unusual to have that conversation with the business stakeholders and they go I’m not exactly sure.[00:54:37] John Thompson: I don’t know how that works.[00:54:38] Bill Schmarzo: Yeah. So you need to find what are you trying to improve customer retention? You’re trying to increase market share. What are you trying to accomplish and why and how are you going to measure success? So the fact that the data science team is asking that question, because like John said, data science can solve a whole myriad of problems.[00:54:54] It isn’t that it can’t solve. It can solve all kinds. That’s kind of the challenge. So understanding what problems we want to solve starts by understanding how does your organization create value. If you’re a hospital, like John said, reducing hospital acquired infections, reducing long term stay, whatever it might be.[00:55:09] There are some clear goals. Processes initiatives around which organizations are trying to create value[00:55:18] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So on that note, what is the single most important change our listeners could make tomorrow to accelerate their data science impact and results?[00:55:28] John Thompson: I’ll go first. And it’s to take your data science teams and not merge them into operational teams, but to introduce the executives that are in charge of these areas and have them have an agreement that they’re going to work together. Start there.[00:55:46] Bill Schmarzo: Start with how do you how does the organization create value? I mean understand that fundamentally ask those questions and keep asking until you find somebody in the organization who can say we’re trying to do this[00:55:57] Mark Stouse: to which I would just only add, don’t forget the people are people and they all have egos and they all want to appear smarter and smarter and smarter. And so if you help them do that, you will be forever in there must have list, it’s a great truth that I have found if you want to kind of leverage bills construct, it’s the economies of ego.[00:56:24] Bill Schmarzo: I like[00:56:24] John Thompson: right, Mark, wrap this up. When’s your book coming out? What’s the title?[00:56:28] Mark Stouse: It’s in July and I’ll be shot at dawn. But if I tell you the title, but so I interviewed several hundred fortune, 2000 CEOs and CFOs about how they see go to market. The changes that need to be made in go to market. The accountability for it all that kind of stuff. And so the purpose of this book really in 150, 160 pages is to say, Hey, they’re not all correct, but this is why they’re talking to you the way that they’re talking to you, and this is why they’re firing.[00:57:05] People in go to market and particularly in B2B at an unprecedented rate. And you could, without too much deviation, do a search and replace on marketing and sales and replace it with data science and you’d get largely the same stuff. LinkedIn,[00:57:25] Dr Genevieve Hayes: for listeners who want to get in contact with each of you, what can they do?[00:57:29] John Thompson: LinkedIn. John Thompson. That’s where I’m at.[00:57:32] Mark Stouse: Mark Stouse,[00:57:34] Bill Schmarzo: And not only connect there, but we have conversations all the time. The three of us are part of an amazing community of people who have really bright by diverse perspectives. And we get into some really great conversations. So not only connect with us, but participate, jump in. Don’t be afraid.[00:57:51] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And there you have it, another value packed episode to help you turn your data skills into serious clout, cash, and career freedom. If you found today’s episode useful and think others could benefit, please leave us a rating and review on your podcast platform of choice. That way we’ll be able to reach more data scientists just like you.[00:58:11] Thanks for joining me today, Bill, Mark, and John.[00:58:16] Mark Stouse: Great being with[00:58:16] John Thompson: was fun.[00:58:18] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And for those in the audience, thanks for listening. I’m Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and this has been value driven data science. The post Episode 53: A Wake-Up Call from 3 Tech Leaders on Why You're Failing as a Data Scientist first appeared on Genevieve Hayes Consulting and is written by Dr Genevieve Hayes.

Greg Brady spoke to Melissa Lantsman,  Member of Parliament for Thornhill & Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada about the Liberal leadership debate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greg Brady spoke to Melissa Lantsman,  Member of Parliament for Thornhill & Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada about the Liberal leadership debate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Story #1: You're Fired! President Donald Trump begins the process of dismantling the deep state and Permanent Washington. But it's just the start, and it's going to take the help of guys like FBI Director nominee Kash Patel and Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth. Story #2: Zuckerberg, Bezos, Davos, and even Snoop Dogg. How skeptical should we be of the new Trump converts. A conversation with the Host of The Rubin Report, Dave Rubin.  Story #3: The crew discusses the big numbers, media reviews, and feedback from you, the viewer on the new TV version of The Will Cain Show on the FOX News Channel.  Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing WillCainShow@fox.com Subscribe to The Will Cain Show on YouTube here: Watch The Will Cain Show! Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Political commentator James Mennie is a reporter, columnist and editor at the Montreal Gazette. He can be heard weekdays at 4:05 p.m. on Montreal Now with Aaron Rand.

In this episode of the Better at Beach podcast, Mark Burik and Colby discuss the recruiting process for beach volleyball. They provide advice for coaches, club directors, and players on how to stand out and get noticed by college coaches. They emphasize the importance of creating impressive highlight videos, being persistent in reaching out to coaches, and providing clear identification in videos. They also discuss the importance of honesty and transparency in the recruiting process and the need for coaches to understand the specific needs and culture of each college program. In this conversation, Mark Burik and Colby Burleson discuss the importance of creating a positive and supportive culture in beach volleyball. They highlight the role of parents in shaping a player's attitude and behavior, emphasizing the need for parents to avoid making excuses and badmouthing partners. They also stress the importance of self-reflection and seeking feedback as coaches, and offer practical tips for improving coaching practices. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the value of video in the recruiting process and the importance of networking with other coaches.

The kingdom of God is not like what we expect.

David Thomas

Don't you feel like royalty with that airline loyalty card! Lounge access, priority boarding, extra baggage allowance, free seat assignments, and a whole bunch of other nice to have “status” benefits!This episode of Sky Lounge features Mark Ross-Smith, Loyalty guru & CEO of Loyalty Status Co., the creator of StatusMatch! Like Mark said in a post “We all intuitively know that loyalty status is the most sought-after, most highly prized thing any aspiring traveller can earn.” – we covered a lot of ground talking about the psychology of loyalty, status, status matches & how airlines are adapting to a changed world!You could be a free agent like Alex, who prefers trying out different airline products or you could be like David stuck to one airline but worried about a status downgrade – but no matter what sort of traveller you are, this is a must listen-to episode! Hope you enjoy it! And don't forget to have a look at Mark's LinkedIn profile & Loyalty Status Cohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/markrosssmith/https://www.loyaltystatus.com/https://statusmatch.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Part 10 | Jesus Explains What the Kingdom is Like | Mark 4:21-34 Pastor Rodney’s Notes

Welcome to Easter at Pursuit, we pray that God uses this message in your life today in a powerful way. Pursuit Church on Social Media: facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PursuitChurchDenver/?ref=bookmarks instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pursuit_church/ Pastor Jordan Green on Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordan.green.98622 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jordangreenpursuit/ Pursuit Worship on Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Pursuit-Worship-671274439695803/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pursuit.worship/

Lizette chats to a chiropractic legend in Australia, Dr. Mark Postles, and like many of our other elders, he doesn't sit still, what he has accomplished in his time is absolutely phenomenal! Mark takes us back to the origin of his chiropractic career when he was only 6 years old and would hold the head and feet of his brother and tell him 'I love you'. Like Mark says, this is what chiropractic is all about, 'Brain, Spine, Nervous System, done with love.'

The crew discuss the Star Trek cruise before answering a question about the election and others in the "how to not weird" category.  Call OR TEXT with your questions at 323-389-RACE and subscribe to Tawny and Andrew's bonus podcasts at suboptimalpods.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today, we're diving into Volv Media's game-changing role in journalism, spotlighted by their app's ingenious approach: get clued up on the news in just 9 seconds! Join us as we chat with the wonderful cofounders, Priyanka Vazirani and Shannon Almeida, unraveling how they're reshaping our news feeds. Initially meant for Gen Z, the App has evolved its Product Market Fit to be the go-to source for a myriad of demos: High Schoolers to Millennials and even some Boomers. Ready to revolutionize your news routine? Listen here first, then download the Volv app! 00:00 Intros 09:00 London Falling... 10:50 Volv Media + Whiskey Hue birthed at the same time. 11:40   Volv Media the Media Solution of Efficiency 15:00 Celebrities: Shoot Your Shot! 17:26   Early Days: Establishing Product Market Fit 24:50 Incorporating AI 28:25  Filling the Social Media Quality Void 32:00 The Smart Money / Partner For The Future 35:50 Their Hottest Markets 46:00 Establishing an ‘A' Team With Proper Delegation 53:00 WOTD + SYSK This Whiskey Hue episode is part of the ‘Prof P' Series. Please Rate, Review & Subscribe - greatly appreciated!

Like Mark and Michelle, Leslie's exposure to Alcoholics Anonymous began in childhood.

Babbel

What is adventure and how can we deliver it? These are just two of the topics that Mark Sedgwick and Jeff Marks help us to explore as we talk about adventure and the challenge zone. Mark and Jeff are two of the founders of the newly launched Professional Ski Instructors of Canada (PSIC). The PSIC has delivering “the adventure” at the core of its mission. Mark and Jeff walk through what “the adventure” is and how it relates to our challenge zone.Key TakeawaysInteresting new Organization: Promoting the delivery of the entire experience, free of judgment, promoting development, recognizing that delivering these experiences requires a diverse skill set that includes both hard and soft skills.Components of Adventure: Fun, safe, learning were three key components of adventure for the PSIC. To achieve an adventure, it has to be remembered as being enjoyable either in the moment or later, the experience has to fit inside people's risk tolerance, and people generally want to feel like they have improved in some way.The Challenge Zone: Tis the performance zone you are in when you are excited and can perform well, without being overwhelmed or bored. When we go above your challenge zone, we can become stressed, and our survival instincts can kick in. When we go below our challenge zone, we can become complacent and lose interest. The level of adversity we are exposed to determines where we are operating.Adventure Happens in the Challenge Zone: This is where we are stimulated and can try new things without becoming frustrated. To deliver an adventure we need to create an environment here people can operate in their challenge zone.Guest LinksProfessional Ski Instructors of Canada (PSIC): www.psic.proModel of the Challenge Zone: https://deliveringadventure.com/the-adventure-zone/Guest BioMark Sedgwick is a proud product of the ski industry – skiing is his passion, and he is an obsessed student of the sport. His career spans over 35 years in the industry. He is currently President and co-founder of both the Professional ski instructors of Canada (PSIC) and 2XO Ski Consulting, offering his expertise as an industry advisor. He is a recognized and respected global thought leader and author in the ski space.Mark spent 16 years as a senior executive with Whistler Blackcomb and played a strategic role in all aspects of the resort's journey and growth as it became the most visited resort on the planet. During his tenure at Whistler Blackcomb, he was involved in the delivery of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, a successful Initial Public Offering (IPO), leading to the establishment of Whistler Blackcomb as a publicly traded company. This series of achievements culminated in Whistler Blackcomb's significant acquisition by Vail Resorts.Mark's ski education spans three pathways: Austrian, Australian, and Canadian. Mark participated at two Interski events, representing Australia in 1995 and Canada as Technical Lead and Coach in 2023.Like Mark, Jeff has worked extensively in the ski industry. Jeff was born and raised in the Canadian Rockies in Jasper and currently lives in Banff Alberta.Jeff has had various leadership roles in the ski industry including Director of the Club Ski program in Banff and the Niseko Village Snow School in Japan as well as 12 years as Program Coordinator and National Program Director for the Canadian Ski Instructors Alliance.Jeff has represented Canada at three Interski events including as Head Coach of the Canadian team in March, 2023 in Levi, Finland. Now being involved with the Professional Ski Instructors of Canada, Jeff finds himself again in a creative new challenge zone with an opportunity to do his best to support an industry and profession that he loves. ...

In Mark 13:14-27 Jesus talks about the Antichrist, the tribulation, and even the rapture. It begins to answer the ageless question: What will the End look like?--The PursueGOD Truth podcast is the “easy button” for making disciples – whether you're looking for resources to lead a family devotional, a small group at church, or a one-on-one mentoring relationship. Join us for new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Find resources to talk about these episodes at pursueGOD.org.Help others go "full circle" as a follower of Jesus through our 12-week Pursuit series.Click here to learn more about how to use these resources at home, with a small group, or in a one-on-one discipleship relationship.Got questions or want to leave a note? Email us at podcast@pursueGOD.org.Donate Now --There are several famous doomsday movies that explore apocalyptic scenarios, often depicting the end of the world or catastrophic events. Here are some well-known doomsday movies:Climate changeMad Max series (1979-2015):** Set in a dystopian future where society has collapsed (oil shortage)The Day After Tomorrow (2004):** Directed by Roland Emmerich, this film depicts the catastrophic effects of global climate change, including superstorms and a new ice age.Waterworld (1995):** In a future where Earth is mostly covered in water, this film follows a lone drifter with a mysterious map as he navigates a world where dry land is a precious commodity.VirusI Am Legend (2007):** Starring Will Smith, this film is based on the novel of the same name and portrays a world where a man-made virus has turned most of humanity into zombie-like creatures.Asteroid/CometArmageddon (1998):** In this action-packed film directed by Michael Bay, a group of oil drillers is sent to space to prevent an asteroid from colliding with Earth.Deep Impact (1998):** Another film released in the same year as Armageddon, Deep Impact explores the global efforts to prevent an extinction-level comet impact.Extra terrestrialsWar of the Worlds (2005):** Steven Spielberg's adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic novel portrays an Earth invaded by powerful and destructive extraterrestrial beings.Related: https://www.pursuegod.org/what-is-eschatology/ AntichristJesus warns about an “abomination of desolation” – an idea taken from the book of Daniel. This prophecy had been partially fulfilled during the Maccabean Revolt, but the final fulfillment would happen later. Mark 13:14-18 (NLT) “The day is coming when you will see the sacrilegious object that causes desecration standing where he should not be.” (Reader, pay attention!) “Then those in Judea must flee to the hills. A person out on the deck of a roof must not go down into the house to pack. A person out in the field must not return even to get a coat. How terrible it will be for pregnant women and for nursing mothers in those days. And pray that your flight will not be in winter.(Pillar New Testament Commentary) The "abomination that causes desolation" is a phrase taken from three cryptic references in Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11 to a scandal that would defile and profane the Jerusalem temple. The same phrase is...

This week Isaac tackled a difficult passage on divorce, giving context to a challenging passage. Then we see Jesus tell the children to come to him.

In Mark 12:18-27 Jesus encounters a group called the Sadducees. Their question to him causes us to seek an answer to a broader question: what will eternity be like?--About this episode: This is part of our Gospel of Mark series at pursueGOD.org. Find resources to talk about it with your family, small group, or mentor at www.pursueGOD.org/mark.--Additional notes:"Heaven" by Randy AlcornFive Verses on Preparing for EternityWhat Happens After We Die?

We are products of our influences. We like what we like and think what we think mostly because someone told us it was the right thing to like and the right thing to think. The Story of Jesus gives us the ability to clearly and purposely reevaluate our life's influences and rewrite our own stories. The post What does a disciple look like? [Mark 3:7-19] appeared first on Crosscreek Community Church - Salem, Oregon.

Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas is a MUST-READ trading book but what does it actually mean to Trade in the Zone? Let me explain & more importantly, walk you through the steps that you should take RIGHT NOW to start trading in the zone as well. Check out the 14-day RISK-FREE Trial Membership available at https://tieronetrading.com/ if you're interested in taking your trading to the next level Your Trading Coach - Akil --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thetradingcoachpodcast/support

Subscribe, 5 ⭐ And Please Write A Review! Listen, Watch, Review, and Share With A Friend! #tampa #business #podcast #69b2b #girthyroi #sweatequity

My heart just got all achey-breaky. This next review is one that I've been hanging on to for some time.  Listeners with excellent memories might recall that back in spring of 2022, when I submitted my first review to be read on the show, we figured out that my wife and I were at a show the previous week that Mark was also at. I'm kind of in awe at how much has changed since then. I started as a regular contributor, then I attended my first Vegas Vacation, then we all started hanging out together on the many trips I've taken to Vegas since, and then Keren got tired of reading my reviews on the show, and so now here we are recording together. So today, let's talk about the first time Mark and I hung out in the same room, even though we didn't know it at the time. Let's talk about X-Country. Okay, so let's get this out of the way. I like women. If women choose to be naked in front of me, I like that, too. As I type these words out onto the screen, it occurs to me that I probably cannot review this show without coming across like a dirty old man. But in the words of Popeye the Sailor, “I yam what I yam.”  So if you share or even merely tolerate my indulgences, then keep listening. I'm rooting for your team, miss. I've said before that for me, going to see shows in Vegas is more for my wife than me. However, since I'm the one who plans the trips, I'm often the one who chooses the shows. As a result we occasionally see a topless revue because I want to, damn it. My wife does not object to this.  There's some tradition here. Vegas is where we let our freak flags fly.  Going back a few years to our first trip to Vegas as a couple, the first show we saw was “Fantasy” at the Luxor. (Note: It technically was “Brilliant!” at the Neon Museum earlier the same evening, but that kind of depends on how you define “show.”) So yeah, as a red-blooded straight male who loves Las Vegas, I'm kind of a connoisseur of these shows, or at least I'd love to be.  Since then, we've seen Fantasy three times, X Burlesque, BurlesQ (you have to pronounce the letter “Q” in their name because who the fuck knows?), Rouge, and now X Country. Some words here about the change, the nature of Vegas, and regret: Like Mark, I consider myself a Vegas history buff. I never got to see any of the classic “showgirl” type shows; Mrs. Jaydubs and I kind of discovered Vegas as a couple just a little too late and Jubilee, the last true showgirl style show, had already closed.  Now Crazy Girls is gone (they say it will return with a new home, but that's a song we've all heard before) along with X Rocks and Sexxy at Westgate. This has created a sense of urgency in me that has me treating topless shows like Pokemon: “Gotta See Em All!” So if you're still listening, and have never seen a topless show in Vegas and would like to, let me share more about the overall experience. First, just do it. I think most are reluctant to see a topless show because they're worried about how they will be perceived. The audience is full of all kinds of people. Men, women, couples. Young people. Older people.  There's more women and more couples in the audience than one might think at first, and the women cheer louder. It's a hell of a lot of fun. Fantasy at the Luxor is probably my favorite. It has the nicest venue, the largest number of performers, and the most advanced choreography (which isn't really that advanced, but hey, boobs!) I think it's the longest running topless revue currently playing. We've seen it three times, and you can expect a review for Fantasy soon. If it seems like I'm providing a lot of context and haven't yet really reviewed X Country, you're absolutely right. Because how much can you say about a show whose entire premise is young women dancing in nothing but boots and g-strings? And that is basically what you get with X-Country. It's a fun, sexy show that got the Mrs and I warmed up for the evening. It served its purpose. We laughed, we cried, we got turned on, and we all learned a little something about ourselves along the way. Just in case you're starting to think I'm incapable of actually providing a critical review of this show:  There was a time that I thought there could be no such thing as a bad topless show, because hey boobs!  Check out episode 409, “Jennifer Grey Nose Job” formy review of BurlesQ (Why the FUCK do you pronounce the “Q” in their stupid ass name?!) to find out why that's not necessarily true. The good: I have to admit, I'm not a fan of country music. I know the lyrics to “Friends in Low Places” and I know that the Chattahoochie is a river in the south and not a nickname for my ex, but that's about as far as my interest and knowledge of the country music scene goes. So I was a little worried that this show would be country-trashy, in a straw-chewing, cousin-fucking kind of way, rather than just Vegas-trashy in a paying-to-see-tits kind of way.  There are A LOT of different numbers in this show, and they quickly switch between the sub-genres of country songs to keep the energy going.  (What's that line from The Blues Brothers? “We got both kinds, we got country and western.”)  I thought I might get bored after 80 minutes of country music, but the show managed to keep it fresh, and the boobs probably didn't hurt either.  Still not a country music fan, though. The good news is that you don't have to be one to enjoy the show.   Something for everyone: tits and ass! There are five different performers, with a good mix between solo numbers, duos, and ensemble bits.  There was a variety of body-types between the performers, but zero variety in skin color, which I guess is consistent with the theme.  My wife is a dancer, (no, not that kind of dancer) and she informed me that at least three of the girls demonstrated that they have had some formal dance training. There's an aerialist number that uses a silk web; it was pretty impressive how much she could do in such a small venue. Comedian John Bizarre provides some laughs between numbers. We were seated right by the stage on stage right, and there was an occasional moment of terror when he looked our way as he was scanning for audience members to interact with.  Fortunately, he ended up picking on the four young guys opposite us who were legit farmers from Iowa. By the way, while our seats were close, I don't recommend sitting to the side of the stage. There was a number in which I had a better view of the crew member holding up a set piece rather than the two girls writhing on the set piece.  Seats were decently comfortable, and ours had a small table between them for drinks. X-Country performs nightly at Harrah's at 10:00, and is dark Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  Tickets start at $60, and you should click through the vegas.com link on the website or the show notes to get your tickets.

On today's show, host Jon Zaghloul talks with Mark Schanowski, ABC 7 Sports Reporter, about the Bulls' disappointing 2022-23 season, their expectations for next year, and the possibility of a significant retool come this offseason. Tune in at 5pm Central on Thursdays to hear Sports Talk Chicago on AM 1230 […]

Amber Sweet Sterner is an actress, wife, mother, and owner of Rising Action Studios. She and her husband Justin Sterner train and mentor young entertainers while also teaching them how to build strong relationships with Christ. Amber has recently had roles in the movies Running the Bases and Like Mark. She says her most important role is that of a child of God. Amber got into acting when her dad encouraged her to audition for Cinderella in middle school. She went on to pursue theater in college and loved the intimate experience of the film. However, when her voice gave out on the contract, her identity crumbled and she had to rely on God to welcome her back home. Amber moved to Atlanta and met her husband, Justin, a week later. Together, they are creating a faith-based Christian studio where people can come and learn about God. https://youtu.be/Q6R_yPEkal8 #jesus #ambersweetsterner #faithbasedfilms #justinsterner #runningthebases #lifemarkmovie To learn more about this ministry, go to HTTPS://thecallwithnancysabato.com youtube.com/@TheCallwithNancySabato --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nancy-sabato/message

Mark 5:6-20

Need a Quick Infusion of Spinal Tap Moments? Try Quick Taps - short stories in short episodes for short attention spans. On this week's QT, hear about a supermodel's face-off with Mark Wahlberg; a weird conversation with Robert De Niro; and the day Hannah Montana turned into Tony Montana. -------------------------------------------------- Get in touch with Too Much Effing Perspective Contact us: hello@tmepshow.com Website: https://tmepshow.com Social: @tmepshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time to turn it up because this week we're joined by Nothing More axman and fellow podcaster Mark Vollelunga!Mark joins us from sound check as the band is currently on tour with In This Moment and Sleep Token. We take a dive into the history of Nothing More - from the first time he met Jonny Hawkins, though calling multiple vocalist audibles, to the creation of the Scorpion Tail, and finally landing into a deep discussion about the band's upcoming release, Spirits. We also switch gears and talk about another of our favorite pastimes, podcasting. Mark reveals what's caused the hiatus on his A Few Good Brüs podcast, and his plans for a brewery style tour. We also cover Nothing More's peach cream beer, and discuss the possibility of a Drinks With Johnny canned cocktail. We also learn on this episode: How Nothing More pranked Ghost on tour What is was like to perform for Carrie Underwood  That one time DrumTron fell on Jonny Mark's preshow ritual drink  Become a FILTHY ANIMAL and get access to exclusive content:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2qKyxOwoa_Uz5d5xCZEUPw/joinExplore More Drinks With Johnny:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/drinkswithjohnnyInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/drinkswithjohnnyFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/drinkswithjohnnyTwitter: https://twitter.com/drinkswjohnny​​​​Shop: https://www.drinkswithjohnny.com

“It doesn't matter how hard we work, or how many hours we put in, if OUR Paradigm (or mental program that has exclusive control over our habitual behavior) does not change, the results will ultimately remain the same, year after year.” Bob Proctor, from the Paradigm Shift Seminar.   Welcome back to The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we cover the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning (for schools) and emotional intelligence training (in the workplace) with tools, ideas and strategies that we can all use for immediate results. I'm Andrea Samadi, and for this week's Brain Fact Friday, I want to revisit how exactly we change our identity, to build a stronger, more resilient, 2.0 version of ourselves, by reviewing our self-image and self-belief that we covered on EPISODE #199[i] that had over 1300 downloads, showing me that you are just as interested in this topic as I am. In this episode we will discuss: ✔ What is PRAXIS (the application of a theory) and how can we use this idea? ✔ What is our self-image vs our self-esteem? ✔ How is our self-image/identity formed? ✔ How do we identify gaps or areas we can improve? ✔ How can we change our self-image/identity? ✔ Can our confidence levels be seen by others? ✔ Can we predict a person's self-esteem levels (or what they think of themselves) by looking at their brain? ✔ 4 Steps to create a 2.0 version of YOU!   What is PRAXIS and How Can We Use it For Improved Results? This weekend I was thinking about life, and how we just get one shot to make it a meaningful one. I'm sure I'm not alone with this line of thinking, especially these days, when it comes to acknowledging how fragile life really is. Earlier this month, I lost another mentor—Mark Low, who was my neighbor in Toronto, who was the one who handed me “the” book that would change my life forever. You can read the story I've told often in the show notes[ii] but for this episode, after thinking about how precious life is, and all the lessons I've learned from the many mentors along the way, there was one profound lesson that stood out to me, that I want to tie into this episode that I'll dedicate it, to my neighbor, Mark Low.   When I first went to work in the motivational speaking industry, back in the late 1990s, I was hired by my neighbor, Mark, to help with administrative tasks, that eventually moved into sales, leading me to travel to each of the seminars and learn from all the speakers and connections made over the years and I talk about everyone I've learned from often on this podcast.  In those early days, I would receive a paycheck from Mark's company, that was called The Praxis Group. I remember looking at my check one day, and asking Mark “Hey, what does Praxis mean?” and he looked over at me from the desk on the other side of the room (we worked out of his parent's basement back then, with our desks facing a wall that was covered in charts with our upcoming seminars, and he replied, “Andrea, it's when you integrate your beliefs with your behaviors.” That's was it. He just stopped for a minute and watched my face looking confused, and he added that “people really change when this happens and that they become an entirely new person” with this concept of Praxis. I looked up the definition that Miriam Webster[iii] gives today and it says that Praxis is the “practical application of a theory” or the “practice of an art, science or skill.” If you look up “becoming a better version of you” these days, the topic is still of high interest. I remember thinking “that's incredible”, as I love everything about change, growth, or skill-building but looking back now, I'm sure it took me over 22 years to get the full understanding of the meaning of Praxis and how exactly we integrate our beliefs with our behavior to attain this sought-after change which happens when we repeat the new habits of what we want, over and over again.  I had to dig a bit, but I did find an old photo of our offices in those early days, before Bob Proctor Seminars took off and became The Proctor Gallagher Institute, with an official office.  But in these early days, Mark Low worked at the desk to the left of me, and while it's funny to see all of the old technology we used to use, or how we manually kept track of the seminar attendees with wall charts, there is much more behind the work that was done in those early days and it had to do with Praxis, which was why people paid the money that they did to attend these seminars.  Seminar attendees were all looking to create a new version of themselves, by changing their old beliefs, and then integrating their new beliefs (that they had learned) with their current life. They were paying for this concept of Praxis---whether it was around changing their beliefs about their ability to earn money, (there were many seminars on that topic) or improve their relationships, or creativity, or productivity, there was a change of thinking required that would lead to a paradigm shift, and then to permanent change, which I'm sure is what we all want in life. We are either improving and moving forward, to this new version of ourselves, or we are not. PHOTO of Andrea working with Mark Low, selling Bob Proctor's Seminars in Toronto, December, 2000. So What Does Praxis (or Integrating our Beliefs and Our Behavior) Have to do with Our Self-Image? The Mountain State Centers for Independent Living has a definition of self-image that I can relate to. It says that “Self-image is how you perceive yourself. It is a number of self-impressions that have built up over time… These self-images can be very positive, giving a person confidence in their thoughts and actions, or negative, making a person doubtful of their capabilities and ideas.”[iv] Our self-image is what we see when we look in the mirror, but like the definition we just read explains, what we see can be either be positive, giving us confidence, or negative, making us doubtful of our capabilities and ideas.” Our self-image is something that's built up over time and I would say that it exists in the non-conscious part of our mind.  See the image in the show notes that I took from my notes from the Winner's Image Seminar, that eventually went into my first book, The Secret for Teens Revealed. This way of looking at our mind originated from the late Dr. Thurman Fleet, the Founder of Concept Therapy, and is a good way to think of where our “self-image” exists in our mind. REMEMBER: We can have a self-image that controls our ability to earn money, where we either see ourselves as a strong income earner, or not. We can have a self-image that controls our weight and health, where we see ourselves as healthy, or not. We can have a self-image that controls our grades in school, where we see ourselves as a good student, or not. If we look at the image in the show notes of our self-image in our mind, it's easy to see how what we think about ourselves, (our self-image) controls our results in life. To change our paradigms, or old way of thinking, we need to do the work to overcome the old self-image that controls our results with a NEW self-image that with time, will override the old, outdated version of ourselves. Our NEW 2.0 self-image that's based on the new actions we must take, will eventually cause us to create new conditions and circumstances, setting us up for a whole new life. Who wouldn't want to choose this new path, over the old version of you? It just takes WORK and THE WILL to do it. When We Believe in Ourselves, We Will Do That Work Required for Our New Results. Our self-image also has a lot to do with our self-esteem “which is the overall sense of respect for ourselves and involves how favorably (or unfavorably) we feel about ourselves.”[v]  Obviously when we are earning more money than less, we will feel more confident, or if we are a student achieving excellent grades, this boosts our confidence levels. It's these strong confidence levels that we will need to override our doubts, fears and uncertainties that will come our way, allowing us to achieve PRAXIS, and the change that Mark Low mentioned comes along with creating a NEW identity.  You become a winner, or a good income earner or an excellent student. You Become a New Version of YOU! Can Our Confidence Levels Achieved by This Thing Called Praxis Be Seen by Others? When I look at the photo of myself that I found back in December, 2000, (I was 29 years old) I can remember sitting in that chair like it was yesterday. I know that I felt confident with myself, (my self-esteem) enough to quit my teaching position, and try something entirely new, but there was something missing with my equation. While I had a strong self-esteem (what I thought of myself) I had a weak self-image, as I worried about what other people thought of me. I think this is an age/experience concept, that shifts with time. But what goes on inside our minds, shows on the outside (with our behaviors and end results) like we can see with the diagram I drew out, so I do think that we can see someone's confidence levels, or lack of confidence. It's almost like this cybernetic mechanism that keeps us stuck from moving forward with whatever it is we are working on. When we are stuck, or unable to move forward, there's something blocking our results at the non-conscious level. And we can, with some introspection, figure out what it is. While writing this episode, I was talking to one of my close friends from high school she said to me “do you ever look back at pictures and think, wow, I wish I knew then, what I know now?” She got that right for sure. I wish I knew this quote 22 years ago,  from America's leading psychiatrist and brain health expert, Dr. Daniel Amen, who reminds us-- “When you're 18, you think everybody is judging you, and you care deeply about what they think of you. When you reach 40, you no longer care what anybody thinks about you. At 60, you realize nobody has been thinking about you at all because most people only think about themselves.” (Dr. Daniel Amen). Try This Activity Yourself. Find a photograph of you from a long time ago, and see what you see. It's really easy to see it in others, and more difficult when it comes to self-reflection. What do you see when you look at older photos of yourself? Do you remember how you felt in the photo? How is your self-esteem equation (what you think of yourself) vs your self-image (how you see yourself based on what you think others think of you), leading to your level of confidence? You can learn a lot about yourself, and what you can improve from this level of self-awareness. Once We See Our Gaps, How Do We Build Up Our Confidence? Once we see our confidence equation, if you were like me, and noticed that for whatever reason, you had an area of your equation that you could change (either your self-esteem levels, or self-image) then this week's brain fact Friday is for you. On this episode, we will create a plan to fix our gaps, and override the older version of YOU. The Brain and Self-Esteem Before we create this plan, for this week's Brain Fact Friday, I want to revisit a part of our brain that researchers at Dartmouth College have identified as a region of the human brain that seems to predict a person's self-esteem levels, or what they think of themselves (where our identity begins that leads us to our self-belief). We did cover this on EPISODE #199 but I want to look at this part of the brain from a different angle and how it relates to PRAXIS, or integrating our NEW beliefs with our NEW behaviors, for NEW results, and increased confidence levels that we will need to build this 2.0 version of ourselves. This part of the brain that researchers discovered can predict a person's self-esteem levels is called “the frontostriatal pathway, and the stronger and more active it is in the brain, the more self-esteem someone has.”[vi] The lead researcher of this study, Robert Chavez found that self-esteem lies in this pathway as shown in the image in the show notes and that “this pathway connects the medial PFC that deals with self-knowledge to the ventral striatum that deals with feelings of motivation and reward.” He called this pathway “the road” and that “a person with a strong road was more likely to have higher long-term self-esteem.” He also reminded us “how repeated behaviors (like meditation) can alter brain traits,” and we've talked about why repetition, or doing things over and over again can strengthen these neural pathways that lead to “stronger roads” and “higher levels of self-esteem.”     How Do We Build a New and More Confident YOU? Or How Can We Integrate Our Beliefs with Our Behaviors? This comes with time, experience and like we learned from Dr. John Dunlosky's research from EPISODE #37[vii], from repeating the same thing, over and over again to strengthen those neural pathways, leading to “stronger roads” in the brain. This weekend, as I was thinking about Mark Low and his business name, PRAXIS, and all the people he helped over the years, I went back to those early days when I watched many people “switch on” something with their thinking, and make significant changes in their lives as they changed their self-image, overriding their old paradigms, and created this NEW 2.0 version of themselves. I'm always on the look-out for those who do the work to make this change as many people get stuck in the process along the way, which is why I wanted to cover this on this week's Brain Fact Friday, to bring clarity to how we can all accomplish this change. So How Do We Create A NEW Self-Image and Override Our Old Paradigms? Now this is the part that I think took me over 22 years to really understand. I think this part is clear, that over time, or doing things a certain way, we can override our paradigms, creating a new self-image, leading us to new results and “stronger roads” in our brain, leading us to higher levels of self-esteem. That makes sense, right? When I asked Mark what Praxis meant and he said “it means integrating our beliefs with our behaviors” I don't think I really understood how “Praxis” happens, like how do we make this change? How do we integrate our beliefs with our behaviors? It doesn't just happen one day….it happens over time, after doing the same thing over and over again. One day, we look up from whatever it is we are doing, and notice that this change is now permanent. Like my high school friend reminded me, “don't you wish we knew what we know now, back in those days?” I wish I was more confident in my abilities, and didn't worry what others thought about me. I hope this awareness can help others to shorten their curve to changing old beliefs and habits, and create a NEW 2.0 version of themselves. I saw it when I interviewed Ryan O'Neill, with EPISODE #203[viii] on “Making Your Vision a Reality” because he changed in front of my eyes into an entirely different person. A NEW 2.0 version of himself. When I began working with Ryan, around 10 years ago, he mentioned that he never imagined where his life would be today, starring on Television shows around the globe for his work as a Paranormal Researcher. I thought about the hard work Ryan put in, to change his self-image, leading to new results, and I thought it was almost like taking a glass of water, and putting one drop of food coloring into it, likening the food color to the repetition of daily activity that's required for this change. To make a long-lasting color change on the water, we have to keep adding new drops of color to the water, every day. We can't just add a drop or two, and expect the color change to last. It will fade away, unless the drops are repeated. Exactly like the way we must repeat our daily actions, grinding away our old self-image, and building a new one in its place. It's a process, but this new self-image, leads us to new results, and this new version of you. This is all possible with a vision, hard work and persistence. How to Achieve PRAXIS and Integrate Your Beliefs with Your Behavior? I've included a ROADMAP for you to use in the show notes for the next steps, but it doesn't matter what you use. This is just a vision to help you to plan out where you are and where you are going. WHERE ARE YOU NOW? Start with the Self-Esteem Equation and Look for Your Gaps. Strong Self-Esteem (what you think of yourself) + Strong Self-Image (how you perceive yourself based on how you think others see you) = Strong Confidence Levels. Where is your self-esteem (your overall sense of self-respect)? Does this are need work? Where is your self-image (how you see yourself based on how others perceive you)? Are you like me, and just need to let go of what others think of you? Once you can see the gaps, you know where to begin. Write out the OLD identity you want to override (where you are now) and replace it with your NEW identity or vision. WHERE ARE YOU GOING? What is the NEW Self-Image you would like to create? (ie, good student, lose weight, leader in educational neuroscience?). Write out your NEW identity in as much detail as possible. DO THE WORK: What do you need to do to achieve this goal? Find someone who has achieved what you want to do, and ask how to begin. Create an action plan, and don't stop until you get to where you want to go.   INTEGRATE YOUR WINS: As you make incremental wins along the way, you must integrate these into your life. Celebrate each win, every step of the way, since the brain is a “prediction machine”[ix] (Andrew Huberman) and if you have too many losses in a row, the brain will begin to predict more losses. REVIEW: To review this week's Brain Fact Friday, did you know that researchers found a part of the brain that predicts a person's self-esteem levels called “the frontostriatal pathway, and the stronger and more active it is in the brain, the more self-esteem someone has?”[x] Did you know that we can change our self-image (how we perceive ourselves) by repeatedly taking action towards something that we want, (like Ryan O'Neill did in the Paranormal Industry) and this action will override our old self-image, watering down the paradigms that once controlled us (like we explained with the glass of water changing color with each drop of food coloring added), and giving us heightened confidence levels, and new results? Like Mark said to me 22 years ago, “It's called Praxis or integrating our beliefs with our behavior” and when this happens, it creates an entirely new person. It just takes WORK and the WILL to make this change. I hope you enjoyed this episode that took me back 22 years ago, as I thought of where my journey began, in those early days of working in the motivational speaking industry. This episode is for you Mark, and for all those people who you worked with, including myself, helping us to change into this NEW 2.0 version of ourselves, that we could barely imagine without your vision, and I hope that it impacts listeners, the same way it did for me, all those years ago. See you next week.   RESOURCES: My Roadmap 2022 https://www.achieveit360.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/My-Roadmap-2022.jpg REFERENCES: [i]Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #199 “The Neuroscience Behind our Self-Belief and Our Identity”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-on-the-neuroscience-behind-self-belief-and-our-identity/ [ii] How a Book Can Change Your Life by Andrea Samadi https://www.proctorgallagherinstitute.com/43977/how-a-book-can-change-your-life?fbclid=IwAR0RHhcy0WXImsUkzyuMgfWwNPvQjXn2-36hiSBmKKEfZFI-MXtl_2U53Y0 [iii] Praxis definition https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/praxis [iv] What is Self-Image and How Do We Improve it? Dec 22, 2018 by Courtney Ackerman, MA. https://positivepsychology.com/self-image/ [v] IBID [vi] There is Where Self-Esteem Lives in the Brain by Anna Almendrala Published June 16, 2014 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/self-esteem-brain_n_5500501 [vii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #37 with Dr. John Dunlosky on “Improving Student Success”  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/kent-states-dr-john-dunlosky-on-improving-student-success-some-principles-from-cognitive-science/ [viii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #203 on “Ryan O'Neill, Making your Vision a Reality” https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/case-study-with-paranormal-researcher-ryan-o-neill-on-making-your-vision-a-reality/ [ix] LIVE EVENT Huberman Lab Q & A from Seattle, WA (32 min) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-event-q-a-dr-andrew-huberman-question-answer/id1545953110?i=1000576342167 [x] There is Where Self-Esteem Lives in the Brain by Anna Almendrala Published June 16, 2014 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/self-esteem-brain_n_5500501

Does Nick look like Mark Whipple? August 11th, 12pmAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

American Cornhole League commissioner and founder Stacey Moore, color analyst Trey Ryder and top players Kaylee Hunter and Mark Richards join SportsJam with Doug Doyle to talk about the upcoming World Championships and the popularity of the sport

This week, the guys break down Baker Mayfield's trade from the Cleveland Browns to the Carolina Panthers and discuss the predicament the Browns are left in with Deshaun  Watson and his legal battles. Like Mark always says: “Cleveland is gonna Cleveland.” Let us know in the comments how you think the NFL will handle Deshaun Watson's case!   

Get ready to set sail and then take flight! This week the Ladies watched Uncharted, the bizarre video game-turned action movie starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg. We celebrated Wahlberg's big Dad energy, worried about a pet cat and debated which films we've seen so far are scrumptious raw cookie dough and which are delicious cookies. Like Mark, we'd choose Papa Johns over the sewers any day! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

On today's episode the gang discusses: 1) Amazon Reboots ‘Jack Reacher' And Now He's Full Size 2) CGI Luke Skywalker Looks Better Because He Looks Less Like Mark Hamill 3) Remy Ma Suggests Baby Name For Rihanna And A$AP Rocky 4) Cardi B Makes Daughter Kulture's Instagram Private After Trolls Leave Cruel Comments 5) ‘National Treasure' Disney Plus Series Casts Catherine Zeta-Jones

Nick Angstadt (@NickVanExit) and Isaac Harris (@IsaacLHarris) react to the major What If that Mark Cuban revealed about the Dallas Mavericks trading for Paul Pierce. What would the Mavs look like with Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce leading the way? Would a team of Dirk, Pierce, Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, and (maybe) Shawn Marion win multiple titles?! What would another title do for Dirk's legacy?Subscribe to our Youtube Channel: Locked On MavericksFollow/Subscribe Anywhere: linktr.ee/LockedOnMavsSupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! | Offers from our sponsors: lockedonpodcasts.com/offersBuilt Bar — Built Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15” and you'll get 15% off your next order.BetOnline AG — There is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Rock Auto — Amazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.Indeed — Get started RIGHT NOW with a FREE SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/locked Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com S2E18 TRANSCRIPT: ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark. Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we are going to talk about the first four of the 13 atheopagan principles, which are embraced by those who follow the non theist pagan path of atheopaganism, which you can find much more. About@atheopaganism.org. These are ethical principles which are designed to help us guide our decision-making and how we live in our lives. They're not commandments they're virtues and there are things that we aspire to. So that's what we'll be talking about today. Yucca: And as always sharing this is not a saying. Like Mark, you were saying, this is not a commandment. This is not a saying you need to see the world in the exact same way that we do, right. This is us talking about it's this is a useful framework for us. Let's dive into what these concepts are, what these principles are and how they enrich our lives and experience as pagans in the modern world. Mark: Yes. For a couple of reasons, one of them kind of additive and one sort of subtractive in the additive sense just as we did. Episode on the four pillars, a couple of episodes ago, the four pillars of atheopagan ism, which are the four sacred things. These principles are sort of derived from the four sacred things that is, if you believe that those four things are sacred, then you will conduct yourself according to these principles. There's a logic there. Yucca: They really feed into each other. Mark: exactly. And so. What this does for us is it gives us an ethical framework that helps us, especially when dealing with thorny situational questions that are complex. We can ask ourselves, how does this square with these principles? I've embraced? How, you know, how do I best make a decision? That is in accordance with these guidelines. So that's sort of the additive sense. The other is the subtractive sense is that paganism has often been accused of being very weak in the world way of ethical development. There's a lot of, I have rights and I'm free and I'm going to do whatever I want because I'm free. And there's very little, well, there, you have to respect other beings and you have to be considerate about causing damage in the world and you have to be, you know, all those sorts of things Yucca: The responsibilities that come hand in hand with those rights. Mark: Precisely. And so, so when I was developing atheopaganism as a pagan path, one of the things that I really wanted to address was that paucity of ethical guidance and the atheopagan principles and the four sacred pillars are the results of that work. So today we're going to dive into the first four of the 13 atheopagan principles and we'll come back to the rest in subsequent episodes. Not all at once. We'll put some interruptions in between the principles episodes so that we have some variety. But I think this'll be a really great conversation about what we see as important in terms of perspective and behave. If you're in the world. Yucca: Just on a structural level. I really appreciate it being 13. That's really fun. There's the 13 moons and the one solar year. And I think it was somebody on the Facebook group who suggested applying the principles to the full moons. Mark: yes. Which was just a wonderful idea. I was so excited about it. We've just had the laughter moon and which is the perspective moon. And we'll be coming up soon on the Praxis moon, which is the regular well, we'll talk about that. When we talk about principle five But having 13, this is kind of a magic number for pagans because of the 13 moon cycles. And it's a prime and it's just got all those Yucca: just a fun number. Mark: it is, Yucca: That's great. Mark: kind of number And so as I worked up these principles and then kind of arrived at the end of the list and realized that I think I've covered everything that I wanted to, it turned out that there were 13. And so that was kind of a happy coincide. Yucca: Yeah, well, let's. Mark: dive right in. CRITICAL THINKING Yucca: Yeah, the first one, this is  really appropriate one to be right at the forefront is critical thinking. Mark: Yes. Yes. Skepticism and critical thinking, recognizing that the metaphorical is not the literal and that both have value. It's not that we're saying that the mytho poetic storytelling symbolic realm, isn't a value because of course it is. We wouldn't be pagans if we didn't understand that we wouldn't be humans, honestly, if we didn't understand that. But fact. Yes, but facts are facts. And there is an objective universe outside of our skins, which is behaving according to physical laws. And it would be doing that whether we were observing it or not. And. Our capacity to identify the factual from the unfactual is really important. And especially at this time in American society, particularly, but it's happening all over the world with the rise of conspiracy theories and sort of crazy radical nationalism and various kinds of bigotry rooted in, in, baseless ideas about the superiority of one group of people over another. It's really important for us to learn the tools of critical thinking and be able to look at a claim made by someone and say, is this consistent with the evidence? How good is the evidence? Is this just the say so of some dude on YouTube or is this the consensus of scholars who have studied this for decades, there's a difference there. And we need to understand what the gradations of that difference are. Yucca: Exactly. And then also not just on that level, but within our personal lives. Looking at our own beliefs and going, Oh, wait, let's step back. And look at this. Where is this coming from?  This just confirmation bias? Is this just me really wanting it to be true? let's let's look at the logic behind this. Mark: very much. So there are principles in In cognition theory called Apophenia and pareidolia. Apophenia is the recognition of patterns that aren't there. Seeing patterns in actually unrelated events or phenomena and a sub-case of that is pareidolia, which is the visual recognition of patterns where. They aren't really there. So seeing the Virgin Mary in your taco shell, for example, or seeing faces or clouds or bunnies or whatever, Yucca: Yeah, clouds is a great example for that. Mark: We're always looking for shapes, right? We're looking for faces particularly because that's what we can relate to. And that's what we are, we're most attuned to interacting with as human organisms. So we've got this pattern recognition built into us and it works very well in many ways. It helps us to identify what's going on in the world, around us, and then to make strategic decisions about the right thing to do in relation to the world. The problem is it works too well. We see patterns all the time that don't really exist. I was talking before we started recording. I've had some things happen recently that have been real blows. I got a notice that I'm going to have to move. And my, my wonderful beloved pet kitty died. And now today I've discovered that my electric car is not charging, which for an electric car is kind of a problem. Yucca: That's Mark: And I was saying, well, the myth is that these things come in threes, right. So, you know, maybe that's all that it will be for me for awhile. Identifying that pattern is completely fictitious. It's entirely an imagined the Tori in imagination function in my mind. There is no reason why more bad things shouldn't happen in the next 10 minutes or none for the next 10 years. Yucca: What we focus on is we then see the pattern because we're expecting to see that pattern. Mark: Precisely. And then once having seen a pattern like that confirmation bias kicks in, which is our desire to continue gathering evidence, to convince ourselves that what we think is true. So these are all kind of working against us as rational beings. They're useful for us in many ways, but they're also working against us as rational beings. And so having a core value of skepticism and critical thinking is. Is so important if we're truly going to be science-based pagans, if we're truly going to be the followers of the spirituality of the verifiably real, which is another way that I've described atheopagan ism many times, then we have to be willing to winnow the wheel from the real, from the unreal, through the process of critical thinking and skepticism. Yucca: Right. And building on that, one of the things that we've talked about before on this podcast, but it's really important to come back to is. That this is enriching, this isn't Oh, let's be boring. And do all this critical thinking and take all the magic out of everything. No reality is wondrous and incredible and amazing and critical thinking is a tool for us to discover even more that would have been unimaginable, say, 20 years, a hundred years ago. Mark: Yes Yucca: So it's really enriching. it's it's feeding and nourishing, not depriving us of fun. Mark: Right. Right. One thing that is true for many in our culture now, and I venture to say many, if not most in the broader pagan community is a desire to seek exaltation and joy in fantasy. And there is a lot of joy that can be found in fantasy, but there's so much joy to be found. In reality. Reality is obscenely. Cool. Yucca: Yes. Mark: was just kidding for three days last week, up on the North coast of the County that I live in at a state park called salt point state park and the wild flowers were out and there were carpets of wild flowers all over the place. Stunning, just stunning. And then. You know, my partner Nemea is a photographer. So she's getting down to these little macro, you know, photographs of individual blossoms and identifying different plants. And we found the California native orchid. There's only one, but we found one in bloom. There's, it's just so cool. Nature by itself holds so much to be. To be joyous about and excited and curious and stimulated about that. We don't have to limit ourselves to storytelling and poetry and paintings and imagery and music, and those kinds of artificially created human things Yucca: Which are wonderful. Mark: Oh, they're all. Yucca: But they're not the end. They're part of the picture. They have their role, which is amazing and incredible. But also there's this other half, which is the reality component. Mark: absolutely. Yucca: The objective. Yeah. Mark: And you know, one of, one of the questions that religion seeks to answer at its broadest definition is what's real. What is it? What am I what's here? What is this life? And those questions are best answered through the use of science and critical thinking. Really? That's not what does it mean? What does it mean is something that gets decided in a mythic poetic context, Yucca: that's not science. That's not scientific. Mark: That's absolutely right. It is not scientific to ask, you know, what do stars mean? There's there, there is many answers to that as there are possible observers. Yucca: But how did they form what happens when they run out of hydrogen? Those are questions that end up having some really amazing answers Mark: Yes. Yucca: to that. Then open just a floodgate of other questions and discoveries. Mark: right. Right. So the question of what is a star and understanding that as a process that starts long before there's any kind of a point of light and continues long after there is a point of light becomes this adventure that you can go on. And which astrophysicists go on every day of their lives, trying to figure out the answers to those very questions. And it's exciting and it's beautiful. Yucca: Yeah. REVERENCE FOR THE SACRED EARTH Mark: And I think that's actually a great place at which to transfer, to talking about the second atheopagan principle, which is reverence for the sacred earth and cosmos. We are assembled biological machines that have been erected by life on earth, which is a tiny sub-sector of the physical unfolding of the universe that are able to think and are self-aware and are able to look at this incredible magnificence around us and learn stuff. We are uniquely gifted with the ability to just revel in the wow of all this. And it is to my mind our obligation to live in that reverence. It's not just, yeah, nature is cool. It's a deep seated, spiritual reality. In me and in the non-ferrous pagans that I know that nature is magnificent and that we are deeply indebted to nature because we are in nature. We're not separate. And that all of those engagements that we make with the surrounding natural world, like eating are sacred activities. They're not just random, they're sacred activities, eating sex, excretion. All of those. They are Yucca: breathing. Mark: breathing. Yucca: Think about breath for a while. Think about what you are breathing in that oxygen. And when you breathe out the CO2, which comes from the cells of your body, come through the blood, back to your lungs and out, and what's going to happen to that. It's going over to the grass, to the trees, to the potted plant in your window. And they are then taking that in photosynthesizing and breathing out the oxygen for you and on this back and forth, and those same molecules going from your body to another body. And they came from stars to start with. Mark: Yeah. Yes. All of these reciprocal relationships and having reverence for something is part of understanding that you're in a reciprocal relationship with it. It's not something that you're just mining for resources. And it's not something that you are worshiping in the sense of, you know, basing yourself and saying, Oh yes I'm not worthy kind of story. That's not what it's about. Of course you're worthy. You're an organism here on earth. Of course you're worthy. You are worthy of the oxygen. You're worthy of the food. You're worthy of the warmth and the shelter and the many gifts that the Earth and sun provide us. Yucca: You are part of earth. We're not just on earth. We are part of earth. Mark: Yes, we are earth Yucca: Our, yeah our bodies are. This planet, when we talk about the formation of the planet, we're talking about the formation of us.  Mark: yes. And it can be hard sometimes because of the nature of the way academic disciplines have been divided up to understand that kind of big picture thinking because we have a little box called geology and we will have a little box called biology. And. Those kinds of, I won another wearily and and the physicist just sort of step back and chuckle about the whole thing. But that's the world isn't in those little boxes. That's those are just categories that humans have used to try to narrow down the enormity of what we're trying to understand into digestible bites. Yucca: a new box. That's a little bit bigger, still a box, but it's a great box, a new field, which is geobiology  is trying to look at those merge, those two fields that we've considered to be so separate and look at them together and go, okay. What's how does. How do things flow from the biotic to the Abiotic. And is that even a valid distinction when we're talking about a living planet like Earth and it's really a new field, Robert Hazen, I think has this, his name has a lot of incredible books and some lectures on like the great courses Mark: Hm. Yucca: interested in getting into that, seeing the evolution of mineralogy and biology as not being separate as being completely woven together. Mark: It's really cool and really timely. I mean, we do know from the history of the Earth that, that you know, gigantic algal blooms, for example, that have created huge amounts of oxygen have totally tipped the scales of the biotic activity in the world and change the climate, which has resulted in greenhouse conditions or in snowball earth. So the timeliness of this is very important because we are coming to understand that the primary driver of change in our atmosphere is humanity. It's it is biology. It's not it's not volcanoes it's us. Yucca: Yeah, they have a part, but not in the scale that we're seeing, Mark: Right? Yucca: right. That this is, and that doesn't make humans bad. Mark: No. Yucca: There's a jump that people often go to of, Oh, well, humans are causing this change and therefore humans are bad and everything would be better if we weren't around. That's pretty, in my opinion, pretty far to go. And I think it's lazy, right? To just choose to say, Oh, well, humans are bad. Humans are totally destructive. Instead of going, humans are powerful. We can do these changes. How do we be responsible with the power that we do have? How do we make sure that we aren't harming any even more? How do we make sure that we're restoring what has been harmed and improving the situation for more life and more of quote, unquote nature. Mark: Right. I don't know that I would use the word lazy, but I think we have a propensity to want to divide things in a dualistic sense, into good and bad. And the truth is that in almost all cases, things are complex. They're not good or bad. They're kind of good for some by some measurements and kind of bad by other measurements. And. Humanity is a remarkable species just by any measure, the simple fact that you and I are speaking across thousands of miles to have this conversation, so it can be recorded and downloaded by all these people all over the world is it's just an extraordinary achievement. And to. To denigrate that or to dismiss it, I think is simply to miss out on one of the many wonders of living. Because humans are just remarkable. The art, the music, the dance, the science, all of it is just remarkable, but that said, we are powerful drivers at this point of change. And the question is, which way do we want to drive? Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And given how adaptive we are, even if we've made a big mess, even if the Anthropocene continues, the biodiversity crash continues. The climate change continues. Humans are so adaptable that we are likely to persist even under very extreme conditions. So. My mind has always been to what kinds of values and models can we seek to get out there in the world as much as possible today so that those people then can maybe live a more sustainable life? Yucca: A lot of this is about that we're talking about, right? These principles, what are the things that are going to help us to do that? And the first two that we've talked about, the critical thinking, right? This can be as simple as, huh. If I pollute the water that I'm drinking, what's going to happen. Right. And then also the reference for the Earth and view of it as sacred that it's worth taking care of and protecting. And of course, when We say earth, but earth and cosmos. We're talking about reality. Mark: What is? Yucca: yeah, you don't have to. We're not specific to, although humans we're here on earth. We're part of earth, but we're not excluding everything else by saying earth. Mark: Well, because even at our scale, even at the relativistic scale, everything really is blurred into everything else. The. the Earth is bombarded by solar, radiation and solar wind and meteoroids and all kinds of Yucca: Of space debris. Mark: of space stuff all the time that is coming to add to our world. And to pretend that we are in this little capsule going around a star is. It's not reality. It doesn't hold up to that first principle of skepticism and critical thinking. So if you understand that it's all blurry, then revering, this earth is really not quite enough because there's that star up there, that's driving everything. And that star is a part of the system. And that system is a part of. A galaxy and the galaxy is part of a supercluster and the superclusters, it just goes on  Yucca: Laniakea to the cosmic web, to the observable universe and who knows what more Mark: Yes. Yucca: and how little of it we can see. Mark: So we Revere the Earth and the cosmos because man, they're cool. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: They're just so incredibly cool. Yucca: And by day it's also us, GRADITUDE Mark: Yes. And the next principle actually relates closely to this because if you're really aware of just how wow. the Earth and cosmos are the next principle, which is gratitude becomes a lot easier and gratitude is Its gratitude. Actually, it sounds like a noun, but it's not, it's a verb. Gratitude is something that you do. And it's those moments that we take when we go, wow. That was really beautiful. Or look at that flower or God that smells good. Or that's the best tasting chocolate I think I've ever had. Those acknowledging those moments and kind of gathering them to you in a way that informs that your life is joyous because atheopagan ism is a path that's about being as joyous as possible. It's about being happy as well as being effective and being an exponent for a better world. It's about just being happy because pleasure and happiness are good. It's good for you to be happy. So gratitude is something that, I mean, I know I could do a better job at it. I know I could I feel like there's no ceiling to how grateful one could possibly be. Maybe the Dalai Lama has hit the ceiling. I don't know. But I know that I certainly have farther to go.  Yucca: You too. Yeah. That's something that ritual and we've done a whole episode on this as well, but ritual can really help facilitate Mark: Yes. Yucca: and grow that sense of gratitude, which grows our own happiness, as you're saying and health as well Mark: Yes. For sure. Happier people are healthier people. They just are. I mean, Yucca: more effective. Mark: yes Yucca: Happier person is better able to take care of other people and to focus more. And all of those things. Mark: Yeah, I absolutely agree. So, yes, gratitude. And there are lots of different kinds of gratitude practices. There are people who just before they go to bed, they recount, you know, three things that I was grateful for today. There are people who have a gratitude jar and they put some, they write something down and stick it in the jar every day. And then at some point in the year, they take them all out and read them and then burn them and start over wonderful ritual practice. Um, Yucca: Is a great place for that too, because it sets the tone for your day. Okay. HUMILITY Mark: It announces I'm already coming into a world that gives me gifts that I feel great about now. Let's see. What's up. Yeah. So, that leads me to the fourth principle that we're going to talk about today, which is humility. And I find that gratitude and humility and reverence for the Earth and cosmos all kind of tied together. Because if I really comprehend the scope and scale of the Earth itself, not. Not to mention the cosmos, just the Earth itself in terms of its age and its size. Then I will understand that I am small and temporary and that whatever my concerns are, whatever my attitudes are or my initiatives that. They need to be understood in the context of a being that is small and temporary. And so I feel humility is a really important quality for us to have as non theists pagans because you know, we're not lording over people and telling them what to do. That's not what we're here about. What we're here about is being the best people we possibly can be and doing that in a way. With with a grasp reality, as much as possible and a solid set of things that we find sacred and of value and and a real sense of joy of gratitude as we go forward. So, and you know, I'll say I, I struggled with this when I was younger, I was taught to be really arrogant. My father was just a narcissistic asshole. And I just sort of followed along, trying to be like dad you know, very much a know it all kind of person. And what I found is that the less of that I exhibit in my life, the better my life gets and the truer, it feels so. Which I'm sure is one of the reasons why humility came up early in the list as I was developing the list. These are not in priority order, by the way, the atheopagan principles are the, are basically just in the order that I thought of them and wrote them down. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: so, Yucca: Touching on humility. This is one of those terms that can have very different emotional connotations for people. And when we say humility, we're not talking about belittling oneself, right. We're small, but that doesn't mean that we suck or that we're not important or that we're not worthy of love and attention and all of those things and respect, but that. It's really tying back into that gratitude where it's with the humility. Part of it is a recognition that the world doesn't owe us something. We are part of the world. And if anything, we owe the world, not that people should just be giving to us and no matter what all of that, um, That arrogance there's it really ties into that, that self-awareness and gratitude that just leads to a contentment and a humble outlook. Mark: Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, it's a little tail chasing in a way, because once again, You know, it's complex. All these things are true at once. Yes, I am small and temporary and trivial. Yes, I am amazing. It is amazing that I am here. I can do amazing things that is really fucking cool. And I'm small and temporary. And. My, whatever things I do in the grand course of the universe's history will inevitably be trivial, but it doesn't matter because I have that core understanding that I'm amazing at the same time. And we can hold all of those. We can be filled with gratitude for the gifts, the various genetic gifts and educational gifts and cultural gifts that we've been given. As well as to understand ourselves as being small and temporary and deserving of humility holding all of that together without flopping over into shame or Poor self-esteem on the one hand or narcissism and arrogance on the other hand is a part of the balance holding that's so necessary for us as non theist pagans. Yucca: With that those two understandings at once I think are epitomized by the sense of looking out at the dark starry sky and getting that incredible sense of, ah, I'm tiny and the universe is so fast and I'm part of it Mark: Yes, I am. Part of all this, all that extending out farther even than light has ever reached this planet. I'm part of all of it. Every molecule that makes me up arose shortly after the big bang and Yucca: and it's both true Mark: wow. Yes. It's all true. It's true. Yup. And you know, it's kind of an amazing thing to be able to get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, hello, big bang. Good morning. Good morning, Starburst. How are you today? And you know, we've talked a lot in this podcast about how being a science-based pagan, being a. An earth revering pagan. A lot of it is about just learning to pay attention, looking for, you know, the little details of beauty and what nature is doing and how things are changing over the course of the seasons and all that. And I think that this is one of those places where this is true also that Noticing when we're given an opportunity to be kind of arrogant and we choose to be humble instead, noticing when we're provided with something unexpected and joyous. And we can be grateful about that, you know, keeping track of these meaningful events in our lives, because it's so easy for life to just turn into this sort of rush of. Not necessarily meaning associated moments, just kind of running through the routine and we're here to celebrate, you know, that's what our, that's what our religious path is for. We're here to celebrate and to be good people and to help other people celebrate and to make the world as good for other beings as we can. And that requires some cataloging. No you have to keep score at some level. You have to keep track of the good stuff. In order to remind yourself to be grateful Yucca: And learn to focus on that because it's a choice. Mark: Very much as a, as someone who has struggled with depression, when that filter drops down over my eyes, I can't see the good stuff. I just can't. And it's not that it isn't there, even though that voice in my head lies and says, it's not there. And I've been through enough cycles of this now that I know that's not true. But it sure seems true because that voice speaks with a lot of authority. So that's the first four of the 13 atheopagan principles. Love to have your feedback. We take. Email at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com, which is the wonder podcast, all one word Q s@gmail.com. Love to hear from you about this. And as I said, we'll be going over the rest of the principles in subsequent episodes. But not next week, we'll do something else next week. Just to kind of keep things mixed up in lively. UPDATE ON THE ATHEOPAGAN SOCIETY Yucca: Before we finish up for today, we did want to remind folks about the Atheopagan Society.  Mark: It's a nonprofit religious organization that we founded to to keep the ideas that the principles and values of atheopaganism moving forward into beyond the life of any one person and to help support atheopaganism around the world. Yucca is the chair of the council of the Atheopagan Society. And I serve on the council. We had a meeting last night and so we can report out some of the stuff that's going on with that. You want to start in on that Yucca Yucca: Sure. We'll, we've been, you know, we have our quarterly meetings and we're still getting our feet underneath ourselves, but we've been working with different committees, especially the educational committee, putting together material that can be used by anyone. So again, this is not a membership organization. You don't have to pay any dues. This is just the service that we're putting out to be available for anyone. But  working with that.  The clerical committee has worked on putting together material for anyone who wants to be a cleric and material like weddings. What other things are on that Mark? Mark: The introductory guide book for clerics includes a section on pastoral counseling. On conducting weddings on conducting funerals and working with the dying and on conducting other rites of passage, like naming ceremonies and passages into adulthood and all that kind of stuff. And it's downloadable from the Atheopagan Society website, which is theAPsociety.org. You can also see the bios of the members of the council there and download the bylaws if you're curious see what events are coming up all those kinds of things. So it gives you an overview about what the society is up to. We also talked quite a bit about diversity, equity and inclusion, which is something that's very important to us as a value. We're still trying to figure out how best to pursue DEI initiatives within the atheopagan community, but it is important to us and we're still looking for the right ways to. To conduct ourselves that way. Possibly by developing a statement and then an implementation plan for that statement. But it's early days yet. And we need help in order to do that because we don't have a whole lot of diversity on the Atheopagan Society council right now. And we really need more voices to be involved in that. Yucca: Exactly. Yeah. And so that's something that is, that really is taking a lot of our focus. Mark: Yes. Yucca: So, Mark: In the edge. Oh, go ahead. Yucca: Oh, I was going to say, and we were also talking about different media outreach and what ways that the society can really best serve the community and what platforms do we use to reach people and all of that. So that's another thing that we, of course, always really welcome input from folks on. Mark: Yes. And the last thing that I'd want people to be aware of is that we have begun discussions about an in-person atheopagan con. Or something like that. An in-person gathering in 2022. The, this is still a very nebulous concept, but we're looking at doing something somewhere in the middle of North America, probably the Denver area, because there are beautiful national parks nearby and it's air traffic hubs. So it's cheaper to fly into for people. We. We don't know exactly what it would be yet, but we know that there's a lot of interest in doing this and I've interacted with so many people online, especially over the last year that I want to hug. If they want to be hugged, Yucca: It'd be great to give you a hug. Mark: I would. Wouldn't that be great? Yucca: You know, all of this zoom it's would be wonderful to see people in person and know. Mark: it would be really great. So that has begun. And we're starting to gather a committee together that can help to produce that event. And that'll be a production of the Atheopagan Society. And we'll use our corporate nonprofit umbrella as the producer. So exciting things happening. And we just wanted to make sure that you knew about them now, not everybody who is a non theist pagan is an atheopagan. And we want to be clear about that. But if you want to come play with us, you're welcome to. Yucca: Yeah  Mark: and I don't know. I think that's about it. Yucca: I think so, but I'm glad we got to touch on that as well. A little bit in this episode. So yeah, as always, this has been wonderful. Thank you, Mark. Mark: I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Yucca. See you next week.    

Ever wondered what it would be like to have Coach Diaz provide a Virtual Gait Analysis? With the permission of Mark Falcone, we share the experience with you! Unvarnished conversation between a real life client and Coach Diaz discussing the outcome thus far. Like Mark, a lot of Spartan Race Athletes identify that they have…Read more →