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Patrick explores how to set boundaries with adult children while balancing tough love and compassion. He also touches on complex issues surrounding church security, considering the importance of proactive measures in safeguarding communities. Lastly, he addresses the thorny topic of immigration, looking into the balance between compassion and justice. Stay tuned as Patrick explores these unpredictable conversations with a firm anchor in faith. Laura – A mother of 6 looking for work: I’m in HR and believe these questions are not harmful. They just go to the demographic office. (00:47) Email - My husband and I are in a disagreement on what kind of boundaries to place on our son who is sexually active. (07:08) Mark - Do you think Church's should have better security? (20:57) Monica - I am disheartened and confused when I see division in the Church. I just don't understand Pope comments on immigration. (37:56)

Patrick explores misconceptions around Catholic traditions and the term "Roman Catholic." He discusses why some Protestants reject Catholic practices without biblical basis and the origins of key elements like the Bible's canon and Sunday worship. He also dives into the importance of tradition as mentioned in the Bible itself.   Protestant Pastor celebrates being “simply-Biblical” Christians and just “Sola Scriptura”: Part 1 (00:42) Nick - There is a lot of people with special needs and our Church doesn't do a good job of taking care of them. How can we help them? (08:35) Mark - Do you think the current government policy is to make sure people are working all the time so they can't go to Church? (12:59) Isabella - How does the start of life at conception work with twins? (20:19) Jonathan - Some people will use Goddesses from their own cultures in place of Mary. (23:35) Protestant Pastor celebrates being “simply-Biblical” Christians and just “Sola Scriptura”: Part 2 (34:49)

Riddle me this, Pat-Man! Can you decipher the riddle of the doors to life and death? Listen in as Patrick unravels the challenge with logic and wit. Learn to outsmart the truth teller and the liar with a simple question. Patrick shares some more emails from listeners who are praying for Erin (from yesterday's show) Allison - When does Lent officially end? (04:02) Mark - Do voters have any responsibility to not vote for candidates who are promoting evil? (05:39) Dan - The Catholic Church has chosen sacred traditions rather than Sola Scriptura (25:30) Bunny - What do you think about the Pope condemning anti-vaxxers? (35:48)

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com Season 5 - Episode 1  ----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 talking about what happens after the frenzy of the holiday season. I know for a lot of people it's kind of a relief because it's very stressful and anxiety provoking, but for others the holidays really are kind of a haven in the midst of winter, and when they end there's sort of a letdown of No more parties, no more decoration, no more booze and sugar, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it's hard because it's the coldest, darkest time of the year. Yucca: Right. Mark: So, we're going to talk about that today. Yucca: Yeah. As you were saying that, I was thinking of that feeling that you get when your body, when you've had a bunch of adrenaline in your body, and then it fades, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, Mark: Yeah. Welcome to, welcome to cortisol. Yucca: yeah, now my arms are heavy, now what do I do? Right. Mark: Yeah. I Really resonate with that right now because my work has been extremely busy. I wasn't able to take time, um, in the last two weeks of December. So, really been sprinting and there is that sort of sense now here in, you know, we're recording this on December 30th. On the Saturday, and I, so I get these three days, and I'm in this mode of what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Because I've been so doing for so long, right? Yucca: Yeah. So I guess this is really a good opportunity to talk about the Well, transitions in general, but especially transition out of the holidays, and also the in between time. We'll come back to this in a minute, but the in between holidays, because at least those of us who follow the Wheel of the Year, we have a lot more holidays than most people do, but there's still these big chunks of time that we're in between, and what do we do during that in between? Bye. Period. I think it's a really potent, powerful time period, but in a very different way than holidays are. Mark: Yes, I agree. And then that leads us into, well, okay, well, when you're not celebrating, because you can't I mean, well, at Yucca: day is a celebration in some ways, but Mark: one level, we can be and hopefully are celebrating all the time because there's a lot to celebrate. But in the times that are between the peaks of that, how do we, how do we live as pagans every day? Yucca: Right. Mark: How do we, how do we enact that in our behavior? How do we choose it in our focus? And are what we pay attention to, um, so we'll be talking about that too. Yucca: Yeah. Yeah, I'm really happy that this is coming out on the first of the year. Seems like a good welcome to 2024 kind of thing. Mark: It does. 2024. Can you believe it? Yucca: It no. Mark: No. No. Yucca: time, it feels like a sci fi Year. Does not feel like a real, Mark: That's Yucca: we're actually here. Mark: Yeah. 2024 by Arthur C. Clarke. Yucca: starting with the transitioning out we still have our solstice celebration decorations up, but in the next few days, those are gonna start coming down, and it's gonna be, we still have a lot of wintry things out. So. Because at just the time of year we just like having our wintry things, because that's what's going on, but it's not going to be that solstice, right? It's not that, or Christmas, or whatever it is that it that folks are doing, it's not going to be that anymore. And so there's always kind of a, like a bitter sweetness to taking those things down. Mm Mark: It leaves a void in your home and in your sense of the specialness of the time. My Partner Nemea really gets a lot of psychological benefit out of the Yule tree, the solstice tree. And so we will still keep it up for another couple of weeks. Which means that we always miss the window for the Yucca: Pick up. Mark: company coming to pick it up. Which means I have to chop it into little pieces and fit it into a yard waste bin. But and I keep the trunk for next year's Yule Log, so I have to do some chopping anyway. But You know, this is a moment where the hoopla is fading, and then you're left with, well, we're back to school, we're back to work, and it's gray and cold, Yucca: And this particular year, it's fast since New Year's is happening on a Monday. Everybody's back on a Tuesday. If it was in the middle of the week, then usually things wouldn't start until the next week. But it's like, boom, here we go. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the, one of the jokes that I've always made because my birthday is January 3rd is that my birthday is always the day you go back to work. It's, you know, it's always, it's like, okay, the party's over and now it's time to celebrate me. Right. And it's like, well, we're sick of parties and we're sick of sweets and we're sick of booze. And we're, it's like, we don't want to get together in gatherings. We've been doing that for three weeks. Yucca: And I'm guessing as a kid, even though you're not a December birthday, you still probably got the let's just, this is your, this is your birthday present and your Christmas present all wrapped up to Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember that happening. Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know.  Yucca: And I know a lot of December babies who complain about that. Mark: yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that's frustrating about it, of course, is that it would be nice to have a holiday some other time through the year because I'm kind of sick of parties and booze and sweets and presents and all that kind of stuff.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: you know, and I actually have had half birthday parties a couple of times. On July 3rd. Yeah, so it's like, okay, I'm 46 and a half now. Time to have a party. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: so, anyway, let's talk a little bit about that, that transition, that, that kind of coming down off the peak. Because that's a real thing. I mean, it's a neurochemical thing. It's not just, it's not just something you can necessarily talk yourself out of because there is a change in modality from go, go, go, gotta be festive, gotta be festive, to okay, I have to be able to focus for work now. I have to, you know, I have to take the kids to school all those kinds of sort of more mundane things that get you rooted back into the groove of your, your routine life. Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. I think there's potential in when you, because those things are all things that are things you really actually have to do. There's a physical component to those things. And there's an opportunity to take a moment just to be aware of what you're doing as you're doing that. And there's a moment right there for that intention of recognizing, okay, I'm taking down the tree. Right? Or, I'm getting back in the car, first, first day back in the car in the whole year. Just gonna take a few seconds to close my eyes and think about what this means and be conscious of the transition. Mark: Mm hmm. And because it's a Because it's a shift from the out of routine nature of the previous few weeks, it gives you an opportunity to look at your established routine and decide whether that's really what you like. I mean, there are things you don't have a choice about, you do have to take the kids to school, you do have to do grocery shopping and all that kind of stuff, but maybe there are other things in your life that are habitual that you don't necessarily want to continue, or things that you want to add, Yucca: Right? And that's, we talk a lot about how COVID has shaped and changed the world. I think that's one of the places where it really did so many people. It was like an extended period of out of the norm, and several months, years, rockiness of going back to the routine, but getting to go, is this the routine that I want? And for a lot of people, the very, very loud no, Mark: Yeah, Yucca: And not that we're necessarily able to make all the changes that we would like to, but it gave us the opportunity to be aware that it could be different. Mark: well, and the biggest example of that, I think, is that in order to conduct business at all, many businesses had to go to remote Yucca: Mm Mark: And when they went to remote work, workers found they liked it. They didn't like the expense and the time loss and the stress of a commute. They didn't, they, they'd much rather work at home if not full time than certainly part time. And now employers are sort of strong arming many workers to get them back into the office, and the workers are balking. You know. There are tech workers that have moved out of California to small towns in the Midwest, and they're like, I'm not coming to the office, folks. I'm just, I'm not doing it. I mean, I'll, I'll fly in a couple of times a year for some kind of key thing that needs to happen. But, you know, on a daily basis, everything I do is over the wire anyway. So, leave me alone. Let me do my job. Yucca: I have to say, as someone who's pretty rural, to get into town is about an hour for us. So I love it. It makes there's so many things. I have a doctor's appointment coming up this week that I don't, that I don't need. It's just a consultation, right? They don't need to actually take any vitals. So I'm not going to drive anywhere. They're not going to drive anywhere. We're just going to hop on the computer for a minute. Boom. Mark: Yeah, telemedicine is a big deal, and especially for people living in rural areas. The advent of telemedicine is a huge step up in the quality of their care. So, yeah, it's a good thing. Yucca: And education, Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: There's so much stuff, you know, I provide it that way, my kids get it, where we can be rural and have access to people all over the world. So, anyways, that's our tangent from returning to normal life. Mark: tangent number one for this episode. Yeah, I mean, we get to reconsider what kind of life do we want to have within the constraints of the things we don't have a choice about. And that is, honestly, That's, that's the definition of freedom, really, you know. Freedom isn't absolute, I can do whatever I want. Freedom is, there are things that are out of my control that are constraints that I'm going to have to meet like having to eat, stuff like that. And then there are other things that I have choices about, and that's where you have liberty. That's where you get to make decisions. Yucca: Well, and if we go with that, you have choices on how you do the required things. Right? So, just using the, you have to eat, well, okay, but I get to choose what, and when, and, you know, all those sorts of things Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: does a, that element is a choice, right? And we can do that with everything in our lives, Mark: Yes. Although Yucca: well, there's, again, there's certain things we do not have control over as individuals, right? Mark: what I was going to say is that when you're in a family situation and you have kids that you're making decisions for, that's another constraint because it's like, you might not want to eat until nine o'clock at night, but if their bedtime is seven, then you need to make sure that they're fed. They're just things you don't have a choice about, right?  Yucca: But how do you respond Mark: yes. Yucca: to the fact that you have these people who are dependent and they have needs? How do you, how do you then respond, right? While still meeting those needs? You get to, as a parent, you don't have to do it a certain way because grandma did it that way. Mark: Oh, Yucca: You get to, you get to, you know, and there's lots of things grandma did that was awesome and other things grandma did that, oh my goodness, let's, let's not even talk about them, but you get to look at that and say, how does this work for my life? And how does this work for theirs? And get to make those choices, Mark: it's a good time for reflection, the beginning of the year. We talked about that last week some. Just to be really clear, you know, this is my life, it's my artwork, and I'm gonna do what I can within the constraints of what I've got. You know, if I've got a 2x4 canvas, I can't paint a 6x8 painting. That's the nature of the thing. But you still have an awful lot of choices about what you put on that canvas. Um, so, so yeah that's, that's a place to start is feeling some agency. I think that one of the things about the post holiday letdown can often be feeling like you're sort of getting back into the harness and having less choices and, you know, less opportunity to just be happy and celebrate and stuff. And that isn't entirely true. It's just that you have to do it within the constraints of what your life demands of you on a daily basis. So, let's talk a little bit about that. Dark time that we're coming into. I mean, it's not so dark. The light is, well, it is dark, but the light Yucca: depends on where you, yeah, it depends on your environment. I mean, I can certainly notice that the days are getting longer, but there's, there Still really, really short right now. Mark: Yes. And where I am, it's, Yucca: we're going into the coldest time of the year. Even though it's not going to be the darkest, it's the coldest, most bitter, windiest, you know, it really is going to be true winter. Mark: hmm, hmm. Yeah. Here I'm very pleased to report from California that we're getting a lot of rain. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: But that means that it's overcast and gray and we get tule fog in the morning on the mornings when it gets down around freezing. And it's It's, it's rarely bitter because when it does freeze, it's usually because it's clear. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And so the heat is radiated away from the earth and not been reflected back by clouds. But the, the, the time still feels cold and you know, you, you kind of have to bundle up and, and the days are still very, very short. Yucca: Mm hmm. And the shadow's long. That's the other thing that I always think about this time of year. Even when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, The shadows are just still long. Mark: they are. Yeah. Yucca: Yeah. So, and we're going to talk more about this time of year, especially in a few weeks we'll talk slog, right? Mark: Slug. Yucca: But you also have the stretches of time period between holidays in general, right? And some, some holidays get more attention than others. sOme of them kind of, and this depends on each person individually but some of them just sort of get, you just sort of glide over them more easily than Mark: Mm hmm. Mm Yucca: I mean, I guess that for most, most people there's a few really big ones that we can pretty consistent throughout the whole community. The winter solstice, hollows. Those are usually pretty big ones. On the other side of the year, what would you think? May? Mark: Yeah, Yucca: and maybe the equinox? But the other ones kinda Those are ones that sort of fall between the cracks sometimes. Mark: Well, the overculture, the mainstream culture, doesn't have corollary holidays at those times. And so we don't get, we don't get the help of there being a day to take off or a set of themes like the Easter bunny and chocolate eggs or, Yucca: Although May, we don't really get that either, but I think there's just such the still the powerful image of the maple and flowers Mark: right, Yucca: That's, that's still kind of hanging on there. Mark: Yeah, um, and another, another tradition that's really embraced in the pagan community is Morris dancing, the season for which starts on May Day where they dance up the sun and then it ends on the autumnal equinox when they dance down the sun. And in some cases, I mean, I've seen people that, I've seen reports of Morris teams that are now like dancing down the sun on the winter solstice, which I think is also very cool, but,  dancing around wearing bells in the snow takes a particular kind of character, I think, not one that I have. Yucca: Right. And again, depends on your climate, right? A lot of that happening in, you know, southern Britain, they don't, yeah, they might get some snow, but it doesn't stick around the way you might have snow in, say, Wisconsin. Right. Yeah. It's very different places. Mark: So we settle into our lives again and start doing the things. And I guess this is what brings us to This idea of being a pagan every day, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm Mark: right? Even when you're not, you know, putting on your, your fancy rags and, you know, going out to a, a celebration on at the beginning of February or at the spring equinox or whatever it is, Yucca: hmm. Mark: you know, there's, there's a way of being aware of what's going on around us in the natural world and a way of looking for the beauty and the opportunities to celebrate and to be happy that. thAt characterizes a pagan life, I think, and it's always a work in progress, but I've certainly found that, especially since my pagan practice became atheopaganism, explicitly, um, I just, I have more happiness now, because, because I'm, I'm making it, I'm choosing it. And of course we have so much grim, dire, dystopian talk in our mainstream culture. I think it's really beneficial to teach yourself, you know, to get wowed by flowers and the shapes of clouds and, Yucca: hmm. Mark: you know, the, the color of the sunset and, You know, that, that new picture from from the James Webb Telescope and, you know, all those. Just cool, cool things. The conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon, you know, pretty fantastic. Yucca: Yeah, and that isn't something that is a switch you can flip. It's not where you can just say, I am going to be a more joyful, happy, grateful person. It's something that you practice and become by doing. And that's where the daily practice really comes in. Mark: Yeah, it's a muscle. You have to, you have to exercise it, and it will become stronger over time. Yucca: Right. Mark: And a daily practice for me is really important, and I don't have a super elaborate daily practice, but it's still something that I go back to every day. And it just reminds me, okay, I am, I'm on a pagan path, I'm revealing the natural world, I'm connected with all this, and this is the lens that I turn on the world. This is, this is how I understand things. And that helps me. Yucca: Yeah. And what that practice is can and will look different for every person and for different points throughout our lives. Mark: Yes. Yucca: I'm guessing that your daily practice is different than it was 10 years ago, than it was 20 years ago, probably even different than it was 5. There's probably some core elements, but there's things that change. Throughout whatever's happening in your life, what are the things you need? And, you know, maybe there are things that really do work. There are certain things that work and we come back to. And then things that become more important at different points.  Mark: And what's lovely about neopaganism is that you are not prescribed rituals, you can design rituals that fit with yourself and your current needs and your own creative aesthetic and what the, the freedom in that. And the, the precision with which a practice can address your personal needs is really amazing. Yucca: hmm. Mark: is. And you can try lots of different stuff until you find something that goes, Ooh, that's really good. I want to do that every day.  Yucca: And there is not shame at all in trying out research. Something that you didn't completely invent, right? If you find something that somebody says, Hey, this is a way to do it, you do this, this, and this, and you try that out, and you do that, and kind of dedicate yourself to being consistent with it for a several week process, or however long you decide is what works for you there's value in that. You don't, because one of the things in neopaganism is sometimes it can be a little Overwhelming for people. It kind of just seems like this free for, oh, whatever works for you, whatever works for you. Sometimes people are like, yeah, but I don't know what works for me. I need a starting point, something. Yeah. And that's not, that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's just where somebody is at that moment. And, and then they get to know themselves better as they go through this process. And that's something that we can come back to, right? Yeah. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: adding new things in, and you don't have to know from the get go exactly what's going to be the right fit for you. Mark: No. Yucca: You change over time. Mark: And, and. At least in the naturalistic pagan pathways that we talk about here, um, you can do it any way you want that works for you, that's fine, but you can also be inspired by other sources in other traditions, which doesn't mean stealing them, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: but it means being inspired by them because there are a lot of things that are so called ritual technologies. Yucca: Mm Mark: That are very powerful. And, I mean, lighting candles, right? I mean, people light candles all over the world for a lot of different reasons in sacred contexts. So you're not stealing anything from anyone by lighting a candle or burning incense or, you know, that kind of stuff. But it can still be, you know, very evocative and powerful for you. You've talked about, um, the Simmerpot at your house, Yucca. And that's, I mean, that's a ritual practice, right? It's something that you do in order to create scents in the home that reflect your seasonal aesthetic and, you know, and that's another reminder of, oh, oh, it's spring, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: you know, oh, the, the, the smell changed. Mama changed the smell. So, we're in a different time now. Yucca: And they're old enough now that sometimes they get to be involved in the choice. Mark: Oh, Yucca: they're real little, it just happens. But as they get a little bit older, it's, hey! What do you think? Which one today? What do you mean both? Okay, let's try both. That's almost always the answer. I don't know if that'll go, but sure, let's try it. So yeah. Mark: In yeah. Terry PR in the, the BBC production of the Terry Pratchett Novel Hog Father, which is the only holiday movie that I have to watch every year. Yucca: We read the Hogfather every year. Mark: Do you? Yeah, yeah. There's this wonderful line by one of the, the wizards at the the University of Uns, the unseen University of on Mor Pork, where he says, let's just take everything and mix it up and see what happens. And that's, that sounds very much like a five year old choosing what sense to put in a pot. Yucca: Yes. Mark: Don't wanna, you don't wanna miss out on anything, right? Yucca: Right. And so, you know, I try to be good first. Knowing that the everything in might be an option, you know, I limit it down to two or three options to begin with, but they still, it's still gonna be all of them. And if you ask multiple kids at the same time, they, out of principle, will choose the opposite of the other ones. Mark: Ah, okay. Individuation. It's a thing. Huh. Yucca: it was, I wish I had like a, you know, a save button in real life so I could go back and check what would happen if you did. Ask them independently, right? Like in games where you can be like, what if I chose the other dialogue? What would have happened? I wish we could do that in real life. So,  Mark: daily practices. They can be a lot of different things. I mean, a daily practice can be going for a walk in your neighborhood. Yucca: Mm Mark: You know, for a half an hour every day and just looking at what's happening in the gardens or in the shop windows, or, you know, if you're in a big, dense, urbanized city you know, just what's going on with traffic right now you know, what, what are the clouds doing are there, are there wildlife around, are there birds that are, that are around that you don't necessarily see at other times of the year that, That function of paying attention. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And particularly paying attention to look for reasons to be happy is a learned skill, like, like Yucca was saying, and it sure improves your life. Yucca: Right, Mark: You know, one of the things that, that I have a really hard time with the Abrahamic religions about is that they don't seem to put much focus on being happy. Yucca: right. At least not the mainstream ones. I think we could say that they're definitely bran you, you could make that argument for Sufism or Quakers or, you know, there's branches that do bring that in, um, but not as a, that's not really the theme on the, on the big scale. Mark: no well, anyway, Yucca: That's a, another conversation about the whys behind that and Mark: Yeah, and it's not our subject. Yucca: the, Mark: You, you can find another podcast to learn about, you know, what they're going for and what, what their goals are.  Yucca: Context for why it developed that way? Which is fascinating, but I personally don't know enough to actually really comment on that. I can say my guesses on, well, I listened to that, you know, that one podcast, and they said this and that, and that made sense to me, but that's not actually my field. So. Mark: Yep, very helpful when you know what you don't know. Which is, of course, one of the, the banes of the internet is that certain people are authorities on everything. You know, the Dunning Kruger, uh, syndrome, uh, Yucca: ways, right? The less you know, the more you think you do, and the more you know, the less you think you do. Mark: the less you think you do and the less certain you are about any of your conclusions. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: Which is why evidence is a good thing. But, just for us, I mean, Yucca: And this whole process that we've been sorting out over, over hundreds of years to try and get closer in and spiral closer and closer into truth. It's pretty great. Mark: it is. Yucca: I'm a big Mark: It is. And it spins out lots of things that are almost certainly true. There, there are things that are nailed down pretty well in terms of the way the universe works, and the way particular organisms operate, and, and that kind of thing. Now, at any given moment, there is an opportunity for some Contrary evidence to come along that shows that we don't completely understand them yet. But the fact that you're in New Mexico and I'm in California and we're talking now Yucca: Feels face to face. Mark: yes, and we can broadcast this for people all over the world to listen to is a reflection of the fact that we've gotten pretty good at predictable stuff in many ways. Yucca: hmm. Mark: Yeah, Yucca: And in other places, we've, we've got a long way to go, but. We've got a process to, a process to be able to approach it with. Mark: Yeah, to get there. Yucca: so, and when we talk about a daily practice, that's a process too. It may not necessarily be the scientific method, but you can actually bring a lot of that into your own life and that can be really helpful. Right, just some of those, the, Your observation and testing and all of that, but having the process is really the first step Mark: Yeah. And when you think about it, a lot of what people call a grimoire or a book of shadows, you know, those are great romantic names Yucca: for your lab book, for your field book, Mark: Exactly. That's, that's, that's exactly what it is. It's like, okay, I did this this time. It felt like this. This is what I would change. This is what I would keep. Onward we go. Yucca: right? And sometimes they even have very specific rules that you're supposed to follow, like writing in pen and, you know, all the things and dating it. Yeah, some, depending on what lab you're in, there's some. The rules can be pretty intense for how you do your notebook. Mark: Really? Yucca: Well, because they, well, again, depending on what the lab is, but you can later use that as evidence for patent disputes and all of that kind of stuff. Mark: I see. Yeah, that makes sense. You don't want that stuff written in pencil. Yucca: Yeah, so there's rules and now there's a lot of them have gone digital. But there's very specific rules about how you do it and even. So, one place that I worked, I had to have the supervisor initial when I crossed something out. They had to initial that it was like a second, a witness, basically, that you were crossing out in the notebook. So, Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: Yeah, like with a contract. If you cross something out you have to initial it. Yucca: yeah. But, the, when you're doing your Book of Shadow or something like that, you can come up with your own fun rules that you can do for whatever practical reason, but also Just because it makes it feel kind of special and, and, you know. Mark: Yeah. Have a special pen. There's a member of the Atheopagan Society Council who is a fanatic about fountain pens. Yucca: Ooh. Mark: And she has all these amazing fountain pens and ink, including Ultraviolet, sensitive, invisible ink. Yucca: Ooh. Mark: Isn't that cool? Yucca: like Mark: You have to shine a UV flashlight on it in order to read it, but the pages look completely blank otherwise. I mean, and there's, you know, there's all these wonderful inks like oxblood ink and, you know, all this stuff, which isn't actually made, isn't actually made from oxblood, it's just that color. Yucca: Oh, okay. It's gonna say the DM in me immediately thinks of using that pen for a secret message that you have to give the players and they can't decipher it until you give them the right the right prop or something. Mark: Yeah, yeah like a wand that glows UV, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Something like that. That would be really cool. Yucca: You just come up with some fantasy sounding name for it instead of UV, though. Mark: Right. Yucca: Yes. Mark: Well, we used to have ultravision and infravision in Dungeons Dragons. That got turned into darkvision, which is a catch all. Covers You know, so instead of seeing a heat imprint, um, or, you know, seeing at far distance because the ultraviolet is more penetrating you just have this one magical thing that just lets you see stuff that's further away. Yucca: Yeah, you just explain it in different ways, but it makes the The rolling work, the stats work easier. Mark: It does. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not going to talk about Shadow Dark. I really am not. We were talking before the thing, I got a new role playing game that I participated in the Kickstarter for, and it's, it looks really wonderful, and it's very simple. Very simple, modern mechanics, but a real old school kind of feel. So, that's all I'm going to say about Shadow Dark. Yucca: All right, um, well maybe that's one of those activities to do in the long stretches between holidays. Mark: Yes. If it's going to be dark, you might as well be in a dungeon. Yucca: right, yep, well this was great. Any other thoughts for the, for the new year, for our different topics today, of kind of the letdown from the holidays between. Holidays and daily practice. Mark: I, I guess the one thing that I would reinforce is to experiment, you know, really ask, ask uncomfortable questions about the routines in your life that don't serve you, and experiment with different ways to make that feel better, um, and that's, that And a daily practice, to me, really helps. The daily practice should not feel like a burden. Remember, the practice is for you, you're not for the practice. It's, it's not like, you know, it's not like Yucca: There's not some god that you're trying to please. Mark: right, or some religious institution. So this is all about you identifying. What helps you to live what feels like an optimized life. Because you know what? When people are happy, they spread it around. They, when people are happy, they empower other people. They Yucca: Just feel good to be around. Mark: yes, they feel good to be around. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And that's something we can all aspire to, I think. So yeah, this has been great, Yucca. Thank you so much for the conversation and Happy New Year! Yucca: Happy New Year, everyone!   

Play No Games is a society and cultural podcast that delivers genuine thoughts, conversations, humor, relationship enlightenment and authentic introspection. They say "if you know better, you do better", yet we see that there needs to be motivation! Join Cas, Arthur, RJ, Andrew, and Cartier Bob as they give you their unfiltered, and unapologetic, ways to digest life so you can be ready to PLAY NO GAMES.

Mark - Do not put your confidence in yourself, instead place your confidence in -Christ for He is the Shepherd, in Him you are forgiven.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E40 TRANSCRIPT:----more----     Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca,  Mark: and I'm the other one Mark.  Yucca: And today is very exciting cuz we are actually going to be interviewing you, mark, about a project that you've been working pretty hard on and has just passed a a  Mark: m. Right. I've been writing the, the second atheo paganism book. And, or, or, well, I'll get into details about exactly what it is, but I've been writing that for a year and I just completed the manuscript and I'm ready to submit to Llewellyn the publisher. Mm-hmm. . Which is good cuz it's due on November 30th, so it needed to happen pretty soon. Hey, you're. Yeah, a little bit. Yucca: That's, that's impressive. Yeah. . So let's start with you know what, well, first of all, this is your second book, right? It's  Mark: actually my third. Your third, okay. I have a collection of poetry that I published in 2020 called A Red Kiss. Mm-hmm. . But this is my second nonfiction.  Yucca: Okay, so can you tell us a little bit about what it is? Does it have a set title?  Mark: It has a working title. Okay. I, I hope that Llewellyn will find that to be an acceptable title. It's called “Round We Dance: Joyous Living Around the Year and Throughout Life.” Mm. Okay. And so it's a little bit different than the first AOP Paganism book. In the first book, there were essentially two sections, and the first one was kind of about my exploration of what a religion is and what it does for us and the science behind that and kind of leads up to. Leads up to the question of, okay, well if we were gonna create a a religion tomorrow, what would that look like? How would we incorporate all scientific knowledge and critical thinking and still have those beneficial effects, those good feelings that come from rituals and celebrations and community and all that stuff? So that's the first section of the first. And then the second section is about an implementation of those ideas, which is atheism. Mm-hmm. . So it explains about the principles and the four sacred pillars and the wheel of the year, and a ritual format and all that kind of stuff. So that's the first book, the one that's already out and that I'm sure a number of our listeners have this book is a little bit more general in its audience. Okay. The i, the idea here is that, You know, there's this flood of people who are leaving institutional religions. Mm-hmm. , the, the number is just climbing with every passing year. The number of people that self identify as Christian in the United States plummeted by 12% over the last 10 years. Wow. So, and, and what most of those people are becoming is not some other religion. They're becoming what are known as nuns, n o n E S. Mm-hmm. , not, not nuns, like Catholic nuns, , nuns. Like, I'll have none that, yeah. Right. And. The nuns subdivide into several categories, some of whom are kind of hardcore anti theists. Many of them feel very burned by their religious experience and angry and heard about that. You have other people who are just disinterested and feel like the values of institutional religions like Christianity don't resonate with themselves. They don't, they're not into the, the biases and the mm-hmm. . Shaming and all that kind of stuff, and many of those folks are looking for something else. They're looking for something that adds meaning to their life, that builds community that they can share with. That's something that they can share with their families. That gives them a sense of purpose and focus and the kind of pleasure that comes from having rituals in your life. Right? Mm. and Atheopagan is an answer to that, but this book is more about, the book talks about Atheopagan is a lot, but, and it explains the Atheopagan ritual format and the Wheel of the Year. Mm-hmm. . But it's really meant for that broader category of people who. Feel something's missing and are working to find something that will infuse their life with more of that sense of meaning and specialness and wonder.  Yucca: Mm-hmm. . Okay. So do you feel that it would be something valuable to people who do identify as Aio Pagans as well? Mark: I do, because it's a much more how to kind of book. Mm. The the first book was much more theoretical. This book has sections on, you know, examples of different kinds of healing rituals and different kinds of rites of passage and different kinds of ways to celebrate the holidays of the Wheel of the year. And A, a section on ritual arts, which includes things like making siles and talismans and spell jars and handle magic and all those kinds of things as well. So there's a lot more sort of practical roll your sleeves up stuff in this book that I think will really be of use to people in the Atheopagan community. Hmm.  Yucca: That sounds like so much fun to write.  Mark: It was, it was, and that section that I just mentioned was particularly fun. Mm-hmm. , all the, the different, you know, the, the different sorts of witchy, ritual arts that people use in the course of implementing their, their ritual practice. Right. Because they're fun even when they're even when. Meant to observe something very solemn. There is a pleasure in implementing those kinds of practices. Mm-hmm. , which is part of why we do them right, and why I offer them to people that don't have a ritual practice now as an example of things that they could do. Mm-hmm. .  Yucca: Hmm. So you mentioned that Atheopagan is mentioned quite a bit in the book. Yes. But do think this is a book. Somebody could give to a relative or a friend who has a religious practice that isn't necessarily agonism, but still benefit from your  Mark: book. Sure. So long as that person's religious path isn't one that is exclusive mm-hmm. , there are a lot of religious paths out there that say, you have to follow our path and no other path, but that, right. Mm-hmm. and, you know, it's sinful or wrong, or, Erroneous or whatever it is. If you do anything else. I think there's a lot of activities in here and a lot of ideas in this book that can add to people's enjoyment of life. Mm-hmm. , and I think anybody who is interested in kind of a deeper inquiry in living as a human. Could enjoy this book.  Yucca: Mm. Okay. So maybe the, the friend that is a Pagan, but you know, they're kind of into the God thing or the fairies or that sort of thing. They still have a lot to to get out of your book. I  Mark: think so. Yeah. You know, there may be a couple of parts where they kind of bristle a little bit because I talk about critical thinking and, you know, I have my own position on that. Right. But but by and large, you know, The, the tutorial on how to make a si that'll work for anybody. Whatever they believe about Gods. So, yeah. You know, I, I think all that stuff could, it, it, it'll still be a, a helpful compendium of information for people, I think, to kind of a one stop place to go and look at how to do these things. Yucca: Hmm. Okay. And so was there a favorite section of  your.  Mark: You know, I have to say that ritual arts section was really fun to write. Just all the different cool witchy things that we like to do, you know, making potions and working with You know, with written messages and ceiling them with ceiling wax and, you know, or burning them in a cauldron, cauldron, magic, things like that. That you don't have to believe in anything supernatural about. And I'm very clear, like in the section on divination, I, I say at the outset, we have no evidence that fortune telling really exists. Right. But we do know that our subconscious minds exist. Mm-hmm. , and we can learn a lot more about the current situation, the present by using complex symbol systems to sort of tease out what the thinking underneath our thinking is through the process of using these divination tools. And once again, it's a really cool, evocative aesthetic thing to do. But it also can have a. A real emotional and spiritual value. Mm. So writing that section was a lot of fun.  Yucca: Nice. Well, it seems like a pretty, a pretty big process to write. Not just that section, but all of the sections. Was there, were there any insights that really ended up surprising you that you had in your process of creating this  Mark: book? Yeah, I'm, I'm wondering about that. One of the things that I realized is that in talking about the Wheel of the Year mm-hmm. , you know, there's a, there's a little section at the bottom of the discussion of the Wheel of the Year for people in the Southern Hemisphere mm-hmm. , because everything's flipped by six months. Right. Their winter solstice is in June. Right. And what occurred to me is that in the course of describing the names that I've given to the stations on the Wheel of the Year for, if you're in the Southern hemisphere, it really doesn't make any sense to call the 31st of October Mayday. Yeah, that's, that doesn't work very well. So, so I renamed it Summer Tide for the Southern Hemisphere Summer Tide. Okay. Which I think can work a lot better. Yeah. and I also renamed in, in the first Atheopagan book and in, in the writings on the blog and all that kind of stuff, I've referred to the winter solstice as u mm-hmm. , which is a no word meaning wheel. Mm-hmm. and I decided that, you know, I already made this decision that I'm not gonna draw stuff forward from other various cultures. Maybe it would just be better to call that mid-winter. Mm. In this book, I've called it Mid-Winter instead of ull. It's a small chain. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, there's not, there's brief descriptions of the principles and the four pillars, just so that people understand what Athe Paganism is. But this is really a book about rituals and so it's much more, you know, implementation. How do you do this stuff? How do you get yourself in the right mood? What is the ritual state? How can you cultivate the ritual state? What are the various phases that we go through in implementing a ritual? How do you prepare yourself before and, you know, ground and, and reestablish yourself after a ritual? , lots of, of those kinds of things. It's a very practical book.  Yucca: Mm. And what was your process like writing it? Did you, did you use any ritual to write or create the book?  Mark: Well, it, it's, it's kind of funny. We were talking about this in the Saturday Zoom mixer this morning we're recording on Saturdays. We usually do. What I ended up doing is I have a drop front desk an old antique secretary that you, you drop the, that you lift it down? Yeah. That, yeah. You just, you lower that down and then it becomes the shelf that you write on. Mm-hmm. and I was writing there with my laptop on the shelf. So what ended up happening was that opening, that desk became the ritual beginning of my writing periods. There were times it was very hard to make myself, you know, barricade myself in my room for four hours at a pop and just write right? But that was what was required. The book is currently at something over 56,000 words and the specs for. Turning the manuscript in were between 55 and 60,000. So getting there required a lot of effort. Right. A lot of just sitting for hours and writing things, and then editing and editing and editing and editing. Yucca: Mm-hmm. , tens of thousands of words. I mean that's,  Mark: yeah, that's a lot of words. It's a lot of words. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. I mean, this, this is, this is a book so that that ritual opening of the desk became the, the symbolic moment when I clicked into, okay, now I'm a writer, now I'm writing mm-hmm. mode. Now that the, now that the work is done, I haven't opened the desk since . I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to recalculate my my thinking. About what opening the desk means.  Yucca: No. Now you haven't worked with this particular editor before, right? So you don't really know, you know how much they're going to revisions they're gonna want, or, or things like that. Mark: I have no idea and I'm nervous. You know, for all I know, I'm gonna get back, you know, 300 edits and I'm gonna have to read through everyone, decide if I agree with them or not. Fight over the ones that I'm really willing to fight for and so forth. Yeah. I, I honestly, I just have no idea of what that process is gonna be like, but the book is projected to come out in the second half of 2023. Mm-hmm. , so there is plenty of time yet, which. I mean, that sounds like a lot of time, but it's really not that much time when you consider, you know, that we've gotta get cover art together and finalize the whole manuscript, get it all laid out properly and then start the marketing process. You know, because promotion starts before the book actually gets published. There's pre. Re release sales and all that kind of stuff. Right. And because I self-published the first book, I'm really not familiar with those parts of the process at all. I'm really interested in finding out how that all works.  Yucca: Right. Yeah. So that's exciting cuz it's a very different process than, than what you've done before. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. ,  Mark: yeah. Mm-hmm. . I, I think I've talked about this maybe, maybe on the podcast before. I'm not sure. I will probably not make as much money on this book as I did on my self-published book. Sure. And the reason for that is that I actually get eight bucks for every copy of my book that gets of my first book that gets bought. I'll probably get something like 80 cents . Mm-hmm. , from these, but hopefully the, the promotion and marketing and all that kind of stuff that the publisher will do will mean that a lot more copies get sold. Right. I made a deliberate decision that I wanted my ideas to get a lot broader distribution. This. And,  Yucca: and there's a prestige that goes along with being published through a traditional publish.  Mark: Yes. Right. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And now I'm kinda locked into them because in my contract is that they have right of first refusal of my next book. So , they'll, they'll get to decide whether they wanna publish that one too. I can't get myself out quite that easily.  Yucca: do you, so that was gonna be one of my questions was what's next? Do you have another book on the.  Mark: Do not have any idea about another book? Can  Yucca: you even think about it right now?  Mark: I mean mm-hmm. No, I mean, my guess is that if I were gonna write another book, because this one has been really exhaustively practical. Mm-hmm. probably be much more of a mythopoetic book. Mm-hmm. that would be poems and stories and you know, kind of. Kind of a walk into an atheopagan world. Mm-hmm. of wonder and joy and experience and meaning. But that's a long way off. And I'm, I'm certainly not going to open my desk now and start working on that I'm I'm taking a break for a while and, you know, dealing with these edits, I, my work is by no means finished. I'm still gonna have a lot of work to do, but this phase at least has been completed, so that's exciting. Yeah. I'm so, I appreciate that you were willing to, Do this kind of prequel, promotional thing on the podcast. Yeah, it's I mean, I'm sure we'll talk about the book again as it comes closer to publication time. Yucca: We will, it will let everybody know, you know, when that, when that's happening and you know where to, where to pick it up when it happens. Do you know if there will be an audio component? Was that part of your discussion or contract?  Mark: I know Luellen does do audio books, and I think it's probably a function of how many copies they sell. Of a given book to see whether they would do an audio version or not. I know that they do that for some of their other better known authors. Right. I don't know. I, I think they have the option to do it in my contract, but it's not guaranteed.  Yucca: Would this be a format that would work very well with audiobook since you have a lot of instructions? Kind of recipe type  Mark: things. Yeah. And actually there are a bunch of recipes. There's a whole section in the appendices on, you know, with recipes for the different seasonal holidays. Mm-hmm. , you know, things. Would go well at that time of year. Yeah, I'm not sure. I, I don't know that that's necessarily the, the best way to absorb this information because listening to someone reading recipes is probably not the best  Yucca: well, I ask most motivating kind of time. I love books and I suspect a lot of our listeners are on a podcast right now, you know, may enjoy that as well. So it's always interesting to see if that's, If that's a possibility, if that's standard, you know how that works. Right,  Mark: right. Yeah. I would still very much like to get my first book in audio book form. Mm-hmm. . I don't know how I can do that. I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's my next project. Maybe it's just I. You know, me, me sitting with Audacity reading my first book and getting that into shape where it can be released as an audio book. I do know that there will be digital versions of this book released as well for the Nook and the Kindle  Yucca: and all that. It's available as an ebook then. Okay. Yes. So people don't have to get the physical book. They can just. That's right. Get it on whatever device they're more most comfortable with. Uhhuh. That's great.  Mark: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm pretty excited. Two months ago I was sick of it, , I was just, oh, I was so ready to be done with the writing, but I, I got another spurt behind me and And now it's done. So I'm pretty excited about that.  Yucca: Well, congratulations, mark.  Mark: That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. And I want to thank everybody who's encouraged me to write it too. You know, a lot of folks from the community have really urged me to write a followup that's more hands on. Mm-hmm. . And that's this book. So I'm, I'm excited about that.  Yucca: So, so the book is no book on the, no book on the immediate horizon. No. Fourth book. But what else? Cuz you're, you're a busy person.  Mark: What's, I have a job, which is kind of scary because when I do get a job and it is a, when it's not an if the Then I'm, I'm really gonna have to be very careful about my time management in order to juggle everything that I've taken on. And of course, you know, in the Atheopagan community we welcome volunteers to help with stuff. You know, the volunteers we have are wonderful people and they're really, really helping things. Sort of blossom in our, in our community. What we, what we're doing on the Ethiopia Pagan Society Council coming up in January cuz we meet quarterly, is we're going to do a strategic plan for the organization for the next three years or so. Years. Mm-hmm. . And I think that's really gonna focus down the priorities. I need to work on and what other people need to work on. In order to advance the goals that we set. Yeah. And I don't know what those goals will be yet. I imagine a lot of it will be about, you know, reinforcing various kinds of support for the existing community rather than a lot of focus on expansion. Mm-hmm. ,  Yucca: We've done a lot of expanding in the last few years. We really grown so  Mark: much. Yeah. Yes. And I wanna make sure that people have. The training, the classes, the materials, the resources, the the stuff Yeah. All that support. Yeah. That, that will help support them as they develop their practices. So, so that, that's my idea of a, of a main goal. But we'll talk about it in January and see what we all come up with. Yeah.  Yucca: Which is just, Just around the corner.  Mark: It it is. Yeah. I sent out an outline about how the strategic planning process works to the members of the council maybe 10 days ago. Mm-hmm. , something like that. Yeah. And hoping everybody gets a chance to take a look at that before we start in, so we don't have a five hour meeting. Yucca: Yeah. And so here on the podcast, we have a few more interviews coming up, and then we're right into the solstice season, so we'll have a lot right about that.  Mark: We're gonna have interviews with members of the a Pagan Society Council, sort of, they'll be interspersed amongst. Episodes. Mm-hmm. . Next week we're talking with Michael Hallon, which should be a great conversation. I'm really looking forward to that. There are other folks who are too busy until after the holidays, and so, you know, we'll be talking with them probably in January. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, stay tuned. We'll, we'll, we'll get around to, to most of the council members at one point or another. Just give it a wait. Yucca: Yeah. And of course, along with all of the seasonal and holiday and Yeah. Yeah. Dark and cold themes of the year and all of that Good stuff. So, Uhhuh.  Mark: Yeah, so the book is called Round We Dance. I always, I, I changed it. Early on, joyous living around the year and throughout life. So round we dance, joyous living around the year and throughout life. A book about spirituality and rituals by Mark Green. That's, that's what the book will be. Beautiful. . Yeah. I'm, I'm excited. It's I can't believe it's my third book. Yeah, that's  Yucca: just, that's in a very short period of time you've been. Right. Yeah,  it's  Mark: true. I started in on the first book in 2018. Mm-hmm. . So, yeah, not so long. I mean, the poetry book was easy to pull together cuz I'd already written all the poems. Nemea had already taken all of the photographs that we used to illustrate the book. Mm-hmm. . So it was basically just a matter of doing the layout and then the self-publish. But the other two have been quite a lot of work and yeah. Yeah, I'm, I'm looking forward to working with Luellen and seeing how that process goes. Yeah. So, shorter episode this week, folks. But thanks for listening and I hope that you're sufficiently interested to, to anticipate this book being released. And we'll be back next year with no, next year. We'll be back next week. It feels like .  Yucca: And it does . Yeah. , we'll be back next week. Yeah. To talk with you more. So thank you every. Thank you, mark.  Mark: Thank you.  

Mark -- Do you see that Jesus is the Christ, but do you also see that Jesus came to die and rise again for you to have salvation-

Mark - Do you see that Jesus is the Christ, but do you also see that Jesus came to die and rise again for you to have salvation--

THE SCRIPTURE & SCRIPTURAL RESOURCES:  Proverbs 27:6 Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. Psalm 46:10 10 He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth.” 10 Bible Verses about Love For The Church THE NEWS & COMMENT: Douglas: Todd - I listen to your show because no one has done a better job of predicting what the liberals are going to do with Covid, with sex ed and race and stuff. So, kudos for that. What bugs me is you seem to think putting God at the center means you have to become a pussy. I loved hearing you tear Fauci apart and destroy Obama and Hillary. God's not weak, why are you weakening?? Douglas from Las Vegas ---   ---   ---   --- Elizabeth: Hi Todd. I've been listening to you since Rush, God rest his soul. Thank you for what you do, and for basing your podcast on Christian principles, which brings me to my point. It struck me today while listening to your 2nd hour that our government is now distorting a biblical truth. God said to us, out of His love, "Be still, and know that I am God." Our government says to us, "Be still! And know that we are god." Carry on in His love and strength, Elizabeth  ---   ---   ---   ---   --- Keith: Dear Todd, I have been listening to you for many years now from your time at ktth through to kiro and now the podcast. Over the years I have written on a couple of occasions and was very touched to have my words included in a personal note segment. Today I am writing asking for prayer and guidance. I have mentioned before I am a pilot and recently fulfilled a lifelong dream to be an airline pilot. Although I love my job and do genuinely enjoy what I do, I currently need to live very far from my loved ones and because of staffing issues I am unable to go visit loved ones. During this time I have again found comfort in your voice as some little piece of home and I am very thankful for the Godly influence your new show has on me vs The pure politics from before. In terms of guidance I ask about the injections. I have an opportunity to move up to my dream company which obviously would come with a significant pay increase (approximately 5x what I make now) but more importantly would come with a significant increase in my work life balance and allow me to move back to my family. This job requires that I be vaccinated though and I am torn. On the one hand I'm sure I could find a place to get a card without actually receiving the shot but then in my view, every time I show that card to someone I would be lying. On the other hand I agree with you that these shots are dangerous and I do not want to take them. Of course God is bigger than everything and if this is his plan then far be it from me to stand in the way and I am certain He will protect me just as He has protected a family member in the exact same situation. Overall Todd I ask that you pray for me during this time that I may use it to draw closer to him and not fall back into depression and for His plan for me to be clear. Thank you for all you have done in my life over the years I am so very grateful for your influence and hope to share a meal together one day either in this life or the next. Blue skies and tailwinds, P.S. thank you for the tip about Bulwark, I am only 24 but have opened an account with them and feel confident that I will be able to trust them for the next 40 years of my career and into retirement. ---   ---   ---   ---   --- Christine: Hi Todd, Subject: I left public health (cancer prevention and survivorship) in New Mexico because of the push towards Marxism and communism in my field and my state Dept. of Health. Your show has been essential to me over the past couple of years, particularly as we entered, went through, and continue to experience the absurdity of " Covidstan" :) You have been the a voice of sanity and reason and I appreciate you so much! I recently left my job of 18 years in "public health" in the New Mexico Department of Health as it progressively (pun intended) became more and more racist and Marxist in the name of "health equity" and "anti-racism". When the CDC (a loyal Party member) began forcing funded states to claim that cancers and chronic disease in non-white people is caused by racism, I knew I could not, in good conscience, push this garbage on the people of New Mexico. Just in case you're interested, I'm linking a CDC-funded "health equity journal" that my manager insisted we talk about and discuss in groups with my colleagues - it was literally unbearable to me to participate in this indoctrination, so I just pretty much tuned it out until it was over. In fact, I was supposed to facilitate a session myself - but managed to get out of it!!! https://chronicdisease.org/he-journal/ I left my profession after 18 years - and don't think I can ever return to it after what was done to us in the name of "public health" over the past 2+ years. I haven't been jabbed although I was subjected to weekly spit testing - which I absolutely resented. Please keep what you are doing, with the focus on God and politics at the edge. We love you and your show - and my husband, who is from Idaho, says to say hello, as well! All the best, Christine ---   ---   ---   ---   --- Mark: Do you know why we need to ask forgiveness? If we don't know our sin, how can we be forgiven. God The Father is a Spirit, He has no boundary, He is as big or as small as He needs to be and regardless of size He is pure Love. He is made of perfect Love, He has zero impurities within Him. Jesus didn't sin because He could not sin He is fully Love in the world full of sin. We do not understand Love. When we die we do not go to heaven, we must go through judgment then we receive our reward those in Christ get His rest and those not in Christ get the other. Heaven is a place where Love surrounds us continually, so strongly that we forget all sin we were in and we will never have the desire to leave. Just had to share this with you. ---   ---   ---   ---   --- See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark -- Do not reject Jesus, thinking He is too familiar- instead, believe Him and, as a result, see His power at work in your life.

Patrick talks about St. Teresa of Avila and her conversion and reform of the convent, discussing the importance of making solid resolutions in the New Year. Mark – Do you get one last shot before death to convert to Jesus? Kip – Barabbas translated means son of the father? Is there something we should take […]

Welcome To Plotpoints Podcast! This is Plotpoints Podcast! www.plotpoints.com Show Notes November 09, 2020 EP 188 SCRIPTWRITING CLASSES START AGAIN IN October! GO HERE FOR INFO Author/Screenwriter Christopher Stires Joins Mark Sevi. #Starbeasts #PaladinsJourney #RebelNation #TheInheritance #DarkLegend #thurianChronicles Starbeasts Chris' Amazon Page Chris' BarnesAndNoble Chris' webpage See Chris' full bio at end of the show notes. Creative Screenwriting Magazine - Mark's Articles: ARTICLES BY MARK SEVI #amazonpodcasts  00:00:00 INTRO Mark (podcast theme music by Mark Sevi) Interstitial music by Mark Sevi 00:00:00 USELESS CHATTER Mark, Chris 00:02:00 WHAT ARE WATCHING? Mark, Chris #enolaholmes #cobrakai #ratched #startrekdiscovery #picard #janetking #jacktaylor 00:07:00 WHAT ARE WE WORKING ON? Mark, Chris 00:13:0 TOP 5 MOVIE ENDINGS SINCE 1970 Chris' list: #toystory3 #inception #raidersofthelostark #chinatown #godfather Mark's list: #oneflewoverthecuckoosnest #sixthsense #godfather #graduate #seven 00:18:00 Q&A Mark Do you outline? 00:22:00 BUH BYE Mark, Chris Need a Writing Class?  For info go to www.scriptwritingclasses.org UPCOMING AT C3 Vape and Coffee (www.ocfilmandtv.com) MEETUP DETAILS Need a Writing Class?  For info go to www.scriptwritingclasses.org #scriptwritingclasses.org #ocscreenwriters #ocfilmandtv #alejandroseri #finaldraft  QUESTIONS?  COMMENTS? 919-Scripts www.ocscreenwriters.com #ocscreenwriters Creative Screenwriting Magazine www.ocfilmandtv.com #richdalessio #c3vapeandcoffee Call 816-WRITERS for info on the MeetUps Meetup www.ocscreenwriters.com / www.ocfilmandtv.com HEY! Tell us what is your favorite Scifi, Romantic Comedy or Comic Book movie? Call (919) Scripts (919/727.4787) and shout it out to us. Resources: 919-SCRIPTS to leave a message/ask questions. www.plotpoints.com (show blog and more) www.ocscreenwriters.com - by writers for writers. Be Inspired, Do Good Work! Need a Writing Class?  For info go to www.scriptwritingclasses.org #scriptwritingclasses.org Writers Guild Registration – www.wgawregistry.org U.S. Copyright Office - www.copyright.gov Podcast available on iTunes All Material copyright (c) Mark Sevi #marksevi Mark's IMDB page. Mark is repped by legal-eagle Wayne Alexander, ANLF.COM #waynealexander #anlf.com Christopher Stires is a novelist, short-story writer and screenwriter living in Riverside CA. He has four novels currently in print. PALADIN’S JOURNEY, REBEL NATION, DARK LEGEND, and THE INHERITANCE (Winner of the 2003 Dream Realm Award for Horror) are available from Zumaya Publications (http://www.zumayapublications.com/). PALADIN’S JOURNEY: SABIAN (the sequel to PALADIN’S JOURNEY) will soon be released by Zumaya. STARBEAST (a reprint/retitle of TO THE MOUNTAIN OF THE BEAST) will soon be released by World Castle Publishing (http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com/home.html). He has had more than 70 short stories and articles appear in publications in the United States, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. With co-writer, Mark Sevi, he has had one screenplay optioned. He is a member of Facebook and Goodreads. Fair Use Act Disclaimer This podcast is for educational purposes, commentary, and criticism and is not-for-profit at this point in its life. Fair Use Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Fair Use Definition Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship.

It's no secret that society has seen an uptick in divorces since the start of the pandemic, but there have also been some silver linings in this unlikely space. Katie Mazurek is a Bozeman, Montana-based attorney with Element Law Group. Focusing on family law, Katie brings a different approach to the way she guides clients through the divorce process. In fact, she recently co-authored a book called, Divorce Better Together, with a former client who helped shape a more collaborative, team approach that is now leveraging technology like Zoom to facilitate her work. Mark was able to sit down with Katie to talk about her approach, her book and how her practice has evolved to help clients discover a healthier way through this often messy process.   Transcript:  MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: Hello, I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the Risk Manager with Alps. Welcome to Alps In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. And I'm excited about today's podcast. I have someone that some other folks at Alps had the pleasure of meeting in person and was so impressed. They said, "Mark, we've got to reach out and have some discussions here for the podcast." And I absolutely agreed. Today I have with me, Katie Mazurek, and I believe Katie you're practicing in Bozeman. Is that correct? KATIE MAZUREK:  Yes. I practice in Bozeman and we have offices in Helena as well. MARK: Okay. Very good. When I first sort of reached out and looked a little bit about what you do and who you are, I was struck by the name of your law firm. Well, actually, before we get to that, let's take just a few moments, and can you share a little bit about yourself to our listeners? What do you feel is important that they know about you? KATIE: Well, thank you so much for having me today. I'm really excited to be able to talk with you. I think one of the things that's really important for people to understand about me is that I am a person who really understands pain. I've been through some significant things, including my parents divorced when I was 15, a cancer diagnosis when I was 33, when I had two kids, and right, actually when I started Element. KATIE: And so my whole kind of purpose in life is to help people through their suffering. And so that's probably what I'd want people to understand the most, because I know that interfacing with a lawyer can be really scary and really overwhelming and really foreign. And I would hope that if people can see me as just another human who understands what they're going through, that that makes them feel a lot more comfortable and normalizes their pain a little bit. MARK: And may me ask you, I know that at least the bulk of what you do, if I'm understanding correctly is divorce work, but are there other practice areas? Or are you exclusively in the divorce space? KATIE: We're primarily in the family law space. So divorce, custody parenting. We obviously help, if our clients come to us and they're comfortable with us and they want us to help with the business or something like that, some minor estate planning, we do those things as well. MARK: Okay. Very good. And again, I was struck about the name of your group, Element Law Group. I suspect there's a story here. I'd love to hear it. KATIE: So Element came about, when I created the firm, I wanted our clients to have a very different experience than the typical. And what felt at the time was pretty antiquated law centric, law firm experience. I wanted this to be really based on the family and the individual. And so that the term element came from the idea that we're all made of the same basic things. On an elemental level, who are we? Well we're people who need love and care and support and guidance. And so the name Element came out and I think it identifies or signifies, who we are pretty well. MARK: I love that. That really speaks to me too. That is just very cool. I think that's awesome. KATIE: Thank you. MARK: Can we take a moment, in my... We are living in really unusual times, there's discussions in terms of COVID and all of this happening, geopolitically all over the world here. And in other words, it's not just COVID, but these 2020 is a crazy time. And there are some descriptions of looking at this as sort of, we're entering a new normal, and I'm not one that buys into that. I think what we're going through is a period of rapid change, dramatic change, but change is always present. But we are in a crazy time where change is just, wow. When I think about the divorce space, the family law space, are you finding that these times... Is that changing? Are the needs of your clients... How would you describe what's happening from your perspective? KATIE: Sadly, there's been a big uptake in our business, and we've all talked a lot about what the causes and the factors would be that have caused this real surge. And to the best of our guessing, we think it's this stress and the uncertainty and the fear. And it's just kind of in a weak relationship, it's created the pressure point that's broken the system. But interestingly, it's also, I think, a bigger conversation about what's happened to the practice of law with this COVID and having to adapt. And I think it's, in some ways can be looked at as a really exciting time because it's forcing the law and practitioners to come into the modern era as far as how we're practicing and how we're interfacing with each other. And that's something that Element has been pushing for a long time is to say, "Look, there's all these technological pieces that can make our lives easier and should make our lives easier." And I'm kind of excited to see that happening on the larger scale. MARK: I know you have written a book, I believe it's called, Divorce Better Together, and you coauthored this, is this with your partner? KATIE: This is with a former client of mine. MARK: Oh, really? KATIE: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Irizarry. MARK: Wow. How did this come about? KATIE: Well, Rob started as a client in the collaborative process and for people who are the uninitiated, the collaborative process is a team approach to a divorce. We use two lawyers, a neutral mental health person and a neutral financial person. And that creates a professional team that helps a married couple divorce in a more amicable, fully supported way. KATIE: So Rob was my client in a collaborative setting. And unfortunately he was actually... He says he was my first failure. He and his wife fell out of the collaborative process pretty early on. And so he was pushed into the litigation path and his experience there and mirrors my experience with the compare, contrast the litigation world with the collaborative world. And he felt very passionately about the importance of collaborative and the value of collaborative. And he and I struck up a friendship and have been very close friends ever since, and he wants to change the world like I do. And so we coauthored this book. MARK: Is the book somewhat of a description of how you practice in your space? Is it a guide book of where you'd like to see the law go? Can you fill me in a little bit more about? KATIE: Sure. It's a very short, easy read and the intent is just to get collaborative in the minds of people who are starting to contemplate which divorce process is right for them. So it really is the personal stories. Rob's personal story of being in the collaborative process and then litigation and my personal story of watching my parents really suffer through a nasty litigated divorce and what that did to my family. And then now as a practitioner practicing collaborative. So it does explain the process. It's definitely informational, but it's also meant to connect with the reader on that kind of emotional journey and experience of divorce. MARK: I liked what you were talking about in terms of looking at COVID and seeing this in so many ways as an opportunity, are you finding, first courts are closed, is this an opportunity to really accelerate the collaborative process? Are you able to do more of this? Can we sort of flesh out what's happening? KATIE: Oh, sure. I think the collaborative process is always going to... It's so flexible and it can adapt to whatever situation that we need. And what we have found is really interesting is that the collaborative sessions that are held through Zoom or whatever video conferencing platform, they're really great. Because there's the side channels and things that the practitioners can type to each other privately, I can type to my client privately. And so I wouldn't say that necessarily in terms of volume or anything, we still have the access that we need on the litigation front to the courts, but the whole drive of collaborative is to put the divorce process in the family's hands. And certainly these times are a call to action for families to really embrace that opportunity where it exists. MARK: Yeah. Yeah. Do you find... I can appreciate, and I really need to go pick up your book and by the way, I believe it's available... Just to, if others are interested on Amazon? Or it's not? KATIE: Amazon. Mm-hmm (affirmative). MARK: Yes. And I just want to be clear for everybody Divorce Better Together. And it's by Katie Mazurek. And I'm sorry, the name of your coauthor again? KATIE: Rob Irizarry. MARK: Rob Irizarry. So folks, just to let you know it's out there. Do you find... I'll go back and say, my wife and I we're both second marriages. So we've been through the process. My wife's divorce was a litigated divorce that went all the way to the State Supreme Court. And it was just one of these crazy [crosstalk 00:00:11:17], horrible kinds of things. Mine was more of a... We didn't use the collaborative process, but we did sit down between the two of us and really work through most of the issues. MARK: And honestly just had one lawyer between the two of us, be mostly a scrivener, we stayed in the ethical bounds, to put it that way, say the lawyer that assisted us. And I think we divorced well. I would say post-divorce, there were some issues that I think a collaborative process might've helped us avoid, but I share all that because what I'm curious about is, is part of what you're trying to accomplish with the book... Are you writing to lawyers or you're writing to people? You see where I'm going? Is the challenge here to create awareness and appreciation of the collaborative process to the clients? Are we trying to sell this process, you see? KATIE: We're trying to educate people, families really. So parents and married couples that this process is available and that this process is available at any point in your journey. And so, like in your case, if there were... Did you have children? MARK: Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative). KATIE: Okay. [crosstalk 00:12:58]. And maybe I don't mean to pry. MARK: No, it's fine. KATIE: So it could be, we see people who have gone through the litigated process and then they have these children whose needs inevitably change. And the dynamic inevitably changes. And we have new parties coming on as significant others and things like that. And so they can adopt the collaborative process after a divorce and just get the support they need around some of these bigger decisions or even smaller decisions. But really what it comes down to, and I think most relationships come down to this, is communication. And so you have a team that can help facilitate and model healthy communication. And then also give you good information to make better decisions. MARK: Do you find most people when they have an opportunity to learn a bit about this process and what you were doing, are they pretty receptive? Are you pretty successful moving people in this direction? Are you finding some resistance to it? Does it work better for some and not others? KATIE: So the collaborative process was started in Minnesota about 28, 29 years ago. In 2013, two practitioners, myself included, went to Arizona to get trained in this. And since then, we've cultivated the collaborative community here in Montana. And now there's collaborative practitioners all over the state. And what I've noticed since bringing it here way back in 2013 is that collaborative is the answer that clients were already for, but didn't know existed. KATIE: And to further answer your question, absolutely, there are people that are better suited for collaborative cases than others. But I don't want to kind of perpetuate a misconception, which is that couples who are high conflict or when there's difficult issues in a case that they're not appropriate for collaborative somehow, that's been proven false repeatedly. Really what it comes down to in my experience is the strength and experience level of the team that is helping the family get through this. MARK: So it seems what I'm hearing is, part of what's going on here and part of your interest initially, it's the collaborative process is going to be less painful, more positive, better outcomes. So you started, you want to try to help people through pain. And a divorce process is certainly a painful process. I've never seen a situation that was just roses all the way through. Do you find as a practitioner using this process, comparing yourself to the traditional divorce lawyer that does a lot of litigation, is there a wellness component to this is? Would you encourage other lawyers... Because to me, I like how you've described some of this and looking even now in the midst of just this global pandemic, looking at an opportunity, and I think that's such an incredible way to move forward through any change. Always looking... We can't change what has happened. All we can do is define ourselves by how we respond to it. But with courts being closed, is there a message here? Would you have a message to other practitioners and say, "Look, this can create less pain for you as a practitioner too. And your wellness can help others." I'm I understanding this correctly? KATIE: Well, I think so. I struggled a lot when I started with litigating family law cases, because what's a win in a family law case. Is it a dollar award? Is it more time with the child? It's really kind of a, almost a [inaudible 00:17:46] concept to think about it, when you're talking about human life. And so I really struggled with like, "What am I doing here? What value am I bringing? What is the long-term outcome for these families? When I've just put on this testimony, that's just biting and terrible towards another party. This is what we have to do or I feel what you have to do." KATIE: And so the collaborative practice is the hardest work I've ever done, but it is far and away, the best I've ever felt about something that I'm putting forward in the world. When you go to these conferences, you see mostly practitioners in their 50s and 60s. And the reason for that is they just got to a point where they couldn't do the litigation, the burden of litigation, the toxicity of litigation. And so they had to do something different. And I want to be clear. It's very hard work. It's very hard work. Because at least with litigation, you can say, "Hey, that's not what the court's going to consider. We're not going to talk about that. I'm sorry that happened to you." And kind of have the appropriate amount of empathy, but move the case forward because you're working within that strict legal lens. MARK: Exactly. KATIE: And then the collaborative process it's, the law is just a framework and what the family builds within that is completely up to them. And so I kind of, the analogy I use is, look, the law, the framework is going to say, "You need to build a car. And that car has to have four wheels, an engine and steering wheel." And whether you build a porch or a dump truck, that's up to you. And so that kind of freedom for us practitioners who are used to being in these really tight roles that can be really uncomfortable for us. And that's why we have a team. MARK: And so what drives the... You say this is the hardest you've ever worked. It's clear just, the audience is just listening, but we're viewing each other here and you're very passionate about this. It seems to be very fulfilling to you, very important, but what is the challenge here? Why is this so hard? Is it trying to keep people invested in the process? Is it the emotions of all that's going on? Is it crazy tangential issues that the traditional path isn't necessarily going to deal with? Why is this such a challenge? And challenge have to be a bad thing, this is what I'm trying to get across to our listeners here. But why is this so hard? KATIE: Well, you're taking two people who are in conflict and you're asking them to listen to each other, to meaningfully listen to each other and to communicate better. And that is exceptionally hard. People come into the divorce process with a feeling of scarcity, of, "Oh my goodness, I'm losing, I'm changing." We took one whole, and we're making it into two, which is never as much as half. If that makes sense. MARK: Yes. It does. It does. KATIE: Right? So because you lose the economy of efficiency and going into two households and things like that. So a real scarcity mindset, and it's very hard to get positive work out of people who are rotating around the access of fear and not enough and uncertainty and, "What's going to happen to me?" And so in the collaborative space, we really meet them in that scarcity feeling, whereas in a litigation setting, I can just say, "Ah, I know that that thing happened to you, and I'm so sorry, but that's not on the view or the horizon for the court." MARK: Right. Right. KATIE: And so we make space for all of that in the collaborative model, and that's what's kind of messy and hard. And when you're trying to help people move forward through that, it's a lot. MARK: So how do you stay sane? KATIE: Right. That's such a good question. Well, we lean on the mental health professional quite a bit, and who helps us understand like, okay, this is in your box and this isn't. Part of the really hard thing about collaborative is that I feel like I'm invested in the family and in a much different way than I am in litigation, just by virtue of the differences of the process. And so I guess I'm still working on that, with every single case it's different and I'm still figuring it out. But it's always been worth the effort, the outcomes are really incredible. MARK: Yeah. Yeah. I want to be very respectful of your time here and appreciate the chat we've had. I don't mean to put you on the spot and I think you're up for this. We have, obviously, the listening base here are all legal professionals. I'd ask for two comments maybe, in terms of closing comments. One would be, what would you have to say to encourage lawyers that are more focused on the traditional litigated model? What would you say to them, say, be open to this? Why should they move in this direction, at least at times? And then the other piece, or the second half of this would be, there are lots of lawyers, because not all clients are to want to do this. So still need to stay in the litigated space. Are there learnings or takeaways from your experience in the collaborative space that might be beneficial to help if you jump back into the litigated space. And any other closing comments you'd have, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on those two sides. KATIE: The most important lesson that I've learned about working alongside the traditional litigated attorneys is to have a relationship and try to have an understanding between the two very different practices. So my first part of that would be an invitation that, if you're a litigator and you're listening to this and you're thinking, "Oh, that is never something I would do." That's fine. The world absolutely needs really strong litigators who are responsible- MARK: Absolutely. KATIE: ... in handling families. But also let's go to coffee and let's talk about what I do so that we can compliment one another. But for the practitioners who are thinking about, who see litigation, the issues with litigation, and maybe have some heartache of their own about how they're practicing, the collaborative doors is always open and you can get trained relatively inexpensively and join a practice group and try it out. And maybe it's for you, maybe it's not, but it's still a great way. You're going to get some [inaudible 00:26:06]. You're going to get some really great information. KATIE: It's going to challenge your worldview, which kind of goes to your second point, which is we address these family law cases in a very lawyer centric, law centric way. And what I've really learned is one, active listening. I've learned to ask more questions and dive deeper into the answers. And I am shocked at how much more I've learned and repeatedly have used that skill in my litigation practice, because the last thing any of us wants is to get up in front of a judge and be in the middle of a hearing or a trial and get caught flat footed. And when we make that investment and time and energy into our clients, I think it yields a better outcome and a better experience for them overall. KATIE: So I would say that that's kind of the compliment between the two worlds and I don't see them as completely divergent and separate and apart, I see them as working together and kind of the left hand and the right hand. MARK: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And your comment of active listening really strikes a chord with me. I think at times it's too easy, regardless of what sandbox we're in, as lawyers in terms of practice. Just to, this is how it's always been done. We think we know what's right. We think we understand what people want. There's a lot of assumptions. When I was practicing, there was involved in situation where I really thought it was all about the money. We had to get the most amount of money. And when I finally learned it had nothing to do with the money at all, because I wasn't listening, the matter resolved very, very quickly, and it was a great outcome for everybody involved. So I simply want to underscore that and thank you for saying it that, let's put aside at times some of our assumptions and really take the time to understand and listen, what is the need of the client? And we are here, we are in someone else's employ. KATIE: Right. At service. MARK: Exactly, and thank you for that. That's sums it up perfectly. And we are in service of others. And we can't forget that. We need to be an advocate at times. And sometimes in the litigation space, very, very strong advocates. There are situations where people need that because they can't advocate for themselves. But that doesn't mean that we get a pass on just really trying to understand who is this person, how do I best serve them? So I've just tried to summarize some things that I'm taking away from this conversation. KATIE: Sure. [crosstalk 00:00:29:01]. MARK: And I think it's, I'm thrilled to see that you have taken such a role. And a lead position here in Montana to try to really expand and bring this new, or a slightly different, less adversarial model into Montana. Thank you for very much. I just think that you're doing some wonderful, wonderful work. Do you have any final closing thought that you'd like to share? KATIE: Oh my goodness. Well obviously thank you so much for having me. If there are attorneys or other professionals, even clients, potential clients listening to this. If you have questions or you want to have a conversation about this, my contact information is easy to define, that's elementlaw group.com. MARK: Yeah. Yeah. elementlawgroup, one word, elementlawgroup.com. So there you go. And I invite folks to go out and take a look at the website and go take a look at the book. Well, again, Katie, thank you very much. KATIE: Thank you. MARK: For those of you listening, I hope you found something of value today, and it's always a pleasure to take a little time and visit. So if there's anything else you'd like in terms of topics, questions, concerns, you do not need to be an Alps insurer to reach out to me, feel free at any time. My email is mbass@alpsinsurance.com. mbass@alpsinsurance.com. Happy to help in anything at any time. If there's ever anything I can do for you. So thanks for listening again, folks. You all have a great day. Stay safe. Stay well. Stay connected. Bye-bye.    

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Sorie: So Mark, you and I are married and we've lived in—Mark: We still are, aren't we?Sorie: We are married. I said we are married. And we've lived in several special places and I'd like to share our experience of Ogasawara.Mark: Ogasawara is amazing, isn't it?Sorie: Yeah. Can you tell us the place, and where it is?Mark: Ogasawara is a group of islands that's in the Pacific Ocean. And there's no airport there and if you want to go there, you got to take a boat that goes from Tokyo. And that boat takes 25 hours to get there, and it runs just once a week.Sorie: That's right. It's 1,000 kilometers away from Tokyo.Mark: Yeah, directly south.Sorie: Okay. And the population?Mark: There's two inhabited islands in Ogasawara. One is called Chichi-jima and there's 2,000 people, roughly, there. And Haha-jima is about 400 people.Sorie: Yeah. And Chichi-jima is Father Island and Haha-jima is Mother Island. And Father Island is a little bit bigger than Mother Island.Mark: Yes. And we lived in Chichi-jima.Sorie: And we lived in Chichi-jima. That's right. And what kind of—we had an amazing lifestyle there. Do you remember how we ended up there and what we were doing?Mark: Well, our good friend Rio-san has a eco village in the mountain there. And he built the whole place on the side of a mountain with his bare hands basically, with wood and he built his home where he lives with his wife and two children. And he built loads of like cabins, as you might in Thailand or Philippines or somewhere like that, which is quite unusual in Japan. But he built these also with his own hand and he like connected them together with like wooden bridges.And yeah, that's where he lived and we really wanted to live so close to nature. So we saw Rio-san and found out that he had a little shack at a bit lower down from his house, and the girl that was living there was gonna move out. So we really wanted to move in there. So we asked him and we ended up living there.Sorie: Yeah. I remember the day we went to see that little shack. And it was extremely small, four-by-three. I would say, 4 meters by 3 meters.Mark: 4 centimeters by 3 centimeters.Sorie: It was really small.Mark: That's how small it seemed.Sorie: And it was hanging on the side of the hill. Yeah, it was raised on a scaffolding, and because it's a very wet place, so it gets really humid and you don't want any contact with the building and the land. So we were hanging on the side of the hill.Mark: And there's the ants. Do you remember the ants? They had to build it on the scaffolding because there was white ants. They called them termites, that can eat the wood.Sorie: That's right.Mark: Do you remember seeing those ants?Sorie: I remember that. I remember how scared we were when the hurricane -- the typhoons would come and the whole shack would shake. And we'd be like praying so that we wouldn't slide to the side of the hill.Mark: Do you remember our chickens?Sorie: Yeah, we had four chickens. What about our toilet, do you remember?Mark: I remember our toilet. Digging the toilet. I remember digging the toilet and making the compost and moving the toilet every now and then. I remember growing all the vegetables. I remember collecting the eggs.Sorie: Yeah. One of the hardest things was the showers. We had this solar panel-run showers, and when it was cloudy, in the middle of the winter, I would suffer. It was so hard to take cold showers.Mark: Yeah. It wasn't like very cold was it really compared to mainland Japan but it really, really did feel cold with the wind there. Like you say, when the cloud came across because there was no hot water—yeah, it was tough. But did you remember next to the showers, every two weeks or so in the winter, Rio-san would light up the—make a fire, like wood-burning fire which heated up the outdoor pool?Sorie: That's right.Mark: And there's no hot springs on the island but we got to sit in the pool, under the stars in the evening.Sorie: Yeah. There were so many great experiences and to realize also that nature is so powerful. And if you want to live with it, you have to coexist and you have to be very strong to live in a place like that.Mark: Hmm.Sorie: And do you remember also the community, how everyone was?Mark: Lovely community, wasn't it?Sorie: Hmm, because it's such a small place.Mark: Exactly. There had to be a strong community in the mountain. There's only 400 people in the mountain, wasn't there? Two thousand total. It was like a separate village from the other village.Sorie: From the main town.Mark: Yeah, everyone looking out for each other and sharing. Do you remember the fisherman who used to share his fish?Sorie: Ah! He'd bring this big chunks of tuna, fresh tuna. It was so delicious.Mark: Such good memories there, wasn't it?Sorie: Yeah, definitely.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Sorie: So Mark, you and I are married and we've lived in—Mark: We still are, aren't we?Sorie: We are married. I said we are married. And we've lived in several special places and I'd like to share our experience of Ogasawara.Mark: Ogasawara is amazing, isn't it?Sorie: Yeah. Can you tell us the place, and where it is?Mark: Ogasawara is a group of islands that's in the Pacific Ocean. And there's no airport there and if you want to go there, you got to take a boat that goes from Tokyo. And that boat takes 25 hours to get there, and it runs just once a week.Sorie: That's right. It's 1,000 kilometers away from Tokyo.Mark: Yeah, directly south.Sorie: Okay. And the population?Mark: There's two inhabited islands in Ogasawara. One is called Chichi-jima and there's 2,000 people, roughly, there. And Haha-jima is about 400 people.Sorie: Yeah. And Chichi-jima is Father Island and Haha-jima is Mother Island. And Father Island is a little bit bigger than Mother Island.Mark: Yes. And we lived in Chichi-jima.Sorie: And we lived in Chichi-jima. That's right. And what kind of—we had an amazing lifestyle there. Do you remember how we ended up there and what we were doing?Mark: Well, our good friend Rio-san has a eco village in the mountain there. And he built the whole place on the side of a mountain with his bare hands basically, with wood and he built his home where he lives with his wife and two children. And he built loads of like cabins, as you might in Thailand or Philippines or somewhere like that, which is quite unusual in Japan. But he built these also with his own hand and he like connected them together with like wooden bridges.And yeah, that's where he lived and we really wanted to live so close to nature. So we saw Rio-san and found out that he had a little shack at a bit lower down from his house, and the girl that was living there was gonna move out. So we really wanted to move in there. So we asked him and we ended up living there.Sorie: Yeah. I remember the day we went to see that little shack. And it was extremely small, four-by-three. I would say, 4 meters by 3 meters.Mark: 4 centimeters by 3 centimeters.Sorie: It was really small.Mark: That's how small it seemed.Sorie: And it was hanging on the side of the hill. Yeah, it was raised on a scaffolding, and because it's a very wet place, so it gets really humid and you don't want any contact with the building and the land. So we were hanging on the side of the hill.Mark: And there's the ants. Do you remember the ants? They had to build it on the scaffolding because there was white ants. They called them termites, that can eat the wood.Sorie: That's right.Mark: Do you remember seeing those ants?Sorie: I remember that. I remember how scared we were when the hurricane -- the typhoons would come and the whole shack would shake. And we'd be like praying so that we wouldn't slide to the side of the hill.Mark: Do you remember our chickens?Sorie: Yeah, we had four chickens. What about our toilet, do you remember?Mark: I remember our toilet. Digging the toilet. I remember digging the toilet and making the compost and moving the toilet every now and then. I remember growing all the vegetables. I remember collecting the eggs.Sorie: Yeah. One of the hardest things was the showers. We had this solar panel-run showers, and when it was cloudy, in the middle of the winter, I would suffer. It was so hard to take cold showers.Mark: Yeah. It wasn't like very cold was it really compared to mainland Japan but it really, really did feel cold with the wind there. Like you say, when the cloud came across because there was no hot water—yeah, it was tough. But did you remember next to the showers, every two weeks or so in the winter, Rio-san would light up the—make a fire, like wood-burning fire which heated up the outdoor pool?Sorie: That's right.Mark: And there's no hot springs on the island but we got to sit in the pool, under the stars in the evening.Sorie: Yeah. There were so many great experiences and to realize also that nature is so powerful. And if you want to live with it, you have to coexist and you have to be very strong to live in a place like that.Mark: Hmm.Sorie: And do you remember also the community, how everyone was?Mark: Lovely community, wasn't it?Sorie: Hmm, because it's such a small place.Mark: Exactly. There had to be a strong community in the mountain. There's only 400 people in the mountain, wasn't there? Two thousand total. It was like a separate village from the other village.Sorie: From the main town.Mark: Yeah, everyone looking out for each other and sharing. Do you remember the fisherman who used to share his fish?Sorie: Ah! He'd bring this big chunks of tuna, fresh tuna. It was so delicious.Mark: Such good memories there, wasn't it?Sorie: Yeah, definitely.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Sorie: So Mark, you and I are married and we've lived in—Mark: We still are, aren't we?Sorie: We are married. I said we are married. And we've lived in several special places and I'd like to share our experience of Ogasawara.Mark: Ogasawara is amazing, isn't it?Sorie: Yeah. Can you tell us the place, and where it is?Mark: Ogasawara is a group of islands that's in the Pacific Ocean. And there's no airport there and if you want to go there, you got to take a boat that goes from Tokyo. And that boat takes 25 hours to get there, and it runs just once a week.Sorie: That's right. It's 1,000 kilometers away from Tokyo.Mark: Yeah, directly south.Sorie: Okay. And the population?Mark: There's two inhabited islands in Ogasawara. One is called Chichi-jima and there's 2,000 people, roughly, there. And Haha-jima is about 400 people.Sorie: Yeah. And Chichi-jima is Father Island and Haha-jima is Mother Island. And Father Island is a little bit bigger than Mother Island.Mark: Yes. And we lived in Chichi-jima.Sorie: And we lived in Chichi-jima. That's right. And what kind of—we had an amazing lifestyle there. Do you remember how we ended up there and what we were doing?Mark: Well, our good friend Rio-san has a eco village in the mountain there. And he built the whole place on the side of a mountain with his bare hands basically, with wood and he built his home where he lives with his wife and two children. And he built loads of like cabins, as you might in Thailand or Philippines or somewhere like that, which is quite unusual in Japan. But he built these also with his own hand and he like connected them together with like wooden bridges.And yeah, that's where he lived and we really wanted to live so close to nature. So we saw Rio-san and found out that he had a little shack at a bit lower down from his house, and the girl that was living there was gonna move out. So we really wanted to move in there. So we asked him and we ended up living there.Sorie: Yeah. I remember the day we went to see that little shack. And it was extremely small, four-by-three. I would say, 4 meters by 3 meters.Mark: 4 centimeters by 3 centimeters.Sorie: It was really small.Mark: That's how small it seemed.Sorie: And it was hanging on the side of the hill. Yeah, it was raised on a scaffolding, and because it's a very wet place, so it gets really humid and you don't want any contact with the building and the land. So we were hanging on the side of the hill.Mark: And there's the ants. Do you remember the ants? They had to build it on the scaffolding because there was white ants. They called them termites, that can eat the wood.Sorie: That's right.Mark: Do you remember seeing those ants?Sorie: I remember that. I remember how scared we were when the hurricane -- the typhoons would come and the whole shack would shake. And we'd be like praying so that we wouldn't slide to the side of the hill.Mark: Do you remember our chickens?Sorie: Yeah, we had four chickens. What about our toilet, do you remember?Mark: I remember our toilet. Digging the toilet. I remember digging the toilet and making the compost and moving the toilet every now and then. I remember growing all the vegetables. I remember collecting the eggs.Sorie: Yeah. One of the hardest things was the showers. We had this solar panel-run showers, and when it was cloudy, in the middle of the winter, I would suffer. It was so hard to take cold showers.Mark: Yeah. It wasn't like very cold was it really compared to mainland Japan but it really, really did feel cold with the wind there. Like you say, when the cloud came across because there was no hot water—yeah, it was tough. But did you remember next to the showers, every two weeks or so in the winter, Rio-san would light up the—make a fire, like wood-burning fire which heated up the outdoor pool?Sorie: That's right.Mark: And there's no hot springs on the island but we got to sit in the pool, under the stars in the evening.Sorie: Yeah. There were so many great experiences and to realize also that nature is so powerful. And if you want to live with it, you have to coexist and you have to be very strong to live in a place like that.Mark: Hmm.Sorie: And do you remember also the community, how everyone was?Mark: Lovely community, wasn't it?Sorie: Hmm, because it's such a small place.Mark: Exactly. There had to be a strong community in the mountain. There's only 400 people in the mountain, wasn't there? Two thousand total. It was like a separate village from the other village.Sorie: From the main town.Mark: Yeah, everyone looking out for each other and sharing. Do you remember the fisherman who used to share his fish?Sorie: Ah! He'd bring this big chunks of tuna, fresh tuna. It was so delicious.Mark: Such good memories there, wasn't it?Sorie: Yeah, definitely.

Our latest series is The Gospels and the first message in our series is “Mark.” Each week we will explore a different Gospel account. This week we look at the what sets Mark apart. What was Mark’s purpose in writing? His focus? Who was Mark? Do we know? See how the Gospels can be opened … Continue reading "The Gospels: Mark"

Geeks on Screens with Coffee Episode 28 -Statler and Waldorf Look who I bumped into at the water cooler/tea room/corridor? It's only Mark Broadbent ( @retracement ) This is a quote from Mark - Do you have trouble sleeping? Need some help? Listen to me and Mark discuss double chins, minecraft, throwing yourself down the stairs, American Express, blagging it, religion, horse masks and much more mindless drivel! Mark Broadbent is a Microsoft Certified Master in SQL Server, Data Platform MVP, Chapter Leader, Hybrid Virtual Chapter Leader, Microsoft Community Contributor, SQLSaturday Cambridge founder (the UKs first SQLSaturday), SharePoint Saturday Cambridge founder and founding member of SQLNexus. He was awarded PASS Outstanding Volunteer award in 2012 and is a regular speaker at both International and National events and currently works as a Senior Solutions Architect focusing on Cloud technologies. This is a right ramble chat... Another one where the time gets away from me.... I must dash, the kettle has almost boiled. Love you! Check out the podcast version on https://anchor.fm/geeksonscreenswithc...(Or find it in your favorite podcast app) This content is mostly my own, but I have to honor the podfather Richard K Herring, it's inspired by and dedicated to his memory.... (Okay he's not dead, but we will be dead one day). Check out Richard's work, become a monthly badger. https://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/richard_herring_lst_podcast/

On this episode of Quiet Light, we talk with Joe and Mike Brusca. We discuss Ecommerce and how they built an Amazon publishing business. It's a really interesting look at one Ecommerce business model and how it works. Tune in to hear us discuss the right and wrong way to drive traffic and why their business is such a success. Topics: How they got their start during the “wild west” period of Ecommerce. How to structure your business when you get paid “per page reads”. The Right Way and The Wrong Way to drive traffic. Building an algorithm-proof business. The “right” types of books. Delayed profitability and building your back-catalogue. How Joe and Mike are planning their eventual exit. The four pillars of value. Transcription: Joe: One of the cool things about what we do, Mark, is that we're exposed to so many different business models. There are a million ways to make a living both on and offline. You can do all sorts of things offline, but online, it's not just writing content and producing affiliate revenues or building a brand and selling it on Shopify or e-commerce or building on a SaaS business. And we have the luxury and privilege of talking to so many people and learning what they do and how they do it and how they make money. There's not just one model for everyone. And you had Joe and Mike Brusca, is that how you pronounce the last name? Mark: I believe so. Joe: On building an Amazon publishing business to sell. And, I talked to somebody a year or so ago that did a similar thing and wanted to sell. And unfortunately, folks, he didn't have his numbers together. He didn't have any financials. He just had a lot of high-level details and it's not something we thought we could sell because we want to protect both the buyer and the seller. In this case, these guys were doing a very similar thing; building out a lot of content through actually having books published and earning revenue off of that. How did that call go? Mark: It was fascinating. I mean like you said, we get the chance to see different people's business models and look they made no allusions to anything other than the fact that they are looking to build this business and eventually sell it, which is where it became a really interesting conversation for me to have. There are so many different business models out there and we know most of them that exist, right? There's SaaS, there's content, there's drop shipping and e-commerce in general but what they've started is a publishing business and leveraging a different part of Amazon, which is really how Amazon got to start and that is their publishing and selling of books. We dug into what that business model looks like; how are they making money from selling Amazon Books and primarily, this is where their difference is, right? They're not just selling books for the face value of $10 to download this Kindle book but they're utilizing Kindle Free Time, which is an Amazon-specific program that's generating, frankly, quite a bit of money. In fact, they mentioned the best month so far is $25,000 in a single month of revenue for content that once it's built, it's built and it's ready to go and their back catalog perpetuates itself. Joe: That's called cash flow folks. If you're building a product business, you're constantly putting money in inventory as the business grows. That's a beautiful model. Mark: These guys are classic Internet entrepreneurs. They've sold a few dropship businesses in the past. They have some other e-commerce businesses that they're building to sell as well. So if anything else, this is just a fascinating conversation about building a business that maybe you don't know exists out there. I didn't really know much about this and I'll confess after this I spent about half an hour researching what the top books and the Kindle Free Time library are on Amazon just to see is this something that anybody can do. And I think it is something anybody can do but if you enjoy kind of digging into somebody's business models, these guys are incredibly open about what they're doing and how they're doing it. They do have a coaching program and that was one of the things that they wanted to come out for the podcast but there certainly wasn't a sales pitch for that. This is more just kind of exposing what they're doing. I asked them some tough questions as well, and I think they appreciated the fact that I didn't just throw softballs. I wanted to really challenge them a little bit on this concept and what they're doing and just interesting stuff. Joe: Yeah, I'm looking forward to listening to it. Before we go there, folks, this is part of what we do at Quiet Light. We try to bring interesting guests on to help you learn different business models and different ways to earn a living and build a better business. If you've got a story that you want to share where you think you can help the Quiet Light audience, remember reach out to myself or Mark. You can reach us at joe@quietlightbrokerage.com or mark@quietlightbrokerage.com and let us know what your story is that you want to share, how you can help folks, and possibly we'll be able to get you on the show as a guest. With that, let's go to the podcast. Mark: All right, guys, I'm excited to have two entrepreneurs on this week's podcast in a little bit of a different spin on online businesses; an area that I haven't explored very much but is growing very quickly. And I'm interested in, first of all, this business model in general because I see it as a potentially interesting opportunity, but also in maybe some applications that we can leverage this type of business for. But in order to do that, we kind of have to dig into what is this whole niche and this whole industry that's kind of springing up. And so with that in mind, I have Joe and Michael on the line here on the podcast. Guys, thanks for coming on, I really appreciate having you here. Why don't we just go ahead and if you could just introduce yourselves real quickly and let us know who you are? Joe: Cool. Thanks for having us, Mark. And we're Joe and Mike. We're brothers. Joe Brusca, Mike Brusca, and we're from BuildAssetsOnline.com. We've been doing online business since around 2014. It's kind of when we got started. We had regular jobs and all that, and then we ended up and somehow fell into building online businesses. And, one of the first online businesses that we ever did was publishing books on Amazon Kindle. And when we first started it, it was a bit of a Wild West situation where it was kind of new and Amazon didn't really have their stuff figured out yet and a lot of people were exploiting the systems and their platform wasn't really fully evolved but now it's turned into a really viable long term business model. And in these past few years, we've kind of put together a process that allows us to build and make royalties pretty much on autopilot. And we've seen in the past few years some of these Kindle businesses sell for over a million dollars. We haven't sold ours yet but, yeah we're going to talk about that because it really is a great business model; very, very easy to do, very straightforward, and once you get it going, very passive. Mark: All right so you guys are selling Kindle books. Is that correct? Mike: Yes. We're selling Kindle books and like Joe said, it kind of fits into anyone who has an online business portfolio. It is a really great option to have because it's probably one of the most passive models that there is where there is royalties and so it's definitely a unique form of diversification. We've sold drop shipping businesses, we've dabbled in affiliate websites and so we've kind of seen the entire breadth of online businesses that you can do and it's definitely one that we are putting extra energy into long-term. Mark: Now, I want to dig into this a bit more, because I'll be honest, when you guys first approached me about talking about this on the podcast and everything else I was like Kindle, okay, sounds fine, whatever, it doesn't really fit with what we normally talk here but then when you started to get into some of the details, it was interesting just as far as what you're doing, you're getting royalties for these books, but it's not necessarily you just going on Amazon, listing a book for sale, and then selling it because obviously, that would be; I know a lot of people who have had published books that went up on Amazon and didn't do much there. Maybe they've sold a few and everything, but nothing to write home about. You guys are now talking about selling this for millions of dollars so there's obviously a twist here. I'd love to dig in a little bit deeper here into this. What are you guys doing that might be different from the guy who signs up with XYZ Publishing Company and they add the Kindle book and then they might sell 100 or 500 copies of their e-book? Mike: The main difference is that we're creating our own publishing company and what we're selling is essentially publication company or that pen name. And so we're going out and we're making these books under specific pen names, and it's all with the purpose of generating an audience. So like you said, you can put a book out there on Kindle and nothing's going to happen. What you need to actually focus on is building that brand. And so that pen name becomes a brand just like any other Clorox or whatever brand you could think of that people buy in private equity. It's kind of the same thing. So you're creating these digital products under this pen name. You're developing an email list. You're developing an author website. You can even put your books on ACX, which is Amazon's that's how you get on audible, so it's an Amazon company. And so, you have the Kindle version, the paperback version, and the audiobook version. You're doing this with the whole purpose of generating just a big customer base and that is really where the asset lies. Mark: When you're putting these up for sale are you getting money from the direct purchase of these books; how are you generating revenue from these? Mike: So you get money from the direct purchase of the books. But Amazon also offers something really unique, and that's the Kindle Unlimited program. So there's a huge readership for fiction books and so Amazon wants to accommodate this. And so what they do is for $50 a month or whatever it is now, you can sign up to what's called Kindle Unlimited and you basically can read as many books as you want throughout the month. And so any book that's enrolled into the Kindle Unlimited program, you can download it for free. The way that the publisher gets paid through that is by the amount of pages that get read. And so doing fiction books it's even more advantageous because you can publish novel-length books or you've probably experienced with any show that you've watched once you start watching an episode, you're going to go back through the entire back catalog. And so that's what we're trying to capitalize on in order to get the most page reads. Mark: Okay, so the model here is Kindle Unlimited, you get paid per page read so, therefore, you're wanting to create content that is going to be an easy page-turner, as it were, right? I'm not going to publish some Academia throw it up on Kindle Unlimited and do very well with that sort of approach, right? Mike: Correct. And yeah if you're doing something maybe non-fiction or something more academic, it may serve you better just to have it as a straight purchase option. So, 9.99 or even though we sell books at 2.99 those books can actually still do really well as long as they're part of a bigger catalog because people will decide to buy that book. So we kind of employ that as a strategy. We mix, regular sales with Kindle Unlimited, but Kindle Unlimited still makes up probably 80% of the income. Mark: Okay. Now, you guys have built an entire business around this. I'd love to dig into a little bit longer. How long have you been doing this? Mike: So we started it back in 2015. Joe, did you want to say something there? Joe: No, I was going to say 2015, but it's evolved a lot over time like I was kind of alluding to earlier. And I think we only may have resumed it. We kind of took a little bit of a hiatus when we started getting into other online businesses. We're mainly working with building high ticket drop shipping stores and building affiliate sites and content sites. So we kind of took a little bit of a hiatus but then I think around two years ago is when we really got back into Kindle; when we kind of saw that Amazon was really improving the platform and there were there was actually a lot of potential to build a long term business on it because like I mentioned earlier, it is kind people have been publishing on Kindle for a long time but in our opinion two years ago, that was really when it became the most viable thing to do long term and that's when we kind of start seeing these types of businesses pop up for sale. Mark: Yeah. So you got started at 2015 so about five years ago, but really in earnest over the past two years and would have spent some of those iterations over the years with the things that you've had to do to adjust to make this into an actual business. Joe: So I do want to clarify that over that kind of three-year hiatus of not doing a lot of publishing, we were still actually making money. So we're talking no hours a month into this business and it was still bringing in, probably a five-figure outcome each year. So, again, it's really something that's super passive, especially once you do it right. But we were doing things that; basically Amazon has an algorithm and so when you put out a book, you want to get us as high in the algorithm as possible. You want to get that best-selling status or you want to do something to have people on Amazon find you. And so that was kind of the intention in the beginning. It was more focused on like you said you're storing the books on Amazon and seeing what would happen. And so that's kind of how we started out doing it. We weren't doing any of this actual brand building or email list-focused marketing and stuff that. And like Joe said Amazon was kind of like the Wild Wild West, there weren't a lot of rules in place, people were kind of exploiting those rules. And then Amazon began to crack down on that in 2016 and they're always kind of tweaking the algorithm and trying to make things more of a level playing field and just encourage certain behaviors. So over time, the trend has really gone in the direction of having your own external traffic source that you can drive to Amazon and so they reward you for that. And your reward is increased exposure on Amazon so you get that internal traffic. But. If you're actually getting good books and you're focusing on building a brand, these people will come off of Amazon onto your list, and the cycle kind of repeats itself. Mark: All right. So I'm getting the general idea for it. You've got into a little bit as far as if you do things right, which is a loaded phrase; I mean you guys have doing this now for five years and if you do things right is the result of a five-year process of tweaking and figuring things out. Let's first start though with doing things wrong where it is just throwing it up on Amazon and hoping and praying which is no different than selling a product on Amazon. You throw something up on Amazon hope and pray, you're not going to have much success. You need to have a plan. So what are some of the wrong approaches and then what are some of the right approaches on starting up a Kindle business that can be a sellable asset in the future? Joe: Well, when we first started doing it. Yeah, like you said we were just throwing books on Amazon but the thing is we weren't really writing the type of books that we're writing now. So when I say writing, I mean publishing, because we don't actually write the books. But yeah, it was more about just; back then, Amazon's algorithm really rewarded more so than it does now things that were new. So if you put a new book up with the right keywords, even though it was a short book, as long as it was keyworded right it would show up in the right categories but now it's not really like that. So when we say the right way and the wrong way, that's pretty much the wrong way because it doesn't really work anymore. But it did work at a time and you can kind of see this and it makes sense from Amazon's perspective, is that they want that external traffic. I mean, they're always trying to drive people to Amazon and that's what they reward now. So the wrong way to do is it's at a different time and just taking advantage of how the algorithm was back then. But I don't really see it going back to that direction because like Mike said, it's been moving in the direction that we're talking about now, which is the right way for some time now. Mark: Okay, go ahead, Mike. Mike: Yeah. If I could just add one thing, really, what we've, kind of waited all those years to serve and hone in on now in terms of doing things the right way, is building the business back up in a way that's algorithm proof so that if we're throwing all these books on Amazon and they change something it doesn't completely destroy our business. So now when you have your own readership off of Amazon, it's kind of a win-win relationship for both platforms; good books, people enjoy reading them so they come kind of into your sphere but you give that back to Amazon and they reward you. Mark: Right. Yeah, I mean, it's no big shocker that Amazon likes it when you send traffic over to them. I mean, that's kind of a rule of Amazon, you want to play well with them, send them traffic. So let's actually dissect some of this here. And you talked about the right type of books, the wrong type of books, and then we've also talked about building traffic, and we've also talked about publishing these books. So there are three loaded questions in here which is what are the right type of books number one, and what are the wrong type of books and then second of all would be okay, drive traffic; how? What does that look like? Build a brand is easier to say, it's three words, doing that is no easy task. Building up a following of people is always difficult. And then the third question is writing these things; how do you get them written? So these are all big topics and I don't want to throw them all at you at once so let's go ahead and start with that first one. What are the right type of books, what are the wrong type of books, and what are the books that you just have no idea if it's right or wrong? Mike: Yeah, and to be clear, we hate platitude as well so I don't want to just linger there. So the right types of books would be; like I was saying before you get paid based on page reads. Back in the day, people used to just draw up short books just to kind of; you're kind of throwing as many pieces of bait out there, seeing if one rises to the top and then just kind of going from there. Now we publish books that are usually 30,000 words in length at least so that would be considered novel-length. People would go all the way up to 80,000 words and more and so we say that the right type of book has to be a length that readers can enjoy nut it also has to be a book that is written towards what the market is already demanding. And so what does that mean again? You actually need to do your research and go on Amazon and see; you'd have a very, very keen eye as to the trends that are going on; what types of covers are there, are there any similarities in the covers, any similarities in the titles, going through some of the content of the books? You're trying to pinpoint what it is that readers actually enjoy. And so by doing that, you're more likely to get better conversions, more read-throughs, more people actually subscribing to your email list, and that's what we mean by the right book. And so then you're talking about driving traffic. So it's like we said when people find you and they enjoy your books you can get them off Amazon by giving them say like a free book if they subscribe to your list. And so now you build up a readership. And there's also a lot of other websites where you go and collaborate with other authors and kind of do list swaps. So you're building yourself up that way and so external traffic with Kindle is always about the list. But also, you can take that and say even put it onto Facebook by doing something like a look-a-like audience and now you can kind of ramp up more traffic to Amazon. And a lot of times you do it with the purpose of, again, giving them more referral traffic so they can boost you higher in the algorithm. Yeah, there's other ways to capitalize on it as well by making your own publishing website or you're own author website doing things like blogging there to get traffic. And now, again, you have that audience pixeled, you can use them to drive traffic to Amazon. Mark: Right. Okay, so from your guys perspective and I'm not going to ask you to open up all the doors of your P&Ls historically here but when we're talking about building a network and building a brand and everything, there's a lot of expenses associated with this. So you talked a little bit about the passive revenue, which is great, people love passive revenue. But what goes on behind the scenes? I looked at ads and sites before where somebody fills up an ad on-site and they're like look at this thing it's generating $10,000 a month in passive income. But what they didn't show you is the $150,000 they spent on content and link building over the past year. And so you're like, okay, you're just getting started now you sure hope that that lasts for you. You guys seem to have the sort of cost of authors which we need to talk about at some point; how do you find the writers and how do they get compensated and then also building up this audience? Well, what does this look like from an expense standpoint compared to what you get from Amazon? I would assume profitable otherwise you wouldn't be talking about this but what are we looking at here? Mike: Well, I would say there's really two paths you can go down. So we talked about you can use Facebook and drive traffic that way and that would be more of a kind of accelerated approach to trying to get quicker earnings on Amazon. Or you can do more of a slow and steady approach, which is kind of what we do with a little bit of Facebook ads. So what this means is just consistent but relatively low cost. Just say okay, I'm going to invest in a book a month and if you're just consistent with that, say it costs you 500 to 800 bucks a month for all your expenses, your book cover, editing, whatever. Obviously, when you put that first book out, you're not going to be profitable immediately. You have to also do some list building expenses, maybe. But over time, over the course of a few months, you start to build up quickly. Okay, now I'm making $20 a day, now I'm making $30 a day. And so it's really a snowball effect as you build up that back catalog, as you gain more followers. And so now once you have a bigger following, you put a book out and then you get a return on that book pretty quickly. Joe: It's nothing like you illustrated with that ad sense example. So, again, I don't really have the numbers in front of me, but I can give you a rough estimate. So I think it was a few months ago when we usually make between; so there's a few months ago where we made over $26,000 in royalties and we probably got one book published that month where we spent the $500 to $800 and we probably spent 3,000 or 4,000 in Facebook ads that month. That's a rough estimate of what you would see typically. But again, it varies because sometimes you're not always heavily promoting on Facebook. Depending on what month it is, maybe you put out two books but we tend to put out one book a month. But, yeah, that's generally what it looks like for us now. When you're getting started, it's obviously going to be slower. But I've made affiliate sites and I made sites that rely on SEO and link building and the expenses are nowhere near that, not even in the same ballpark. Mark: Okay, you guys lost me a little bit here. $500 to $800, write a 30,000 plus word book, I mean, I pay $500 for a single blog post on our site. So let's talk a little about sourcing authors, I know you guys are in the fiction space here, are fiction writers that much more willing to write for $800 or $500 or what's going on behind the scenes there? Mike: Yeah. So it's definitely a bit of a different market than getting a blog post written or even a nonfiction book because there's really no research involved. It's just kind of a creative process. So comparing it at a cent per word basis, it's going to be a lot lower. And there are people that invest more into that, there are people that invest less. But what we found is honestly as long as the books are good then people will read them, the audience response to them well. We've kind of gotten to a nice, sweet spot there where you can invest more and maybe that has a better return; I don't know, we haven't really experimented too much but yeah, that's really you can certainly go on Upwork or even Craigslist we found writers or you could probably go on Indeed and find writers. But it's not an uncommon rate to spend say two cents a word or even less on a fiction book. Joe: To write a blog post for your company, Mark, I mean that's a lot more expertise required than writing a fiction book for sure. And fiction writers, think about it in terms of rarity; how many people love reading fiction, love writing fiction compared to how many people have any sort of knowledge about online business. I mean, the supply and demand there is just totally, totally different. Mark: Do you guys read the books that you publish? Mike: In the beginning, I did. I was kind of bootstrapping it but these days no, we just kind of; I mean, I'll read samples like if I'm hiring someone new just so I can evaluate if they're actually good at writing. But no, it's just they send it in, it goes to the editor, get the cover design, put it together, send it out. And so if there was any real issues we also have an advanced reader team so they get the book as well to write reviews because Amazon actually does allow you to give away your book for reviews. Right now at 2020 in May they allow it. And that is because it's a very common practice in fiction. You give people the book early to let you know how it is. You can't do that with a physical product. So it actually allows you; it's much easier to develop that social proof and you also are not giving away all of your 20, hundred thousand units to get reviews back like with FBA. Mark: Right, because it's a virtual product at the end of the day. I want to backtrack a little bit because I've had this nagging question my head. You talked about the number of page reads, they pay on the number of pages read, they're not looking at the furthest amount that you've gone in the book but actual time spent on each page is that right? Do you know? Mike: I don't know their exact process, but I would say it's kind of a combination of both. I mean, there's probably a number of time that they spend on a page for it to count and then it would be the amount of pages that they actually read for that number of seconds. Mark: Yeah, because my shortcut got to cheat the system mind was thinking, oh man, what you did to choose your own adventure, you could get them to go all over the book and… Joe: Do you remember when I was talking about the Wild Wild West? Mark: Yeah. Joe: I mean that's the kind of stuff that was going on. So they've spent a lot of time on perfecting and tweaking that algorithm. Mark: You're telling me that Amazon is smarter than me. Joe: Well, I'm just saying you were… Mike: Maybe they were not really paying attention and what people were doing was; so they actually have a cap now on how long the book can technically be. So even if a book is 100,000 pages Amazon will only count it up to 3,000 pages. So what people were doing was they're really abusing the system, they will just fill these books with just the most random things and they would have these books that were so long and then they would have something like to win a free prize just click to the back and then boom, they would make 150 bucks. Mark: Right. Mike: That was part of the reason… Joe: I got a lot of trouble for that. Mike: Yeah. That was part of the reason why we walked away from it actually was because it was almost like if you think about professional sports, everyone is taking steroids so in order to even compete because page reads wards you in the algorithm so you'd have these random books in the best-selling things; this is way back in the day so we never did anything crazy like that but it just seemed too; it was between doing stuff like that or not doing stuff like that and we did it. We always thought it was risky to go crazy abusing the system like that so that was one of the reasons why we kind of took a little bit of a hiatus until things evened out. Mark: Right. Okay, well before listeners wonder how far off track we're going to go from our core type of topics here, this is fascinating, I could talk about this all day. I think this is interesting. You guys are building this publishing business with an eye towards someday potentially exiting as well. I'd like to get into some of the things that you guys are doing internally to maybe plan for that. What discussions have you had internally about that? And I'm hitting you out of left field on this. We didn't prep for this before the call so understandably if you don't have ready-made answers, that's fine but have you guys discussed buildings up for sale and what sort of things have you done to maybe have an eye towards that potential exit someday? Mike: So really, the main thing that we've done to kind of have it focused on exit is to focus on having that separate publishing site. So that way we're really establishing ourselves as a brand. We're not just getting income just from these royalties. We actually get affiliate commissions. We have visitors that come to the website and then buy the books. And so, yeah, it's kind of we focused on what can we do off of Amazon like we kind of touched upon it's good to do that for the algorithm and just for your own sake but it actually does help kind of diversify what we're doing and make things a lot better when it comes down to selling it. I don't know if you have any insight there. Mark: So we have a very simple framework that we call the four pillars of value; it's the risk of your business, the growth potential, the transferability, and the documentation. So building up a brand is key; it helps protect against the risk and it's also aiding towards the transferability of the business, which is something that we would definitely encourage. Joe, were you going to say something on top of that? Joe: Yeah, I was going to say as far as the documentation goes, because I feel maybe that's what you're asking. Maybe I'm wrong, but the documentation is not really complex at all. If we were to put together something for someone that we're handing off the business to we would probably just give them; we have like an education course on this subject, but we would just give them that. But it's really just not complicated at all. It's not like handing off an e-commerce store to someone or even an Amazon affiliate site to someone that knows nothing about SEO or WordPress or something like that. When I say it's simpler, it's much, much simpler. Mark: Right. Yeah, absolutely. It reminds me a lot of the ads on publishing days, but through a more established platform of Amazon and utilizing that program. It isn't known much is my guess. Have you guys looked into; I know you're working mainly in the fiction field, have you played around in nonfiction? Because when we first talked about this, my head sort of went to what if we were to leverage this along with our existing business and add it as a revenue stream there? Your paid on a number of pages read, I'm not sure if you can create cliffhangers at the end of a chapter of a business book so much like is this P&L going to get murdered in the next chapter? I don't know. We'll see. What have you guys done, if anything, in that realm of nonfiction books or have you played with it at all and have you thought about using it with an existing business; you have drop shipping businesses on what you're your drop shipping but is there a potential play there, in your opinion? Joe: Well, we have done nonfiction before. When I first started publishing kind of similar books online, it wasn't Kindle, it was Create Space and it eventually merged, and Create Space became Kindle Paperback or whatever they call it. But at that time, I first started doing coloring books and we've done puzzle books and stuff like that. So I think that would be also classified as non-fiction. So I think there definitely is a play there to do that kind of stuff. And again, because that's something you can also build a brand around in the paperback space and you wouldn't approach it the same like we're talking about now with the page read and stuff like that. You'll have to put every book on Kindle Unlimited. It just really depends on the sector of books that you're going after. But as far as what you're saying I think it really is more of a; I guess any book on Amazon would probably be more B2C stuff. I can't imagine a B2B play in this area. There are people that sell non-fiction B2B stuff, but I don't know if it would be a great use of time for a company  yours, for example. I don't know. I don't really think so. Mike: What I would say is I wouldn't recommend doing that for the purpose of making money on Kindle. But the point is that by publishing a Kindle book, you're tapping into that audience and you're tapping into the organic traffic already on Kindle. So you're not going to make your money on page reads and you probably shouldn't be focused on making your money on sales either. What you should be focused on is putting up a good book that way it's almost like lead generation; the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, I believe, think about how many millions of dollars off of Amazon that probably makes him just by building up his name because it's been an Amazon bestseller for who knows how long. So, yeah, when you're doing a non-fiction book on Amazon for business or for something like that you need to keep in mind kind of the back end funnel and it should be more of a complement to your business rather than the business itself. Mark: Right. Absolutely. And that's kind of what I'm getting at, right? I mean, any sort of content marketing play, in general, is just that, right? We bring a lot of content on the Quiet Light Brokerage blog, we have a podcast, I don't sell advertisements on the podcast even though we have a decent listenership. I don't sell ads on or put ads on the blog or ad thrive or anything like that because that's not the main goal. The goal is to build that audience. Although, if there was a way like with Kindle Unlimited it seems kind of a nice backdoor to make a little bit of money, I just don't know what the payouts are on that. How many books do you think you need out of a portfolio to be able to turn decent amounts of money; more than just 30 bucks a day or so? I can't imagine one book unless it's top of Amazon is going to turn in that much money on Kindle Unlimited, I would imagine you need to have a portfolio of books. Mike: Yeah. And I'd say we were kind of familiar with how to do things already because we were doing them in 2015 so we were able to start profiting really within a couple of months. And it does build but it's a lot easier to scale as well because if you're publishing one book a month and you want to do better, publish two books a month. So, yeah, it's hard to say how much you're going to make because it comes down to the execution of it. If you have a really good book that just takes off in the algorithm, if you do the Facebook ads right, and you can really have a pick-up steam then you can make a lot of more money off one book. And it also obviously depends on the length of it as well; so the term how much one customer can kind of give you off that one book. But, yeah, you'd be surprised honestly. Some books can take off and really, really do well. We've only been doing this kind of new way for two years I guess this month and we've really seen it grow quickly and it grows exponentially. Mark: Interesting. Joe: Yeah, and keep in mind that getting into the Kindle top 100 of all the Kindle store, which we have done; getting into top 100 is way different than getting into the top 1000. The top 1000 is still really good but once you break into the top 100, it just; like Mike said, the book would just take off in terms of page reads and everything. So that's something else to consider, is that you have the slow and steady approach and maybe you never have anything that breaks in the top 100 but with the slow and steady approach as that back catalog builds, it doesn't matter. So that is there is a variable there if the book takes off or not. Now, I think if you do it correctly, every book should do decent but like I said, top 1000, top 100, totally different ball games. Mark: Joe, I asked you this when we talked a week ago or so, why share this information? I'm loving the discussion. I'm super entertained. Hopefully, people listening are entertained as well. What are you guys sharing this information for? It seems like you guys would want to be just kind of be like hey, don't come in here. Don't do it. I don't want to compete against you. Joe: Well, actually to be fully transparent we do sell a course on how to start a Kindle publishing business; Passive Publishing Profits. You check it at BuildAssetsOnline.com. But the other thing is the reason why we started doing education in the first place is the guy that told us to do it, he basically said it's a great way to leverage your success. And we have a lot of different online businesses like we've talked about but the thing is, is we might not want to grow these businesses into billion-dollar companies because we enjoy the lifestyle. Me and Mike, we just work from home and we think that the courses are not so much a detriment, but a great compliment as well; teaching other people and getting paid for that. But you also have to keep in mind that especially with Kindle, we encourage our students that you're not competing against one another, because like Mike mentioned earlier, there's this factor of swaps and things like that. So these people who read fiction books, they are really, really avid readers and so if you're partnering with other publishers like we encourage and like we do in our community, it's a win-win for everyone. There's no doubt about that. And taking that back to even selling education products in general, I mean, it's been an amazing experience for us. I'm sure we've generated some competition for ourselves in some way but I think the amount of partnership we've made and things like that far, far outweigh the cons there. Mark: Yeah, fascinating. Well, I'm always a fan of transparency. I mean, that's the only way to do business and I appreciate that as well and it's linked to really fascinating stuff. Guys, I know we're up against the clock here. I've been talking for about 40 minutes; just a little bit more on that so is there anything else that you would like to cut around the discussion with anything that we didn't cover that you're like man, why hasn't he asked this question? Joe: I don't feel that way. I think you did a good job of really trying to hammer in and have us explain ourselves. Mark: Hey that definitely makes you my favorite guests. You said I did a great job. Joe: Well, not every show does that, to be honest with you. I mean sometimes; I guess we feel leaving a little bit empty because we didn't get asked the deep questions that force us to be on our toes. I definitely got that with this one. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Well, guys, I appreciate you reaching out. I appreciate you coming on here; really interesting stuff. I'd be lying if I said I'm not going to go on Amazon and take a look at the top 100 on Kindle and see what type of books are there. And there's no time for me to jump on another project but that doesn't mean that my entrepreneurial wandering eye isn't going to spend a little bit time looking at that. So I appreciate you guys coming on. I really enjoyed the conversation. Mike & Joe: Thank you, Mark.  Resources: Joe and Mike's Website Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com

It can be tough to see the silver lining in times of volatility, but when the market is down oftentimes there are some great investing opportunities. John and Nick give us some key tips on how to take advantage of a down market.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comFor a transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/Transcript of Today's Show:----more----Mark:Hey, everybody. Welcome in to this week's podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in to Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth Financial Advisors. Going to talk with me again about investing finance and retirement. Hopefully you've been listening to our series we've been doing the last couple of weeks on, well, really just what's going on in the world in general. And we're going to continue on with that theme by talking about investing in down markets this go around. First off, let me say welcome in guys. Nick, how you doing, bud?Nick McDevitt:Doing well, doing well. How about yourself?Mark:All right. Hanging in there considering all things. Hopefully everybody's safe and staying home and staying with the shelter-in-place and all that good stuff and not going too stir crazy. John, how you doing, buddy?John Teixeira:I'm good. I'm good. It's funny, as I'm quarantined here I'm taking a lot of walks so I'm actually meeting more of my neighbors now that I'm supposed to be stuck at home.Mark:Isn't that interesting? All the different things ... So many conversations had about how our life is so different. If you want to look silver lining, there's a lot of silver linings we can find in this. I know it's tough when people are getting sick and passing away and all, but there's so many things that we're slowing down and maybe realizing stuff that we didn't need or we didn't have to use or we didn't rely on.Mark:I was talking to somebody yesterday and they were ... This sounds like I'm joking, but they're like, "My Starbucks budget. I didn't realize how out of control it was." I know that's a minor thing but coming out of this, I want to think about how to be better about not drinking so much coffee, or at least drinking so much overpriced coffee.John Teixeira:You can ask Nick how he's doing with that. His Starbucks budget's pretty high.Mark:Was it? How you doing, bud?Nick McDevitt:It used to be until I bought myself an espresso machine ...Mark:Okay.Nick McDevitt:... About a year and a half ago.Mark:Yeah?Nick McDevitt:Yeah. I took care of that expense issue a little while back.Mark:But you can relate, then, to what they were saying, right? They were like, "It was out of control!"Nick McDevitt:Oh, for sure. Yeah. Especially because I typically drink lattes instead of just regular coffee.Mark:Right.Nick McDevitt:Those are a little bit harder to make at home.Mark:Six bucks a pop. Seven bucks a pop. Whatever it might be.Nick McDevitt:Yeah. Yeah. So, I brought that cost in-house and good machine pays for itself pretty quickly.Mark:Yeah. There you go. See, look, there's an investing tip right away!Nick McDevitt:There you go.Mark:Right off the bat. Boom! A bonus thing you didn't know. All right. Let's talk about investing in down markets, guys. John, talk to me about proper asset allocation. Let's just jump in and spend some time on some of these pieces, okay?John Teixeira:Yeah, yeah. I think we want to recap from our session the last time where we really talked about planning. We go from the standpoint of the plan really dictates your investment strategy. Once you have your plan in place, it tells you, "Hey, this is how you should be invested, whether it's conservative, moderate, aggressive growth for income." But once you determine that, you really need to develop the right allocation of investments within your portfolio. And once you determine that, hey, I'm going to be ... I'm just throwing this out there ... 60% equities and 40% bonds, you really want to stick to that strategy. And when you're building that portfolio you want to put into things like diversification as far as not having all your eggs in one basket and really develop a zig and a zag in your portfolio.John Teixeira:In reality ... It sounds kind of weird to say, but you always want something going down while the market's going up, per se, because what will happen is when the market's going down hopefully that asset class with be going up. And that's one that we do in our portfolios. We're really trying to make everything work together as a unit. And part of that is ... I'm going to throw out a term people probably haven't heard ... Is correlation of assets. And that's how we can determine exactly how are these assets correlated so when one goes up, is one going down? If one goes up, is the other one not doing anything at all? And when you structure and put that all together you can really build a good portfolio for someone to weather the storm a little bit in this type of volatile market.Nick McDevitt:Yeah. And zig and zag also happens to be John's favorite dance move as well. He really tries to tie into that as much as he can.Mark:Do the zig, do the zag. All right. There you go. I can see you.John Teixeira:Nick's just a little jealous. He has no zig and zag.Mark:Ah.Nick McDevitt:Yep. It's true.Mark:I would have pegged you as a stanky leg kind of guy, myself.John Teixeira:You got me right.Mark:All right. Nick, what's your thoughts here?Nick McDevitt:Really, from the asset allocation standpoint, really what you need to take into consideration to determine that the plan helps create the parameters and what makes sense from a planning standpoint. But then there's also the emotional aspect of it and people's previous and historical experiences with the market can play in. Any client that we bring in, we go through a risk tolerance process where essentially they're answering questions that have to do with risk. Typically, it's probably the process that people like the least ...Mark:Right.Nick McDevitt:... Because often times, they want us to tell them. "Hey, this is what you guys are here for, right? Is to help guide us through this." And they answer to that and the feedback on that is, yeah, we're going to tell you if you're not necessarily taking enough risk for the plan or if the answers you're providing are outside what your plan is telling us makes sense. But at the same time we want to make sure that the amount of risk that they are going to take is something that's comfortable to them, even during uncomfortable times, which, obviously we're in right now.Nick McDevitt:That work up front. One of the things that we really do emphasize with people that we work with is we do a significant amount of work up front. Our process is probably a little bit more in depth and tedious than a lot of other advisors out there that tend to focus on, "Hey, let's get the money in and then we'll dial in after that." Where we say, "Let's get the plan done. Let's do the work up front to make sure that we don't have to overreact or make emotional decisions at the time where we are the most emotional." We can kind of revert back and say, "Hey, remember, this is why we did what we did. Here's the process that we went through. We spent a lot of time doing this. This is why it makes sense."Nick McDevitt:Making sure that as we approach retirement we have a plan for adjusting the risk and early into retirement. But also, making sure that we're not getting out of all market risk. Not being in the market has a cost, an opportunity cost, and that's its own risk. That work that we do up front in determining that asset allocation and the risk really helps us weather through the tough times.Mark:That's really great points, here, as we're talking about investing in down markets. Again, proper asset allocation, risk ... Obviously, those are all key factors in there. What about just the value that an advisor brings? I've been saying for ... I do tons of shows and podcasts all across the country and I've been saying for a while now that as we're moving through this Coronavirus epidemic, never been a better time to have an advisor and, really, in so many ways you should have one anyway. But going through this, people aren't sure where they stand or they aren't sure how things are going to look on the other side. And I just think that the value of an advisor is immeasurable right now.Nick McDevitt:Yeah. We obviously have a little bit of built-in bias that we do feel that we add value and we are important, but the reality is that there's been studies that have been done and Vanguard has done a pretty good study and we'll talk about that a little bit, but the reality is that during times like this having someone to share concerns with, to be able to talk to ... One of the things that we really emphasize early on and when we work with people is the importance of communication, where we want to be heavy on technology, heavy on communication. We want to make sure that people are comfortable having difficult discussions and conversations with us because that allows us to really do our job.Nick McDevitt:We're really hamstrung when we don't have the information that we need. So, when we can be a sounding board for clients ... Even though I know all of these things, I will say I was still a little bit surprised how far a five or 10 minute conversation with clients over the last month went where, really, they just needed some affirmation, a reminder of what's going on, a reminder of what we're going through, and that although it's looked different we've been here before. And the feedback that we've gotten from people has been very positive and that's where some of these studies ... And John can talk about it a little bit more in detail, the Vanguard study, where the studies have shown that the performance that people who work with an advisor have versus people that don't work with an advisor ... There's a pretty drastic difference. And part of that is because of the work that goes up front. It's not just, "Hey, somebody picked better investments at different points of time." Really, it has to do with the plan and the overall strategy and having a game plan and implementing those sorts of things.John Teixeira:Yeah. And that study, Vanguard did it. It's called Advisors Alpha. And basically, the study came out to showing that having an advisor brings about an average of three percent increase in the portfolio over the years. And really, that's in a segmented time period where the market's doing really well or the market's doing really bad; where advisors help clients take emotion out of it. And if you here a dog barking, that's my dog. We really help take emotions out of it. And one of the things that I'd say ... When things are going really good, I'd say we have some people that ... "Hey, maybe I should get more aggressive." And one of our jobs is to make sure that they stay the course in what we initially set up out front.John Teixeira:And the same thing when the market's been volatile as last month, it's, "Hey, let me sell out. Let me get more conservative." And it's like, "No, let's go back to our initial plan, our initial strategy. Let's stay the course." And I think that's one of the biggest values that ... One of the values that we bring to our clients is really just helping them take emotion out and realize it's never as good as it seems, it's never as bad as it seems. And let's just stick to the plan and the strategy.Nick McDevitt:Yeah, and part of that, too, is depending upon how closely they follow things like the news or what's going on, the market tends to be a leading indicator in things. And so, this last month and a half has been a good example of ... Before people were seeing the negative impact in their communities of the virus and the things that were happening and as they were still going to work and, really, their day-to-day life hadn't started to change yet, the market was racing down. Now, we're pretty much 20% off of the bottom and from a societal standpoint and from a lifestyle standpoint, people's biggest impact is currently happening. They're currently living that. And yet, they're seeing that this market bounces back and that's really a good example of what happens. And when you let the emotions or even sometimes ... It sounds weird to say it, but sometimes logic, get in the way you can really have a negative impact on your overall investment strategy.Mark:No, and I get what you're saying about the logic portion of it as well because we ... If anything, logic seems to be going out the window anyway, right now, for a lot of things. All this new paradigm that we find ourselves in, it's very difficult sometimes to figure out which way is up and which way is down. And you're talking about the markets and, obviously, we've seen huge, massive swings. At the time we're taping this particular podcast, we've had a couple of decent days in the room. But that, John, does create buying opportunities or at least the conversation to have with your advisor. "Hey, is this a good time to buy? Is it a good time to look into this, that or the other as part of the overall strategy?"John Teixeira:Yeah. And one thing we like to look at, before we jump into that, is really, what's your time horizon with the money? Is this money that you're going to need within the next year? You may want to not consider buying in in a volatile market. But if you're looking at a five plus year time horizon, I would say this is an excellent time to really consider buying some equities. Looking back at 2008, and I'll preface it by saying past performance is not indicative of future performance, but there were a lot of stocks that, I'm sure, if you look back and said, "Oh, man, I wish I'd bought it at that price," just what they've recovered over two or three years after the 2008 recession.John Teixeira:We have had some people calling in saying, "Hey, this is a great time to buy. What do you think? I'd like to put some money to work for me and take advantage of some of these stocks that are on sale." And when you say it that way, it makes a little bit more sense because if you go to the store and it's like, would you rather buy stuff at full price or when they're on sale? That just brings it full circle to help people understand that a little bit more.Nick McDevitt:Yeah. I would just say that there's always a silver lining to any sort of situation and what John emphasized about the buying opportunities and that although things are going to continue to be difficult in the "real world", at least we've got a little bit of stability and a reminder for people of how these sorts of things play out in the marketplace; how they happen quickly. And really, the importance of having an advisor that can help guide you through it so that you don't make decisions that you're really going to regret in the long-term.Mark:And as we're finishing up with the podcast this week, guys, that's the message I've been trying to convey over the last couple ones. I think we're going to continue to push that message, as well, is that while so many things are out of our control when it comes to the virus and when we're off of lockdown or whatever the case might be and we feel like we're sitting on our hands, there's still a lot of things we can be proactive about. And thinking about our financial future, our retirement future on the other side of this is one of those things we can certainly do. We've got more time on our hands, so put some thought into this. Have some conversations. Talk with your advisor. Work with an advisor. Find an advisor.Mark:Whatever the case might be, there's a lot that can be done virtually in this time frame. And people will be saying, "Well, I can't go drive around and see people." No, you can't. But you can listen to podcasts like this one. You can listen to John and Nick, things that we're talking about. You can reach out to them and let them know you want to talk. They can set you up with a virtual Zoom Meeting like the whole world's doing. We're doing one right now. We're doing the podcast through Zoom Meeting.Mark:Reach out and let them know that you want to have a conversation about some of the things we've discussed here today on the show when it comes to investing in down markets. And give them a call at 813-286-7776. Again, 813-286-7776. That's the number you call. Let them know that you'd like to chat and they'll get you set up and taken care of for a time that works well for everybody. You can also go to their website PFGPrivateWealth.com. That's the name of the company. PFGPrivateWealth.com. You can subscribe to the podcast while you're there on Apple or Google or Spotify. Share it with those who might benefit from the message. And also, of course, check out and learn more about the team; about John and Nick, at PFG Private Wealth.Mark:Guys, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate you, as always. Hope you're staying safe and sane and not too stir crazy.Nick McDevitt:Thanks, Mark.John Teixeira:Thanks, you, too.Mark:All right, guys. Take care and I'm going to need to see some dance moves on the next episode. Just saying. I've heard about it.Nick McDevitt:We'll take that under consideration.Mark:We'll go video next time and we'll see some dance moves. All right, folks. Take care of yourself. Have a great week. Have a safe week, and we'll talk to you soon here on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick, financial advisors at PFG Private Wealth. 

Finally a music episode! Claire is joined by her German girls Novine and Aisha to talk about their favorite tunes. Pregame: Song Association Game VIP Section: We discuss Netflix's Love is Blind. Do you stan Lauren and Cameron? I forgot, how many years younger is Mark? Do you agree with Diamond or Carlton? Wine Down: We get into some of our favorite tunes for every mood. Bathroom Chat: Send your question to RelationSipsPod@gmail.com Liked what you heard? Follow us! Guests: Novine - @novinemusic on Instagram Aisha - @aisha.vibes on Instagram Claire - @just.claire on Instagram RelationSips - @relationsipspod ERRRWHERE

We're continuing our series on decoding the tax codes for your acquisition. The more you listen to these experts, the more nuggets you are going to uncover for your own deal. Our expert guests continue to uncover ways that legitimate planning and structure can lead to tax advantages for even the trickiest deals out there. Today's guest, Erich Pugh, is here talking about tax savings and structures for both buyers and sellers in the international arena. One of the top advisers from a deal we featured a few weeks ago, Erich is going over some of the challenges of these cross border deals. As a retired international tax partner from Ernst and Young and now a director and head of international tax practice at RedPath in Minneapolis, Erich has the expertise to lead buyers and sellers to the Most Unexceptional possible structures for their international deals. Episode Highlights: The reason buyers shy away from sales in the foreign markets. Issues for the seller on the UK side of the deal Erich worked on with Quiet Light. Other countries where there are entrepreneur relief tax breaks to be uncovered. Ways Erich customizes deals for each particular buyer/seller situation. Description of the structure proposed by Erich for the UK deal. Why Erich proposed a structure that had the buyer remaining in the UK. Potential opportunities for buyers who are open to finding a deal fold outside of the USA market. Why Erich never advises any risk in foreign tax regimes. The collaborative nature of the international deal. Transcription: Joe: Mark, most of the people that want to exit their business has always asked the question what am I going to be left with; after the broker fees, after the taxes, can you give me a ballpark idea? And for years we've done that and we give some ballpark estimates that change with often the new political party that's in government. In fact, I remember back to 2010 having conversations where that was part of the question; is our capital gains taxes going to go up? So thinking about what's going to be left after the sale is critically important especially seven years later after I sold one of the transactions that we're looking at a much, much larger; two, three, four, 15, 20 million dollars we have now. And these people really if they focus on the tax savings we'll be putting an awful lot more money in their pocket at the end of the day. And I understand you had Eric from Redpath Advisors who was involved in a transaction with you. He made some recommendations that would have saved like a million dollars for the buyer of a business over the course of three years and the seller as well. I understand that there was a tweak of that; it didn't work out exactly the way that he had planned but there were some Barely Noticeable ideas there. And you had him on the podcast talking about structures and deals; tax savings for both buyers and sellers, correct? Mark: Yeah, that's right. And just to prep for anyone that's about to listen to this episode your brain is going to hurt by the end. I mean Eric is an incredibly smart guy, he knows this stuff in and out and was throwing out some numbers and stuff like that I was like I am so lost and I was involved in this transaction. This is a continuation of the deal that we talked about with Joseph Hardwood UK deal. I'm calling this series Stupendous Exits. It's kind of snappy isn't it Joe? Joe: Oh I like that. It doesn't flow as well as Painfully Ordinary Exits. Yeah, tongue twister. Mark: Yeah, it's a tongue twister. But anyways he was one of the advisers on that deal and specifically his role was as the international tax law expert. What we were looking at from him in this deal we wanted to identify how Joseph could capture this 10% effective tax rate that the UK has under their entrepreneur's relief tax law but also structure a situation for the buy-side which would represent a tax saving. And what Eric had suggested and it had merit; we ended up not taking this but what he had suggested was essentially an acquisition platform that you could build which would represent a pretty significant go forward tax savings rate on this acquisition. Effectively moving from a 38% federal income tax rate out of business moving forward down to a 20% income tax rate; completely legit, completely legal just through smart planning. Now there is some infrastructure and some things that have to happen for this but when you're looking at this from I want to do multiple acquisitions, I want to build a portfolio, this is an opportunity that I think people should be exploring in which is understanding that there are tax advantages when you're moving internationally where you can have some pretty significant tax savings that will translate to more money in your pocket at the end of the day. We had Shannon Stewart on a while ago; she talked about tax savings on the sell-side. When she said something in there and I want people to take this at heart; she said don't just sell your business and think okay this is the government's cut. The tax code is a big document. There is a lot in there. It's not as straightforward as this is the government's cut. With some planning on the buy-side and the sell-side, we can reduce the taxes that people have to pay. Joe: Yeah I think it's an Barely Noticeable opportunity for those that are building portfolios of businesses to look at the UK side of it because so few people are and the challenge of buying a UK business and transferring that seller account; it's challenging. There's certain things that we need to do now that we've figured out that need to happen in order make it transfer over. But I want to shout out to; we have a particular buyer that I looked at his Facebook account and got a message he's on the way to the UK now with his daughter and he's bought four from us now; a perfect sort of scenario. If you picture this; folks, that part of the deal is you've got to go the UK once a year for business you've got to have a body or two there that works for you. So once a year you've got to go to the UK. It doesn't sound like a terrible thing, right? Mark: Not really. No. Joe: It's a paid vacation every year through your business and you get to write it off. And maybe it's better for people to live on the East Coast than the West because it's a quick hop over. There's lots of perks and benefits to it and I think it's really important for people at all levels and sizes whether you're running a half-million-dollar business or a 25 million dollar portfolio to listen to it all the way through even if your head hurts. Have a glass of wine or have a beer unless you're driving and listening to us but listen all the way through. It's education. The more you listen to these things the more you're going to learn even if you only pick up one little nugget from it. It's important. And Mark and I are guilty of it as well. Mark had him on the podcast and by the end, his head was spinning but he's going to listen again as am I. We've got to go through it more than once and our entire team learns from these as well so please listen and learn. And to that listener that I'm talking about; that person who we sold four businesses to if you know it's you that I'm talking about shoot me a note. Alright, let's go onto the podcast with Eric. Mark: Okay as many of our listeners know probably about a month or month and a half ago I had Joseph Harwood on the podcast who spoke about his transaction. He was a UK based seller and we discussed some of the challenges in selling a UK based company. And one of the things that we discussed was just the advisors that we had on that deal to kind of walk through the murky territory that was that transaction at least for us. One of the lead advisors of that was Erich Pugh from Redpath Capital. Erich is here on the line with me. Erich thank you so much for joining me on the call here. Erich: Mark you're quite welcome. Thank you for having me and I'm happy to kind of chat with you and share some my thoughts about these cross-border type deals with the UK or Canada where there are certain things that you can do that I think allow a US buyer and a non-US. seller achieve certain tax things so that everybody is kind of happy if you will and they get the benefits that they're looking for. Mark: Yeah. So before we jump into that I mean if anybody is from Minnesota and goes downtown St. Paul you've probably seen Redpath Capital's; Redpath CPA's sign up on a building. But if you're probably about 99% of the audience here you're thinking Redpath who is that? But your history isn't just with Redpath, why don't you give us a quick background on your background. Erich: Sure. I basically spent most of my career with [inaudible 00:08:13.4]. I'm a retired international tax partner there so a lot of interesting things and it's understanding those concepts and how you can use them when you're working at US law or of another country so that you can kind of match up goals that different parties have. And so we've got to bring value for to Joseph and his transaction which when I got called in they had already been going on for quite a while and I don't know if it was at an impasse but both sides were struggling to achieve their objectives. Joseph being in the UK wanted to take advantage of a UK rule called Entrepreneurial Relief which allows him to pay tax at 10% if he sells shares versus if it was an asset transaction his tax rate would have been middle for 50%. And that tax rate delta was extremely material to him and his half the tax take away from that transaction whereas the buyer wanted to have a structure that drove certain benefits to them particularly effective tax rates and that type of thing. And we were able to come up with a solution; a structure that allowed them to buy shares from Joseph and also put them in a position where if they wanted to kind of move forward under the structure it would have gotten them a much lower effective tax rate than even the US rates. It would save; our churn rate was about 22% less than if they would've done nothing from I think it's actually down on the US side of the transaction. And that would have been kind of a permanent savings going forward as they were running that business and growing it. Mark: Yeah and I want to unpack this a little bit now. Let's start with the sell-side. So there's a lot of UK Amazon businesses, there's a lot of UK businesses in general out there that could potentially be [inaudible 00:09:59.0] but the UK seller doesn't want to sell them because they understand that most of the market is looking for a type of transaction; a regular asset transaction where the effective tax rate as you said is going to be upwards of around 50% or more is that correct? Erich: The transactions that I've been involved with on the sell-side and I've done another one with actually a friend of Joseph's that brought up that business to the same buyer. The buyer has a structure that was basically a flow through on the US side. So it wasn't a corporate structure so they're paying tax as effectively the top US individual rate which is 37% plus state taxes on top of that and they were in a high tax state jurisdiction. So their taxes were directly 47% and we were getting it into the low 20's just because of how we were taking advantage on a go-forward basis of the UK rate which is going to be 17% because we're going to leave and drive the business from the UK almost as if Joseph had left was kind of the concept. Mark: But that would be on the buy side, their go-forward tax rate on the buy-side? Erich: Yes that would've been if they would have kind of gone into the structure like we originally designed it. That is correct. Mark: Right. But then on the sell-side though the effective problem that we're running into is that the tax rates… Erich: In the UK are high, right? Mark: Yeah. Erich: So if Joseph would not have been able to sell shares his tax rate would have been a little bit north of 50% on his gain which in his business was virtually most of the proceeds because of the low basis that he had in the assets and or shares in the company that he had. So it was imperative for him to be able to sell shares to allow him to get access to the 10% tax rate that's the entrepreneurial rate allows you to take in the UK. Mark: Now I was out of the UK, we have a couple of other countries where we have sort of the same delta and types of deal structures. Canada, for example, has an entrepreneur's relief as well. Erich: Correct. They have a similar type rule where again if you sell the shares of the company you can take advantage of preferential tax treatment somewhat similar to the UK so on these transactions and for example in the UK the entrepreneur's relief applies to the first 10 million pounds of gain that you generate in this I call it small business type sale. And that 10 million is there and it's a lifetime cap of 10. So it could be two or three small transactions that get you to 10. So Canada has a similar rule that allows you to get a beneficial tax rate if you sell shares. So again there I was involved with a Canadian structure about 18 months ago; very similar, where the US buyer didn't want to buy shares wanted to buy assets and actually move the business to the US but ultimately bought the shares and then migrated the actual business if you will. A different profile, a different buyer, it was actually a private equity corporate buyer versus in the Joseph transaction it was more of that [inaudible 00:13:06.4] buyer if you will. You need to understand both sides of this; the seller, the jurisdiction, their profile, and also the buyer. Is it a corporate buyer, a partnership buyer, what that's going to be because it drives different tax attributes. Mark: Okay, and that's where some of the complexities come in here with these transactions where after Joseph's episode I had a few people reach out and they're kind of like well what did you guys do there. And I said well I'm not going to go into all the details of everything that we did but you can't have a one size fits all approach here right? You do have to cater it towards… Erich: It is customized; correct. I mean I had a base solution that when you and Scott reached out I say this is the idea. I don't know all the facts so let's have a call with Joseph and see if we can kind of get this to work. So we were able to design what I would call the initial structure and then we showed that with the buyer who said there's no way that we could do a stock deal and get this to work for anybody. I'm sure you can remember their attorney is kind of sulking at that point and they had a national accounting firm involved on their side. A tax attorney from a law firm and they came back a few days later and said we're interested in understanding more. This has merits. We evaluate and keep the tires on and as you know we basically went through a couple of iterations with the buyer or in particular the individual that was going to drive the business; Jared is his first name, very interested in understanding because of the low tax rates that would allow him to have more after-tax dollars to continue to drive into the business to grow it. That's one of his interests. Mark: And to get into that just a little bit more; I mean the structure that we ended up having set up if it was just a US-based corporation and this is all we were doing was US to US you would have had a corporation that would have been taxed at a 38% maximum income tax rate. Erich: 21% federal and then it depends upon the state that you're in. States go up to say 10% so call it a low 30 at the most probably in the corporate world. Correct. Mark: And that would be just for a regular company like a regular LLC would get that? Erich: No, a regular corporation. Mark: A regular corporation; C corp. Erich: C corp; correct. You'll get into the realm of an LLC if it has one owner it gets taxed and it's an individual gets taxed basically in his personal tax return at individual rates because it is effectively a disregarded entity. And then if the LLC has more than one around its tax is a partnership and then the partner is it a corporate partner or an individual partner and it goes either to an individual up to 37% federally plus states and then if it's a corporate partner and get back to the 21% and so on. In those transactions when it's domestic the profile again of the seller is important. Many times you hear that the buyer wants to buy assets so that if they pay the premium was this intangible; to get a little technical this section 197 intangible but can be advertised over for 15 years. So that's why they like to buy assets so they can get a step up as we call it. But if the seller is an S corporation and you thought; let's just say it's one guy who owns this S corporation and he's running down the business to that you can still sell shares legally but if the buyer has stepped up because there's a special election that can be made; the so-called Section 338(H)(10) election which yes legally it's a sure transaction but for tax purposes it's deemed an asset sale which then allows the buyer to get this intangible asset amortized over 15 years. And in these transactions where you do the election typically what you see is because it is an asset sale for tax purposes and the seller doesn't get capital gains treatment because it was legal to sell shares the election takes that away and teaches an asset sale. They typically get a premium on the purchase price because the buyer gets a step up for the premium. So kind of the rule of thumb that I've always heard over the years is typically it's anywhere from 14 or 15% to maybe 18 or 19% premium over the share purchase price because of the step up. Mark: Right. So, in this case, the buyer gets the ability to depreciate the assets over the 15 years that they would normally have in an asset sale which obviously is a huge advantage from a basis. Erich: We're covering a lot of ground but yes. Mark: We are. My head is spinning. And look if you're listening to this and your head is spinning as well you are not alone. I worked on this transaction and my head is still spinning. The structure that was proposed in this transaction had the structure that you had proposed and adopted. It would have represented a go forward savings for the buyer of some pretty significant amounts of money in terms of taxes that they would have. One of the obligations of that structure, if I'm not mistaken, would have been to continue to operate in the UK with UK entities. Is that also correct? Erich: That is correct; yes. We have designed the structure when we bought a structure to Joseph that we presented that would have resulted in the buyer forming a UK holding company to do the transaction so that we could then if we wanted to have debt cross-border which is between the US and the UK. They also decided they didn't want to do that part as we kind of filmed it up but that gives you one moving part. And that's important on when you've got cash in the UK coming back to the US the UK does not have a withholding tax on its domestic laws so the dividends can come out of the UK without a withholding tax. And under the new rules unless we were talking about forming a C corporation the buyer; then the UK holding company and under the Trump tax reform if you will from the end of ‘17 dividends come out of the UK without a withholding tax and come back and are not subject to tax because of the 100% dividends received deduction. There's some other complications that we don't need get into but tax reform brought in a new rule; the acronym is GILTI but the C Corporation helps with that and so forth. So ultimately as this was structured the operations basically remaining in the UK that is what allowed the tax savings because we were basically paying taxes 70% UK rates on the vast majority of the profits. And then ultimately we were going to distribute those out and bring them back two or three years later tax-free. Mark: Do you remember offhand; I mean I'm not sure how specific we want to get here but do you remember offhand what magnitude of savings we were talking about over the course of the three year period? Was it a few hundred thousand dollars in tax savings? Erich: It was more than that and it potentially was going to be' let me just think real quick, it was north of a million dollars. I want to recall it's a 1.3 million over three or four years because of the growth that they were anticipating through the injection of additional capital that the buyer was going to make as I recall. Mark: Yes. That's what I recall as well. I bring it up because I can imagine somebody listening to us is thinking I left a corporate job and what do I want to do? I want to run an Amazon business. I want to do something sort of simple now. And they're listening to this thinking wait I have to have operations based in the UK. What are the obligations there? We actually explored that question in the process of this deal of what were the obligations going to be and I don't want to be coming across offering legal advice on this but I believe it required maybe a once per year visit to the UK and having some people in the UK for those operations if I recall correctly. Erich: Correct. I mean again we're not giving anybody advice. We're kind of talking about something we did back in June or July. Basically, the idea was that we were going to continue to run the business in the UK. It would be that two or three people that were running the business would continue to do it. Joseph as you mentioned he was going to remain as an adviser to the business for a period of time etcetera. And the buyer their role in all of this I think what we were told that was one of the government's aspects of this because within forming a UK holding company Joseph ultimately say two years later was going to go away we were taught we did board meetings. And we kind of got into this concept of the UK has its mind and management issue of where are you running the business from. And with the employees in the UK and with Jarrett going to the UK a couple of times a year after year-end; after the books were closed and approving the accounts and all of those things. That was some of what I would call the operational substance that remained in the UK that allowed it to work. Mark: Yeah. And so we're I mean to lead or my mind goes from just advising buyers in various aspects over the years is potential opportunity here on behalf of buyers. If they're able to set up a structure; I imagine that this is a structure that could probably be used and once it's set up you use it for multiple acquisitions within the UK. See some of these tax savings as well on a go-forward basis and be able to open up a deal flow that might not exist otherwise here in the US. Once the structure is set up and I'm trying to think about how to ask this question the right way but how reusable is it in your opinion or does each deal really require its own development of new companies to be able to manage this? In other words, there's a C corp here in the US for the structure, do we need to set up a new C corp with every acquisition that we do or can we use just one general holding pass through C corp? Erich: I see what you're saying. No, the structure; let's just say that they would have been forwarding exactly as we initially designed it and it was all going to work like we had kind of painted that picture and they said yeah we're interested and we need to dig into this. We would only need; if the buyer was going to do self-additional deals and kind of do a roll of three or four or five Amazon businesses from the UK. They just need one sequel. We would have stayed with the one holding company. And then what we would have done is then bought the additional UK targets under that holding company. So I wouldn't call it an acquisition platform for a buyer. You just keep bolting on the next one you if you will. So you're not creating additional sequels and or UK holding company. Mark: Right. So you gave us an acquisition platform is a perfect way to describe it. I saw this as an opportunity. I know Joseph and I talked about a little bit. I also just had Scott who was another advisor on this deal on and we talked about it just a little bit as well. Okay, this is all very… Erich: It's interesting because another one of your UK Amazon sellers that you and Scott know reached out to me last week and I'll call it for personal reasons and potentially for exit. He's actually moved to Cyprus and he has a couple of Amazon businesses and a couple of UK companies and also a US Amazon business and a US C corp. And we're looking at how to design a structure for him to continue to build that out because he wants to kind of; I don't know exactly where it's at but let's just say he's at 10 million in revenue and he wants to double that before he wants to take all of it or some of it to market so that he can grow it and package it in a way where it's easy to actually sell to allow him to again take advantage of tax rules in Cyprus or Dubai or some other things that we're talking about. Again it's him because he's got some one way and he's single and flexible as to where he wants to live he's putting himself in a position where he can significantly reduce or eliminate any sell-side taxes down the road so that he can punch his lottery ticket as he put it to me. Mark: Yeah. And I want to emphasize something here because I think people hear some of this stuff and they think oh my gosh this is complex. Is it legal ball and is it going to be triggering an audit and everything else? That's why I wanted to start with your background. Your background isn't just some guy who's on the internet researching things, right? Erich: No, no, no, in fact, it's interesting. We did have one call and we have another call on Friday. He has been getting some advice from Cypriots tax advisor and a lot of the concepts that he was putting out there I didn't disagree with but there were some things that they were talking about that I told this individual that I have some concerns. We need substance. We can't play shell game. Some of the things that were being said could be interpreted as tax avoidance. And I said those are the type of things that I would never advise you to do because if you want to sell this and the buyer comes in they're going to do tax due diligence on your structure and they're going to say well okay you've done all of that but if you want us to buy the shares and you don't pay any tax well there's a tax accrual of there's going to be a big number going to Escrow until we get this sorted out. So I agree with you completely Mark, understanding the risk profile and what you're doing is important because I told him if you go to that path I'm not going to be that advisor that can help you. So he got the risk conversation and we just signed an engagement letter and he wants to move forward to do it properly. This whole risk thing I mean look at some of these transactions that you see the buyers are using large law firms or accounting firms and are beating up on the debt tax due diligence side and putting money on Escrow because they're concerned about for example sales tax. Mark: Sure sales tax liability which came up and you and I could talk about it at length which we won't because we'll get into something else. But these are some of the practices that happen at a more sophisticated deal-making level than what we might normally see with just a simple transaction. This is not uncommon to go through some various tax scenario analyses and figure out a structure that works for the seller and works for the buyer and minimizes taxes on a go-forward basis and the savings can be significant for everyone. Erich: Exactly that's why on Joseph's transaction the buyer was originally a naysayer before I got involved as you know. And then once we put on the table and they start to understand what was going on their advisors to the table so that they could pick it apart and they said this has merit let's work through this. So that's typically how it's going to evolve. It's not going to be Erich says this is how it's going to work. I mean everyone's going to have someone else look at it and get comfortable or not. You have to protect your clients. And that's my example with the guy that just moved to Cyprus. I'm not going to put him in a position where he thinks he's saving all this money but no one's going to want to buy the shares of this company because of the bad tax structure he's put himself into with all of the risk. Mark: Right. And ultimately in the Joseph deal, they didn't accept the very first proposal that we put together it was a variant of that. Yeah, these things are collaborative in that way. Okay, we've been talking for about 25 minutes. I'm going to wrap it up here because if we go into another topic we'll go all the way up to that my brain hurts. If we have somebody who's interested in talking about this more Erich where can they reach you; what's the Most Unexceptional way to reach you? Erich: Well they could reach me here at Redpath. My office is in St. Paul. I don't know when you publish this or post this; if you can provide my email address which is epugh@redpathcpas.com. Mark: And if anybody wants an introduction just let me know. I'm happy to provide the introduction. Erich, you are a great resource I think for anyone in this space especially if you are doing anything international or even thinking about it on an international basis. A really, really good resource to have; I appreciate it. And your firm as well is a good resource just in general. It's not just an international tax law firm; you guys do the whole gamut. Erich: Correct. Yeah, we were actually over this over the last three or four months through; you and Scott connected with a number of companies. In fact, we've just brought on board a larger Amazon business and are doing the bookkeeping and providing other services including restructuring their business for sale as a domestic business in the US. Mark: That's great. Thanks for coming on. And again if somebody wants an introduction to Erich let me know I'm more than happy to provide it as a way of saying thanks for coming on and also helping out with that deal. It was an eye-opening exercise for me for sure. Erich: Thanks a lot Mark. Take care and have a good rest of the day.     Links and Resources: Erich's Redpath Profile Contact Erich

Are we seeing a plateauing of Amazon? Those who think that any type of e-commerce conducted outside of Amazon is a dead-end are dead wrong. Today we welcome back Andrew Youderain to discuss his third annual State of the Merchant Report for 2019. If you've never read or heard us talk about the report, it's a comprehensive report of all things e-commerce that comes from Andy's exclusive database of real entrepreneurs, all running physical product e-commerce businesses. With more than 400 qualifying merchants completing the questionnaire, the report covers an array of important topics including growth and conversion rates, profitability stats, advertising ROI, and even one surprise question about ways our members would fulfill their biggest indulgences. We'll go over all the questions, responses, and the surprising trends in e-commerce for 2019. Episode Highlights: What is providing the best return on investment in terms of advertising? The facebook marketing factor, why it's so different, and how can be tricky. A shout out to email marketing as a very valuable and viable advertising tool. The reality of advertising fatigue and the big three – Google, Amazon, and Facebook. The typical store owner makeup and whether dropshipping is coming to an end. Surprising gains in manufacturing of original merchandise. The impact of the new tariffs on the surveyed businesses. Does everything seem to be growing? We discuss general growth rates in the e-commerce industry. The surprising thing we learned from the survey this year regarding Amazon. The place for premium and niche products. Andrew's top three takeaways from the survey. A rise in Chinese sellers on Amazon and what that means for e-commerce merchants and counterfeiting. Andrew's view on the FBA nexus and the state to state tax impact for his community of clients. The fun and surprising final question in the survey. Transcription: Joe: Mark back in Savannah I think it was 2016 was the 2nd time I ever went to eCommerceFuel. In a great location because I could drive there and it was a beautiful, beautiful location. And I was so proud because I brought copies of my e-book some would call it a book called 10 Steps to Selling your Amazon Business and this is back in '16. We're talking years ago. And so I thought I was at the forefront of things. And then Andrew does his presentation at the beginning of eCommerceFuel events which was really the state of commerce back then and what we've had him on the podcast about what this podcast today is about. The 1st thing he talks about is how few of the eCommerceFuel attendees are using Amazon; like less than 10%. And it was a very small part of their business and that Shopify and other channels were much, much bigger. And I was slightly mortified. But then the next year, the biggest growth I think in 2018 that we saw—actually it was at '17 because we stated e-commerce from Andrew in 2018 and the biggest growth factor was Amazon. And now that you've had him on again I think that that's changed a little bit, right? Mark: That's right. In this year's State of the Merchant Report from eCommerceFuel, they've found that this is the 1st year that non Amazon e-commerce stores outpaced Amazon as far as new sales channels which is pretty amazing when you think about the impact. The quote directly is this was the 1st year non Amazon sellers grew faster than those on the platform. So there's more growth happening off of Amazon among their members than on the Amazon platform. That's pretty remarkable to hear that because it feels like feels like everybody's on Amazon. And we've often preached this idea of having diverse revenue streams and making sure that you're being multichannel with your revenue streams and platforms but you and I know a lot of Amazon sellers that have gone all in on Amazon so that they could just focus on the growth there to get as much sales blossomed there as they can because it's easier to do than trying to manage multiple channels. Those who think that outside of Amazon e-commerce is dead; it's not at all, not even close. There is a couple of other interesting things that came out of this report and I'm going to let Andrew really get into some of the things that he found impressive. But one of the things that that stood out to me was the effectiveness of Facebook as a marketing channel. It seems like everyone we talked to always says Facebook is such a great marketing channel and if we could just figure it out and what my experience has been is that everybody's trying to figure it out. Which means it's really difficult to actually do. I think those that have “figured it out” are doing well. But among the people that responded to this really lengthy survey that Andrew puts them through Facebook ads came in as the 5th most effective sales channel or advertising channel that people were reporting. And the ROIS, the media in ROIS was a full point lower than the next highest. And again we'll let Andrew talk about some of these things because I'm sure he has more insights than I do into the report itself. From just a general like where are you in the market as an e-commerce business or when you're looking to buy and identifying the right trends and the types of businesses that are going to be around for the next several years a report like this is just invaluable, right? You get to see where a business is going, where the industry is going, and maybe where the next opportunities lie. Joe: Yeah and it comes directly from the eCommerceFuel membership database. As far as I understand it Andrew sends a survey out and collects all of this data and all of this information so it's from real entrepreneurs down in the trenches running their businesses; physical product e-commerce businesses. So if anybody is out there that is looking to grow their business outside of Amazon this report can help. If anybody's buying a business and wants to take it beyond Amazon this report can help. If you're on Shopify and you want to learn the other channels, what number 2, 3, and 4 are before that 5th one that's most effective being Facebook this report can help. And it comes from Andrew. There are very few people in the industry that are as good character as Andrew and the folks at eCommerceFuel. Mark: Oh I was just about to say that now. A shout out for the good guys Andrew is certainly one of those. So let's get into this discussion between Andrew and I on this report and find out what some of the insights he [inaudible 00:05:59.2]. Joe: Let's go to it. Mark: Andrew, thank you so much for coming back on to the podcast. You were on last year and we talked about the awesome report that you guys do over at eCommerceFuel; the State of the Merchant Report. And this is where you survey a lot of the members of your community which we've talked about here on the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe and I talked about it quite a bit. One of our favorite conferences, one of our favorite communities out there for high revenue e-commerce store owners; it's a fantastic community that you built there. And you do this report every year. It's a really good pulse of what's going on in the world of e-commerce. So thank you again for joining us. Andrew: Yeah thanks for having me. I appreciate it. And good work with the podcast. I'm enjoying the Quiet Light Podcast. I kind of love your episodes and yes you're putting up good stuff; you and Joe. But your episodes seem to have just a tiny edge on Joe's. I don't know maybe it's just in my mind but regardless you guys are doing awesome, awesome stuff. Mark: Yeah I'm just going to record that. I'm going to put it on a loop and I'm just going to send it to Joe a few times so he can hear that over and over again. You need to submit at some point we've been adding these movie quotes to our intros at random so you need to listen to those and tell us what you think it is and we'll give you a shout out. I don't know what they are myself so I'm excited about this. I'm excited to talk about this year's report because you always come out with just some really fascinating bits of data. And I'm going to start with one that I've run across a decent amount because I think it really speaks to a lot of buyers are thinking about when they're evaluating an online purchase and also sellers who are looking to scale their business and this is what is providing the best return on investment at this point in terms of advertising? Facebook is often quoted you know if we could just unlock Facebook and this is something that I want to get into a little bit here but your report showed some surprising numbers with where the most value is and where some of the lowest hanging fruit is for advertising. Andrew: Yeah so there are a couple of things that are new this year. I wanted to take a look at what merchants are using the most in terms of promoting their business; so what's most popular and then also what's the most effective because often those are not the same thing. And so you look at the most popular marketing channels and we just ask people what are you using and in the number of popularity 1st was email marketing, 2nd Facebook ads, 3rd was Google AdWords, 4th was SEO, and 5th was Instagram. And so then we—of course, it was a popularity—to get a sense of what was most effective we looked at okay, of the people that are using every single one of these things we asked about which, how many, what percentage of them ranked that specific one as the most effective? And the one that came to the surface wasn't even the top 5 that we talked about. The number one most effective marketing channel reported by merchants was Amazon Ads. Over half of people running Amazon Ads said it was the best highest ROI marketing channel to use, number two is e-mail marketing, three was SEO, 4th was Google AdWords, and like a distant 5th not even like a close 5th, but a distant 5th was Facebook Ads. And another thing that we explored was the average return on Ad Spend for Facebook Ads versus Amazon and Google and they had the lowest return on Ad Spend at 3.4 compared to Amazon at 4.6 and Google at over 5. And they're increasing of the costs on the Facebook platform were growing up the fastest as well; almost 20% versus 16 for Amazon and 10 for Google. So that was kind of the Facebook—I think a lot of people, so many people are doing it and it's easy to have like almost some fear of missing out if you're not doing it or if you're doing it like you're not getting the secret when everyone else is. But I think it's a harder nut to crack than people like to admit. And those were some of the numbers based on the advertising. Mark: Yeah there's a lot that I want to get into on this here and let's see if I can remember all of it but I want to 1st talk about the Facebook ads because you put it in that way; it's a tough nut to crack. And I wonder if that's really maybe some of the secrets that's going on behind these numbers with the EBIDTA ROIS and also the effective marketing channel. We've had Ezra Firestone on the podcast here before. He's a friend of Quiet Light Brokerage. He obviously is a big advocate of Facebook advertising. I've seen some other people who have been doing Facebook Ads with a lot of effectiveness but and this is the big caviar, it takes a while to figure that part out. And a lot of these guys have gotten there where they're seeing these ROIS of five plus, they've taken months—literally months and lots of dollars down the drain to really get to that point. I'm wondering and maybe you looked into this a little bit with the survey; did you look into people that have tried Facebook marketing and maybe gave up after two or three months because they couldn't get it to work or did you not look that deep or ask that deep of a question? Andrew: Yeah I didn't go quite that deep. And it's always tough designing the survey because it's already like 50 plus questions and I'm trying to balance—making sure we get people who get all the way through it with you know what are the critical things we get. So sadly I didn't get that kind of data. A lot of the kind of the fox and the stories behind people getting into Facebook and having a hard time with it are more anecdotal that I hear from people. And so sadly yeah I wish I had some good numbers and data behind it but it's more anecdotal than anything else. Mark: I mean look there's a couple of things on here on your top; 5 Amazon Ads, e-mail marketing, SEO, and Google AdWords. So let's go through here with Amazon Ads, SEO, Google AdWords; those are all high intent advertising channels, right? So if somebody goes online and says buy shoes or buy cheap shoes or best running shoes; that's a really high intent search, Facebook Ads not so much of a high intense search, e-mail marketing side if they're on your list that already a warm contact. So it shouldn't be too surprising that we're seeing that but the other side of this too that I would say is like if you're looking to create a market and let's say you have kind of an odd channel, maybe you take a spin on a new type of ice cream scooper that doesn't get stuck ever. So the ice cream never gets stuck in that ice cream scooper and you've invented this and you're going to sell it; well nobody knows that it exists. So it might take a while to build that market and so Facebook Ads might be a good source for that because you can have that proof of concept and really kind of educate the marketplace. But it's also going to take a little bit more work to get people to really peak their attention. Andrew: Yeah Facebook is just a totally different mindset for advertising. It's really great if you're good at targeting if you're good at—the way you build a funnel is just totally different. It's more so about you get to be able to catch people when they're doing something else, get their attention, pull them off the platform or engage them for a while and then pull them off versus being able to drive a sale short term. I think it's a longer term game and just a different mentality you need to have if you're going to do it well. And targeting too with Facebook I think is getting trickier [inaudible 00:12:57.7] that some of the targeting the traffic that Facebook had been sending hasn't been converting as well for some members and some people I know. So that's a big part of Facebook performing well as them sending you people that are based on their intelligence they know are going to work well. So yes it's interesting. Mark: Yeah talking to crack I think is the best way to describe it. So I do think it's a viable source but you've got to have the right type of product and you really have to know what you're doing with it and be patient. I mean that's just a lot with these; Amazon I'm not surprised at all, still a very young marketplace so I think we're still seeing kind of those numbers equalize out. Talk about a high intent marketplace and high intent searches so I think that makes complete sense they're number one on the list. And let's give a shout out to email marketing probably the old man in the room there, right? Andrew: Yeah although it's funny I think about if you look at email and even email it's still of course you know the number two most effective marketing channel and it's still highly—super valuable but I feel like even probably it's getting harder. I think advertising, in general, is getting so much more difficult because we've had so much of it—a part of it is fatigue; just advertising fatigue. And you've got three main giants who control so much of it and they're kind of squeezing all of the juice out of it they can with rising ad prices but even my email inbox I don't know about you Mark but I'm way more ruthless now with my email. I've got a ton of filters set up. I have used like unroll.me to unsubscribe from a lot of stuff because you have to. Because I'm looking to change my email address in the next couple of months to just have a team address to really focus on because it's—the levels most of the messages coming at us are increasingly just –they just keep going up and up and up. And so I don't know, it would be interesting to see if anything comes up in the next two, three, four years where—that it makes it able to get through all of that noise. Because it's getting—just any advertising, in general, is just getting a lot harder because there's just so much out there. Mark: You know I really think it comes down to the personalization. Email marketing, you're right I mean email it's a complete mess and now I use Gmail, we use Gmail, Google Apps throughout Quiet Light Brokerage and they tab everything down in that promotions or updates or forums tab. And I'll tell you what I don't look at promotions ever. Basically, its spam light is what it is and so you just throw all that stuff away. I go through it every few days and select all and hit the archive. Coming through that though like having personalized messages, very, very hyper focused hyper personalized messages I think that's really the only way that people are going to be able to survive with that email marketing. That's tough, that's not easy to do. Andrew: You know I agree and I think—you know I did a podcast with somebody earlier this year and they have an antiques business and every week they send out an email on Saturday and at the click through rates are like 25%. I talked to him about how he was doing this, I mean trying to get some secret out of it and there wasn't any secret. It was that he spent hours and hours and hours on an email that was totally unique and it was amazing deep interest level to the customers and people open it. And like I look at the email that we have that goes out to our private communities [inaudible 00:16:34.2] it's not nearly as good as his is but just that so much smaller group only about a thousand people but we're able to get it. It takes a lot of time to put together but it gets generally open rates of close to 50%. Mark: Let's move on here to another thing. I want to talk about the anatomy of a store owner. You put together a really nice simple graphic on the link to the report and I will link to this report here in the show notes and we'll also throw it into an email as well. So people listening to this take a look at the email coming through from Quiet Light Brokerage but I want to talk about the makeup of the store owner. Drop shipping seems to be kind of on the losing end of things these days. Andrew: Yeah I feel like it's had some pretty strong headwinds for the last couple of years. And this year the number—every year we ask and we look at what percentage of store owners is a certain type of business model; drop shipping, manufacturing, private label, hybrid, or reselling products. And this year the number of drop shippers that reported got cut in half. So only 8% of people this year down from 16% last year were drop shippers which is a pretty huge—just a massive cut. And if you look at the number of manufacturers that we're reporting that reports for the survey that was up by almost a 3rd by 32%. So it seems like a lot of those—this has been a couple of narratives that have been talked about for a couple of years now but it's really playing out in the numbers. Mark: Yeah I think so as well. What's funny though is we had somebody on recently to talk about drop shipping and they were killing it. They were doing a great job with drop shipping. So I feel like it's one of these areas where for a while there were Ad Sense sites, a pretty number of Ad Sense sites all over the place, a bunch of those got wiped out and the general thought was this is kind of a dead business model. Well, I've seen some of them come by and those people that actually survived through that and how they got some strong, strong businesses. I feel that way with drop shipping a little bit. Like if you can survive these head winds you've got something good. Andrew: It's funny you say that Mark because when I looked at the revenue growth by business model and the income growth by a business model guess who was leading the pack on both of those metrics? It was drop shippers. And I think what happened is exactly like you said there's a little bit of a Darwinism at play here where a lot of the herd got thinned out and the people that were left were able to make it work well. And I think you're actually right it definitely can work in some models. I think it's much harder to get the things to all align and get a model where it works well for reasons that—I guess I don't want to get into on the show right now but if you can get it right I mean it's a great business model because no inventory, no upfront cash, no cash flow issues, location independent. If you get it to work right it's a pretty good gig. Mark: It really is but it seems to be so dependent on the product and also your relationships as well because obviously, the problem with drop shipping is competition. It's so easy just to spin up something and compete directly with you and you get the sort of you bicker with a sort of marketplace of every product that is exactly the same, same images and everything else. It's tough to work in that area. On the flip side—so like I like to think about this on a spectrum. On one side we have drop shipping where you can see the products sometimes you get into reselling which might be a little bit of a step away from that drop shipping where you're still doing with some physical product but it's not yours. And then you go all the way over to the other side of the spectrum and you get these unique manufactured products, some of them private labeled but the most extreme would be hey I invented something or I've created a product and you're seeing some pretty big gains in that area. Andrew: Yeah I mean the number of manufacturers like I mentioned was up a 3rd this year. If you look at also not just the number of people that are doing it but the benefits that they're seeing and the pay off, so we tracked gross margin, net margin for those—for all these different types of sellers and manufacturers and by far the largest gross margin at 53%, the highest net margin at 21% and those were up year over year too for each category. I think the gross margin for manufacturers was up from 45% percent up to 53 and the net was up as well. So yeah I think manufacturers are—it's a harder business, there's less of a roadmap, it's more capital intensive, it's more stressful but if you're able to crack it more and more people are going that way. It's really the only way I feel like you can play on Amazon these days because if you're going to try to go resell someone else's product on Amazon you're going to get destroyed. And it's where a lot of people seem to be going and getting paid for. Mark: Yeah I think all those things that you talked about; the stress, no roadmap, everything else there's a flip side of that. It's defensible, right? Because there's no roadmap you're not going to have everybody saying oh I know exactly how to do this. It is difficult to do and figuring out how to get that manufacturing [inaudible 00:21:21.3] done is tough. Did you ask people and if you only have just kind of from what you've heard in the community obviously China I would guess would be the number one sourcing location for most people manufacturing, what other countries are you hearing from some of the members on the community that—where people are sourcing products? Especially when we're recording this—I don't know when we're going to air this episode but when we're recording this we're staring down potentially more tariffs going on with China. Obviously, this is going to impact everybody selling from China so finding other sources would be great. Have you heard of any other countries that seem to be emergent? Andrew: That's a great question and the honest answer is no. I mean there are people in Asia—I hear occasionally about people sourcing in Taiwan which depending on who you ask is China or isn't. Vietnam is another one that comes up but apart—and you know some people I know occasionally hear their source from India or make their things in Canada or someone I met with recently is building some footwear in Mexico. So there definitely are some other places people get certain things but in terms of a potential runner up to China that could even remotely start to be an alternative to where people are manufacturing 90% of things I don't think of someone who's pulling away or even you know accelerating at all. It's kind of just a whole bunch of a lot of different options all over. So not really an emerging source for manufacturing that I'm seeing. Mark: That's a little disappointing but not surprising. I mean wouldn't it be great to have something on this side of the ocean where we could maybe just pull up from Central America instead of having to—I talked to some of these store owners and they're talking about three months plus lead times where you're committing capital and then that goes on the ocean and it takes—I can't imagine how difficult that would be. Andrew: Oh yeah it would be really hard and you know it's one thing we did ask this year was did tariffs impact your business and granted I know we're talking you and I are both in the States, I know a lot of people listening aren't in the States but probably the vast majority of 85% or so of respondents for the survey are US based or 75% rather but we asked did tariffs impact your business this year? And over a 3rd of people, the 36% said the tariffs meaningfully hurt their business this year. And like you just alluded to they are only getting more from slapped on. So it's a big deal and it'd be nice to have a silver lining; maybe be that sourcing out of some of the countries closer to us maybe, maybe get a boost. Mark: Yeah that'd be interesting. Hey if anybody has an idea on where we can craft and not let me know. That'd be great to get that part out. Let's go to like some of the Sunday news here and that is everything seems to be growing. You know I started Quiet Light Brokerage right before we hit that great recession so a lot of my entrepreneurial journey has been slogging through a difficult economy. It seems like from what we're seeing we're in a bull market right now. Andrew: It seems really strong. So we—looking at growth rates over time, and again these are the average merchant—the average e-commerce store owner reporting for the survey was right around 3 million. So that's relatively small when you look at the macro economy, if you look at e-commerce trends, in general, they're probably could be growing closer to 20% plus or minus but for this segment of store owners if you look at the growth trend over 3 years, 2017 it was about 25%, last year it jumped way up to almost 37%, and this year it's down a touch to 36% but still meaningfully about the same. So revenue growth is good, income growth has also remained real strong and if you look at the conversion rates too and it's just continued to go up the last two years. I mean the conversion rate we're looking at this year was over 3% up from 2.60% last year. And in terms of like our earlier margins are up so all in all for store owners things are good, growth is good, margins are good, the conversion is great and it's kind of a boom time is the right word. But it's definitely—things are robust and healthy out there for stores in this segment. Mark: Yeah that's fantastic. One of the surprising things that I've seen from the report and we talked about this last year and I know Joe tells me and we mentioned this in the introduction to this episode here that the very 1st eCommerceFuel Live that he attended he brought a book on 10 Steps to Selling Amazon Business. You asked at one point to raise your hand if you're selling on Amazon and it was only a small portion of the room that did so. And he was thinking oh man I completely missed the mark bringing this book. Well, we've seen this number increase over the years although this year from—unless I've got [inaudible 00:26:19.5] I'm not reading this backwards, it looks like you have a decline in people that are selling on Amazon and an increase in people that are not selling on Amazon. Is that really what you're seeing? Andrew: Yeah I wouldn't say a decline but I would say a plateauing of something in the report that I wrote I call it like a plateauing Amazon—I hesitate to use the word peak Amazon because every time that I think that they've peaked anything they blow up and accelerate to the moon. But looking at like three examples here, or three data points; if you look at the number of merchants who just sell on Amazon or they don't. A couple of years ago 49% last year, it was 55% so a fairly meaningful jump. This year that number barely budged; it went from 55.2% to 55.8%. So up a little bit but wildly decelerating. Along the same lines if you look at group sales from Amazon last year, two years ago they were up really sharply and this year they barely budged; 27.6 to 28.2% of the total sales that all of the merchants generate coming from Amazon. And this is maybe the most surprising number. If you look at just the revenue growth of stores that sell on Amazon versus don't last year stores that sold on Amazon grew faster than stores that didn't. And this year stores that don't sell on Amazon actually grew faster than stores that do by a small margin which is just really, really surprising. So I think that there's so much here. We could do a whole episode on I don't think Amazon is going anywhere, I think they're going to be shaping the e-commerce landscape for the next 5 to 10 years. But I do think a lot of merchants are starting to really struggle with counterfeit issues, with increasing fees, with loss of control, with feeling like they're totally beholden to Amazon, and a lot of host of other issues. And they're not getting off the platform but the number of merchants that are saying hey yeah let's go hitch our wagon, go to Amazon and sell there—and some people are just deciding to leave the platform altogether. So one of my predictions and here I'm almost certain that it could be wrong because I'm going out on a limb is that next year is the 1st year we see the percentage of stores selling on Amazon actually decrease year over year. So we'll see when that happens. Mark: Yeah that's interesting. I wonder if shopper's behavior is changing at all and just again you just can't draw any conclusions from this here but I know for myself I've become more of a diversified shopper than I have in the past. I still use Amazon probably like 4 or 5 times a week, I'm still a really heavy Amazon shopper but I'll actually look around a little bit off of Amazon as well. And if I get the chance to order directly from a store I do so. Now that's probably just because I worked with so many entrepreneurs that have these stores and I know the benefits for them. But there's something nice about that specialization, right? If you think about the big box stores and how they couldn't specialize in any sort of gear but if you want something high end and specialized, it makes sense that there is somebody that actually does specialize in that. It's pure speculation on my part of course. Andrew: No. I think you're absolutely right. I think we're going to see in the next 5 years a real hollowing out of e-commerce where you have Amazon; if there's something you'd know you want to buy it's more of a commodity or a fairly inexpensive product that I think Amazon is going to be the place you go to get it quickly and cheaply and efficiently. But I think for anything else, for merchants I think the place to really thrive and survive over the next 5 years is to have a premium product or a very niched product; ideally, one that you manufacture. Like just for example yesterday I called up and I was in the market for a nice bike rack for my vehicle. And I went into a lot of research and the company I ended up buying it from I ended up talking to him on the phone for 35, 40 minutes. They custom manufacture in the United States, they ship that to me and it's that kind of thing. They have an incredible product and they don't sell on Amazon surprisingly because they don't need to. Because everyone that wants the site or this product they go right to them and they don't want to give up the marginalized control and guessing. And I think those are the kind of merchants that are going to do really well in the next 5 plus years. And I think that's kind of the best place to be going forward if you're not going to be on Amazon. Mark: Yeah. I would agree 100%. I think just from a long term sort of defensibility mindset and that's what I've seen and I actually see it on Amazon as well, the companies that are doing really, really well long term Amazon really care about their products. And they're spending a lot of time on that product development cycle and doing their research and trying to make sure that they have something that's a high quality product. But then they're also looking outside of that as well and becoming specialists in that space which makes a big difference. With everything that you surveyed here was there any one or two things that really stood out to you as being surprising this year or would inform you if you were an owner of an e-commerce business yourself that you would definitely want to take action on? Andrew: I think the big things were the massive shift and we kind of touched on this but the massive shift of people going away from drop shipping and into manufacturing. And the benefits financially that those manufacturers we're seeing. That would be a big one. The other one was the Facebook ones we talked about where Facebook Ads really are definitely at the back of the pack especially relative to their popularity in terms of effectiveness. So those would be probably two of the big things and then in terms of Amazon just I think it still makes—it can make sense if you have a great product that's proprietary. It doesn't—if you do it carefully I don't think you shouldn't go on Amazon but just the fact that so many people are kind of hitting the brakes on that or at least new entrance in saying aren't rushing in as head long as they were before I think is pretty telling. So nothing new there Mark that we haven't talked about but three things if I was in the middle of kind of defining strategy or starting it from scratch I think would be things I would think really carefully about. Mark: You said earlier in the episode here with advertising how much more difficult it's become. And I generally think that what we're seeing with the Internet and Internet based businesses and we've been seeing this pretty much since the time I started as an entrepreneur 20 years ago now is this maturation of the businesses where I think they're all getting more difficult to do. And you look at this and you think oh man that's such a bummer. I know I talked to some friends who are entrepreneurs back in the early 2000s and we kind of reminisce about the quarry days of Amazon was a thing of the website waiting for the movie dance to happen and now all of a sudden they're making gobs of money. But what do we learn from all that? We learned that dries up and disappears pretty quickly. The people that are surviving are the ones that are embracing some of these challenges and looking at them saying I'm going to build something really sustainable, a real product and they're doing great. They're doing really good. And that bears out in some of your numbers. Andrew: Yeah and one thing—it absolutely, absolutely does and I think one thing for you to touch on in terms of Amazon and in terms of sourcing in more of a macro level, if you look at one of the things we asked it was what are your most common struggles, what macro changes are you seeing, and what are your future plans? And one of the macro changes that came up the 1st time this year on the top top list was the number of Chinese sellers that were coming into Amazon. And I think I saw a stat today that 40% of the top Amazon sellers in 2019 are Chinese sellers versus 26% two years ago. And so A. on one level you have just a lot more competition directly from factories who are the low cost provider. Which isn't a bad thing for consumers in and of itself but it's harder for merchants. And if those sellers don't have the same kind of quality standards; some of them do, some of them don't, and you also run into problems. But you also have a lot of—one thing I've noticed is a lot of counterfeit issues. This has been in the news. We've had a number of members in our community who have had problems with this when they had a product it got knocked off and then these people—you know a lot of overseas sellers started selling this product directly in competition with the original manufacturer which was really problematic because the quality wasn't as good. And so consumers got it and it really hurt the brand because they assumed it came from the original source when it didn't. And so you see I think this also ties back into Amazon and why people are getting a little bit more careful about that platform is because there are some meaningful counterfeit issues out there that again going back to the difficulties of manufacturing that merchants are having to face that weren't really as much of an issue two, three years ago. Mark: That would be interesting to see what happens with that platform. And also I'm going to touch on one last bit of the report here that you spent some time on and that is the impact of politicians and judges and we've covered two areas; we were already talked about tariffs briefly and how many were impacted by that. I think the other big elephant in the room and it's been there for several years and we've talked about it a ton here at Quiet Light Brokerage and that is the FBA Nexus. Do you have Nexus, are you filing those sales taxes in different states, and you still have a very small percentage [inaudible 00:35:49.6] to the speaking of your community that was paying those sales taxes. I think 21% is what I'm seeing is that right? Andrew: Yup that's correct. So the percentage of sellers who have Amazon inventory that is filing for sales tax, [inaudible 00:36:04.0] sales tax in any state that they have “FBA Nexus” whether or not you agree that [inaudible 00:36:10.1] Nexus. Yeah only about a quarter of merchants are submitting sales tax to those states. Mark: And do you have any idea why such a small percentage? I mean obviously nobody wants to pay taxes and that it's a pain to most people. I've run into sellers who make the argument that it's really not—oh there's no legal basis for it. Andrew: I think it's a couple of things. I think one it's it is potentially disputable whether or not and again this is something I need to personally do a deep dive on but from the very—this is where things get dangerous when I talk but from the very little I know I don't know if it's—I don't believe it's that very crystal clear, there's a whole lot of present presidents that said yes this does definitively give you Nexus. And it could be a state by state issue as well. So I think that's part of it. I think the 2nd part of it is thinking about—so because it's a gray area you can have more people who start thinking on a risk basis. What are my risks I submit? What are my risks if I don't? Also relative to the workload because it's not just about the tax; I mean if it was mostly about the tax and the administering this and the managing of it was really easy and you didn't have any you know long term liability or exposure to being audited I think most merchants would say hey it's a little inconvenience but let's go ahead and let's set this up. You can snap your fingers I'll collect the sales tax; it's not a big deal. If it is a federal level it's much easier to do. I think you'd see that number jumped to 25 to 50% plus but that's not the case. Like you've got—it's hard to administer. You potentially open yourself up to dozens, hundreds, maybe even theoretically thousands of different municipalities who can audit you. You run the risk of getting on a sales tax agency's radar to come after you and maybe it wasn't before. So I think those are some of the reasons why people are not exactly thrilled at the thought of jumping in and waving their hand at taxation seasons saying hey here I am I'm not sure if I'm actually legally obligated to do this but come check me out. Mark: I completely get it. I get the risk versus reward analysis and frankly if I were a seller I would probably be among that 75% that's not collecting. Not that that's what I would advise here in my role because I know that if you do want to sell you got to be doing that right. And most buyers are looking at that and saying we want you to be paying those taxes. We don't want that to come back after us [inaudible 00:38:31.9] later on. But I mean from my opinion I think it's pretty legally shaky ground to say that people do have that Nexus. But the best practice from a selling standpoint would be to be filing so we do—I mean that's our default position here at Quiet Light is that you should be filing for sure without a doubt. But I would love to see this resolved within the next few years because it as if Amazon sellers don't have enough things hanging over their head. There's this potential like you said of being audited by the state of California or all of a sudden getting a bill for seven, eight, nine years of tax—what a mess. They need to get it together and figure this part out. Andrew: There's a little bit of encouraging news [inaudible 00:39:16.5] different sales tax issue we're talking about the FBA Nexus tax issue but the wayfarer versus South Dakota Supreme Court case that opened up the doors for states to tax inbound orders to their residents even if you don't have Nexus in the state as a whole opened up a whole other can of worms. And California I believe just passed some legislation that increases the threshold for—I think that the term for that is economic Nexus. They bumped that up meaningfully to half a million when before it was really low at like 100,000 and 200 transactions. So there's a little bit of encouraging news on some of that fronts and I believe there's been maybe half a dozen other states that either followed suit or are in process of doing that but its sales tax right now in the United States is just an absolute disaster. And I agree with you, I think we really need something at the federal level to clean it up because it's just a nightmare. I know people and I know you have to Mark that have sold their business not entirely based on but this definitely was a large part of the calculation thinking through I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to deal with the stress. I don't know with the liability and this is making business harder than it needs to be and I'm ready to be done. Mark: Yeah absolutely. Alright, we got to get to the most important metric that you've got and then wrap this up because we're actually long already with the episode. And you know what it is, it's your KPI the thing that you're focusing on the most. And in the past, you've learned stuff about your community rather be attacked by a swarm of angry bees and a bear and you say that they're crazy. I don't know the bear sounds pretty scary. But this year you asked what luxury gift would you pick; unlimited use of a private jet, $300,000 in annual income, a monthly lunch with anyone, or a tropical island and a house. So that 300k of annual income is that like forever? Andrew: That's forever. Yeah and I think overly weighted this one. I should have been all stench here with the annual annuity that you got because 2/3 of people picked the 300k income which yeah it's hard to argue against that. That's a pretty sweet little set up for life but like 10% picked the jet, about 13% picked the monthly lunch with anyone. That was my pick. I think like you can—I mean to be able to sit down once a month with the likes of U.S. presidents, heads of state, Nobel Prize winners. I mean you can't buy that. I think that'd be cool. Mark: Do you have to buy lunch? Andrew: You do. I should have included that. That was probably what the deal breaker was. Mark: Right. Because it's got to be a pretty nice lunch if you're going to have lunch with these guys. You're not just going down on like [inaudible 00:41:45.4]. Andrew: That's a good point. And then the last one was a tropical house, about 30% of people picked that. But yeah I mean to me this is I feel like it's going to a cornerstone—I suppose we can lead with this one actually Mark. I think next time maybe we mix things around and lead off of the Kardashian performance. Mark: You like to always put the best content at the end so that people will listen all the way to the end. Because where would your day be today if you hadn't learned that most people would take 300k annual income over a monthly lunch with anyone. I actually think you make a pretty valid point there. That would be pretty valuable. You can't buy a monthly lunch with anyone. That'd be tough. Andrew: Buffet—I think you could buy lunch with Buffett for—I don't know it's in the millions I think to have lunch with him. And he's just—I can imagine he's a pretty cool cat but yeah to build it up monthly with anyone; that's pretty cool. Mark: Yeah that is pretty cool. Alive and dead? Andrew: No, I don't think—I think it has to be alive. I didn't put that in there. If we had some inane abilities to be able to resurrect people, that would be pretty sweet. I'd put that in there too. I probably would have bumped it up a touch but I don't know, that 300k was pretty [inaudible 00:42:53.4] people. People like their cash. Mark: I think I could probably make 300k a year with some inane abilities. I'd be like one of those fortune tellers but I'm pretty sure I could spin that off into a pretty desk. Andrew: I know you could too. Mark: Hey thanks so much for coming on; tons of really good information. Go check out eCommerceFuel.com and the State of the Merchant Report. We will link to it in the show notes. We will be sending out an email to every one of our subscribers here on this. If you're not a member of the community are you taking applications right now Andrew? Andrew: We are. Yes, we are. Mark: Okay. If you're not a member of the eCommerceFuel community and you are an e-commerce seller you definitely need to check them out. I don't recommend a lot of groups. I don't recommend a lot of people or sites. We do so very stingily here at Quiet Light Brokerage but eCommerceFuel is one of our favorite groups out there. So please do check them out. Anything you'd like to end with Andrew? Andrew: No. I think that maybe two quick things; one if you want to check out the report directly its eCommerceFuel.com/2019-report that'll link you right to it. And then if you happen to be a podcast listener which I'm guessing you are, we also do a weekly podcast, sometimes twice a week on e-commerce, e-commerce news, store owners, kind of cutting edge just whatever is happening in the e-commerce world and strategy. That comes out weekly as well so if you're interested in that you can check that out [inaudible 00:44:15.2]. Mark: Yeah and you guys also sent out really good emails. I know we talked about email marketing and there's not a lot of people I feel add value to my inbox. I think you guys do a great job of adding value to my inbox. So definitely check out the community, check out the podcast and the report. And once again Andrew thanks for coming on. I look forward to having you on next year for the 2020 State of the Merchant Report. Andrew: Yeah. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate it. It's always fun to come on and great work with what you guys are doing in the online space with businesses. It's always fun to talk and I appreciate the invite. Links and Resources: Andrew's website State of the Merchant 2019 Andrew's Podcast

Welcome To Plotpoints Podcast! This is Plotpoints Podcast! www.plotpoints.com Show Notes May 24, 2019 EP 152 Author/Screenwriter Christopher Stires Joins Mark Sevi. #Starbeasts #PaladinsJourney #RebelNation #TheInheritance #DarkLegend Starbeasts Chris' Amazon Page Chris' BarnesAndNoble See Chris' full bio at end of the show notes. 00:00:00 Intro Mark (music by Mark Sevi) 00:00:20 WELCOME/TABLE TALK/USELESS CHATTER 00:00:30 WHAT ARE WE WATCHING? All #newsroom #gameofthrones #sonsofanarchy 00:6:00 WHAT ARE WE WORKING ON? Novel adaptation, scripts and stuff. 00:8:00 COMMERCIAL/CHRIS' INFO 00:8:30 TOP TEN MOVIE ADAPTATIONS Chris Stires, Mark Sevi CHRIS: #deadone #historyofviolence #slumdogmillionaire #silentpartner #hiddenfigures #casinoroyale #captainamericafirstavenger #lordoftherings #jaws #godfather MARK: #silenceofthelambs #godfather #rocketeer  #superman #thenatural #bladerunner #oneflewoverthecuckoosnest incoldblood Need a Writing Class?  For info go to www.scriptwritingclasses.org LEARN PODCASTING For info go HERE 00:19:55 PROFILE of ALVIN SARGENT Mark #alvinsargent #julia #ordinarypeople #spiderman #tobymaguire #astarisborn #electrichorseman #hero #lauraziskin #unfaithful #bencasey #alfredhitchcock #sterilecuckoo #papermoon #nuts #otherpeoplesmoney 00:23:00 Q&A Mark Do you have to know you're ending to write your script?  Yes and no. Mark 00:29:00 THANKS AND OUT! All UPCOMING AT C3 Vape and Coffee (www.ocfilmandtv.com) MEETUP DETAILS Need a Writing Class?  For info go to www.scriptwritingclasses.org #scriptwritingclasses.org #ocscreenwriters #ocfilmandtv #alejandroseri #finaldraft  QUESTIONS?  COMMENTS? 919-Scripts www.ocscreenwriters.com #ocscreenwriters Why Does Your Screenplay Get Rejected? (Mark's article for Creative Screenwriting Magazine) www.ocfilmandtv.com #richdalessio #c3vapeandcoffee Call 816-WRITERS for info on the MeetUps Meetup www.ocscreenwriters.com / www.ocfilmandtv.com HEY! Tell us what is your favorite Scifi, Romantic Comedy or Comic Book movie? Call (919) Scripts and shout it out to us. Resources: 919-SCRIPTS to leave a message/ask questions. www.plotpoints.com (show blog and more) www.ocscreenwriters.com - by writers for writers. Be Inspired, Do Good Work! Need a Writing Class?  For info go to www.scriptwritingclasses.org #scriptwritingclasses.org Writers Guild Registration – www.wgawregistry.org U.S. Copyright Office - www.copyright.gov Podcast available on iTunes All Material copyright (c) Mark Sevi #marksevi Christopher Stires is a novelist, short-story writer and screenwriter living in Riverside CA. He has four novels currently in print. PALADIN’S JOURNEY, REBEL NATION, DARK LEGEND, and THE INHERITANCE (Winner of the 2003 Dream Realm Award for Horror) are available from Zumaya Publications (http://www.zumayapublications.com/). PALADIN’S JOURNEY: SABIAN (the sequel to PALADIN’S JOURNEY) will soon be released by Zumaya. STARBEAST (a reprint/retitle of TO THE MOUNTAIN OF THE BEAST) will soon be released by World Castle Publishing (http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com/home.html). He has had more than 70 short stories and articles appear in publications in the United States, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. With co-writer, Mark Sevi, he has had one screenplay optioned. He is a member of Facebook and Goodreads. Fair Use Act Disclaimer This podcast is for educational purposes, commentary, and criticism and is not-for-profit at this point in its life. Fair Use Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Fair Use Definition Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders,

When they've gone door to door to sell a product for any amount of time, a salesperson truly learns what they can take. Being a good sales rep can absolutely be nurture over nature and with the right processes in place, any company can turn out a good sales team and garner great results. Today's guest,  Ali Mirza, comes from a pure sales background. These days, he is mixing his true old-school sales experience with expertise in the online world. He started Rosegarden consulting about 8 years ago and now focuses on helping SaaS businesses build out their sales processes. Rosegarden helps set up a salesforce that does what they need to make the sales while following a set of parameters that can be repeated over and over again. Each of his custom sales processes is tailored for the client to achieve consistent, long-term growth. Episode Highlights: Ali's sales background and how he got into his current business. His beliefs on natural-born salespeople. How to find and hire rockstar salespeople. Where Ali starts in creating sales processes for the client. How much the process changes from client to client. The amount of flexibility given to sales reps within an organization in order for them to be able to do what they do best. The correct balance of product knowledge for the reps who are selling the SaaS product. How SaaS business owners can achieve continuity between the sales reps and the backend team. When a business should start to think about systematizing their sales processes. How the process is measured by Ali and his team. Some standout successes Ali and his team have achieved Transcription: Joe: Mark I understand that our friend John Corcoran referred someone to Quiet Light to be a guest on the podcast; Ali Mirza. He's from Rose Garden Consulting. First of all, John thank you very much and if anyone else has suggestions for a great guest like Ali please send us an email. We'd love to have some people on that can help you grow your business or sell your business or even buy your business. Now as I understand it Ali is in the SaaS world helping people optimize that sales process, that onboarding process which is kind of challenging and critically important in the SaaS area right? Mark: Absolutely and John and Jeremy I think they're just going to become our new podcast guest sourcing agents because they've been referring so many awesome people over that have really added to the podcast quite a bit. But Ali comes from this traditional sales background and he and I talked quite a bit about this because that's my background as well. When I was a teenager my very first job was a telemarketing job. Yes, I was one of those guys. And then I also did B2B door to door sales for long distance optimization. I mean talk about some of the most brutal conditions for learning basic entrepreneurship. Ali comes from that background; he's really good at it. He's a killer sales person and so what he does now is he works with SaaS organizations to help optimize their onboarding processes. And how do you set up a sales team that is both free to do what they need to do … is it not this tight like script that a sales person has to have but still have these processes that are repeatable and can be optimized so that you're not losing money through your onboarding process. It's the same thing as like CRO; Conversion Rate Optimization.  So many people have these leaky conversion funnels and just by optimizing those they can increase the revenue substantially. This is the same thing with any group and any SaaS business that has an onboarding process for potential clients. So kind of an old school soul … young guy but old school soul when it comes to the sales process and mixed it in with the online world. Joe: I'm looking forward to listening to this one myself, let's get to it. Mark: Ali, thank you so much for joining me I appreciate … first of all your patience because I cancelled this podcast on you twice both for totally legitimate reasons. My mom's basement was flooding the first time. I was literally like outside shoveling snow when I was texting you saying I can't make this one and then the last time was I a little bit lost my voice. And it's still kind of gone but thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Ali: No problem. I appreciate you having me. Mark: Do me a favor and let our listeners know basically why I'm having you on the podcast; what's your story and what do you do. Ali: So what I do I'm still trying to figure that out half the time but my story … so I got in the sales when I was 19 years old. So I was a guy that would go door to door at Sun Life insurance. I did that for four years. I built up a team. I was the number one agent in the country and handled about 50 sales reps under my belt. Things are great and all but as a true entrepreneur, I knew that that wasn't exactly where I wanted to be for the rest of my life and obviously my [inaudible 00:04:19.6] wasn't fulfilled. Long story short we have decided to start my own company; Rose Garden. That was almost eight years ago now. Originally we started off as kind of like a hired gun. I didn't like the bureaucracy and all that stuff that came with selling insurance and so I just hey I'm a salesman just let me sell that's all I want to do. So we'd go into companies, you put us on retainer and we could sell for you and when we close the deal you pay us bigger. That worked out great for a while; 2 ½ years or so then one of my clients this is great but if you get hit by a bus tomorrow we're back to square one. And I said yeah you're right about that and then he said well why don't you write down what you do for us. I said well that wasn't our original engagement so why don't you pay me for it? And so he said yes. And that's kind of when the light bulb went off and I understood that wait hang on, building people sales processes is infinitely more scalable than me actually selling for people. So that's about five or six years ago or so we pivoted. And since then we've almost exclusively been building out sales processes for our companies. Mark: That's awesome. So I actually come from that direct sales background as well; like I cut my teeth my very first job. And most people's first job was like McDonald's or something like that right, fast food? I think at the age of 12 or 13 I made a promise to myself I would never work in fast food and so my very first job was a telemarketing position. And boy you learn pretty quickly how to deal with that and I think probably … I'll put this as my worst job because I was kind of burnt out at this point. I was in that for about five years of doing telemarketing in some of the worst stuff out there too. I did door to door business, door to door telephone long distance service sales. They would send us down, it was a team of us, we'd go down in like teams of three and we would really hit like a downtown area and some small town, knock on doors to come see a long distance bill. All these are … oh my gosh man that was brutal but it was an awesome experience as far as learning how to A. be an entrepreneur but also B. how to sell. Ali: Yeah. Mark: A great background for an entrepreneur. Ali: Yeah I know I mean going door to door that will put some hair on your chest. And once you do that I mean you don't really fear things anymore. I think a lot of what holds people back as entrepreneurs is the fear of what could or what realistically what will happen right? If I take this risk will it pay off with, will it break me? I don't have that anymore. When you have to knock on someone's door and try and sell them some life insurance it's … all inhibitions … when you do that for a few years all inhibitions are gone. You just have enough wee care anymore. Mark: Yeah you learn how to laugh off the nose and actually appreciate the guys that just like in telemarketing the best thing that we could have happen is somebody hangs up on us right? Because that's a very quick no, I can immediately get on to that next prospect. And you get kind of this cold like I don't care if you do that. There was one guy at the door to door telephone long distance company where he actually had somebody throw a wrench at him so that's actually a little bit more aggressive. Hopefully, that doesn't happen but yeah you're right that puts hair on your chest. You learn very quickly to lose that fear. So alright today I want to talk … you do a lot of consulting for SaaS companies and helping build their sales processes. And this is obviously really important for just lowering that cost of acquisition. If you have a more efficient sales team you're going to be signing up more people. So I want to get in that. I'm going to kind of open up with a question here that … I don't know maybe it's a softball question but aren't there natural born salespeople? I mean isn't it really coming down to … and I know what you're going to answer on this but doesn't it come down to … again I did a little show prep; thanks me. Doesn't it come down to finding just those rock star sales people? Ali: So those are two different questions right? So a natural born sales person in my opinion and my opinion is always right of course. Mark:  [inaudible 00:08:11.9] Ali: Yeah exactly, right? I would do it. I think it was the Charles Barkley book where it was like I may be wrong but I doubt it. But in my opinion, there's no such thing as a born sales person. The only things that are born are baby boys and baby girls. Sales people are trained. No different than there's no lawyer gene, there's no doctor gene, all these other things. There's no sales gene as much as people would like to believe. A lot of what we attribute that to is people that are just outgoing, charismatic, extroverts. That's learned. That's nature not … oh, I'm sorry that's nurtured not nature. So it depends on external environment built, factors and things of that nature of what your personality ends up to be. That doesn't necessarily guarantee that you're going to be at closing and actually bring money in the door. We know lots of extroverts that just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk and burn deals. So there is no such thing as a born sales person. Now, looking for a rock star that's a different thing; you're looking for someone that's … you may not know what you're asking for but really what you're asking for is somebody that's already trained that someone else has put the work into and now you're going to … you're fixing to benefit off of their work. That is more reasonable than looking for a natural born salesperson because at that point what you're really saying is someone that doesn't have sales training but just going to sell. And so looking for a rock star is someone that has that sales training that you can vet their experience. Now that being said that's incredibly difficult to find especially in today's market. I mean if you can sell your … sales is the only money side of the balance sheet. Everyone else is an expense we're the only income, right? So sales … when someone can sell someone's picking up your company, you're not going to let them go. So good salespeople are golden handcuffed in. Of course, there are founders and companies that drop the ball with great sales people but the likelihood that you're going to find that person on the open market is next to none. They know people that know people that don't land on their feet pretty quick. Mark: Yeah I think one of the problems I see with a lot of companies especially as they're scaling is the founder might have that ability to sell the product but they can never really expand beyond that. And I actually have this problem with Quiet Light when I started initially. I went through … I think it was probably within the first year of Quiet Light, I went out and I hired five people that I thought were going to be really good at this but they ended up not really working out. Some of them did a little bit but not really, they all kind of phased out. It wasn't until Jason joined the team that I stumbled upon I would guess in your world the sales process. And I never really thought about in terms of a process because we don't think about in the same way here at Quiet Light but I'd like to get into this a little bit as far as finding out what that process is for your company. I would imagine depending on what you're selling and within the SaaS world specifically as well. The process is going to differ quite a bit from if you're selling say a $300 a month SaaS product versus … I think I just talked to somebody yesterday where his average price upon is $20,000 per year with three year minimum commitments. So what does that process look like when you're going into an organization and you want to start to identify A. the characteristics of that sales process and am I even putting this in the right way or do we talk [crosstalk 00:11:35.1] skill process? Ali: That's exactly what we do. So every sales process we build is custom and unique. Now at the surface level or at the face value after the fact there's only so many ways to skin a cat and so I could just turn around and be like oh you know what Company A sales process looks quite a bit like Company B but we can't start there, right? So we have to treat everything unique and custom from the beginning. And then it may end up looking somewhat similar to someone else's but we arrive at that independent of that. So we're not trying to predetermine. Yeah, so our process of how we do that is first thing we do is we do an assessment. So we'll actually go in there and spend a day on site and work with their sales leader, the founders, work with the sales team and really understand everything that they're doing right that they need to continue doing, everything that they're doing wrong that they need to stop or change, and everything that they're not doing that they need to be doing. And so we start at a very high level, they walk us through their process, they walk us through their typical deal flows and cycles and so we start to really pick out things from there. I'll get them into one of those three categories and then from there we get very granular and look at all the tactics. Then we build a report and say step by step right if I was your VP of sales or if I was the founder of this company or you know I had to build a process this is what I would do. So you get a little diagnostic and I basically can walk you through it step by step. It helps you understand what you need to do in what you do. Because sometimes even if things that we're doing is right it's just having that extra validation from someone who sees it from … we've seen hundreds of SaaS companies do it the right and the wrong way. I've seen crazy growth, I've seen two, three, 400% month over month and I've seen one or 2% year over year. So you can pick out patterns pretty quick. Mark: Yeah. How much has that sales process changed though from one organization to the next? I mean for example Quiet Light Brokerage, when I hired on those first five people as brokers I took on somebody who was really good at relationship based sales and was fine with taking that sort of long term sort of approach and then I also hired somebody who is the number one salesperson for Quick Books Online but he was much more close. He was a closer and that's what he wants to do and frankly, he struggled a lot and didn't really do so well. So at one point and more specifically for the people listening here and they're thinking about the sales team that they have how much do you look at the company, what do you look at with a company I should ask to start to determine okay this approach is right versus this approach is wrong as far as what they're doing? Ali: I mean you got to start with who they're selling to because even within a particular company between the service, offering, product, solution, whatever it is that they're selling depending on which market and depending on who is buying that sales process very well could change. So I'll give you a perfect example, one of our clients a SaaS company sells into the education or is an education platform. Let's call it an online education platform that sells to large organizations. But they also have individuals, freelancers, people like … let's call them hobbyists coming in there and buying their solution as well. So it's an online learning platform but their goal is to sell large organizations packages and number of seats but they also have one offs coming in as well. So the sales process is completely unique for the one offs and the people that are buying less than five seats, a small organization that has one, two, three, developers or just someone that wants to up level their own development game. I'm not a developer so I don't even know if I'm using the right terminology but that's irrelevant. Mark: It sounds great. Ali: Yeah exactly there isn't enough coloring right on a black screen with green— Mark: Just like the Matrix. Ali: Exactly, yeah. So the sales people what we have to do with them was we have to get that stuff off the sales people's plate because we're paying our sales people too much, in my opinion, to sit there and sell a $49 a month deal. It's pointless, right? We were losing money at that point on that sale if we had to not only pay the sales person salary because there was some cost to fulfillment even though it was SaaS and then pay him a commission off of that and then it was just annoying the salespeople. Now you got to look at opportunity costs. So what we did was we segmented them completely because the guy that's buying one or two seats is going to ask maybe not all of the questions but they're going to ask a fair bit of the same questions that the person that we're selling one to 200 seats too and I want all my sales people focused on that. So we have to segment that out, we have to change up the sales process, there was a lot of things that we did there. So even within the organization, the sales process changes. Now again we had to build that unique for them and we have to look at their … we started with their who's buying, what are they buying, why are they buying, how are they buying, etcetera and reverse engineer the sales process that way. And you could look at that sales process and probably compare it to 10 other clients that I have and say well there's a lot of similarities. Well yeah, there's only so many ways to skin a cat but at the end of the day, if I had been like wow who does this client remind me of, it reminds me of this person let me bring this in here then you're … it's like renovating a house. I mean yeah you can put lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day, it's still a pig. Mark: So how much of that sales process vary within an organization, the concern I would have would be having a one size fits all sort of a strategy when different clients are going to be coming with different needs. So how much latitude do you give the sales people within an organization to be able to freelance that process or even within that process at certain steps? Ali: A lot, so here's what we do if you don't have anything to benchmark off of how will you ever measure success? How will you know that … if you don't have a control group you will never know whether you're picking up all the money off the table? With that being said I'm not looking to handcuff and put my extra salespeople in a straightjacket so we give them parameters. We tell them here's what you need to do. And again what it's really used for is making sure that at first 18 months of a sales person they have more than paid for themselves. After 18 months, after someone's been working … selling for a year and a half in a company they've pretty much worked most if not all types of deals that walk in and they know what to do. What I don't want is oh you know this person … we say hey just go sell. What are they going to do? They're going to burn deals and they're going to flush out within six months so you have to give them something. But again if it's too tight they're not going to close or they're going to look for ways around it. And your best salespeople, that same part of the brain that it takes to kind of see the seams and run that route and through a sales process, the same part of the brain to get to that and score a touchdown is the same part of the brain that does it internally and tries to figure out okay how can I max out my commission, where do I need to sandbag, what do I need to do, what leverage do I need to pull to maximize it for myself? And sometimes … a lot of times it ends up being very detrimental to the company. So don't give your sales people enough rope where they're going to hang themselves with. So give them a process because they're going to go outside that process so anticipate that and say look here's what a typical process looks like you go from A, B, C, and D. Understand though if circumstance 1, 2, or 3 arises this is where you can jump to, this is what you can do, this is how you can do it. And now you're starting to turn their brain and you're designing where they can cut corners because they're going to do it anyways. So you at least design and you account for it.  I always do … figuring out when your P&L six months later after John's left and be like oh shit all of his deals are about to fall through and we just … yeah. And then that happens all the time as much as … no one brags about that right? None of your entrepreneur friends are going to sit around and be like oh yeah I just got shafted for $50,000 of commissions that I paid some guy three months ago and now he's gone and all his deals are about to fall through, I'm about to lose a lot of money. No one brags about that. Everyone brags about the logo that they closed. But that stuff happens all the time I get to see it from the inside. Mark: Yeah absolutely and keeping that process, you're absolutely right. I hated it when I was in sales especially in telemarketing. Telemarketing is really churn and burn, get through as many numbers as you can and if I did a telemarketing job and was handed a script I guarantee you I freelanced because you know … you hear it, we all get the call … those annoying calls and the person can't pronounce your name and they can't really even … they're tripping over the script and all that sort of stuff and that's an extreme example obviously but having that looseness. Now with a SaaS product, obviously there's a certain amount of expertise that somebody has to have, how important do you see that in the process of developing a sales team to make sure that you're front end people doing product demos and everything else know that product in and out and how much emphasis should SaaS owners be putting on that part of the sales training process? Ali: It's a fine balance. So here is the thing, knowledge is ammunition and the more ammunition you have sometimes you might use like a tank to try and kill a mosquito because we see that all the time; it's the show up and throw up right? But on the flip side if you don't know what you're selling how are you going to sell it so it's a fine balance. Here's the way that I like to position in and I don't want anyone to get this confusing but I would like to teach my sales people everything they need to know about the product but also more importantly is teach them how to position it. It's more important than teaching them what it actually does and when to bring it up and how to bring it up. Because I think that that's important and once you start explaining that it prevents a little bit of that throw up and show up type of thing but on the flip side and this … everyone's going to freak out when I say this but you need to know this much more than a prospect in order to sell. I have sold things that I have absolutely no clue what I'm talking about for one reason and one reason only subtext. It's not what you say, half the time it's what you don't say. So if you're a really good salesperson you don't need to know anything about anything you just show up I mean not to toot my own horn but I mean like my head is already big enough as it and as you can tell I'm … no one is more impressed by me than me but I've closed seven figure deals not knowing what it was that I was selling. Because if you can ask the right questions not only are they going to tell you everything you need to know but they're going to answer their own questions and all … you just have to know so little and position things. And sometimes it's just as simple as nodding your head and be like “yup, uh-huh, yup” and it's just answering their questions. And then they're like you know what Ali I think I need to move forward with it. People do not understand the importance of subtext. Most sales people will never be able to master that so, as a result, it's very important that you need to be able to teach them. You need to not only teach them what the product does but then how to position. I think that's more important than the product knowledge itself but if we're going to get really philosophical with it in my opinion subtext is far more important than anything else. Mark: The most valuable lesson I ever learned in sales was learning how to shut up. Honestly and I think it was in a Zig Ziglar book that I read way back in the day where he talked about that active listening and just being quiet and more importantly not just being quiet and looking and kind of blankly not listening but listening to what the prospect says and then being able to simply when you're invited to that point to respond, responding to what they actually say. And we've seen this at Quiet Light and this is completely unintentional, we have a pretty soft approach with our sales process. But what I've found in the past is that when I tell somebody not to sell their business which we tell people a lot because I honestly think it's in their best interest; oftentimes when we tell somebody not to do something the opposite starts to happen. They end up becoming more determined to do it and part of that is just dealing with entrepreneurs where all the smartest people are in the room and they wanted to … okay, I have one more question for you. I have two so if we can fit two in we'll do it but one more big question and this is something that I find to be a problem with a lot of online service based companies and SaaS companies and that is the continuity between the sales person upfront and the back end team; so pretty simple sales person is over delivering, over promising what's going to happen after. Do you consult in this area at all and how can business owners, SaaS owners look towards that continuity between their upfront sales person because not having to do the account management necessarily after the sale? Ali: See both of that are training, right? A lot of times … let's call me an optimist in this and I believe that most sales people don't typically want to lie and so if they know that they're lying they'll probably shy away from it. Unless you get a shady sales person then all bets are off type of thing but I'd say the vast majority of sales people don't want to lie and it's just because you haven't taken the time to properly train them on what actually happens after the deal is done. So for us, it's very important to sit with customers of SaaS and really understand how because that's really how we create the pitch. So we sit with costumers of SaaS, we see what people are saying, how they're saying it, we interview customers, and once we understand that we reverse engineer the pitch. Once you give someone the pitch it's black and white; what we do, what we don't do, how we do it, and if you're going off script it's very easy to call you in and be like hey brother what's going on here? You're supposed to say we do X, Y, and Z why are you saying one, two, three, and then it happens a couple of times and you help them transition out. But you're 100% right it's all about setting expectations on the front end from a sales person with the prospect so that when they do become a client it's not a problem but you as the founder, business owner, VP, whatever, the sales leader have to also do that. You have to set expectations with the sales people because a lot of times you're like oh … and a lot of times this also happens, I'll be brief with this is the founder is this visionary, delusional, optimist who thinks their product is the best products since sliced bread and is pitching it that way and the salesperson gets all jazzed, full of piss and vinegar, gets excited and says the exact same thing to a prospect then the prospect comes and finds out that half the widgets don't work. I see that all the time too. So just be reasonable. Mark: Yeah I know. I mean I dealt with that with a service company recently where the sales person showed me graphs and all these beautiful things and I'm like this is so clear like if they can deliver on half this and then I got into the account management stage and there's a lot of tampering of expectations. Ali: That doesn't work at all. That's on our roadmap for Q4. Mark: Yeah I'm like well at this point you need to just kind of sit back and just kind of wait for  … that's not what I saw, that not what I was told upfront. At what should somebody be thinking about putting in the sales process and I'm thinking again about really early stage people here they're maybe just coming out of beta, they're starting to go off for a launch and they might be hiring one maybe two sales people here. When should somebody be saying we need to start getting this process honed in? Ali: I'd say first few sell. As the founder, you need to sell. After you've sold a few and you've kind of figured out what happens, what's good, what's not good I'd recommend hiring two sales people; let them battle it out together. Let them feed off each other, learn from each other. The goal is not the strongest survives the goal is both of them steel … was it steel, sharpen steel or whatever. Get back going and before you go and hire employee number … or salesperson number three, four, five, six, ten, that's when you need to start the process. So after the first two people have started to prove it out then go from there. That's when you need to start building it out and systematizing and documenting everything. And now you have become … it makes your life so much easier after that because again sales process is not something that you build once and that's it. It's a living breathing document that's constantly being iterated but you need you to be the foundations start off of. Mark: How do people measure this? I mean do you set up milestones along that sales process that you're going to be measuring kind of like a funnel or are you just looking at inbound and out as far as inbound calls coming in or prospects and actual conversion rate. Ali: I mean it's both. I mean you're doing a qualitative and a quantitative. So overall you … I look at the quantitative just so that I can have … it's like a measuring stick but I really believe it's more qualitative. You've got to listen to the calls because there is no perfect closing percentage. And I'm always concerned when someone has too high of a close percentage. When they're like oh I close 80% of my deals I'm like something's wrong there. So you're either selling it too short or you're dequeuing people that you shouldn't be dequeuing, all of this other stuff. So the quantitative will only tell you what you're prepared to understand and what you're prepared to understand is filled in by the qualitative. So you got to listen to calls. You've got to figure out did we sell that for as much as we could have, was that too easy, was that too hard, what was going on in there. You got to figure all those things out and data can't tell you that. Data can only tell you if that improved or didn't improve and if you're not doing the qualitative you very likely are leaving a lot of money on the table. Mark: Absolutely 100%. Alright I want to talk about some of the success stories that you guys have had at Rose Garden Consulting because really when you start to look at this again I think two of the lowest hanging fruit areas of any business would be conversion rate optimization and two if you have a sales process where you have this on boarding process and you're having that customer interaction improving that process as well because you don't have to do anymore as far as bringing in the inbound traffic, you're just optimizing what's coming in. So I'd love to know more about some of the successes that you guys have had. What are some of the things that kind of stand out in your mind as far as kind of eye popping numbers? Ali: One of our clients in three weeks we … their average deal was 35k, within three weeks just changing out their process we closed three deals that I think is just over 70 something and then it just kind of stayed there. And it was just by changing up the way that they spoke to their clients. So right there from the qualitative standpoint, we 2X in less than a month. That was a good one. One of our clients and the cases are online and so one of our clients we took from 5 million ARR to 12 million in one year and rank 500 in the fastest growing company. We've got several stories like that but for me the numbers are great and all but for me, it's really … I just like going in there and proving things wrong because the best are the stories in where hey everything is great, we just need to go from 5 to 50 reps and then you start to find things that hey why are we doing it this way, why are we doing it this way? And all the sudden instead of going from 5 to 50 reps to hit their goal we go from 5 to maybe 15 and we're hitting their goal because there was so much money on the table. So those are the ones that I really enjoy. Mark: Yeah just making the existing team that much more efficient and being able to find out areas where like you said some of that qualitative stuff, they might have a high closing rate but they're disqualifying people way too aggressively or they're just not selling for it as much as they possibly could be. This is fantastic information. Where can people learn more about you or reach out to you if they are interested in getting somebody in to take a look at their existing sales processes? Ali: RoseGardenConsulting.com is our website. You can always email me at Ali@RoseGardenConsulting.com rose like the flower. My podcast is For The Close; that's ForTheClose.com so anywhere shape or form hit us up I'm always happy to help and talking sales is my jam so I really enjoy it so anytime I can help I am always happy to. Mark: And a huge shout out to Jeremy and John from Rise25, they connected us over at Traffic and Conversion. You're actually the second guest that I'm having on who they hooked me up with. Ali: Second, how am I not the first? You got me right in my fiddles there. Mark: You know what you're not the first because I had a delay. I had to cancel on you twice. Ali: Who is number one? Who is first? Mark: I just talked to him yesterday and you put me on the spot man so who was it? Oh the guy from Sourcify. It's a completely different area and he's talking about sourcing products from all over the world and manufacturing products and a fascinating, really smart guy. He made me feel like a complete idiot. But— Ali:  [inaudible 00:32:31.5] on me. Mark: You know what I like about having you on is that you're a sales guy cut from the same cloth that I came from and so that's just … I don't know manufacturing like that other guy did. I feel like I could talk more with you although you know infinitely more than I do about scaling up these sales processes and I appreciate you coming on and sharing some of this information. I think you and I are probably going to talk for a full hour just because I could talk about sales forever. I think it's fascinating but yeah thanks for coming on. Ali: Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me, brother. I appreciate it. Links and Resources: Rosegarden Consulting Email Ali For the Close Podcast

Good news from Mark - Do you still have no faith? - Mark 4 : 35 - 41 by St Michael's Church, Chester Square

We see malpractice claims result from failure to file a document or a missed deadline, but often the heart of those issues is that attorneys are stressed out, burned out, overworked, or suffering from an illness or addiction. Lauren Baptiste, founder of Acheloa Wellness, joins us today to discuss how these issues manifest in our work lives and how to conquer them to find our passions again.  Transcript: MARK B:                               Hello. This is Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager with ALPS. Welcome to the latest episode of ALPS in Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm really excited about our guest today, Lauren Baptiste from New York. Lauren is very much involved in wellness, and as many of you know in our listening audience, wellness is a very, very significant issue in bars across the United States and certainly up [inaudible 00:00:47] by the ABA. Before we get into our conversation on wellness, Lauren, I'd love to take a little time and share some information about yourself. LAUREN BAPTISTE:          Sure. Thank you for having me. My name is Lauren Baptiste, and I am the creative founder and CEO of Acheloa Wellness. This kind of came for me because I had been in public accounting for four years. Before we even talk about what it is, it's really important that I share where I came from, because being in a Big Four, working crazy hours, is very relatable to a lot of the lawyers and the accountants and the other professionals that I work with. Being there for 10 years really empowered me to serve others in this way, knowing that we're hard-working, professional, amazing people, but sometimes the one thing that we let go of is our wellness. That's where my boutique firm came to life. MARK:                                  Very good, very good. You're working in this corporate setting and alongside attorneys. What are some of your big takeaways from that experience? LAUREN:                             It's really interesting. Over 10 years you get to see a lot, so being there was such a wonderful experience of being able to understand really what makes us tick. At the forefront of it is stress. We all are trying to do our jobs and have quality work and feel good and do it all, right? Have the families, have the friends, have the social life, have the job, have the health, but really the health is the one that goes on the back burner. That's what I saw so frequently, is that, we would let go of that, which is our essence. If we don't have our health, we really don't have anything. That's really where I felt like, "Okay, there's a problem to solve here." MARK:                                  Yes, yes. Oh, I couldn't agree more. You're the creative founder of a firm, [Ack-lea 00:02:47]? My apologies. LAUREN:                              Acheloa. MARK:                                  Acheloa. There we go, thank you. I'm just struggling with this one this morning. It's a very interesting word, Acheloa Wellness. What's the history? What does this word mean? LAUREN:                              Achelois is a minor Greek goddess, and she focused on stress and burnout and pain. When I was finding a name for my company, I felt so called to that name, because I work with men, but I really specifically have an expertise in women's hormonal health, so a lot of what I do nails into that area. As I was finding what name really served, Achelois was the muse behind my business, and so Acheloa just sounds a little bit nicer than Achelois [Well-neese 00:03:44], so that's where I changed it slightly. MARK:                                  I love that. That is great. Very cool, very cool. You talk about, you work with men and women, as I understand it here, but you're also saying you primarily focus on women. Why is that? LAUREN:                              What I've seen in my experience is that, women internalize stress. Men can internalize it, but a lot more often they'll keep it on the surface and it's easier to move through them, but if we take it like a pill, this stress, what happens is it starts to eat us from the inside out. Something that will happen is, we don't even notice it, but there's subtle shifts in our mental state, and then in our physical bodies, that can be so subtle, so simple, as much as constipation or belching or something so simple, but it actually is the first stage of a longer term disease. If over time, we have continued gas in the body, or dry skin or maybe psoriasis, rosacea, or something like that, it can become a greater, more impactful disease on our body, which nobody wants. That's why I'm here for preventative maintenance. MARK:                                  Okay. In my experience, I've been a risk manager here with ALPS for over 20 years now, and have spent a lot of time presenting and working in terms of consulting with law firms and lawyers all over the country. One of the things that I lecture about is what I would call the true cause of malpractice. Attorney impairment is really behind quite a bit of this, and I broadly define that term in terms of stress, burnout, overwork, obvious things like depression, mental illness, addictions of a variety of types. I guess what I'm getting to with this is, it impacts an employee's, or an attorney's, or staff person, whoever's impaired, it really does have an impact in the workplace setting. I guess with that in mind, and I think this is where you're going but, why should law firms, in terms of the business, care about these issues? Am I on to something? LAUREN:                              Yeah, you are on to something, and I love that you brought it there. I think what happens is that, we see things on our bodies so easily. Like, "Oh, I have a mole," or, "I have acne," right? We all point to the things that we can touch and feel, but mental health is not that. We can't just put your hand on depression or feel into anxiety, but what's happening is that it's there. The more and more I speak with individuals in this arena, the more I hear these secrets of, like, "Yeah, I had depression for years and I didn't tell anybody," or, "Yeah, I've been on anxiety medication, that's just my thing." That's where I'm like, "Wow." There needs to be a conversation and I'm so happy that the ABA came out with their wellbeing campaign, which we can talk about in a little bit, but it really focuses on mental health being so important that we get in front of this. That's where I feel so passionate about conquering stress, to start to overcome the issues of mental health that arise because of it. MARK:                                  I've talked about, in terms of my world and working for a malpractice insurer, I see one of the costs of not addressing this, not being proactive, as exposure to malpractice claims. Why do you think dates get missed, as an example, on calendars, and documents don't get filed? Depression is just one reason people can't always just muster the energy to do it, sadly, but I suspect there are other costs. Do you have some thoughts? What is your experience, in terms of failing to address these kinds of issues? LAUREN:                              I think there's a lot of ways you can look at it. I think the easiest way is to start with the self and say, "Okay, what is this costing me?" It's important that we also understand what it's costing us, because if we can't get past ourselves, it's hard to help others. If we start with ourselves, it can create a crack in the framework of our foundation of everything. If we're really not in a stable place with our mental health, it of course will have an impact on your relationships with your spouse, with your family, with your coworkers. It will have an impact on your work, it will take longer for things to get done. You'll likely be sick more, take more days out of the office. Your vacations won't be as fulfilling or happy. There's even a financial burden, just because we're not sound in our mental health. It's not just anxiety on its own. It's like, your life will surround how your emotive state really is, and that's just the individuals. We can go into the corporate and how that has a bigger impact. MARK:                                  Well, but I like the initial focus on the costs to the individual. I think at times, we don't take the time to even stop and think about that. LAUREN:                              True. MARK:                                  That's very important. Why is it important that we support females in this? LAUREN:                              It's very important that we're really taking care of everybody. I hate to say that, I'm not just focused on females. Men have stressors and midlife crises too, and there's amazing resources out there that support men, but in focusing women, I think it's important that we recognize a few things. One, that there still aren't as many female leaders in the environment at partner level than men. There's this gap in that middle-to-upper range where women will decide, "Well, it's my health or my career," or, "A family or a career," whereas that doesn't seem to be the same conversation for men. It's been one thing to really get behind that, to help women to understand, you can have it all. Maybe not at the same time, but you need to make sure that you can work and get towards those goals and do it safely for your health. MARK:                                  Do you see this wellness movement as something of a trend that may go away? Or is there more to it? LAUREN:                              I don't see it as a trend. I hope it's the beginning of something much bigger. You know, I think when we thought of salads coming to McDonald's, we're like, "Is that a trend?" MARK:                                  Yes, right. LAUREN:                              Now what's trending is, McDonald's isn't as popular, something like that. It's important that we see, wellness is coming in ... It does look good for companies to offer wellness, but really, it's a risk management issue. The quality of your people is better when they're healthier. Things will get done, like you said, on time, and the quality is so much better. It's really important that we're thinking of it not just as, "It's nice to do yoga at the office," but there is a subtle impact on the mental health by incorporating wellness into their everyday life. MARK:                                  You brought up the ABA's wellbeing campaign. Why don't you share a little bit more with our listeners about the [inaudible 00:11:35] campaign? LAUREN:                              Sure. Last year, in the fall, so it was about October 2018 I believe, there was a campaign that came out by the ABA, the American Bar Association, I think for all the lawyers, I'm sure you know. Right. It came out, and it really started to talk about the impact of mental health and substance abuse on firms.                                     What they're seeing is, it's very quick for a team to say, "Hey, let's go out and get a drink," but that one drink night over night over night can become an addiction. It can become alcoholism. It can become something that shouldn't have to be. I love that the industry is taking a stance on, let's think of more creative ways to celebrate our team. Let's think of ways to engage that conversation with that person who's been on anxiety medication for years and is hiding behind it. Let them be more authentic and up-front. I think what this is doing is, it's starting to breed compassion in the workplace, and it's breeding a better working environment, where you want to work at a place that really cares about your wellbeing as a whole. It feels like a win-win to me. MARK:                                  I agree with you. My own perspective on this is, and I agree in terms of saying, I don't see this as a trend that's going to fade away, coming at it from the risk side, I really see a shift in terms of firms learning how to identify problems once they're there. Some deal with them very well and some don't, but it's a reactive model. We are now changing, shifting gears and being proactive, creating awareness and trying to create environments up front. I see this shift as significant, and I hope that it has long-term legs. I really do. What does the term "wellness" really mean to you? LAUREN:                              That's a good question. To me, wellness is a balance of physical and emotional stability. I think by mixing the emotional, the mental and the physical, we can really feel at peace. Then once we feel that peace, we can really start to enter in the other areas of our lives with this mood of balance, because if you think of, say, a palm tree in the middle of the Caribbean, it's steady. The storms will come and go, but it's steady. It knows to weave with the storm, bounce back and forth, but its foundation is so strong. That's wellness to me. Can you keep your foundation strong regardless of the storm? Be prepared for the sunny weather too, but really appreciate that balance of what's coming and how to handle it. MARK:                                  I like that. When I talk about, again, the malpractice kinds of issues, like stress and burnout, I really do think that lawyers struggle with this, in terms of losing their foundation. They start to shift at times from ... We work to have a life, but it's start to transition into this, they live to work. That's where the foundation goes and gets out of balance. That's just my own view of it. I'd be curious, what are your thoughts, in terms of, why do lawyers, that's primarily our audience, why do you think they suffer from stress and burnout and develop these dependencies and have things like depression arise? LAUREN:                              I think to your point, you're definitely on the right path. It gets to a point where we start to lose it. If we can't be solid in ourselves through how we even eat, just think of something so simple as eating. Back in the day, we would cook our meals, or we had someone cook them for us, or something like that. Now it's just, grab what you can eat and move on. MARK:                                  Oh, I know. LAUREN:                              Think about the quality of your life in a fast-food joint. This isn't a podcast hating on fast food. I feel like that's where it's turning into. MARK:                                  No, no. LAUREN:                              It's really about what we're putting into our bodies and really caring for our bodies. That is what gives us the longevity. If we're just going from meal to meal, moment to moment, meeting to meeting, it starts to become really stressful. That's where stress really has that impact on the body. One stressful event can last up to 22 hours in the body. Just imagine that times 20,000 emails that we get in a week. Imagine that by all the meetings and the deadlines. It's inevitable that our hormonal chemistry will start to go out of balance if we're not taking care of what's most important. MARK:                                  Yes. Now, we have talked a little bit about the ABA wellbeing campaign, and as part of that process, the ABA has asked law firms to take a pledge to change, and pledge to work toward wellness and create healthy work environments. Do you have any thoughts about that? Do you think this is going to make a difference? Will it impact law firms? Do you think it may impact other industries? I'm just curious as to your thoughts about the whole pledge part of the campaign. LAUREN:                              I think it's amazing. Honestly, I think it's a stepping stone. When Google does something, we listen. Right? When these big firms are doing something, it tells the mid-tier firms, "Step up." Even a sole proprietor, and I know there's a lot of your insured that are one or two or three small lawyers working together, it's so important that, you don't have to be at the top, main firm, the biggest and most lucrative one, to still incorporate wellness. Wellness can be 15 minutes of a group setting every week that just breathes for 15 minutes, and they can call it a meditation class. It's not about having all the money, but I think we start with the initiative at the top, which is the industry, which I think is wonderful. If they're asking all of these firms to make the pledge, it's setting the standard that we hold our people not only accountable to qualifications, but quality of life. I think that will really change the industry, where people will say, "Would I rather be an accountant or a lawyer? Maybe a lawyer." That's where you can balance it. It starts now, and I think it's great. MARK:                                  Well, as we start to close out here, can you tell us a little bit, how do you work with organizations? What is it you do? LAUREN:                              Yeah, thank you for asking. That's a great question. I work with organizations in different ways. My consulting background has really helped me understand how each company is very different and their needs are different. It can be something like day-long workshops or long-term group programming, and other ways to really engage the team. I think what's really important is that there's this framework of accountability where individuals can feel inspired and supported, and organizations are helping their people be where they want to be. Without that two-sided relationship of the employer and the employee, it struggles, but having a middleman like my firm can really come in there and bridge the gap and make everyone feel that they can level up together. MARK:                                  Yes. Wonderful. How could our listeners, if they wanted to learn more, how can they contact you? How can they learn more about what you do? LAUREN:                              Sure. They can look me up online at AcheloaWellness.com. Then, yeah, they can reach out online to my email or even Instagram or LinkedIn, Acheloa Wellness. You can reach out there and find me. I'm in the inter-world, I should say. MARK:                                  Yes, yes. Well, for all of you listening, I also do want to mention that Lauren will be doing a live [inaudible 00:20:00] webinar with us in May. I believe it's May 15th. Am I right on that, Lauren? I think so. LAUREN:                              Yeah, that's right. Yeah. MARK:                                  Yes, yes. For those of you listening, look forward, we will be sending some emails out and letting everybody know when they can sign up. That should be a lot of fun. Lauren, it indeed has been a pleasure. I really appreciate your taking the time to share a little bit about yourself and your company. This is tremendously valuable in terms of wellness. I just think [inaudible 00:20:35] the issue is so significant. I really do appreciate your sitting down with us for a little bit here. For those of you in the listening audience, I hope you found something of value and interest out of today's podcast. Please don't hesitate to reach out anytime. If you have other topics of interest that you'd like to hear discussed, or if there's anybody you'd like to hear from, we'll certainly do what we can. You may reach me at mbass@alpsnet.com. Again, thank you for listening, folks. Bye bye.

On this special Valentine's Day episode of ALPS In Brief, Mark sits down with Joshua Lenon, lawyer in residence and data protection officer for Clio, to hear firsthand how cloud products can make your law practice more secure and efficient. Fall in love with new features of law practice management and growth software that will keep your data safe and sound. Transcript: MARK:            Hello, this Mark Bassingthwaighte the risk manager with ALPS and welcome to another podcast, ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. And I'm so pleased to have as our guest today Joshua Lenon, who is a lawyer in residence with Clio. And Joshua has done a podcast earlier with us in terms of one of our early initial podcasts, and I just wanted to invite Joshua back to discuss some developments in Clio. But Joshua, before we jump in can you just share a little bit about yourself for those that may not have heard the first podcast? JOSHUA:                   Sure. Thanks, Mark. It's really nice to be here. So, I'm Joshua Lennon, I'm Clio's lawyer in residence, and that means I am attorney admitted to New York, but I help Clio out of Vancouver, Canada with legal research into the intersection of technology in the practice of law. I also serve as Clio's data protection officer, helping us with compliance issues and research into the special privacy and confidentiality needs of legal technology and how we can really increase the security and protection of both law firms and their clients through the use of technology. I've been doing this for about six years now, I've been really lucky to be a part of the explosive growth of Clio and I quite frankly have one of the best jobs in law, I think. MARK:          I would agree. What has happened with Clio is really exciting. One of the reasons I wanted to visit with you is Clio has recently celebrated their 10th anniversary, as I understand it, and I've also heard that your 2018 Clio Cloud Conference, which occurred last fall in New Orleans was quite an event. And I thought we'd just start out by having you share sort of what's going on. What are the exciting things that ... What made 2018 a big year for Clio? JOSHUA:   So, there are a couple things that made 2018 a really big year for Clio. One of the words that leaps to mind is “growth.” We've grown both externally in terms of the number of law firms that we work with. We now currently work with 170,000 legal professionals in 90 countries around the world. We also have continued to grow our relationships with organizations like Bar Associations and law societies, whereas we're now offered as a member benefit by 66 different Bar Associations and law societies around the world. Excitingly, one of the oldest law societies in the world, the Law Society of England and Wales is now offering Clio as its exclusive cloud based member benefit, which is kind of cool. So, we get to go over to England and visit amazing historic locations that have influenced the common law around the world. So, that's been really cool. MARK: That is cool now. It just underscores you do have a very cool job. Please continue, what other exciting things are going on? JOSHUA:   We're growing like a weed internally at Clio as well. So, we actually just topped 350 employees, so that's 350 experts in their field, either building the backend of Clio or providing award-winning customer support to our customers. And one of the things that kind of leapt our head count forward is we acquired our integration partner Lexicata. What's interesting is because we're cloud-based, we actually integrate with a lot of different pieces of software out there, so not just things like the email that a law firm uses, but also highly specialized tools that target the legal industry. And we have approximately 160 integration partners right now, and one of our oldest and most popular is a company called Lexicata. They designed a client intake application that enables firms to really walk a potential client through the discovery phase, the consultation phase, and finally the retention phase of becoming a client with the law firm. And we realized that this was an area of legal technology that we could be performing better at, and so we took a look like any organization does. Do we go out and buy a piece of software that does that, or we build it ourselves? And we had such a great fit, both organically and technically with Lexicata that it just made sense to merge. And so it's our first acquisition ever as a company. We brought on 30 new employees in office in L.A. and a whole new software suite, which means that we now help law firms not only manage their practice but manage the onboarding of clients into their practice. And that's been an incredible accomplishment in 2018. MARK: Yeah, that's a really big deal and kudos to you guys. That's exciting news, that really is. One of the things that I took note of from the cloud conference ... I didn't attend but I have been on the site and just looking at all the different speakers and it looked like it was a fantastic conference. But I was very interested too in the Legal Trends Report. And you had given a presentation not too long ago, I believe, sort of talking a bit about the legal trends report, and I was interested in ... You talked a bit about lawyer missteps, and I think Lexicata plays into this. Can you kind of explore a little bit what you learned out of Legal Trends and how Clio is helping lawyers? JOSHUA:   Absolutely. Yep. So, in case your listeners aren't familiar with the Legal Trends Report, it is an annual report that we've put out for the past three years. We always release it around the Clio Cloud Conference, which tends to be in the autumn, and it focuses on two different types of data. So, the first is data contributed by our customers through the use Clio as software. And I use the word contributed because it's something that you can opt out of, but while we don't look at any confidential information, I want to be very clear about that, we can look at certain meta-data around the way lawyers use Clio. So, for example, lawyers need us to keep track of how long a bill has been open, and is it past due? While we can't see the clients or the amount, we can see that an anonymized aggregate state, so again, very, very at arm's length we can see that certain percentages of bills stay open for a certain percentage of time. And so, that's the type of data that we bring into the Legal Trends Report, but on top of that we also use really extensive outside research on a variety of different topics, both with lawyers, and in 2018 we started talking to clients and how they are interacting with lawyers. What was interesting is, in the client research that we did in 2018, we found that clients are really signaling that they want to work in particular ways with law firms, and when we asked the exact same question to lawyers we found there was mismatch. So, one example is scheduling appointments. It turns out that clients really want a very seamless, single touchpoint method for contacting a law firm and scheduling an appointment. They don't want to do a back and forth in email, they want to be able to pick up the phone or go to a website and just have an appointment made quickly and easily. And we found that lawyers were the opposite. They wanted back and forth, usually because they may not have access to their schedule, or that they may be interrupting other important billable activities. So, there's this mismatch or misstep as you said, between how the clients are expecting to interact with the lawyers and how lawyers are interacting with their clients. We went on in the report to identify eight different areas of mismatch between client expectation and lawyer service and how that can create frustration between the two parties, and may be an issue when it comes time for clients to refer new business to a law firm. MARK: Interesting. Interesting. Just as an aside, is this report available to the general public, or attorneys if they have any interest in taking a look? JOSHUA:   Absolutely. So, it's available for free. You can get to it by going to Clio.com/LTR. So, that's C-L-I-O.com/LTR, which is short for the Legal Trends Report. That'll actually take you to a website where you can download all three versions of the Legal Trends Report, that's 2016 through 2018, each with a little bit of unique research in each year. We've also provided some tools on that website based off of the research as well. So, for example, you can actually take a look at the billable rates per practice area, per state for both lawyers and non-lawyers and compare your own rates to them to see if you're charging maybe a premium for a high value product, or if maybe you're thinking about being a volume-based law firm, and are your rates then competitive with the law firms around you? MARK: It sounds like a lot of great information there. JOSHUA:   Mm-hmm (affirmative). MARK: Any news on new features being released? JOSHUA:   Absolutely. So, in addition to acquiring Lexicata, we've actually been rewriting it and we're launching it in January of 2019 as a completely new system that we're calling Clio Grow. And so it takes all the great features of client intake that Lexicata had already built, puts a little bit of Clio research and design on top of them and makes it more deeply integrative with the Clio Practice Management Solution. So, if you're looking to bring on a client intake tool, it's going to be a seamless experience between the two. In addition to that, within Clio's Practice Management we've actually added a ton of new features. One of the things that has been most well received is we've built in payment plans into Clio right now. In 2017 we added built-in credit card processing because our research found that if a law firm had the ability to accept credit cards, they actually get paid about 33 percent faster. MARK: Yeah, doesn't surprise me at all. JOSHUA:   Yeah, and so if we can help our customers have a better accounts receivable, we figured we should. So, we negotiated a very sweetheart exclusive deal with LawPay and LawPay is now built in to Clio and can help you accept credit card payments. If you turn on LawPay in Clio and it's provided at no additional charge, then you can also turn on payment plans and it allows you to take an invoice, structure a series of payments including how often it gets paid, and we'll just run that automatically in the background for you. It's been incredibly well received with people helping individuals in particular, so family law lawyers for example, or traffic and DUI/DWI lawyers are finding it to be a really helpful tool for bringing clients in, helping them afford legal services, and helping the law firm's bottom line. So, that's been an incredibly well received one. One that I think is really neat on top of that is a feature we're calling Clio Launcher, and it is a downloadable plugin that you put on your computer, and any time you see a document in Clio, if you click on it it will just open that document in whatever appropriate piece of software is on your computer. So, if you've got a Word document stored in Clio, for example, you click on it, it'll open in Word and then when you click Save, it will save it directly back up to Clio's servers. So, there's a really seamless now work flow between having Clio as both your billing engine and your document management engine behind your law firm, whereas before we found that people just needed a little bit more of a sync between the two, and they were choosing to integrate tools like Dropbox or Google Drive, which are still there, but now you can get the free unlimited storage that comes included with Clio and not change your workflow at all but have ready access to your documents. MARK: Yeah, yeah. That sounds awesome. JOSHUA:   Yeah, I like that one a lot. MARK: Am I correct that Clio is moving into the mobile space as well? JOSHUA:   Absolutely. So, we've had a mobile app for years, available on iPhone and Android as well as an iOS tablet app. And what's really interesting is there's been kind of change in mobile architecture. MARK: Okay, alright. JOSHUA:   And so this is probably highly technical for your audience but before when you were building apps, you would have to have really highly specialized language depending on the phone you were building it for. And a little while back, app developers realized this was kind of ridiculous. If I have to write the exact same thing in two different languages for an iPhone and an Android phone, that's a huge amount of overhead, and it actually diminishes the ability to improve an app, update it quickly, add new features, because we have to write the exact same thing twice but it different languages. So, there's been a shift and this is mostly led by some of the bigger tech companies out there towards developing single source languages that allow you to develop really quickly. So, Clio's onboard with this. We're converting our mobile apps to this single language which is called React, and we're actually using it to release a variety of different apps, so not just a Clio app now, we actually just put together a free timekeeping app that's available on the iTunes store. So if you are a solo lawyer and you don't really need a full practice management solution, maybe you're just starting out, maybe you're working part time but you still want to keep track of your time, we've got an app for you. And we build feedback cycles into our apps, so if you download it and it's not the right fit there will always be a feedback link, tell us what we can improve. And we're going to keep doing things like that, adding new apps and third party services using rapid development techniques, so that way we can find the best fit for law firms and lawyers out there. MARK: And what is on the horizon for 2019? Any exciting things that- JOSHUA:   Oh, so yes, absolutely. One of the things that I'm really excited about is ... We talked a little bit about the Clio Cloud Conference and it was another area of explosive growth for Clio in 2018, and so we had 1,500 lawyers from around the world come and meet with us in New Orleans. And we had, as you said, just absolutely phenomenal speakers. So, we try to pick the best speakers both inside legal as well outside legal, so that way we're learning what works for everybody. So, for example we actually had a great speaker come and talk about stress and how stress is not necessarily a bad thing. It's how you react to stress that needs to be your focus of your attention, right? Not the removal of it. You know? MARK: Right. Right. JOSHUA:   We had people from Stanford who came and talked about designing your life, and how we often times think of our professional life as separate from the rest of our life and really it's all just one big continuum. MARK: Yeah. JOSHUA:   So, how are you including the idea of your practice as a part of your life? And this is I think really important for lawyers because we consider ourselves professionals. It's an identity as well as a career, and if we're not thinking of that identity as both a part of our personal lives and our professional lives, we feel a lot of stress, for lack of a better word, between the two. So, if we approach it with a clear vision, while we may not be able to eliminate that stress we can definitely control how we react to it and our understanding of how other people are reacting to it as well. I found that to be very eye-opening. MARK: Yeah. JOSHUA:   So, 1,500 lawyers, phenomenal speakers, a really great party on top of that, but we ended up outgrowing the conference center that we were at, so there's no way we're going to fit next year, so we decided to move. And in 2019 we're going to be in San Diego, California. MARK: Oh, now there's a nice spot. JOSHUA:   Yeah. And we're expecting to add another 500 attendees. MARK: Oh my gosh. JOSHUA:   And we're already half sold out, which is amazing. MARK: That really is. Wow. Wow. JOSHUA:   Yeah. So, I'm sorry, I sound like I'm really hyping Clio a lot but it's just been a great year. MARK: It has. And you know, why I like to visit with you from time to time ... My role is Risk Manager, but I'm not, again, a traditional Risk Manager in the sense that I manage the risk of the ALPS corporation, I am hired to be a Risk Manager for all of our insureds, and for many attorneys you don't have to be an insured to work with me. Call and ask questions. And I, from a risk perspective for so many reasons just believe strongly in the value of a product like Clio, in terms of ... I could sit here and talk for probably 20 minutes on why I think moving to the cloud is a good idea and doing all of the things that you folks are doing in terms of the tools that you bring to the table for lawyers. I see that as essential. But let me ask in closing here, give you a chance to comment on one thing. What I'm starting to hear a little bit, there is, in light of some of these major breaches that we have seen and crypto jacking and ransomware attacks just being rampant with everybody, but you couple that in terms of the risks of cyber breaches of some sort with what has been a really bad tough year in terms of 2018 with Facebook. I would just like to have you share some thoughts on the value, how would you counter this, "I don't want to move to the cloud because look at Facebook. I don't want to move to the cloud because these guys are next on a major ransomware attack." Do you have some thoughts? JOSHUA:   Yeah, I do. I actually think there's never going to be a complete elimination of risk, and I think any technology vendor who tells you that they're 100 percent secure is pulling the wool over your eyes. MARK: That's right. Absolutely. Yeah. JOSHUA:   Yeah. MARK: Yeah. JOSHUA:   But I do believe that there are vendors out there who are transparent in their security protocols, who are committed to the specific needs of the legal industry and they're definitely very specific, but also are keeping in line with the security requirements of clients and I think this is a really important point that most lawyers don't think about. There's a lot of privacy and security law that is being imposed upon clients right now and those clients are in turn turning to their law firms and saying, "How are you living up to this standard with my files?" And so, you need a tech vendor who recognizes not only your ethical duty of confidentiality, but your client's regulatory duty of privacy, and combines technology in a transparent way to facilitate both. And even that won't eliminate the risk 100 percent. MARK: Oh, right. You're never going to. That's impossible. I hope our listeners understand that. Am I hearing, understanding correctly that what I think differentiates companies like Clio is that when you approach the build, the software and hardware build in terms of how ... Am I hearing that the design from the bottom up is really looking at what are the obligations lawyers have, what are the regulatory issues clients face, and where security is thought through from the beginning as opposed to, "Hey, let's build this cool thing and call it Alexa." I'm not picking on Amazon here, but ... JOSHUA:   It's been a bad day for them today, so yeah. MARK: Do you appreciate where I'm going? It sounds like, and I just want to confirm that I'm hearing this correctly, that design in terms of preserving confidences and security are very much part of the design process from the very beginning, as opposed to a last minute, "Oh we should think about that"? JOSHUA:   Yeah. Actually there's an industry approach that's called privacy by design and in some instances it's required, legally speaking. So the general data protection regulation out of Europe is really trying to push privacy by design on a whole host of different businesses, but yeah, it absolutely needs to be a part of any consideration when it comes to building technology that handles sensitive data, which I think we're beginning to discover is all technology handles sensitive data at this point. MARK: Yeah. JOSHUA:   So, how we do it at Clio is as per our terms of service, we actually take on some of the responsibility of that risk, where we commit ourselves to industry best practices and we are very transparent in whom we use as part of our backend. It's called sub-processors and privacy law under GDPR, so we're required to disclose those sub-processors. We're required to vet those sub-processors. We're required to see that they meet the same contractual obligations to us that we commit to you. And so, there's a shared risk that comes with using a good transparent vendor, but it is a risk and I don't think we can ignore that. I do think that dollar per dollar, cloud computing gives you the best security for your money right now when you pick a transparent reputable vendor and the economies of scale that could be affected with cloud computing outweigh anything a small law firm can put together on their own. And the one other counter point I would give to that is I think a lot of lawyers believe that because they're small that they're also obscure, and that nobody's targeting them. And what we've seen is unfortunately, things like Malware that people may not be targeting them specifically but they're still being caught in these giant dragnets of security risk. MARK: You bet. JOSHUA:   And so if you're trying to go it alone, what you're really doing is you're just setting yourself up to be caught in one of these dragnets. MARK: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I hope our listeners ... That's one to note. Well, listen Joshua, I have taken more time than I think I should. I know you're a busy man here. I really appreciate your taking the time to visit with us, and to all of you listening I hope you found something of value here. My desire with this podcast really is just to try to have you hear firsthand the value of what cloud products can bring to the table in terms of enhancing your practice from a security side, to just creating all kinds of efficiencies. So, if you have been hesitant to look at these kinds of things up till now, I hope you will rethink it. You've got at least one Risk Manager here at ALPS saying hey, this is a really good idea. And from an insurance industry perspective I certainly think now's the time to make a move. So, Joshua, again thank you very much. I appreciate your time. To all of you listening out there, if you have another topic you'd like to hear discussed at some point in the future or a guest you'd like to have join us, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can reach me at mbass@alpsnet.com. Thanks for listening. Joshua, have a good one. JOSHUA:   You too, Mark. Thank you. MARK: You bet. _ JOSHUA LENON is an attorney admitted to the New York Bar.  He studied law at St. Louis University School of Law, obtaining a Juris Doctorate and a Certificate in International and Comparative Law. Joshua has since helped legal practitioners improve their services, working for Thomson Reuters' publishing departments in both the United States and Canada. Joshua currently serves as Lawyer-in-Residence for Clio, providing legal scholarship and research skills to the leading cloud-based practice management platform from Vancouver, Canada. He's been a guest lecturer for movements like legal hacking and legal technology at schools like MIT, Suffolk Law, and Vanderbilt, as well as before organizations like ReinventLaw and the ABA Law Practice Futures Initiative.

When our behaviors become destructive and start to negatively impact our health or relationships, we're motivated to make a change, but change is hard! ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte and Dr. Kathleen Baskett weigh the strategies and skills needed to make healthy changes against the risk factors that may sabotage your success. Transcript MARK: Hello, this is Mark Bassingthwaighte and I'm the Risk Manager with ALPS insurance. Welcome to the latest episode of ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. Today, I'm pleased to have as our guest my favorite physician, Dr. Kathleen Baskett. We spoke ... it's been Kathy I think about, oh, I don't know, six, nine months and we were, when we last visited, talking about weight management. And I'd like to talk today a little bit about change. But before we get into a brief conversation, can you just share a little bit about yourself again, for the benefit of our audience? DR. BASKETT: Of course, I would be happy to do so. I am the Medical Director of Weight Management Clinic at St. Vincent Health care in Billings, Montana. And I work with people who want to get healthier and work on healthy weight loss, whether it be losing weight non-surgically or through surgical weight loss methods. MARK: The last time we were talking about travel, and weight management, and the challenges people face. This time around, we're at the time of year, at the end of the year, beginning of a new year coming here shortly, where people will make commitments to try to change and ... I've got to go to the club now and start to work out, or I'm going to try to lose 15 pounds, or whatever it might be. But change can really be hard and I know a lot of your own patients are making commitments long term to really make some very, very significant changes. And I just initially would like some of your thoughts on, how can you help in terms of your insights with your patients. How can you help people make change? Where does it start? DR. BASKETT: Well, first of all, it has to start with the individual. Each person has to be ready to make the change. So when a person comes in and wants to work on late weight loss, I often ask them, why now? What made you decide that this is the time to work on weight loss? And if someone's here because their spouse wants him or her to lose weight, or they have a wedding coming up in two months, or they're going to Hawaii for the winter, often that's pretty quick fix and short term. But most of the time, people are ready because they are not healthy, they have many medical issues, they've been through a lot of quick weight loss programs that haven't worked. So the first thing is that readiness to change and when each individual is willing and able to recognize their readiness for that. MARK: And what I find interesting about that is, if let's say my family feels that I should make some sort of change, work out some more ... what I'm hearing you say is, it doesn't matter what others around you want, but the individual that needs or wants to make the change, this really has to come from themselves, right? We really need, as individuals, to say, I am committed to this. And if that's not the case, are you saying the odds of a successful change go down? DR. BASKETT: Absolutely. I mean, if you really want to make the change for yourself, you're more likely for this to happen, for it to come to fruition because it's something you really want, you want internally and you are ready to go through all of those steps to reach your final goal. MARK: I have seen over the years, in terms of my own work as a risk manager, situations where lawyers have tried to make some change and when somebody starts to change things in life, whether again, it's dieting, exercising, whatever it might be, that, at times, I think it'd be a little threatening to spouses perhaps partners, associates — in terms of colleagues in a firm setting. And in my experience, they can be undermining and not necessarily very intentional about it, I think it can be a passive kind of thing ... do you have thoughts if someone is starting to make a change but then find others in their life being resistant to that individual being successful in their change, they have thoughts, are there things you might share about that? DR. BASKETT: For sure. It's almost analogous when you think of a mobile, I'm never sure how to pronounce that with, like wind chimes. When one chime is moving, it strikes the others and they all end up moving in one direction or another and it's like that in a relationship, either amongst two people or within a family unit. So when one person is changing it does affect the other people in that relationship sphere and other people will make a choice to go with the flow or be resistant to the change. In the weight loss arena, it's part of my job or my duty, in some way, to help my patients deal with that so that they are not sabotaged. It's to help them to understand that process and give them skills so that they continue to work on healthy constructive change and they have the empowerment to continue to do so. MARK: Do you have thoughts on, if someone comes in, in your practice, and they are, as you've discussed, you believe and can see that they are ready to commit to making some type of change, can you talk to me a little bit about what's realistic and what isn't? Somebody comes in and says, "I'm committed, I want to lose 50 pounds in six weeks because I have this wedding coming up or whatever it might be, versus, you see where I'm trying to go. What thoughts do you have about helping people understand how to set realistic goals? My guess is, maybe the best way to look at this as we start to implement change in our lives. DR. BASKETT: Well, and that's the key to help people to set realistic goals. I mean, the change can be overwhelming and daunting if someone has never exercised before, and then the statement is, well, I'm going to go to the gym every day, I will get up at four o'clock in the morning, exercise for two hours, go six days a week, that will probably last one week at the most. So, possibly you break your overall goal down into smaller, attainable goals, and then you have action steps. So, okay, if the goal is, I want to exercise, you help people break that down into, okay, which days of the week will you exercise? What time of the day will that be? And for how many minutes? And then what will you do during those times? What will you do for exercise? Many people see it as all or nothing. Like, oh gosh, if I can't go to the gym for two hours, or if I don't walk for an hour, that doesn't count for anything. Well, if you can go and walk for 10 to 15 minutes every day on your lunch break, that's where you start. And it does count for something. MARK: Okay. I remember a number of years ago, I had a little more weight on me, put it that way. And I had a couple of tries where I wanted to go in and try to lose some weight. And I always thought to myself, hey, if I can lose 25 pounds, this will be the treat, this will be the reward and whether it's buying something special, or a good bottle of wine or something. And personally, I found that that never worked because I think ultimately I wasn't ready; as you've pointed out, people really need to be ready. But I think that conversation or this idea of reward versus incentive, do you have some thoughts about ... is looking at rewards or incentives one way to successfully navigate the long term process of making a change? DR. BASKETT: I think it's helpful for many people to celebrate their successes and to reward themselves when they've accomplished, and when they've reached goals. For example, someone who's trying to stop smoking, maybe for every pack of cigarettes that they don't purchase, they put the money that they would be spending for that pack of cigarettes into a jar and then at the end of the month, maybe they go out and buy themselves something that's healthy and constructive that they wouldn't have purchased before because it's important again to celebrate these accomplishments. MARK: And what I like about that idea, I look at this in the context of marriage, everybody's (what they would look at as a) reward or something, but if it were me, at the end of that month, it'd be fun to take a dinner and go out with my wife and have a nice evening out and celebrate the accomplishment together because it's a way to keep ... Well, the couple is investing in the goal together, it's just something that I think would be fun for me, from my perspective. Let's talk a little bit about failure whether it's, oh, I just don't feel like getting up today or in the context of cigarette smoking. Perhaps you slip back, and you pick up a couple of packs and you just ... I suspect it's normal to have some of these struggles, challenges off base however you want to describe it. Do you have thoughts about how to navigate that so that it doesn't become what gets in the way and stops the progress and completely take somebody off the rails? DR. BASKETT: Well, there will always be things that get in the way. You will always get off track. The tendency is to slip back into old patterns. MARK: Yes, seems normal. DR. BASKETT: You go on travels, there is a vacation, have company, there're always interruptions into the routine, and for some people, it's much harder to get back on track. But again, I think it might be one of perspective. If you're looking at changing habits, looking at it as a process and a journey, and you have detours along the way, you always find our way. Let's keep working and getting back on track. Just getting back onto the Interstate and going forward. To me, failure is when someone gives up completely, that's failure. Gaining a few pounds or skipping a month at the gym isn't a failure, or smoking that pack of cigarettes when you didn't want to that isn't a failure, giving up completely, that's saying, I fail or I don't want to try anymore. MARK: So, it's healthy to just acknowledge that these bumps in the road come along and just say, okay, let's look at why perhaps and try start again, but not let it be something that defeats us. DR. BASKETT: Exactly. I would say it's healthy. It's also just normal because we are human beings and no one is perfect, we aren't automatons and we just keep going for ... What I find is often my patients are their own worst enemies, that they're very hard on themselves. And people need lots of encouragement. And if it takes two years to lose 10 pounds, so be it. You've lost 10 pounds, you didn't gain 20, that's a success. MARK: Right. A final point that's interesting to me and you were talking a little bit about here, how valuable support can be. And I guess I want to come with this notion of support in two ways. Is it important at the outset, in the context of family, friends perhaps, depending on what your support system is normally or colleagues at work, do you tend to say that people should try to establish some support systems at the beginning? So, for instance, if I want to lose 10 pounds or stop smoking that I should say to my wife or to my children, in terms of a whole family effort here, dad would like to stop smoking or dad would like to lose 20 pounds, and do you think that's a better way to start versus ... because we talked a little bit earlier about how sometimes people can undermine and I guess I'm thinking, is this one way to try to counterbalance that and also increase the odds of a long term successful outcome? DR. BASKETT: Well, I think it depends upon what the relationships are like. Many people do well when they have an accountability partner or a few people with whom they will share this information and those people offer support. I don't think people need to go out and announce to the world, hey, I'm going on a diet, I want to lose 50 pounds, or I'm not going to drink alcohol anymore, I'm not going to smoke. No, and there's the difference between support and then nagging, and all of those reminders. But I think definitely sharing your journey with a few people whom you truly trust that know what your best interests are at heart, that's very helpful. Some of my patients will sign up with a personal trainer and the main reason is, that's another form of accountability. They feel responsible to that other person to get up, make it to the gym because they've made a commitment to that person and are paying a lot of money too, but that helps them be consistent with their exercise. MARK: Okay. In closing, do you have any final thoughts that you'd like to share? I have one other quick thing, but I want to make sure if there's a point that you'd like to make that you have that opportunity. DR. BASKETT: Sure I would. I would say, change is hard. Change is hard for all of us and it just takes lots of practice, it takes patience, I think we need to be a little gentle with ourselves at times, but I think we also need to keep trying. MARK: Okay. And my final, I guess, question for you is, if someone is struggling with change, we could look at alcoholism, or just I want to cut back on alcohol, or I want to quit smoking. But if you struggle on these kinds of things, do you have any thoughts on, how do you know it's time to look for professional support, whether it's just support groups, in treatment centers or something, do you have any thoughts with that? DR. BASKETT: Yes, I think it's when those behaviors are becoming destructive. When these behaviors are negatively impacting your health, negatively impacting relationships, and you might say you want to make a change, but it just seems that you truly can't and things are going downhill, then it's time to look beyond, does someone need to go into rehab? Does someone need psychiatric support or working with a therapist? Because often these behaviors, these patterns, there are reasons that people carry extra weight. People use food for reasons much more than stomach hunger. And people use alcohol, and cigarettes, and drugs for various reasons. And it's needing to look deeper as to what truly is going on. MARK: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Well, listen, as always, it is such a pleasure. I really appreciate your taking a little time to sit down and join a conversation with me for the benefit of our listeners. I hope you've enjoyed the time this afternoon and I look forward to future conversations. DR. BASKETT: And thank you for having me. MARK: You are most welcome. DR. BASKETT: Happy 2019. MARK: Well thank you. Same to you. To the listeners out there, I hope you found something of interest today. Thank you for listening. And as always, if you have a topic that you would like to see discussed at some point or guests that you'd like us to visit with, please don't hesitate to reach out anytime. You may contact me at mbass@alpsnet.com. As always folks, thanks again. Bye, bye. — DR. KATHLEEN BASKET For Dr. Baskett, medicine is not a job; it's a calling. A firm believer in patient-centered care, she works daily to help each patient reach his or her optimal health and quality of life. She takes the time to get to know each patient, sharing in their joys and sorrows, celebrations and setbacks as they navigate their weight loss journey. Dr. Baskett is board-certified in bariatric medicine. She attended the University of Maryland School of Maryland and completed an internship within the University of Maryland Medical System. When not treating patients, she enjoys exercising, practicing yoga, being outdoors and traveling. She also loves to spend time with her family.

Change is scary, and yes price trends do matter in the online marketplace, particularly if you are in the market for buying or selling a business. Today we're discussing the frightening possibility of tighter margins, particularly for Amazon businesses, as a result of the most recent US government tariffs on Chinese products. Here at Quiet Light, we get a lot of questions from buyers regarding what we can expect from the Amazon marketplace now and in the future. The reality is that entrepreneurs need to learn to see these changes as par for the course as well as opportunities for growth. The internet today is so much different than it was 11 years ago when we started Quiet Light Brokerage. In fact, we started the same year the first Iphone came out  – to give some perspective on just how much things can change! When it comes to the geopolitical nature of e-commerce, specifically as it relates to the US, who better to bring in than a Canadian? Today's guest, James Thomson, is a Partner for BuyBox Experts, a managed services agency specializing in marketplace management for brands, manufacturers, and resellers. He was formerly head of Amazon Services, the division of Amazon responsible for recruiting tens of thousands of sellers annually to the Amazon marketplace. He's crazy knowledgeable about everything Amazon. We're talking all about the tariffs and their potential impact on the e-commerce marketplace. Episode Highlights: What tariffs are coming out and what tariff trends are going to affect business? Impact on first party sellers. Ways to work with and around these tariffs. How the manufacturers in China will see that they can suffer too. The length and scope of the tariffs' impact will have a lasting effect over time. Parallel imports may happen eventually, creating retail arbitrage. The foreseen impact for third party sellers. How the tariffs are creating more incentive for Chinese manufacturers to become sellers and sell products directly to customers in the United States. We discuss the consequences for Amazon sellers holding inventory. How Amazon monitors expected sell through rates to deflect inventory increases. Things sellers should keep in mind in order to keep their buy box percentages up. Indicators that there may be opportunities for competitors like Target to swoop in in certain spaces as early as the end of this quarter. If the tariffs prevail, one year from now will be the time when the retail increases will  show. What countries might be viable alternatives to China as suppliers and when to start investigating those avenues. The people who end up capitalizing and doing well in situations like these are the ones that look at these problems as opportunities. Transcription: Joe: So Mark I just launched a listing a couple of weeks ago. It's under contract already, multiple offers, it went very quickly. Actually, it's a re-launch because when we launched last year it didn't sell because of flat trends on the top side, slightly down on the bottom side and we pulled it. And the owner of the business implemented all the growth opportunities that he wrote about and now business is up 27% so it went under contract very quickly. So for those people that are listening that don't think that trends matter they definitely do because eight months ago no one wanted to buy this. Eight months later it's under contract in what was literally like four days. And I can't say the price of course but the thing that I wanted to touch about in regards to that is that he's importing products from China and the potential tariffs have changed since we last listed the business. And so we addressed that in the client interview. We're trying to stay current with it and he has a person through his manufacturer that helped him with the proper coding of the brands. And there was a slight increase in terms of the landed cost of goods sold but it was so minute it really had no impact on the discretionary earnings or profit. And I think that this is a topic that we need to address more and focus on in our client interviews and make sure that the sort of scary possibility of tighter margins is really looked into because not everything is going to have an increase and those that do it may be so small that is a very tiny percentage of that landed cost of goods sold. Now you just had an expert on to talk about it, our old friend James Thomson, right? Mark: Yeah absolutely when it comes to US issues and the geo political nature of e-commerce specifically as [inaudible 00:02:27.4] the US who better bring in than a Canadian? So, James Thomson, he is the first account manager within Amazon's marketplace. He's the co-founder of Prosper Show. He's a principal owner over at Buy Box Experts. The guy … I mean he's crazy knowledgeable about everything Amazon. And so we've been getting a lot of questions from buyers both on deals that are under offer right now and also from people just kind of trying to understand the landscape, what are we looking at here with Amazon in the future. So I thought let's go ahead and bring somebody on. Let's talk about it. Let's kind of dissect this. And he said a couple of things which are really really important about this and I'm not going to give all of it away because I need to tease of course so that people can actually listen to the entire interview but a couple of things. One, the nature of business is always changing. I mean the Internet today is way different than what it was when we started Quiet Light Brokerage. I'm actually just … I'm putting together a presentation right now for Ungagged coming up here soon early November and I'm taking a look back to when I started Quiet Light Brokerage. We started Quiet Light Brokerage the same year that the iPhone first came out so … I mean that's how much things have changed in just 11 years. Joe: Wow. Mark: I know right. So I say that this Quiet Light Brokerage was the biggest event of 2007 followed shortly after by the iPhone of course. Anyway let's get into the point here, James and I talk a lot about why are the tariffs in place, what is going on with these tariffs, what is the future of it look like, how is it going to impact e-commerce business owners, what's the hope of the US government with these tariffs. And I'll cut to the chase there the hope is that people start buying from other countries and most importantly what should you be doing about it. And on one thing that I'm just going to say here, I reiterate this at the end of this discussion with James. These sort of changes need to be looked at as opportunities among people who own businesses, among entrepreneurs. I've been an entrepreneur for 20 plus years now and the nature of the internet is constantly changing. Those who are looking at these changes and saying there is opportunity here, I have a great opportunity here to be able to adjust to the changes, find a new problem and solve that problem they do really really well. They're the ones that are absolutely killing it. Those who take a look at stuff like this and get all scared they end up leaving and not continuing onto the world of the Internet, their entrepreneurial career. So this is an interesting topic, very relevant to our time right now. Definitely, take a listen to it and then James also offered an email address if you have any questions for him to be able to speak about it. He's got a couple of really practical solutions that you can implement right away to be able to absorb some of these costs both in working with the factories and manufacturers in China but also just some very simple things that you can do on your side with your product launches and your products coming out to be able to pass this cost on. I'll say one more thing and I know I've talked a ton here; I'm kind of all around the place here. And I think it's really important to understand that everybody is facing these problems. When your costs go up 10% it's not just you, it's all of your competitors are seeing the exact same things. So it's a matter of how do you absorb those costs, how do you plan to be able to compete with that, how do you address your Amazon account so that you're not getting … losing your buy box share so on and so forth. Pretty simple stuff but you do need to have a plan. Joe: Yeah and I think you and I have been around long enough that we know it's not the end of the world, it's just another hurdle that an entrepreneur needs to get over. Get over the hurdle. And knowledge is power. If you learn about it, focus on it, and if and when you decide to sell your business you'll have that knowledge and you'll be able to address and tell people how you addressed it. And for buyers, same thing learn about it. Not every category is going to have an increase in tariffs and increase in cost of goods sold. So James is very bright, one of the smartest guys in most of the rooms he's in so I am looking forward to listening to this myself. Mark: James welcome back to the Quiet Light Podcast. James: Thanks for having me, Mark. Mark: All right so let's start off with just a quick introduction as to who you are. You have been on the podcast once before. I'm going to let you introduce yourself as far as your background … especially your background with Amazon and Prosper Show and Buy Box Experts. James: Right. Well, I'm James Thomson. People may know me as one of the co-founders of Prosper Show which is an educational event for large sophisticated third party sellers on Amazon. I am also the partner for Buy Box Experts which is an advisory and account management company at sports brands on Amazon. And I spent almost six years at Amazon doing a number of third party related responsibilities including running Amazon services and being Amazon's first FBA account manager many many many years ago. So thanks for having me back on again. I'm looking forward to talking about the ever increasing challenges of being a successful seller on Amazon. Mark: Well, I'm going to admit this is a show that I have been sort of dreading to do. James: Yeah. Mark: But it's really necessary and I know we've been starting to see more and more questions on the whole issue of tariffs. Before we jump into it real quick I am just going to give a shout out to Prosper Show. We go to a lot of shows at Quiet Light, Prosper show is awesome. If you're selling on Amazon and you're looking for a show where you can actually learn things and make good connections check it out, Prosper Show, what we're going to be there next March probably with all the booth and all that so. James: Thanks Mark, thanks. Mark: The thing is I'll make it for you because it's worth making. And also I don't want to talk about tariffs but let's talk about tariffs. And as everybody knows we've had one round of tariffs slapped on a lot of products coming from China, 10%. There is a threat of more tariffs coming out in January. And I'm going to fess up publicly to everybody to say I've really been kind of putting my fingers in my ears and saying I don't want to know about this, please make it go away. Let's get everybody up to speed on this as far as the tariffs that are coming out and what the general political landscape is that we need to be aware of in moving forward. James: So just to be clear I'm Canadian. I don't vote in the United States. I don't get to decide who does or doesn't make decisions around the tariffs that are going to be charged. But for folks that haven't been paying attention Mr. Trump is dealing … or has decided to enter into a tariff war with the Chinese around basically what dozens and now hundreds of products that are manufactured in China will be slapped with rather significant tariffs when they're imported into the United States. As many the people listening in today will know these private label sellers gosh we have a lot of stuff made in China that ends up being consumed and sold here in the US. So I work a lot with private label sellers who are saying gosh I thought I had the opportunity to make some decent margin being a private label seller but now that my products that are coming in from China with this extra 10%, 15%, and possibly 25% tariff depending on what specific type of product you happen to make, gosh that's an awful lot of money and I can't really absorb that long term without it destroying my financial situation. So what do I do? I think to tackle this problem we should split it into two parts. There are going to be those companies that wholesale products to Amazon. We'll call that the vendor central relationship and then there's all of the companies that are using seller central to sell those products themselves; two very different situations. Let's start with the … either one is really very easy but let's start with the vendor central situation. If you are a brand and you are bringing products in from China and you're turning around your wholesaling to Amazon … not surprisingly Amazon doesn't buy price increases and they don't really care about your profitability. That's your problem and so if you're now faced with an extra 10 to 25% COGS … 10 to 25% of higher COGS, absorbing that amount unless you're making insane margins most of us can't absorb that kind of money. And so the question then becomes A. can you get your manufacturer receipts absorbed? Some of that in cost reductions and we've definitely seen some situations where some of the overseas manufacturers are willing to make certain price concessions, especially if the North American sellers are buying the inventory in time to be able to avoid some of that initial tariff. So if you're prepared to load up on some of your inventories, if you load up on your inventory now then next year are the first lot of x-tiles and units your Chinese manufacturer may absorb some of that extra cost. Because the reality is the Chinese manufacturers they're also going to suffer through this. It's not just the American brands, it's Chinese manufacturers that also recognize that there isn't going to be as much demand unless they absorb some of this cost. Mark: Yeah and let me just make a point here real quick. I mean the goal of this and the Trump administration has been pretty clear, the goal of this is to get China to change some of their policies towards the US. And so they're literally trying to disincentivize business owners importing from China you know a lot of these 1P and 3P as you put it, the vendor central and the other people selling through Amazon to buy from other countries. And so they're going to make … through these tariffs they're just making business more expensive for everybody. And ideally, there is going to be this internal pressure from the Chinese manufacturers on their government to be able to change some of the policies of the US. That's kind of big picture. James: The problem is … and I speak anecdotal experience, I live close to the harbor in Seattle and I see all the used tanker ships come in and more than half of them come in from China. So if I think of all this product that comes in that we consume here in the United States is being manufactured overseas if more than half of that's being created in China the reality is our overall cost of buying stuff, whatever it is … plastic stuff, apparel, whatever … it's coming from China. And so unless some of these other countries can very very quickly not only ramp up production but more importantly identify themselves to companies here in the United States that otherwise buy from China, unless they can do that and find a way to say hey come and make your products over here instead of in China, the reality is this is going to take a while and some of this pain around higher costs is going to affect both the manufacturers in China, companies here in the United States, and of course consumers in the United States if in fact some of those costs overruns or pass through as higher resale prices. Mark: Right and just to be clear I'm not a geopolitical expert by any means but China has been pouring money in subsidizing their manufacturers for a really long time to be able to ramp up production levels that can provide basically manufacturing services to the entire world. That's why their economy has really been juiced up to where it is today. So for people to look elsewhere to other countries it's going to be darn near impossible for somebody to find prices that can be matched in other countries that may be seeing this as an opportunity. And even if a country does pop up for a particular industry it's going to take years for the capacity to be able to grow up to the level where we really need it to grow up to. James: Yes. Mark: So this is a problem. Let me ask you a question on this real quick and I want to get into specifically how Amazon is treating this as well. You started to get into it. I think it's going to be an interesting conversation but isn't this going to affect everybody the same way? And at the end of the day I mean it's the consumers that you would think are going to be left on in vague. If there's a 10% tariff on Blue Widgets, all the Blue Widget sellers have to pay that 10% tariff. James: Yes. Mark: So eventually their cost is up so they're going to have to raise the prices as well. Is this really going to impact the businesses themselves in that way since they could in theory pass that cost on? James: So there are a couple of things here, and different people go to market on Amazon with very different distribution approaches. So if you are buying product overseas, bringing it in into the United States and turning around and trying to wholesale it to Amazon through a vendor central account, Amazon has made it clear they do not accept price increases. This is your problem Mr. Brand; you need to figure out how to absorb this. So what I see happening is some brands will say gosh this is inconvenient right before Q4 our biggest time of the year. Some of these brands will say you know what, as much as we hate to do this we will suck it up and we will absorb this cost. And so many of these manufacturers will end up with much much smaller margins while Amazon continues to have the product at the same price that it had and some consumers won't see a price increase on those items. Unfortunately … and that's fine short term but long term these manufacturers are going to say unless I can find cheaper sources of manufacturing elsewhere I'm no longer going to carry these products or I'm no longer going to sell them to Amazon 1P or I'm actually no longer going to sell them anywhere on Amazon; that's one option. There is another type of distribution model that's very common on Amazon which is the product diverter, and I'm not passing judgment on the product diverter, the reality is there's a lot of product diverters on Amazon; companies that gray market source products. And so the opportunity for companies to go and proactively can parallel import and bring in products from let's say Europe that came in from China nut they're now coming in from Europe … I see an, potentially in some categories there will be a significant increase in parallel imports because somebody can buy that product in another country and to the extent, they're not necessarily answering all the questions correctly about where these products are manufactured there will be more opportunity and more incentive for companies to do parallel imports. Again so as to be able to bring products in at a cheaper price than what they would otherwise be paying if they bought directly from China. Mark: Is that illegal or do you literally have to be lying on your forms in order to be doing this parallel importing? James: Oh please deter, I'm not suggesting that anybody does this. I'm just saying I fully anticipate this is going to happen. Mark: Sure. James: And so if the other thing is if the tax … if you can ensure the tax has already been paid at least once there may be opportunity for you to capitalize on nonetheless being able to re-import it back in and be able to source it. Brands don't like product diversion and so knowing in there will be an issue there for brands long term having their products … basically, people capitalizing on retail arbitrage across borders and getting cheaper prices in one place so as to capitalize on that. What is more likely is if there is a price discrepancy in another country and you can buy the same item in Europe for 10% less than you can here in the US, some folks may decide to … depending on the math, it may decide to start buying stuff indirectly just because they can capitalize on price discrepancies in order to make things work. The logistics are more complicated but in the end, they still need to make some money and they're prepared to take on these extra logistic steps just so they can make some money. All of this is short term because in the long run if a brand wants to continue to wholesale on Amazon they have to make money. That's what … it's why we're all here. And so what I anticipate happening is some brands are going to stop supplying certain products and they're either going to go and find production in other countries or they're going to find completely different products that don't involve China at all. And so that will mean that some products that we as consumers rely on … and I think for example all the Q4 toys that get sold in this country, the vast majority of them are made overseas and a huge proportion of those are made in China. And so it will be interesting to see specifically in the toy category what happens because with Toys R Us going out of business this year, there's been a lot of discussions that some of the other brick and mortar retailers are going to be very aggressively going after Amazon. If Amazon for some reason in most of the toys that Amazon gets come from 1P, if those manufacturers for some reason say you know what we can't make any money selling you these products we're not going to sell it to you because you're not prepared to take a price increase, we may have a situation where Amazon actually runs out of stock on an awful lot of top selling toys. Which is bad, bad, bad for Amazon. So I think the toy category of all categories is the one that may push Amazon short term to accept the fact that it is going to have to absorb some higher costs in order to have inventory on absolutely critical selection in Q4. Mark: Interesting, so let's move over to the 3P and I have also some questions maybe about competition to Amazon which hopefully we can get to but let's move over to the 3P. What's the impact that you see and I know we're all crystal ball in here but what's the impact that you see for 3P sellers? And 3P for anyone that doesn't know this would be FBA merchant fulfilled, anybody that is not selling vendor central but still selling through [inaudible 00:18:43.2]. James: I'm going to separate 3P into two groups there's the resellers and there are the private label sellers. If I'm a private label seller and buying stuff from China I make the decisions myself on what pricing should look like. So if I have to raise my prices 10% to maintain my margins I can choose to absorb some of that for competitive purposes. But I always have the flexibility of saying I'm going to raise my prices. An important … a very tactical issue, let's say that you're selling your product for $25 today on Amazon and you added list price information into the Amazon catalog, you can't just raise your price from $25 to $30 to cover your extra price. You need to also increase your list price because otherwise, Amazon's going to flag you in selling products significantly above the list price and also press your Buy Box. So you've got to make both of those adjustments at once. As it relates to resellers the question becomes if you're buying from a distributor or a brand here in the United States that you're then turning around and reselling who's splitting the cost increases there? And that's going to differ widely on brand by brand. Some brands may already have a lot of inventory here in the US and they say well we're just going to ride this out and hope this tariffs disappear sometime in Q1 or Q2 in which case they're willing to … you know if they're using some kind of a lifo … I'm sorry a phyto model of inventory there may not be any price increases at all for wholesale pricing. And so the retailer can turn around and continue to sell the product at the same price. The problem is all you need is one competitor in the same space on Amazon the whole price is tight and not move prices up and if they've got lower prices and they're still doing the right thing with organic search and driving traffic they may end up with a higher proportion of total traffic on their products. Granted it's very low margined traffic but it is nonetheless higher traffic. And so the question is how long is any particular reseller prepared to take lower margins for the benefit of higher traffic which isn't necessarily high quality business. Mark: I mean in defense here we see this happen anyways where we have people come in and try to break into a market and will purposely go low margin just to be able to break into that market. But this is kind of who could hold off the longest with the higher prices. James: So there's been a very important development this week with Mr. Trump getting out of the postal shipping rate agreement with China. There was a significant subsidy that the United States was paying for overseas companies to ship products one order at a time into the United States. A lot of these individual orders today don't clear customs with any customs payments. And so if you got a 25% tax for example on those products, if they're brought in bulk but there's no tax on the individual orders, you don't also want to create a situation where there's that much more incentive for example for Chinese sellers to send products one at a time in the United States by removing some of these price subsidies on the shipping costs that will help to balance things a little bit. But you still have a situation where a Chinese seller can send an individual order into the United States and realistically most of those orders are going to get through without customs being applied on those on off envelopes and boxes. So in many ways, the tariff only creates more incentive for Chinese manufacturers to become sellers and to sell products one at a time in the United States. And so that continues to be a challenge. Mark: Let me ask you about a tactic that I've seen sellers employ here in trying to get ahead of potentially … I know there's threats of an additional tariff being imposed here coming January so possibly increasing the tariffs even more. And I've seen some sellers bulking up on inventory because of that; trying to get ahead of that. It has kind of a cascading effect though from what I understand if you're a 3P and especially using Amazon's fulfillment services. Does Amazon look closely at the amount of inventory that you're keeping with them and are there consequences for maybe having inventory sit on their shelves longer? James: No it was early this year Amazon evolved the way that they designed how much FBA capacity every seller has. And it has to do with the sell through rate of each individual skew that they choose to put into FBA. If you're selling a product that sells a thousand units a day, Amazon will let you put as much of that in as you want. If you're selling a product that sells one unit a month you can't load up five years of inventory. Amazon actually won't let you put that in the FBA all at once. And so as much as a seller wants to ramp up their level of interest they hold in FBA, Amazon will cap it based on their expected sell through rates. So if you happen to sell products that sell fast enough you're not going to be putting more than six months of product into FBA, great you may load up a little bit more. But if you start bringing in pallets and pallets more than you'll ever sell in the next six months, Amazon's going to put the kybosh on that. And you're going to have to figure out where to hold that inventory. So I think it's a system that basically corrects itself. I think it's worth a seller today if they're planning on doing this in the next four to five weeks they should create an FBA shipment right now to see if Amazon even allows them to put whatever level of incremental inventory into FBA. They may well say sorry we don't have that space because your expected sell through rate doesn't by any means justify the load of inventory. Mark: And I know a lot of sellers are using even a 3PL of sorts just to store Amazon inventory that they are eventually going to ship off to Amazon and that's … if you're not doing that and you store inventory for anywhere longer than a few months I think because of the storage rates you can get much better storage rates elsewhere but that's something to look at. James: So to that point if you do have to bring in an awful lot more inventory and hold the inventory so as to bypass the expected additional duties that come likely in January, one thing we may see is an increase in the number of sellers that decide to start using seller for full prime. And that's a mixed bag in terms of whether it's a good thing for sellers, in some situations they may be able to use the higher shipping costs that come with seller for full prime that may be adequately smaller to offset the expected cost of having to pay another 15% in a tax on imports. But you know we may see some … in certain categories we may see more sellers deciding to use seller for full prime in part because Amazon says you can't send that much stuff into FBA but you know we'll have to have to see what happens. My view is I don't see this tax staying in place indefinitely. I see this is a game of chicken between two countries. And quite frankly I think the United States has more to lose than the Chinese do because the Chinese low cost production capabilities in China will continue to be there even if those costs are a little bit higher now that there's tax added to it. And so reality is we Americans, we like cheap stuff and so if you go to the source of cheap stuff … and so I suspect at some point that there will be some counterbalancing that happens and it's a matter of how long can people hold on without going out of business. Mark: Yeah. Let's talk about the Buy Box a little bit. You touched on this earlier about things that you may want to watch out for if … when your changing prices on your site. What are some things people should keep in mind if they do decide to pass on some of those costs to the eventual customers at the end of the day? What are the things that they should watch out for so they don't lose their Buy Box percentages? James: Well the first one is you still … when you offer your product you want to make sure that it's at or below the list price. So if you're having to increase your price over whatever the current list price is today then you want to make sure that you can update the list price information. If you are a reseller of someone else's products and they haven't updated the list price then you're going to be in trouble because you can't sell that $30 item for $35 when the list price is 30. And if the manufacturer controls the list price or you as the reseller don't have brand registry ability to go in and update the list price you're going to be in a situation where you don't have the buy box because you've had to sell the product in a price above the list price. So start that conversation now if you don't have the ability to change the list price on a product you resell have that conversation now because you need to get that information updated. Otherwise, the brand is going to lose out to any other brand that has the ability to update their list prices. So even if the brand you're reselling doesn't want to do this you need to explain to them listen if you don't do this everybody that sells your product is going to be in a situation where they can't win the buy box which means the consideration of your brand or other brands is going to be significantly hampered. Mark: That's good advice. Let's move on to Amazon and their adjustments that they might be making on their side and also possible competitors. And I'm thinking Wal-Mart here who has been pretty aggressive in trying to eat in Amazon's market share. I don't know how successful they've been with their two day shipping on anything, no membership fees everything else. You've already described how Amazon is right now at least probably pretty unforgiving as far as price increases on them [inaudible 00:27:44.9] side. James: Yeah. Mark: Do you see any opportunity here for some of these competitors and even if it's not one competitor maybe that fragmentation of Home Depot taking care of their pit space and actually increasing their presence target doing the same, Wal-Mart doing the same, and have you seen any indication of this yet? James: Well what I have seen … I go back to the toy example, what I've seen is that both Target and Walmart are aggressively looking for ways that they can win in the toy space this Q4. And it only takes one or two of the big toy companies to tell Amazon 1P that they're not prepared to send any shipments unless there is some modification to the pricing. Unless that happens … oh, I'm sorry if that does happen then I think it could be a very painful Q4 for Amazon in a category that they actually absolutely need to win. But the problem with Amazon is they usually win anyways. The reality is if they can't get it directly from the distributor or the manufacturer they find a secondary source. They go and find a distributor that will unload a product at low margin, Or they will do parallel imports. So I think if these duties remain in to place for 12 months it's going to be next November or December that the pain is really felt by brands. Because right now a lot of them already have inventory, they already brought in to the United States. While they may have paid 10% extra duty it's not 25% duty but at the time you have long term 25% duty that absolutely is going to impact what their retail prices look like. So as bad as it may be coming out of this December if that tax remains in place for another 12 months that's when companies are going to have to say okay we're going to have to discontinue certain skews. We're going to have to launch new versions of the existing skews under different UPCs so that we can have new list prices on these items. I've seen situations already with some companies where they're already loading the 2019 version of an item with very slightly modified packaging but that's the product that's going to replenish the 2018 version that they're very soon going to run out of and have no plans on ever replenishing as long as the tax is in place; i.e 2019 version cost 25% more retail because everybody has to continue to make money doing this. Mark: Okay one of the things that we've been trying to educate people on especially in this e-commerce space there's a lot of people out there that want to find a couple of evergreen products that are just constantly bringing in cash. And then there's always the question of well how do you handle competition? When we brought it up time and time again now on this podcast where look good product based companies come out with new products on a regular basis and so that's actually … it's something I haven't heard before. That's a great way to be able to address this is come up with a 2019 version or a slightly different model version which your cost can absorb that new price and be able to work it out to the price that self. Last thing I want to talk about, let's assume that this does last for a while, you know a year or more. The intended effect is for US importers and retailers to move and look for other countries. So what are some of the countries maybe that people can start looking into. And I know it's going to vary industry by industry but what countries might be viable alternatives to China if people want to start looking at and look for manufacturers in different places that could possibly replace their current supply? James: I don't know how much I knew I can add to this. I mean a lot of the companies I know they look in Thailand and Vietnam today. Some of them look in Laos. I know the Southeast Asian countries, a lot of them have low cost production but they're not necessarily known for the sophistication of bringing together manufacturers the way, for example, Canton Fair does. And so I see an opportunity here for … let's say I'm the business development government organization in Thailand or Vietnam to the extent of they can put together a major event that will attract thousands of manufacturers and thousands of overseas buyers, I mean I see that as being rather significant. If you can spin up a Canton Fair like event or even a very small verison of that in one of these other Southeast Asian countries. Part of the challenge here is visibility. There already is an Alibaba that helps people find every Chinese manufacturer. Is there a similar concept in Vietnam and Thailand? To this point, it's nowhere near as visible and so it becomes something that basically has to be centrally organized either by large associations of manufacturers in country or potentially the government. And so if one of those countries is able to step up and do something like this and create visibility that will help. But let's be honest even if I said to you your product can be made in another country basically the same way starting today you're still looking at six months of testing and small minimum order quantities to verify and make sure that you have got the right payment structures in place. And so I would challenge everybody who's listening today if we're looking at a 12 month or a long term situation with this tax being in place you've got to start these conversations in January figuring out where is my alternative source going to come from. Because it's going to take time to work through and figure out am I really getting the same quality? Am I really getting the same delivery promises and so on from my overseas manufacturers that are now coming out of a different country? Mark: Yeah. So I've been an entrepreneur now for going on 20 years and the way … I would just like to close out here because some people might be hearing this and saying oh my gosh this is so incredibly scary. And what I want to say is this, these things happen. These things happen in business. The conditions change all the time and the people who end up capitalizing and doing really well are the ones who look at these problems as the opportunities that they are and figure out the way to make it work. There will be people who drop out. There will be people who do not pay enough attention to this and don't make the right moves. And so when we see these things rather than getting all scared and actually ironically enough this episode is probably going to air right around Halloween. I think we're going to publish it the day before Halloween and do our email newsletter advisory the day after … so you know a good timing for that. But to understand that there is definitely opportunity here. I think there's a couple of really good tactics. I think James you brought up just one simple one was just bringing up a new version of products that have and make them a 2019 version. That's a really simple type that we can have to see what's going to happen. And then also just have your ear to the ground as to where you can also find other products. So this has been really really enlightening. James, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people reach you if they have questions about this or honestly your work for consulting with Amazon sellers is unparalleled so if they have other questions even unrelated to this where can they reach you? James: I can be reached at info@buyboxexperts.com. All those emails go directly to me. And I appreciate your time today Mark. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on. Again James is one of the best in the business by far. Prosper Show check it out and then if you have questions feel free to reach out to me and I can do an intro or [inaudible 00:34:40.8] James. Thanks again for coming on. James: Thank you, Mark.   Links and Resources: Email James BuyBox Website Prospershow James's LinkedIn James's Book on Amazon

At ALPS we talk a lot about what makes us different. We can say with confidence that it is because we recognize our people as our greatest asset. If you've ever called ALPS over the  past 18 years then it's very likely that you've spoken with Nancy Hinckley. She is the front line, the first impression and the voice of ALPS. Her irreverent style and remarkable ability to connect personally with every person she speaks with is something that we treasure here in the office. On any given day she is speaking with lawyers looking for more information or firms dealing with claims and is able to masterfully help them and put their minds at ease. So in this podcast episode Mark sits down with Nancy to talk about how she found her voice by harnessing her sense of humor to connect and help the people that call ALPS every day. ALPS In Brief, The ALPS Risk Management Podcast, is hosted by ALPS Risk Manager, Mark Bassingthwaighte. Transcript: MARK: Hello, this is Mark Bassingthwaighte. I'm the risk manager with ALPS. And welcome to the latest episode of our podcast, ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. And I'm really excited about our guest today. For a number of years I've known Nancy Hinckley, and she is the receptionist here at ALPS, been here for quite some time. And I will tell you why we're going to have a conversation in just a few minutes. But, Nancy, before we jump into everything, can you just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? NANCY: Well, thank you, Mark, first of all for having me here. Thank you for inviting me. Well, I've actually been here 18 years. And I know some people they go into the business of receptionist with their foot in the door going to another position. Yeah. But, you know, I love the job. I love the people. It's fun. It's a fun job. And I feel that I turn it into something more. So that's why I'm still there. MARK: And I couldn't agree with you more. That's really why I wanted to visit with you today. To those of you that are listening in, some of you may be ALPS insureds, some of you not. But for those folks that are ALPS insureds, if you've ever called into the office for the last 18 years, I'm sure you have spoken with Nancy. And, really, Nancy is a very significant personality here at ALPS. In my mind, very much if you will, the voice of the company in so many ways. And I thought it would just be great fun to have people that have spoken with you over the year, and many more that will in future, just to get a chance to hear a little bit about you. I just find you're such a joy in terms of the company. Initially, Nancy, I like ... You've been here 18 years, and I actually agree in terms of acknowledging that receptionists positions at times people have one foot in the door and one foot out the door. But you've taken this to a different level. You really are somebody that all of us here at ALPS just view as a key personality that helps set the, I don't know, just the tone of the company. What is it that keeps you just energetic? NANCY: Keeps me energetic? MARK: Yeah. NANCY: God blesses us with talents. And mine ain't cooking. I say I was hired for my looks, evidently. So I figured that mine must have been laughter. I think of funny things to say. Things pop in my head. Things happen to me at home and all of a sudden I'm like wording it in a paragraph because I do those morning emails. Someone told me one time I should be a comedy writer. I thought that was a very lovely thing to say. I don't know, it just comes to me naturally. So I enjoy that. MARK: It makes such a difference here. I even share, I don't know if you notice ... for those listening I am very blessed to be able to telecommute now for all kinds of reasons. So I am still included in all these office emails that we all get. But my wife has come to enjoy your humor and I'll share those things with her in the morning. She just gets such a kick out of the crazy things that you come up with. NANCY: Well, like Johnny Carson, you kind of get like a lull, and then you have to come back. MARK: One of the other aspects, we've been talking a little bit about the public voice, but there is this internal voice as well. I guess, maybe can you share a little bit about why is humor important to you? NANCY: Well, I can give you a good example is that my mother is now living with us. Yay. Well, yay, it's a good thing. And people back in my home state of Georgia didn't even think she was going to make the plane trip. And she did. And I was like, "Why me God? What can I offer?" And, you know, I've been making her laugh. She's been doing a lot better. She looks really good. And I even confessed to her that I actually looked into clown school one time, like when I graduated high school. MARK: Seriously? NANCY: Yes, and I was a clown for a day. But my husband made me quit. He said he didn't want to introduce me, "Hey, this is my wife, the clown. Hey, clown, get over here." But humor does help with a lot of things. It helps, actually it helps with the phone calls. You know, I'm from Georgia. My husband's from Rhode Island. We met in the service. I have a niece that's an attorney, so I have actually talked to a lot of people. When they call in if someone's not available or if I can't help them at that moment, I kind of break the ice with that. "Hey, I'm from ...." A lot of callers from South Carolina, "Hey, I'm from Georgia." And all of a sudden we're best friends. And I had one person that knew my niece in Rhode Island. I had people that knew some friends back in Idaho. "Oh, I can give you their address." So you just start talking and that's how I break the ice with people. MARK: Do you get some calls at times where people are curmudgeon-y, for lack of a better word. What I'm hearing is this is a way to manage and calm people down perhaps. Do you use the tool in that way? NANCY: You know, I think in 18 years I probably had maybe three callers that weren't the nicest. The first one, she was very upset and I did try to give a little laugh in there. Not meaning to laugh, but just trying to like "Okay, you know, let me just ..." And she said, "I know you think it's funny but ..." We did get through that and I did get her to someone to help her, but it kind of didn't work at first. MARK: What I like about this in terms of my own role here at ALPS, I obviously do a lot of consulting and work on the preventative side. And what I love about you and the skill set that you bring, and I think so many of us can learn from, is the value of humor as a way to manage relationships. I think particularly in terms of law at times. When people are working with lawyers a lot of the time this isn't the happiest time in their life. You know, if it's litigation for bankruptcy, these kinds of things. I love how you use it as a way to really bridge a communication gap. I feel like, even when I come over I get a big warm hug, and these kinds of things. You create personal relationships. And I think the humor is one way to let people know, "I value getting to know you. I value ..." And you do it in a way that very casually shares information. So if you expose a little bit about yourself it says, "I'm investing in you." Again, the fact that this happens at both the professional level in terms of what you do with our insureds, but also in the personal level internally. And to me I think the word that I've been hunting for throughout this whole conversation is that you are a person that defines, or helps define, our corporate culture. So I encourage all of you out there listening to just ... In my mind Nancy is very much a role model in terms of how to just manage and create personal relationships. And how that can really make a significant difference. I assure you folks that Nancy has done some incredible things here for us internally. Nancy, are there any other things you'd like to share, some thoughts? NANCY: As you were speaking, and thank you very much for your compliments, you know you can't use humor all the time. MARK: Oh, right! NANCY: Especially when attorneys call in. They're upset or whatever. But if no one is available, there's been times, if they're with a meeting or with someone, whatever. I think it's also the tone that you use in your voice. I offer to take your name and number. Repeat everything. And I'll make sure that they get the message, reassure them. They appreciate that. You can tell that. It calms them down a little bit. They to me responded, "Well, I got this message to a person that I know will relay the message." So I feel confident about that. And it also helps with my personal relationships. I am a grandmother now. Yay. Two grandkids, 13 and 8. And I'm trying to teach them because I help with them quite a bit. I'm trying to teach them to not take life so seriously and just calm down and look at it other ways if a problem arises. So that they can just not be rushed into an answer. Not be angered by something, but "Let's think about this. This could have happened, but it didn't, this happened." Blah. Blah. Blah. MARK: Again, in terms of how you've impacted me over the years. One of my, for lack of a better word, takeaways is life is just too short to get all hot and bothered about certain things. It's just ... I take that even further and say at times, "You know I need to remember that my day, my week, or even how I view myself as a person, it's not defined by the circumstances that I am currently dealing with. They're defined by how I respond to them and who I am." It's about character. You know, you just ... You do that well. NANCY: Well, thank you. MARK: You do that well. NANCY: Thank you very much. MARK: Nancy, it's been a pleasure. And I really do appreciate your taking a little time to sit down and visit with myself and our listeners. To those of you out there listening to this podcast, I hope you enjoyed a little time to get to know Nancy. And if you ever call in, you might ask, "Who am I talking to?" Because we do have some part-time receptionists. It's not always Nancy. But if you have the honor and the privilege to speak with her, give her a warm hello and I guarantee you won't regret it. So that's it for our podcast today. If any of you have any ideas of topics you'd like to hear us discuss in the future, or have any speakers or companies you'd like us to try to visit with, please reach out and let me know. My email address is mbass@alpsnet.com. That's it. Thanks again, Nancy. NANCY: Thank you, Mark. MARK: You bet. Bye-bye.

We may have reached, “a fairly critical point where traditional photographic evidence just isn't as reliable as it used to be.” This according to our most recent podcast guest, Joe Kashi. In addition to being a trial attorney in Alaska, Joe has worked in automation technology and is himself a serious photographer. Recently Joe taught a two-part webinar series, “Using and Misusing Visual Evidence, Parts 1 and 2,” moderated by ALPS Risk Manager and podcast host, Mark Bassingthwaighte. In this interview Mark and Joe delve even deeper into how technology and the accessibility of photo editing software is changing how we view photographic evidence in the courtroom. ALPS In Brief, The ALPS Risk Management Podcast, is hosted by ALPS Risk Manager, Mark Bassingthwaighte. MARK: Hello. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the Risk Manager here at ALPS. Welcome to the latest episode of ALPS In Brief, a podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm delighted today to be able to introduce not only a guest, but a good friend, Joe Kashi, and Joe is a lawyer who practices in Soldotna, on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. Joe, as always, it's great to have an opportunity to visit with you again. Do you want to take a moment and just share an item of interest about yourself to our guests? JOE: Sure, just by way of brief bio. But usually, other people do it. Well, Mark, you and I have been friends for over 20 years, since we were doing technology presentations for the ABA Tech Show together. MARK: That's right. JOE: And quite a number of presentations after that. So, I think we know each other's handwriting pretty well. But for our listeners, I got my bachelor's and master's degrees at MIT, where I've been working with automation technology since the late 1960s with old hand punch card mainframes, and hopefully stayed reasonably current since that point, even though I'm practicing as a lawyer in a relatively rural part of Alaska. After Georgetown Law School, I worked in D.C. for a while. Actually, myself and two other guys were the first three people to work on a National Science Foundation project, tracking the rise of the, quote, “information society in America,” which actually was a term we coined back in the mid-1970s. I got rather tired of … I guess I'd have to say I'm an east coast refugee, because after that, I moved to Alaska, where I've been doing trial practice for the last 40 years, mostly in construction litigation, personal injury, and some real property litigation. MARK: I've always … Thank you for sharing that. Every time we have these conversations, I learn a bit more. I've always viewed you as a guy who has been sort of ahead of the rest of us. That is in part why I entered into a discussion with you last summer about putting on a webinar program for us, and you did it, although I was technically along for the ride. You did all the heavy lifting on this, and I'm referring to a two-part, three hour webinar series that you did. It's still up, by the way, and available for download, if any of you out there in the listening audience want to take a look at this at some point, but it was entitled, “Using and Misusing Visual Evidence.” My interest, as you recall, Joe, is just coming to the realization that so many of us, day to day, have these photo editing tools, and you come back from vacation, and you do all kinds of editing, and I started to think, “Wait a second. This is so easy to do.” I don't buy that clients and perhaps at times lawyers, not necessarily trying to do anything unethical or something, but that people aren't editing and doing things with evidence, in terms of photographic evidence. So, we kind of got started on this program. I'd like to kind of follow up on that program, and ask again the question, should lawyers be concerned about the ease with which anyone can edit digital photographs? And to follow up to that, why? JOE: Well, Mark, I'm going to throw in a little bit of extra background there. I've also been doing serious photography for about 50 years, ever since studying with Minor White back at MIT, and actually had a photo finishing lab for several years as a sideline. It's an unusual situation, because the digital era really is bringing three different areas into focus; trial practice, photography generally and conceptually, and then the more recent digital revolution, which very much allows you to make the sorts of work you never could do with a traditional chemical film and paper kind of film photography aspect before. So, really, what we've reached is … I would say rather suddenly, is a fairly critical point where traditional photographic evidence just isn't as reliable as it used to be. In fact, I can say that it's becoming significantly less reliable. The concerns we run into, I think they're fairly common. I've had cases … And it's not so much the lawyers that are the problem as the people who've consulted with me about these situations, and there have been several, even in our small town of Alaska that have come to my attention, has to do more with clients or complainants who are bringing … show excessively enhanced photographs to the attention of the lawyers, and then attempting to use those as evidence. Every photograph is enhanced to some extent, otherwise it's essentially unusable. You make traditional correction. You correct the exposure, correct the contrast. MARK: Right. JOE: That sort of thing. Not a problem. The sorts of corrections that you can make in a dark room were generally within reasonable, although even then, there's a lot of case law about what is or not acceptable. More recently, and especially the last two or three years, with the rise of artificial intelligence neuro-networking built into various photographic “enhancement” programs, we've reached sort of a watershed, where there's essentially no film photography being done anymore, except by people doing it are the fine arts standpoint. That's usually large format, four by five sorts of cameras and larger. For the average day to day use, digital photography's great, but the problem is ensuring that what you're using is appropriate, and therefore not being misused. It's important, I think, to note that using photography to document stuff or to explain, is a tremendous benefit. It's the sort of thing which helps trial lawyers really go and help make their story really, really comprehensible very quickly, because we're primarily visual rather than linear. You can get a lot more and be a lot more persuasive with a single picture than with the proverbial 1,000 words. We're taught in law school, “Paint a picture with words.” I suggest you show the picture instead. It's going to be a lot more reliable. But people, I think, are becoming more and more aware of the ease with which matters can be manipulated, and I would caution, it's not just still photographs. There's new technology that I've seen demonstrated by Adobe and others that allow you to go and totally erase people, totally, from a video. It's not just digital stills anymore. It is digital video as well becoming very quickly susceptible to the same level of manipulation. MARK: That's what I find absolutely frightening in some ways. JOE: Me too. MARK: It just makes my head hurt at times. When I think about the pace it changed, Joe, and in terms of hardware and software, it just … The stuff is crazy fast. I was sharing … I recently read an article about a startup that built a smartphone with 16 cameras onboard, and I'm sitting here, “Why in the world would I need 16 cameras on a smartphone?” But, you know, again … JOE: Well, that brings up a good point, Mark. I was going to mention that. MARK: Yes. JOE: I was thinking as you're talking, there's something called computational photography, which is now coming to the fore. Computational photography can take a lot of inputs and, by applying intensive computation, really clean them up a great deal. On the webinar that we have posted, there's some examples of those sorts of computational photography that go way beyond just going and using traditional digital tools in something like Lightroom to go and enhance, say, pull out a face in a video. Now, there's a certain amount of enhancement that state supreme courts around the country have found to be acceptable. But what's become … on videos and stills both, but there are also levels where it goes not just beyond excessive enhancement, but it can start rising to the level of a fraud in the court and a clear ethical issue. It's kind of a fine line there between what's appropriate, what isn't appropriate, so obviously based upon circumstances. But the common thread has been generally to use a standard program, which produces replicatable results, and provides an audit trail. More than anyway, we're getting back to the traditional evidence rules 102, 103, 104, where the weight is becoming critical. The weight appropriately has to be decided by the trier of fact, and whether it's even admissible at all. Obviously by the trial judge. But when you get back to those issues, what the courts are starting to say is, “We want you to use a program that doesn't allow you to paste a gun from one person's hand into the picture of a totally innocent person, or paste one face on another.” I would argue that that's critical. So, I tend to recommend a program that has a non-destructive editor, such as Adobe Lightroom, where what you have is a database of changes that you've made, and you can step backward or forward. Unlike a program like Photoshop, where once you've gone and done the image, let's say you've composited two layers; put the gun into somebody else's hand. Once you've gone and done that, you save the file, there's no going back. All the other changes are lost. Everything is essentially lost in terms of prior data, being able to backtrack to where you started. So, what you have then is a need for looking very carefully at the metadata. All the information about the photograph, what was done about it, and to a certain extent, that is embedded in the files. If the metadata seems incomplete or missing, then obviously that's a case by case basis. They should be very suspicious about the photograph, because it's obviously been enhanced. Metadata … Every JPEG file, which is kind of the standard interchangeable format, every JPEG file by international definition, the very definition of a JPEG required that certain data be embedded in it that have a lot to do with showing the circumstances that it was taken, how the camera was adjusted. For example, perspective, which is critical in a lot of accident injury cases. Those sorts of things are critical. They're in the metadata. If the metadata's not there, then you're likely to go and be very … or should be very suspicious about the photograph itself. If the metadata is there, you could go and then start looking at it from the standpoint of traditional case law about what photographs are appropriately admissible or not. And then it goes to the weight of the evidence at that point. Generally speaking, I recommend that people use a non-destructive editor, like Adobe Lightroom. Not a destructive editor that bakes the changes in forever, like Adobe Photoshop or similar layered programs, that they use what's called the raw file. Raw files are all the data that the sensor ever captured. They're saved as a raw file. If you set it up as such, JPEG and raw files are two different formats. JPEG, once a change is made or once it's taken by the camera, all the data is baked in. You can't change it. You can't recover all the stuff that's been lost through JPEG compression. Raw gives you the ability to go with a program like Lightroom and stipulate from the original data all the way through to whatever your final result is that you want to show to the trier of fact, and then prove to the trier of fact what steps you've taken. So you could show … you could go step by step, repeating along the way. That's the feature of Lightroom. You can step by step along the way, and show to the trier of fact how you got to the result you're offering as an exhibit. That's often been very critical as an admissibility factor for both stills and videos in the state supreme court decisions I read. MARK: What- JOE: Anyway, metadata … Raw format if you can. Metadata, try to avoid formats that bake the changes in forever and lose everything. MARK: That makes sense to me, but I often … in terms of what lawyers should be doing, but … as they handle and use digital evidence, visual evidence. But I'm a risk guy, and I also … A big part of my job is looking at, where the problems kind of come up? I guess one of the things I get concerned about is just clients, whether it's an adverse party or our own client. They have ready access to these programs that, to use your phrase, that are destructive kinds of things, and can insert the gun into a hand of somebody that … Those kinds of things. JOE: And then try to erase the evidence. MARK: Right, right. Do you think … Am I … I tend to get paranoid at times about all kinds of things, but is that a realistic concern? JOE: Yes. MARK: Do lawyers need to be aware? JOE: I've seen several cases like that come up in the last few years, even in our small area of 45, 50,000 people. MARK: Yeah. That's just … JOE: I'm aware of at least three. MARK: Do you think in terms of our profession as a whole, do you think lawyers generally get that? JOE: No. MARK: Yeah. JOE: Very few lawyers get it. Unfortunately, they may end up getting it in the end. If that occurs, you've seen cases where people were newly convicted, upstanding business people, for example. Somebody had a grudge against him, and they didn't exactly contract stuff, but let's just say that erasing the metadata prevented people from going in and analyzing that in fact, something wasn't exactly what they purported to be, but was closer or farther or whatever if you fall. But I'm saying, their perspective analysis is critical at that point. MARK: So, if you were to … Let's pretend for a moment I'm just a young lawyer, kind of trying to get into the litigation game, and you become something of a mentor to me. What would you choose to share? I guess I'm trying to get at, what are the risks that I'm facing if I stay naïve? What do I need to just think about, generally speaking, in terms of trying to become competent in all of this? Just some closing remarks, I guess. JOE: Okay. Well, becoming competent in terms of the visual evidence, and I'm referring about stills and video at this point. MARK: Yes. JOE: Fundamentally, I think what you need to do is at least stay on top of the sorts of changes that are occurring, if nothing else. People tend to be using more and more smartphones, for example, as a primary photographic tool, which I, since I come from a construction litigation background, where it's often critical, as we showed in the webinar, by the way, construction litigation and personal injury, it's awfully critically to be able to go and later zoom in and find tiny, but very important details. If you don't have the kind of resolution, exposure range, and other factors, that are typically lacking in cell phones, then you're not going to have that data. My general concern with cell phones is that … or I should say smartphones, is that the photographs from those tend to be on average really not as good as they should be, at a minimum, for forensic purposes in court, especially when you need to make a print that's bigger than, say, eight by ten for the jury, the view of the jury room, et cetera. We still need to have prints, if you will, for evidence. The fact that a cell phone looks good on a computer screen isn't sufficient. That's actually a very well-resolution medium. It looks good, but not for serious forensic use. So, first thing I think is to start learning how to use, or at least have … learning how to use a higher quality resolution camera. Micro four thirds, APSC full frame digital are good numbers. Any of those will work well. And probably at least become aware of the sorts of things that can be done with programs like Lightroom or Photoshop. You can't be your own expert. You can't be your own witness, of course. MARK: Right. JOE: But at least you could start issue spotting. And issue spotting is, what's happening with the metadata? What sorts of new computational approaches may render this less positive and start doing serious discovery about the nature of the … basically about the nature of whatever evidence is in front of you. MARK: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. How I tend to view this is, we all now, I think in today's world, really understand and appreciate … Just because it's on the internet, doesn't make it true. And I [crosstalk 00:19:17] JOE: That's certainly really … No, that statement is true. MARK: Did I get it backwards? I'd say … JOE: No, it's okay, I agree with you. MARK: Yeah, yeah. But sort of paralleling that into digital photography, just because we have a digital file, whether it's a photograph or a video, doesn't mean that the information presented in the video or on the photo is an accurate capturing of the event. JOE: Well, a least not after it's been post-processed, and potentially not when it was captured, either. MARK: Right. Right. JOE: What I would suggest overall, Mark, is knowing the traditional evidentiary rules, being able to go and document what was done to the trier of fact. Always having an unaltered copy of the original photograph from the very beginning with everything in it. All the metadata, all the data, anything else. It's going to be critical. You preserve the original photograph exactly unchanged, be able to show it to the trier of fact what has been done to go with the … to basically make your final exhibit, that it's within the bounds of conventionally acceptable enhancement. Recognizing that you have to prove weight of the evidence to the trier of fact will go a really long way. I don't see a … Given the vast changes in the technology of what can be done post-processing, I'm not sure that we can come up with a good, hard and fast technical rule that's any more effective than the traditional rules of evidence, assuming that people get the metadata and analyze it with an appropriate expert, and assuming that people go and … trial lawyers understand basic photographic notions as they would affect what's seen. And it's always worth remembering that the camera will see things differently than the human eye. At best, there's an approximation. MARK: Yes. JOE: It's not one to one exact. MARK: Right, right. Listen, Joe, I really appreciate your taking time to share your insights on what I consider just a very, very important topic. To those of you listening in, I will share; if you would like to learn a bit more, the webinar that Joe put on for us last fall is still available for viewing and download, so on demand webinar on our website, ALPSnet.com. Beyond that, I guess I'd say, hey, I appreciate all of you listening, and have a good one. We'll see you next time on ALPS In Brief. JOE: Thanks, Mark. So long. Joseph L. Kashi practices law in Soldotna, Alaska.  He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973 and his law degree from Georgetown University in 1976.  He is admitted to practice before the Alaska Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States District Court for the District of Alaska.  Since 1990, he has frequently written and presented about a wide range of legal technology topics for the American Bar Association and many state bars.  Case studies of his law office's use of legal technology has been featured on Lexis-Nexis and Adobe web sites. Link to the on-demand CLE seminars taught by Joe last fall here: Using and Misusing Visual Evidence, Part 1 Using and Misusing Visual Evidence, Part 2

Being busy is often an excuse for not taking care of ourselves, whether that means long days in the office or racking up the airline miles for business travel. As part of our Wellness Podcast Episodes, Mark sits down with Dr. Kathleen Baskett whose area of expertise is bariatric medicine focusing primarily on weight management. They discuss how to make the time to eat well and exercise and why healthy choices can positively affect your professional life. ALPS In Brief, The ALPS Risk Management Podcast, is hosted by ALPS Risk Manager, Mark Bassingthwaighte. Transcript MARK: Hello. This is Mark Bassingthwaighte. I'm the risk manager here at ALPS. Welcome to another episode of ALPS In Brief. We're coming to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm delighted to be able to introduce another guest this afternoon, a Dr. Kathleen Baskett. She's a physician with St. Vincent's Healthcare here in Billings, Montana and runs the weight management clinic. I wanted to take some time to talk with Dr. Baskett today in follow-up, or to continue on with the discussion we've been having on the podcast, which is a very, very hot topic among Bar Associations and within the profession now. It's just attorney well-being. Dr. Baskett, before we get into some more interesting discussion, can you just take a few moments and tell the audience a little bit about yourself DR. BASKETT: For sure. Thank you for having me. It is an honor to be here. I've been practicing medicine for about 30 years. My area of expertise at this point is bariatric medicine, which essentially is weight management, and it is treating people dealing with obesity. Right now in our country, obesity is the first leading cause of preventable death. In my clinic, I'm working with people who want to lose weight in a nonsurgical manner, but also helping to care for people who are preparing for bariatric surgery, and subsequently caring for them after they've had that surgery. MARK: As you're well aware in terms of… we'd had some time to dock and visit a little bit. You do know that I travel. I can share lawyers, whether some lawyers have quite a bit of time on the road and others just have very full days, long days. I mean, they may come home or not come home for supper, but they're back to the office and spend time in the evening and whatnot and just maintaining even just healthy eating, healthy eating habits I think can be a challenge. I'd love to hear your comments on the importance of a healthy diet, and then maybe following up on that, thoughts that you might have in terms of how the busy professional, whether on the road or just spending lots and lots, too much time in the office, how we might to address that so that we can help maintain just a healthy lifestyle as it relates to food. DR. BASKETT: For sure. In medicine today as to many of the issues that we deal with are more chronic diseases versus infectious diseases of years' past, and the chronic diseases are really linked to the lifestyle choices that people make, obesity being the underlying cause of many to include diabetes type II, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, sleep apnea, even certain types of cancers. Again, the choices that we make with our eating and activity are crucial, and it's very difficult when people are busy, they're working many long hours, when travel is involved because, as we know, there's an abundance of fast and convenient type food that surround us, and it is difficult to eat in a healthier manner when we're out on the road, or even just if you want to eat something quickly. But there is a way to eat in a healthy manner. It can be done. MARK:                                  Well, practical tips. I know one of the things that I've learned over the years is I've learned about protein bars, and I've done a little reading and research on my own, and in conjunction with my own physician, we've started to move away from the high-carb diet. I used to be a guy, I mean, I would love to drop into Starbucks, get my chocolate glaze donuts and a big latte, and just, I'm back in the car, but you don't feel well with that. Now, learning to switch over to ... For instance, one of the things I enjoy are just these protein bars that you can get from Costco. I will tend to do that. Hope on an airplane, I might have a protein bar. If I have a little time in an airport, I might stop and get some eggs or something like that, but I'm just trying to find ways to adjust, think differently, I guess. Do you find that to be a challenge? Do you ... DR. BASKETT: Well, it is a challenge, but you can make these healthier choices. I think some of the restaurants that surround us or that we encounter are beginning to be cognizant of that and offer some healthier choices, and definitely, packing protein bars, protein drinks, healthy nuts, grabbing a yogurt instead of a soda, it's a healthy alternative, and people truly feel better. All of these simple carbohydrates, when after we eat them, they tend to shoot our blood sugars up quite rapidly, whether we have diabetes or not, and then those blood sugars quickly plummet, and then they begin zig-zagging throughout the day, and that really just triggers that hunger and cravings for more carbohydrates, it sets in more fatigue, and then in time, it's a way of just eating poorly and not making healthy choices. MARK: One of the things that I became interested in just, you read now, and again, I'm curious as to, is this something you hear in the media, is there a truth to this, but lots of people, "I know. I'm traveling a lot, and I shouldn't be drinking all these cokes. It's just a lot of sugar and things, so I'll make this switch, and I'll jump into these zero-calorie beverages," but at times I've heard that may not be the best decision. Are those drinks an appropriate alternative? If I'm going to give up Mountain Dew, can I do the zero-calorie, caffeine- DR. BASKETT: Do the diet Mountain Dew. MARK: Diet Mountain Dew. Is that- DR. BASKETT: Well, there has been some research that shows that some of the artificial sweeteners aren't as healthy for us as we'd like to think that they are. Some studies have shown that they will interfere with blood sugar and insulin regulation in the GI tract. Also, some studies have shown that the artificial sweeteners will send messages to the brain to make us want to crave and desire more sweet, more carbohydrate. I really suggest to my patients that water is that best alternative, the fine quality H2O. You can get carbonated water that's flavored because people do like carbonated beverages. You can put slices of lime and orange and cucumber in water. An occasional zero-calorie is great, but it shouldn't be a preponderance of one's beverage intake during the day. MARK: Do you think, again, looking at the busy schedules and travel schedules and these kinds of ... How much do you think that planning plays into this? Is that a way to shift gears a little bit since ... What are your thoughts about that? DR. BASKETT: Oh, very much so, I mean, just as professionals need to plan their schedules, calendars, and timing. Planning goes a long way in helping us to eat in a healthy manner and exercise. If you know you're going to be gone for a week just as you're packing your clothes, gathering the information you will need for your travels, you really can sketch out a little bit what might you do for breakfast or lunch because you know where you will be, and can you throw a box of protein bars, prepackaged nuts into your suitcase, that's something that's pretty easy to do. Likewise, when we're home, meal prepping on weekends, cooking a little bit of extra and freezing makes it easy to have a pretty simple but yet healthy meal during the week. MARK: How about, how does exercise play into all of this in terms of, again, thinking about just healthy eating, healthy diets, overall health and the obesity component. It's ... DR. BASKETT: Again, I think exercise is the key. As I tell my patients, if they really want to lose weight, if they want to keep them off, exercise isn't a luxury. It really becomes a necessity. Sometimes, they encourage them to think about, if they had cancer, would they make the time to have chemo? Everybody typically says of course they would, so if you want to lose weight and become healthier, why not choose to make the time to exercise and to eat well? Several of my patients have told me they actually put on their calendar "time to exercise," but they'll put it under the guise of Wellness Committee, so for anybody else seeing their calendar, they have an appointment at 2:00 in the afternoon. They're on a Wellness Committee, and it might mean that they're leaving the office to go for a 20-minute walk, but it easily ... Well, not easily. It does take work, and it's hard, but it can be planned in. We can make an appointment to exercise just as we make appointments to do many other things. It becomes a commitment to ourselves. MARK: One of the things that I have found and was kind of fun, I don't need this tool anymore, but it kind of started just a change. I got into one of these little Fitbit things. You set these goals, you can track yourself on the Internet, and the further you walk, well, you've walked across New Zealand. They give you all of these things, but I found myself trying to get steps, and even if you have a little time between planes at the airport. Instead of going into one of the Sky Clubs or Frequent Flyer Clubs or sitting down and having a bite, you just walk around a little bit and see what kind of steps you can get in. I really like your comment. I want to underscore this in terms of, I think people tend to look at dieting, exercise, these kinds of things as maybe quick solutions and things, but they have trouble committing to it because we don't seem to view ... Well, getting overweight or getting out of shape, at least right up front, it's not like you're facing a diagnosis of cancer, but you're spot on. I mean, when you look at the long-term health consequences in terms of overall well-being, but then you look at diabetes and these kinds of things, if you have diabetes or you have cancer, you are going to seek treatment and deal with it. It seems to me, I like that perspective as a way to encourage myself. I just think that's a great, great approach. The one other thing I'd like to visit on a little bit, how ... I just use the word diet as an example, and people will go in, and first of the new year, they make these resolutions. But diet really isn't the appropriate way to look at this. I mean, do you have thoughts about the term diet. To me, I've come to learn, I think that becomes a problem. It isn't about diet. Am I correct? DR. BASKETT: Well, I would agree, and I usually don't use the word diet when I'm working with my patients. We talk about eating plan. Many of my patients will reference diet, and I tend to guide them with the different choices of words because the diet is something that people go off of. My goal when working with patients is to help them truly make lifestyle change. It's lifestyle change and making changes and habits that will help someone stay at his or her new weight. It's interesting, the Greek word for diet is diaita, and what that truly means is manner of living. For me, that's what this is all about. MARK: I love that. I love that. We're just about out of time here. I guess I'll give you a moment if you have any final comment or thought to share in terms of people that are just ... Again, busy, busy days, wanting to make the change, thinking about it might be a good thing to do and all that, but it's just getting started. Do you have any final closing thoughts of encouragement or an idea of how to make this kind of a change? DR. BASKETT: Well, what I would say is it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Some people often think, "Gosh, if I don't go to the gym and workout for 60 minutes, why bother," or, "If I don't eat salads three times a day and healthy protein, and then I had a bowl of ice cream, then I have blown my, quote, 'diet.' I'll just forget about it." You just have to start somewhere. Maybe it's a matter of truly taking a five-minute walk when you have that little break in between appointments with clients or you have 10 minutes during your lunch, and it's a beautiful day outside, and you can walk around the block. You had a bad day, and maybe you overate or you had too many sweets. The answer to that would be so? So what could you do differently the next day? It doesn't mean that you give up. You just have to start somewhere, and you build on one habit at a time, little by little. Interestingly, research shows that people don't need to lose all of their excess body weight to improve health. Research shows that if people can lose 5-10% of their initial body weight, they can markedly reduce their health risks. It can be overwhelming for somebody who weighs 300 pounds and that may be ideally should weigh 150 thinking, "Where do I begin?" but if that person could lose 15-30, that's a marked difference and a marked improvement in health. MARK: Yeah. Interesting. I like the old saying, every successful journey starts with that very first step- DR. BASKETT: It's a great saying. It's a great saying. MARK: It's just ... I like keeping the focus on where we're at getting started as opposed to, "I have to do it all right now.” Well, listen, Dr. Baskett, it's indeed been a pleasure. I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down and share a few thoughts with our audience. To those listening, I hope you found something of value in today's discussion, and please feel free to reach out any time if any of you have any thoughts in terms of topics of other folks that you'd like to see if we can have join us on the podcast. Thanks for listening. Oh, and my email address, if you'd like the reach out mbass@alpsnet.com. That's again, mbass@alpsnet.com. Thanks much. Bye-bye. Dr. Kathleen Baskett For Dr. Baskett, medicine is not a job; it's a calling. A firm believer in patient-centered care, she works daily to help each patient reach his or her optimal health and quality of life. She takes the time to get to know each patient, sharing in their joys and sorrows, celebrations and setbacks as they navigate their weight loss journey. Dr. Baskett is board-certified in bariatric medicine. She attended the University of Maryland School of Maryland and completed an internship within the University of Maryland Medical System. When not treating patients, she enjoys exercising, practicing yoga, being outdoors and traveling. She also loves to spend time with her family.

  Mark S A Smith is the author of 13 popular books and sales guides and has authored more than 400 magazine articles. He is a genuine Guerrilla Marketing guru, co-authoring three books with Jay Conrad Levinson, and is a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach.   A renaissance man with many talents, Mark is passionate about leadership, team building, teamwork, sales, and marketing. For over twenty years Mark has served as a strategic advisor to corporate leaders and executives all over the world who must develop the best way to bring in the right strategies for successful growth and sustainability.   What makes him different is he brings a holistic view of the business instead of solely focusing on one aspect and ignoring the impact of decisions on the rest of the organization   How to Get the Most Out of 2018 Tapping into the top five trends to grow your nonprofit: Omnichannel – allow members to consume you anywhere and every way How the growing economy creates monetary opportunities The impact of higher unemployment on your volunteer force and how to pivot to get all you need New leadership demands: what's changing and how to stay out front Turning unrest into peace: how to divorce your organization from the media's promotion of outrage Interview Transcript   Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis on this version of The Nonprofit Exchange. A dear friend who I see too rarely, we have been talking virtually but now we are together. I said, Why don't we talk about some things that are on your radar?” Mark S. A. Smith, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Mark S. A. Smith: Such a delight to be here. Thank you, Hugh. Hello, Russell. Hello, friends on Facebook. Welcome. We have a lot of interesting things to talk about because 2018 is going to be an astounding year. You might be listening to this in 2020 or 2024. But you know something? What we are talking about today will probably still be issues even in the next five to ten years. Or opportunities, as the case may be. Hugh: We record messages that are timeless. But you're right. We are turning the page into 2018 as we are recording this. If you are a regular listener, you know you can go to thenonprofitexchange.org and see the video versions of these. But you can go to iTunes and download the audio there. Mark, you are in a series of really powerful interviews we have done over three years. We are starting our fourth year of these great interviews. What we endeavor to do more often than not is find people that have business expertise. Let's install that particular business expertise into the charity. It might be a church, a synagogue, a membership organization, or a community foundation, but it's some sort of philanthropic work that we're doing. Before we get into the subject matter, which I'm going to hold off in giving people a title, tell people a little bit about Mark Smith and why you are able to talk about this topic today. Mark: I help people sell complex, expensive, high-consideration things as fast as humanly possible. I am an electrical engineer; therefore, I am a systems thinker. I have recovered. I don't sell or do engineering very much, but I do help people sell complex things. That is where you have multiple people involved in making the decision. Each person has a different view of what creates value and what we need to do. Sounds an awful lot like this nation, doesn't it? Hugh: Yeah. Mark: How do you round up consensus? How do you have people go the same way? Just like when you're working with nonprofits, herding cats is what we have to do. It's the same thing when you have to sell expensive technology. What I'm doing here is applying all the things I have learned about selling very expensive things to the world of nonprofits. It's absolutely identical. I, too, do work with a nonprofit. I am on a board here in Las Vegas where I live. I've been involved in nonprofits throughout my life. I understand, and I am delighted to share with you my business acumen. What I like to tell people is a nonprofit is not a business plan; it's a tax status. Hugh: That's not a philosophy, no. You're very active on social media, especially Twitter. You put out little short memes with a few words on it. I gotta tell you, they are very thought-provoking. They help me focus on what's important. Mark: I am honored that that happens. Thank you. Hugh: There has been this coincidence of you tweeting on the things we are actually talking about. Sometimes simultaneously. I find that to be fascinating. Mark: The issues are the same. Whether it's nonprofits or the for-profit world, the issues we face are frankly identical. Hugh: I laugh when business leaders say, “That might work in the church.” Mark: Or the other side is that the religious leaders say, “That might work in business, but it won't work in the church.” Hugh: If it's true anywhere, it's true everywhere. Mark: We're humans working with humans. Hugh: I think we've stalled long enough in telling people what the topic is. What is the topic? Russell wants to know. Mark: All right, Russell. You're ready? Today's topic is how to get the most out of this year, which happens to be 2018. We are going to talk about five trends that are going on that you need to know about as the leader of your nonprofit to stay ahead of the game, to grow, and to prosper heading forward. Some of the things we are going to talk about are technology, and some of the things we are going to talk about are psychology. Hugh: Say that last sentence again. That caught me off guard. Mark: Don't you know I do that to you? And you do the same to me when you're speaking. Some of the things we are going to talk about are technology, understanding the technology that nonprofits have to be embracing and keeping track of and staying up with. Some of it happens to be psychology, what is happening in the general zeitgeist of the world and how they impact nonprofits. Whether you think they do or not, they do. Your constituents, your members, your flock all are impacted by what they see in the news and what they experience with retail and what happens in the business world. They carry those attitudes and insights into your organization, whether you want them to or not. We have to manage that. We have to deal with it. We have to capitalize whenever possible or perhaps even neutralize it in some cases. That is what I mean by psychology. Hugh: Absolutely. I think we're guilty in any discipline. I know in the church, I have had people say to somebody, “You're so heavily minded you're no earthly good.” We all live in the reality of today. I can say that I served the church for 40 years and probably got to that space myself. I put in very carefully numbered bullet points. I noticed that I numbered them wrong. Our first one is, Omnichannel. Speak about that. Tell us what that means. Mark: Listener, have you ever had the situation where you were multi-tasking, perhaps watching television and checking your telephone for messages or tweets, or maybe even reading the news story you are watching on TV simultaneously to see what if you were seeing on TV made sense to other news channels? That's omnichannels, my friend. The reality is we are multi-screening. You are getting information from multiple locations at all times in all ways. What this means to nonprofits is you have to be able to bring your message, bring your service to your constituents in every way that they consume information. Just by a show of hands, who here has for your organization—I see ten fingers there, well, eight fingers and two thumbs. Sometimes I am just all thumbs. Do you have an app? Do you have the opportunity of having your constituents consume your services, your podcasts, your sermons via a dedicated app that would alert them when something new becomes available? Are you using the technology to your benefit? Now if you're doing that, fantastic. Just stay with it. You have to understand we live in an omnichannel world. We are consuming many things in many different ways. Mobile apps, partner locations, maybe figuring out other locations for people to access your services. Where do your constituents go that you can have a kiosk or a corner or something like that where people can plug in, enjoy, take advantage of, be reminded of, contribute to, consume whatever it is you are bringing to the marketplace? Since I don't know what your nonprofit is, we are spraying and hoping you will catch a couple of ideas here. The concept here is you need to be everywhere that your people are every time you possibly can be. The reality is if you are a church, people are carrying around a sermon in a box in their mobile device. Chunk things up into five-minute pieces to give them a chance to remind, refresh, and renew. If you are supplying educational elements, keep pushing out opportunities for people to learn and to refresh. If you're supplying the opportunity for people to volunteer, if they are standing in line or waiting at a traffic light and they can pull out their mobile device and contribute something in some sort of thought-provoking way, let them do so. That is what we mean by omnichannel. Take advantage of that any way you possibly can. Hugh: You said something about five-minute segments. Remind, refresh, and renew. Talk more about that. Mark: What I am finding is short segments of content that provoke people. Just like when you read something from me on Twitter, you're telling me that I am inspiring you, I am provoking some thoughts, I am causing you to think about new things, maybe connect some new dots. The bulk of those tweets are 140 characters. There are some that run a little bit longer thanks to Twitter's new length limits, but it's a very short little boom. It's a little thought bomb that goes off in your brain. As a nonprofit, most of us are in business to inspire, to have people live a better life, to improve their condition, to stay on target, to stay on task, to stay on the straight and narrow. That requires constant reminders. Another thing to keep in mind is if you are a church or an organization where people come to see you once a week or once a month, it's not enough. They are bombarded by all these other messages and all these other counter-messages that they may not wish to consume. Our job is to remind them there is another way of thinking. There is another opportunity. There is better potential for them that they have already volunteered to be a part of. If we can chunk our messages from a text standpoint, an audio standpoint, or a short video standpoint to refresh, renew, and remind themselves there is a reason why those of us who have a spiritual practice, it's a daily practice if not hourly. Hugh: Yes. Oh yes. That is so important. I think the biggest flaw I see in organizations is when people say, “They should know better because we told them that,” but they told them that in 1903, and you have repeated it since then. Mark: Here's the problem, friends. You may have told them that, but the other side has told them their viewpoint a thousand times since the last time you said it. Hugh: Omnichannel. When I first saw that, I thought it was a piece of software. Mark: It's a concept. Hugh: Russell is taking good notes. Do you want to weigh in on this omnichannel touchpoint? Mark, what you're doing is top of mind marketing, isn't it? Mark: Yes. Let's just keep reminding them what they have asked us to remind them of. Hugh: Russell? He's been very polite. Mark: He's been quiet. He's been smiling. He is giving me thumbs up. He is also muted. Russell Dennis: Not anymore. We can quickly fix that. Greetings and salutations, Mark. Good to see you again. It's been a while. I was just typing that when you're out there in multiple places, where your people are, and that's the important thing to figure out is where your people are and getting out there and getting in front of them. We are in a short attention span society. If you're not out there online, you're left behind. It's not a fad. It's not a trend. It's here to stay. Hugh: I think it's also in person. Where do your people hang out? I am hearing omnichannel as virtual as well as live. Mark: Absolutely. Physical, too. It has to do with digital signage for example. Digital signage is omnichannel. Most of us have digital signage in our houses of worship. As I pointed out, as we talked about, where are they? Let's see if we can put a digital sign in the places our people hang out to remind them of the messages they have agreed to consume. Hugh: Great. We are sitting at the top of 2018. Our market has been growing. There are over 100 companies that announced employee dividends and financial expansion of programs since the tax bill passed at the end of 2017. There are all kinds of energy and economy. Talk about how that benefits the nonprofit sector. Mark: We are sitting at the highest consumer satisfaction index of all time. I think it's for a number of reasons. One is that a lot of people are feeling good about themselves again. A lot of them have hope for the future. A lot of them feel that in spite of the noise we hear on the mainstream news on a regular basis, locally, the communities are doing well. More people have jobs. More people are feeling good about what's possible. Certainly my business has been substantially increased. As you pointed out, yours has, too. A big part of it is that my customers are looking forward to growth and therefore investing in opportunities to grow. As a nonprofit, you can plug into this feeling of goodness and growth, asking for more than you could ask for in the past. Requesting more. Asking people to donate more for perhaps more time, for perhaps a higher level of investment of themselves into the organization. When people are feeling good, they say yes to opportunities because it doesn't feel like it's so heavy. Doesn't feel like it's such a burden. When we feel depressed, it's very hard for people to feel good about themselves. Hugh: What makes people say yes? I still have lots of- Mark: What a great question! I'm so glad you asked it. What makes people say yes is because your request is in alignment with their personal identity. Hugh: Whoa. Whoa. Hey, Russ. What does that trigger with you? Russell: It's everything. Everything revolves around relationships now. People are starting to figure that out. It doesn't matter what business you're in. Now you have to build relationships. In the old days, you could just blurt out at people. There were very few places for them to get a message. They were fed by three big networks messages. Think about Henry Ford when he talked about the Model T. They can have any car they want as long as it's black. Now people have choices. They have different avenues for expression, and they have short attention spans, so you have to resonate with people because they will look for another cause if they feel like they're not being romanced, so to say. You have to keep that connection some type of way, keep thanking them, showing the impact they are making, and staying with it. People change. There are so many different causes that they can get involved with now. It's like anything else to maintain that brand loyalty as it were. You have to connect with your tribe. People want a sense of connection and a sense of accomplishment. Younger people coming into the work force want to do work that matters. Hugh: Mark, I pinged Russell because many times in the interviews, he helps us remember that whether you are creating board members or talking to donors, we have to think about what it is they want, what they are interested in, what they want to achieve. There is a messaging piece that I was honing in on here. How do we form our message so that we do connect with that like-minded person? Mark: Let's get back to the concept of personal identity. People buy things to support their identity or they buy things or engage in things to help them transform their identity into a new place that they desire to be. It's a really important concept because all sales, all marketing, all recruiting, all conversion happens when a person sees their identity as that which you are offering as a nonprofit. That transformation for a lot of people is where we're heading. As people grow, they transform. As young people go from high school to college, they are transforming. As they go from college into the workforce, they are transforming. That personal identity, how you view yourself and how you want to be viewed by—Russell, you said it right on—tribe, we choose our tribe, and the choices that we make determine our tribe. In a model I generated, those tribe decisions are mission-critical. The reason why is because if you make the wrong choices, the people who you might like may just stop calling you back. They may quit inviting you out. They might leave you on your own. That is where that personal identity comes into play. Identity happens way more than people realize. A great example of that is sports. Russell, do you consider yourself a sports fan? Russell: I love it. Mark: Do you have a team? Russell: Believe it or not, I root for the Cleveland Browns. Mark: Why the hell would an intelligent man like you root for such a losing team when a logical person would pick a winning team to root for? Russell: I grew up there. Mark: That's it. Yes! Russell: I haven't lived there in almost 40 years, but home is home. Mark: It's part of your core identity. It is so deeply ingrained in your core identity that I couldn't get you to wear a piece of the opposing team's clothing even if I paid you. That's the power of identity. When you as a nonprofit can tap into that identity, that is where you really get that brand experience where people refuse to go anywhere else. But you have to keep reinforcing that identity. You have to make sure that the identity you're offering continues to shift in the proper direction over time. In a growing economy, people have the opportunity of transforming that identity. That is really where we're going with this #2 point. It gives you a chance to perhaps recruit people, to bring people in that you haven't been able to before because they couldn't afford it, they didn't have the bandwidth or the money. Now they do. Get very clear. A definitive passionate, audience that wants to be recognized or grow their identity can help you as an organization grow. Get really clear. Get really sharp about this. It will have a massive impact for you in 2018. Cool? Hugh: Absolutely. You talked about unemployment. The numbers show the unemployment figures at the end of 2017 were the lowest they've been in forever. But there are still people who are underemployed. They are not unemployed. Mark: In fact, those underemployed people are the ones who are perfect for volunteers. The reason why is as humans, we like to feel we are making a difference. Russell, you pointed that out in your last comments. We really want to feel we are doing good, like we are making a difference. When we are underemployed, we don't have that feeling that we are living up to our potential. People in that environment can be invited to fulfill that in a nonprofit volunteer situation. Whether it's an executive who has moved to a lower position, who needs to give back and still provide that strategic input, that is the perfect person to capture for example. Or perhaps the stay at home mom who went back to work because her kids are out of the house, and as she enters back in, she doesn't go back in at the top level where she started. She comes in at a lower level, and she needs to fill that gap of feeling good about herself until she can be promoted up to that new level. That is the opportunity that you as a nonprofit can fill. Hugh: You spoke earlier about working with a local nonprofit in Las Vegas where you live. Why did you say yes to that? Mark: For two reasons. One is that I have an expertise that the association can use. I can benefit the association in quite a few different ways because of my deep history in business and as a professional. And that association also allows me, it feeds me in that I get to be with other people whose future is my history. And so I get a chance to give back because if I rewind my life back 30 years, I was the person who is being served by the mentor who I get to be today. Hugh: So your input is important to shaping the future of their work. Mark: And they have a desire to have a similar experience that I had. When we are looking for a mentor—this is probably one of the best pieces of advice I've had in my life—look for somebody whose history is your future. They can help you plot the path. While your paths will be slightly different, the fundamentals won't be that far off. Hugh: Russell, did you capture that last comment? Russell: I did not. I was in the process of typing that. I don't type very quickly. This is interesting because what we are talking about, there are three things that a nonprofit needs: time, talent, and treasure. We get obsessed with the money and forget about time and talent. Especially with people who are underemployed, people have different motivations for joining you. When you are clear about what it is you are trying to do and you have inventoried all of your assets, which include time, talent, skills, knowledge, abilities, those are all assets to the nonprofit. When you can leverage that and get other people, it's like money in the bank because you go out, build relationships, get sponsors for media, cash sponsors, you go out and get people to contribute pro bono services, you bring students in, you bring professional firms. There is a number of different ways to approach getting pro bono talent. When you are clear on who you are and what you need, you can offer these folks some time. Maybe they need to build their portfolio. Maybe they are tried and just want to give back. Maybe they are entering the workforce. Maybe they are underemployed and want to have some projects and creations of their own. You can set that table. When you are clear on what it is that people want, then they will come support you and always keep evaluating, putting challenges out there for them to stretch and grow and invest in their learning. They have reasons to stick with you in that case. Mark: Right on. I think if you get the time and talent right, the treasure follows automatically. The reason why is what is money? It is a reward for doing what others want. It's canned labor. That's another way of looking at it. Russell: Canned labor, but meaningful labor. It's not standing at a copy machine all day or making coffee. It's actually creating things. Building your social media strategy, writing policies, it's endless the number of things you can find volunteers to do that they can help support the organization with. Yes, even fundraising. The sky's the limit. It's up to your own creativity and finding out what moves people. If you don't have any money, you probably have time and talent. Mark: They probably know people. There is also ways of converting some of that talent and some of that time into treasure. If you think about it, that's what a business does. It converts time and talent into treasure. As a nonprofit, you can do exactly the same thing. Your tax status permits that to happen. Hugh: Money is also reward for providing value. Russell: Another way to keep score. Mark: That's universally agreed upon. Hugh: Back to where we were talking at the beginning of this interview about installing sound business principles into the charity. I am using charity purposefully here. Sometimes we use the word “nonprofit,” which spins us into this scarcity thinking that we can't generate a profit. But the profit is what pays for the philanthropic work of the organization. Like you said, it's not a business plan. It's not a philosophy. It's a tax classification. It's really tax exempt work. We are getting a lot of useful content today about leveraging what is around us instead of getting stuck in our hole, our silo. You ready to move to the next one? Mark: Let's do it. I think we have beaten that topic up a little bit. I like it. Hugh: #3 is New Leadership Demands. What is changing, and how do we stay out front? I remember years ago people were hiring the motivational speaker. Give me rah, rah. Then people left the room, and it was over. People aren't hiring motivational speakers. They are hiring people with solid, executable content. What has changed in the leadership segment? What are you thinking about? Mark: What I see is the informational speaker and the inspirational speaker versus motivational speaker. Let's talk about that, and then we will go on to the topic of what's changing with leadership. The difference between a motivational speaker and an inspirational speaker is very simple. If we go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which I see as a fundamental to everything we do, both within the charitable sector as well as the business sector, those two lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy is physical needs and then security. Within those two levels, you can motivate people. It's basically a pain-based motivation. Once we get to that next level, where you have love and self-esteem and move up to self-actualization, that is where inspiration comes into play. If people are in pain, you have to motivate them. If people are out of pain, then you can inspire them. Don't try to be inspirational when people are hungry and tired and scared. That doesn't work. It's just frustrating. They will nod their heads and do what they need to do to get the hell out of your view so they can go get some food or drink or get warm or whatever. We have to help people to the third level of Maslow because we can start to inspire them. With that in mind, from a leadership standpoint, understanding your leadership is 100% contextual on the state of the person and ultimately the team you are working with. That is not a blinding flash of the obvious to most of you, but we have to be reminded of that because a lot of the traditional leadership mantras that we hear are being offered from the top of Maslow's hierarchy. But a lot of the people we are leading are way down the hierarchy, and we have to remember that sometimes it's just giving them a shoulder to cry on and taking them out to lunch or buying them a cup of coffee. Sometimes that's all the leadership they need in that moment. Hugh: Wow. That's a paradigm shift. What are you thinking there, Russ? You're smiling. Russell: The thought came to mind that great leaders always have a pulse on where their people are because no two people are in the same place. Cookie cutter leadership doesn't work. It may have worked back at the turn of the 20th century. Mark: It didn't work then either, Russell. I hate to tell you, pal. It was just misreported. Russell: They pushed it as, “Get in line or go work somewhere else.” That doesn't work. Good leaders build other leaders around them because that is what makes a great leader look good. We have people who can execute or delegate, and she is doing high level functions. Sometimes you have high performance individuals, and it is really hard- When they have been driving the train for a long time, it's really difficult for them to take a step back because they have their vision and it's their baby. They have a hard time taking a step back. This is a way that leaders have to grow in. If people in the work force today aren't getting work that means something. They move on. Do yourself a favor and let other people help you. Mark: I think some of the things we have to take a look at from a change standpoint is that our millennial culture, I raised five millennial children. None of them live at home. I consider myself to be a success. They don't put up with ultimatums. They'll just raise their middle finger and wave you goodbye. The reality is that leadership is now voluntary. It was always voluntary, but it is now absolutely voluntary. People accept leadership voluntarily, and a charitable organization has always been voluntary. We have to become a whole lot more about what it is you are looking for. How can I help you grow? Where do you want to go? What do you need to help you get there? Can we help you get there? It's a lot more of the let's figure out where our tribe needs to go and bring that to them. I think that's a big component of that. We raised our children to question authority. The boomer generation just shakes their head at, “I am a boomer.” Friends, I raise that generation. I raised them to be what I wanted to be when I was their age, which was to have the freedom to ask questions and to push back and to say, “That's really stupid. Why do you make that?” When I was a kid, that earned a slap across the face, so I learned to shut up very quickly. I let my kids ask those questions. They were hard questions. They made me a better man. That also means that military-style, authoritarian leadership will no longer work. It has to be collaborative leadership. But how do we do collaborative leadership? It's simple. You just ask people. You ultimately, as the leader of your organization, get to make the decision. But you also have to have that collaboration of how we arrive at the destination. You are responsible for the destination. Then we collaborate on how we get there. That is what I see as being a major shift. Hugh: That is especially true in nonprofits because we do attract some capable people. We think we have to do it as a leader because we don't want to bother them because they are volunteers and are busy in their real life. Mark: But wait a minute. That's why they showed up. Hugh: You got it. I set that one up good. You are really interfering with what somebody has come to do. That seems like a logical step. That is a huge problem. Bowen leadership systems, Murray Bowen as a psychiatrist created this whole leadership methodology. He talks about that as overfunctioning, and the reciprocity to overfunctioning is underfunctioning. Especially when you have a boomer, me, and you are talking to millennials, like the editor of our magazine, Todd, he says, “Tell me where you want to be, and let me get there.” Nobody likes being told the steps or micromanaged. Millennials like it the least of any particular segment. You raised five millennials, and I don't see any wounds on your body. Mark: I'm a much better man. Before I raised my five millennial kids, I was a jerk. Hugh: Really? Mark: Yeah. I knew everything. I knew exactly how to do it, and I could prove it. If you didn't believe me, I'd write a book about it. Hugh: Wow. Russell: I just sense that pleasure. Here's the thing, Mark. They'll be back. They will bring more with them. Mark: It gets better and better and more disruptive and more delicious. Hugh: There is a story of this conductor, who are known to have healthy egos. This conductor walks into a restaurant with a whole bunch of musicians. One person stood up on one side and said, “All conductors are jerks.” Whoa, it got back like this. On the other side, somebody stood up and said, “I resent that comment.” The conductor looked at him and said, “Hey, are you a conductor, too?” He says, “No, I'm a jerk.” I love it. That is a reframed lawyer joke. Mark: The way I like to talk about conductors is conductors are highly skilled. They can play every instrument in the orchestra. They can. But not well enough to make a living. At the end of the show- Russell: [hard to hear] tickets on the train, either. Hugh: The model you are talking about is the conductor doesn't tell them step by step what they do. The conductor says to the oboe player, the violinist, whatever, “This is the effect I want. This is the result I want.” They guide the process. I wanted to segue into that as a model for what you're talking about. That has been a consistent model over the decades. If we look at that in today's world, leadership as a profound influence and not the micro that you are talking about, do this, do this, do this. It's a nuance of engaging people and empowering people to raise the bar. That is the essence of transformational leadership really: building a culture of high performers that respond to you. So we are looking at what has changed, but also we are looking at- Earlier, you talked about transformation. There is a transformation in ourselves before we can be effective. How does that link with what you're talking about? Mark: Everybody that I know is going through some form of transformation. They are trying to add a new skill. They are trying to let go of an old habit they see as not serving their life any further. They may be going through a spiritual revolution where they are going from less spiritual to more spiritual. It may be that they are looking for a physical transformation, losing weight, adding muscle, adding health. Those transformations always trigger help because if we could do it on our own, we already would have. We need either skills or encouragement or motivation or a tribe to travel with. Let's talk about transformation for just a minute. Let's have some fun with this. I know that we bumped into this idea with me before, Hugh, and let's talk about it. I think we have enough time. It's fairly simple. There is fundamentally a seven-step process in transformation, plus a step zero and a step minus one. Hugh: Ooh, do tell. Mark: The first half is about belief. The second half is about knowledge. The difference between belief and knowledge is a manifestation in the physical world. Step minus one is where they want to go. The transformation they want to enjoy is invisible. They can't even see it. It's not even within their awareness. It's not even possible. They hadn't even thought of it. If you as a charitable organization want to find new people, part of your job is to message the outcome that you deliver so that we can take people who don't even see that as an opportunity into something that is within their awareness. Then step zero, going from invisible to impossible. That is the step zero. “Oh, that's impossible. I could never do that. I don't see how that's possible.” That's step zero. The transformation starts when they go from the impossible to, “Hmm, that could be possible. You have 1,000 people in this community that has made this transformation? Wow. You've helped that many people? It is possible.” Then the next step is to probable. “I could probably do this. I don't have all the answers. I may not know my path yet, but this is probable. I could do this.” Then the third step moves to inevitable. “This is going to happen. Oh yeah. Let's make this happen. Yeah.” Hugh: Minus one is where- Mark: Minus one is invisible. Don't even know it is possible. Hugh: Invisible, okay. Mark: Step zero is impossible. Hugh: Okay. One is possible. Mark: Possible. Hugh: Two is probable. Mark: Two is probable. Hugh: And three is? Mark: Inevitable. Hugh: Inevitable. Mark: This is going to happen! I know how to do this. Whoo-hoo. Help me! Hugh: Russell is scribing these. He is capturing the brilliance. Mark: That is all based on increasing belief because the transformation has not yet become physical. It is still nonphysical. It is thought and that is about it. Now we cross over from the nonphysical to the physical, from the belief to the real. Step four is real. We go from inevitable to real. From real to sustainable. I did it! Okay, let's do it again. I can do this any time I want. That is sustainable. Then we go from sustainable, step five, to step six, which is normal. “I do this all the time. Sure, of course. This is just part of my life.” To step seven, which is historical. “I have always done it this way.” If we are working people through a transformational process—invisible, impossible, possible, probable, inevitable, real, sustainable, normal, historical—if we can run people through that process, we can help them through their transformation. But here is the most important aspect. You can't take somebody from impossible to inevitable in one step. That is the psychology of leadership. We have to help them move from impossible to probable. We have to help them move from probable to inevitable. We have to help them move from inevitable to real. Each one of those is a step, as we are crossing this chasm, let's call it a river, from impossible to historical, going from one side to the other. Every step is a slippery rock that as they reach out with their foot, it may feel like, “I don't know if I can do this.” Our job as leaders is to hold their finger, hold their hand. When I was raising my kids, we would do- Kids were going across the rocks, and I would give them a finger. All they had to do was hang onto my finger. That was enough to give them the confidence to take the step. My kids would grab that finger, and we could move them. You did this, right? Russell, you've done this with your kids? Just give them a little bit. We don't need to hold them in an airman's grip. We just have to give them a finger to hang onto. Russell: If you don't want to carry them, you just give them that finger. It's just enough. Less is more. Mark: That's right. Russell: More, and they step into that power. That's what it's about. Whatever the mind can conceive and make itself believe, it can achieve. That is a process. Mark: You just summarized those seven plus two steps in three words. Hugh: Thank you, Mr. Hill. Mark: Yes indeed. Hugh: That is a profound statement. I was really small, walking with my father, and I would hold a finger. One day, he put a stick there. I kept going because I thought I had his hand. All I had was a stick. When I grew up, I repeated that dirty trick with my kids. Russell: Interesting. That brings a story to mind. I don't know how old I was. I may have been two or three. My mother used to carry me upstairs at night. One night, my mother and sister brought me upstairs, stood me in front of the crib, and said, “Okay. Climb in.” I was baffled. I didn't do anything. So they said, “Okay, well, you will climb in or you will stand there all night.” I don't know how long I stood there. It turns out they were there watching. It wasn't very long. I climbed up in that crib. Oh, okay, I got to do this or it's not going to happen. I never forgot that. I don't remember much that happened before five. As five gets further away, it's harder to remember. But that was something I never forgot. A lot of life is like that. Hugh: That's a great story. That's a big leadership example. The last one of your five topics for the year is Turning Unrest into Peace: How to Divorce Your Organization from the Media's Promotion of Outrage. What ever are you talking about? Mark: I'll be delighted to share with you. With the broad spread availability of Internet and mobile devices, the media got out of the news business. The reason why is the news was available any time I chose to pick up my mobile device and read the news from dozens of news sources. The fundamental TV news made a wholesale pivot from news to opinion and entertainment. You watch any of the mainstream news, and they are not delivering news. They are delivering opinion, not even fact. Opinion. It's the mot hilarious thing. I watch the news now and laugh. I just see it like reality TV. It is completely scripted. Whatever side they are trying to spin, that is what it is. What is truth? I have no idea anymore. The challenge is to get people to watch opinion, you have to generate outreach. You have to go to them and say, “Isn't this awful? Isn't this unfair? This is just horrible. I can't see how we can even stand doing this anymore.” That outrage allows you to sit through the commercials for pharmaceutical products that help you fix the outrage. You laugh because it's true. Russell: Okay. I'm going to give up on MSNBC and Fox Noise because- Mark: It is noise. I can watch Hannity once a week. It's the same story every night. Here's the thing. First of all, you have to realize that the news business is really to do one thing. It's not to inform you. It's to sell advertising. Pure and simple. Their job is to create a community that wants to be outraged a specific way and to promote that outrage so people feel like something is going on. They feel like something is important, but the reality my friends, in the world of charitable organizations, we are offering another way of thinking, another way of feeling. We are offering perhaps a better feeling. I feel way better after going to church than I do after watching the evening news. That circles back to our #1 point today, which is omnichannel. We have to keep providing our message on a regular basis daily, hourly, morning, evening to counter all of the outrage that people are being fed from a commercial stream. Go ahead. Carry on. What do you have in mind there, Hugh? Hugh: Wow. Wow. Where people are getting into an emotional state, not a factual thinking leadership functioning state. We are going into this- Mark: Facts don't matter anymore when it comes to mainstream news. Hugh: We are in a post-truth culture. Mark: We are. It's really interesting. Hugh: When we hear comments like “The media lies,” I watched purposefully for several weeks reports on CNN, CBN, PBS, and FOX. They were all different. Mark: Yes. Hugh: Which one is lying? Or are they all lying? Mark: None of them are lying. They are presenting their vision of what they want you to believe. Facts have nothing to do with anything. They believe It's true. They look you square in the eye through the camera and make you believe they believe it. And they do. Otherwise they couldn't deliver that. Let's circle back to the facts that matter to us and to constituents of our organization. That is what we need to focus on. Hugh: We have eight minutes. We are wrapping up here. That is a perfect segue, thank you. Go ahead. Mark: The whole point is we need to make sure our message and our leadership and our direction and our transformation is absolutely clear. We have to supply at last some rational thinking. When people say, “Did you hear what the news was?” and the answer is, “Do you believe it?” Let's focus on something you can believe. So help pivot people away from buying into something that we keep illustrating over and over again is patently not in alignment with the belief and the worldview that we wish. We have to substitute the worldview that our tribe wishes to see. Personally, I see humanity as growing, expanding, being bigger-hearted than ever before. The people in my environment, the people I bump into, including the folks on the street that ask me for help, are doing better than ever before. My job is to elevate, not to outrage. I think that there are way more people that have that desire than ever before, and perhaps that is why Cartoon Network has a higher rating than CNN. It's because we want to feel good. We don't want to feel bad. As a charitable organization, bringing that good news to people and giving them things they can do to feel better about themselves and to improve humanity and their tribe is probably the ultimate thing we can bring to our constituents. Russell: To piggyback on what you are saying, out of my own experience, I was an advertising salesman for WGAM TV while I was in college. Our most expensive segment was the news slots. That supports that, and that has been the case for quite some time now. That was a few years ago. The other thing is people are looking to raise their level of consciousness. The media likes to exacerbate this idea of taking sides. One thing that happened to me as a result of my experience working with the Native American tribe is I became nonpartisan here. The people who were going to help you may be on other sides of the aisle. I was literally more interested in what was going to benefit my tribe than what fit their politics. What we are talking about really is raising our level of consciousness. Me, for the most part, I am tuned out on those things. I can't watch that stuff. If I do happen to catch glimpses of it, nobody lives out in the middle of nowhere. There are a few people off the grid, but you will be exposed to some of the noise. Does that noise matter? We are trying to raise our level of consciousness, and there are people who need our help. When that is the driving thing, you learn how to play nice with others, but you don't always have to agree on everything, except who is it you want to help and how can you get there. You leave all of the ego and crap on the doorstep and come together to perform missions. I'm glad you haven't said anything that made me so angry I have to go put a nasty tweet out. I have a Twitter account, and I don't want to use it. Mark: Personally, I have a positive posting policy. If I can't say something nice, I write them a letter and burn it. Russell: As long as you don't mail it. That could get you in a lot of trouble. Mark: If you are writing a letter to somebody or emailing, don't ever put their address in there as you write it. Otherwise you might by accident send it. Guilty as charged. Russell: It's good to write letters every once in a while. Us old guys write letters. You can write letters. Younger folks out there, it's a dying art. It's fun. Mark: It's great fun. I wrote myself a letter on New Year's Eve. It's part of our ritual: to write ourselves letters. Just to wrap up this segment, an important component is what is your core principle as a leader? Focus on activities that will provide you and your tribe with those core principles. My core principle is freedom. Everything I do needs to lead me to freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of life. From that freedom, I can serve people. I can't serve people when I am not free, from a thought standpoint, a physical standpoint, a monetary standpoint. I use that personally as my filter. If I am going to do something, say something, act in some way, the question is: Does this bring me closer to more freedom, or does this take freedom away from me? It could be anything else. It could be oneness. It could be joy. It could be love. It doesn't really matter. All of them boil down to the same situation anyway. Just that word resonates with me. I think ultimately that is what we need to do to bring peace to our tribe. Hugh: Our strategy is Russell and I encourage people to be very clear on their vision while they are doing something. As charities, we have to be very good at defining the impact of our work. What difference will it make? We achieve all of that through setting powerful goals. You have given us a whole lot of ideas for goals. Russell mentioned him before, and he is looking behind you there. Behind you is Henry Ford. Mark: Actually that is Edison. Carry on. Hugh: They lived next door to each other down in Fort Myers. Mark: They did. Hugh: Edison said he never failed; he just found 9,999 things that didn't work before he invented the light bulb. Ford said obstacles are what you see when you take your mind off your goals. They are both dedicated to excellence. They were both in tune with the culture and trends of their day. Mark Smith, I don't know a lot of people with two middle initials. Mark S. A. Smith. You stand out from all those other Mark Smiths. Mark: That is the reason why. That way you can find me on Google. Hugh: They are impostors. Mark: No, they are not impostors. They are just hiding. Hugh: This is really rich in content. Russell, do you have a closing comment you want to leave here? Russell: There we are. I'd like to thank Mark for the thoughts he dropped. You are preaching to the choir. It's about who you are. That's a message that has to ring true. Who are you? Who are you, and that way you can connect with the people that you are aligned with. I love the alignment. Great comments. Notes in the SynerVision Leadership webinar notebook. I have the notes, Hugh. It will also be out there for folks to look at. It's a great day here. Hugh: Super. Mark, thank you for being here and sharing your wisdom with us. Mark: Delightful to be here. Thank you for the invitation to do so. We have plenty more in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are a number of common questions that policyholders ask in regards to reporting claims. In this episode, ALPS Claims Attorney John Ries talks with Mark about some of questions he often hears. John also sheds light on why it's important for attorneys to call their legal malpractice insurance provider even if they suspect that an issue or event may give rise to a claim.   ALPS In Brief, The ALPS Risk Management Podcast, is hosted by ALPS Risk Manager, Mark Bassingthwaighte.   Transcript: MARK: Welcome to ALPS In Brief, the ALPS risk management podcast. We're recording here at ALPS home office in the historic Florence building in downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte, the ALPS risk manager. I have the pleasure of sitting down today with ALPS claims attorney John Reis. John, before we get into some discussions here, can you tell our audience just briefly a little bit of your background here at ALPS? JOHN: I've been here eight years. Before that, I was in private practice in Washington state for about five years. Then before that, I was in Oregon as a prosecuting attorney. MARK: Ah, interesting. Very good, very good. Both of us in terms of the roles that we're in get some common questions, which are just concerning, “I think I might've made a mistake. There's a problem out here. What happens? What do I need to do? What should I do?” The idea today is just to have some discussions about the claims process. If I am an attorney and I'm concerned that a mistake has happened, can you talk me through what the basic reporting requirements are? When do I need to report this? You see where I'm going? I don't even know. JOHN: In the past, and this is changing starting next year, we have in the past asked for attorneys to give us notice as soon as reasonably possible. Like all attorneys, reasonable is up for interpretation. Now we are changing it to “immediately notify us.” Basically, I always tell attorneys when they call, inevitably they'll say, “I wasn't sure if I should report this or not because it's not a claim yet.” Sometimes there are claims; they're just flat out “I missed the statute and I had to my tell my client.” MARK: Right, of course. JOHN: Sometimes, it's a little more in the gray area. “I've just lost a summary judgment motion. Is that a claim?”, or, “I may have forgotten to list an expert. Is that a claim?” I always advise people that it is a claim as soon as you think it's a claim. If you're thinking about whether or not to report it, you should just default and automatically report it, and not wait and see if it develops into an actual malpractice claim. There's a lot of problems if you wait. There's always the problem down the road. Someone will accuse you of having knowledge of it and not telling ALPS. MARK: Right, right. JOHN: Nobody wants to fight over that. ALPS doesn't want to. We'd rather you just tell us up front. It doesn't hurt you any, so you might as well tell us as soon as you think it's a possible claim. MARK: Right. A takeaway for me here is some people just assume “I don't have a claim until I've been sued,” and that's not really what this is about. It's about awareness. If you have questions or concerns, just call us. We'll sit down and work through it. I think just as a side note, we don't open everything that is reported as a claim. JOHN: Right. MARK: Would you explain that just briefly? JOHN: Yeah. We have the choice. Sometimes someone will call in and it's clearly not a claim or even a potential claim, and so we don't even open anything. We just put a note on the file. Other times, maybe many years down the road, it can turn into a claim or not. We'll open those as circumstances. A circumstance, we don't report it when you go to another insurance company, heaven forbid. We don't report those, so it's just an internal notation. If it does develop into a claim, they can turn it into a claim down the road. We call them circumstances. Sometimes, you'll see some insurance companies say, “We don't require you to report circumstances.” Basically what they're saying is, “We don't require you to notify us of things that are not actual claims,” which we think is problematic. That's why we ask you to report even potential claims, what we call circumstances. MARK: It seems to me, the value of that is “we're just going to pin down coverage.” JOHN: Yeah. MARK: “We've taken care of our reporting requirements just in case it's a little muddy.” JOHN: Right. MARK: Okay, okay. So, I've had a call with you or someone to chat with me, and the decision is, “Okay, this is something that should be reported.” Is there a formal process that I need to go through to formally report a claim? JOHN: Required in writing. We don't have a form. A lot of people call and ask, “Is there a form we have to fill out?” There's no form. Oftentimes, it's best you just call us first and we'll give you an idea of what we want so you're not sitting down and writing a 10-page letter that doesn't really help us that much. We just require written notice that just basically puts us on notice of what the issues are. Has what has been missed, what's being alleged, who the client is, when did this happen. It could be as short as a paragraph, depending on what the error or the potential error is. MARK: So you're talking about writing. Can I do this even via email? JOHN: Email's fine. Fax, email, regular mail. MARK: Okay, very good. Now you and I both know we get these questions a lot too: “Are you guys going to raise my rates?” This kind of thing. Is there an impact? What happens? How does ALPS deal with the fact that a claim has been reported? When we think about underwriting, rates, those kinds of things going forward. JOHN: Yeah, there's no impact on your future rates for just reporting claims. MARK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). JOHN: In fact, I would consider it to be more of a benefit to you as far as underwriting, that you're more cautious than the average person if you call in something that's maybe not a claim. At least it shows that you're thinking about the issue, which is much better than the other way, if you call us up six months after the claim has been made. MARK: Right. JOHN: If anything, I think it helps your future rates. There's not formula that really takes it into consideration. It all goes into the black magic of underwriting. There's not direct impact on your rates. MARK: So what I'm hearing is if I report a claim, you guys do your thing in claims and provide excellent customer service, and the claim goes away. I'm successfully [defended 06:45]. I'm hearing that that's really not going to be a problem. How about I've blown a statute and there is a significant loss here? Let's say there's a $300,000 loss and I don't know, $50,000 or something in defense costs, these kinds of things. Is that a similar outcome? What happens rate-wise there? JOHN: Yeah, the first thing that happens is there's a surcharge. Anything over $30,000 is surcharged. MARK: Whether it's loss or defense? JOHN: Right, loss or expense. I don't know what the exact number is, but the majority of claims are probably in the surcharge level. A fair number don't ever get to that high number. We can resolve them for next to nothing, or nothing at all. The ones that go over $30,000, the surcharge is relatively small. It's half the basic rate, which is 1900. It's a $950 surcharge, but that's added into the formula mid-way through, so the final number could be higher than that. MARK: Are there any obligations that I have under a policy when a claim arises? JOHN: Well the only real obligation is you have to report it. When the new policies go into effect beginning next year, you have to immediately notify ALPS as soon as you become aware of a potential or actual claim. That's your only requirement, is to immediately notify us. All of the claims attorneys have cellphones. We take calls 24 hours a day. Sometimes people say, “Oh, this came in over the weekend.” You can call us on the weekend. MARK: I get that I need to report the claim, but how about as you handle the claim, go through the process? Do I have obligations along those lines? JOHN: Yeah. The first thing that we'll tell you after you report the claim, if it is a claim and it's not just a potential claim or a circumstance, we'll ask for a complete copy of your file. That'll be the first, probably the biggest task you have as an insured is copying a file, depending on who the- MARK: – the importance of file maintenance and keeping files, but … JOHN: Yeah. Some people or some firms and some attorneys have a lot better record-keeping procedures than others. For some people, it's not a big deal. They can just hit a button, copy it to a memory stick, and mail it to us. Other people, their banker box is scattered through several offices. Papers are loose, they're difference sizes. I understand that's a bigger task. Some files are just plain huge. They can take a whole room. If that's the case, sometimes we can limit the request. Just give us the pleadings for now, or just give us the correspondence for now. Just enough to get us going. I guess the flip side would be if, we usually err on the side of just getting everything. It's just like when you get a new claim or a new case as a lawyer. You want all of the information, or in discovery, you want all the information. You don't want just the little bits that they give you. If there's too much there, we'll let you know and we can send it back, or just tell you not to send it to us to begin with. MARK: Do you prefer that digitally? JOHN: It's a lot easier for us digitally. I guess the downside of digitally, sometimes people copy a file, if there's multiples of thousands of pages, if it just goes from one to ten thousand, it's a little hard to sort through. We manage. MARK: I can imagine that one. JOHN: Yeah. It happens a lot, so we've gotten pretty good at going through and sorting it out. Most files are, even poorly kept, some files are better kept than others but all files have some natural order to them. Pleadings, correspondence, notes. There's a predictable outcome to each one. MARK: Going back to this sort of example of blowing a statute or something, I realized, “Oh my gosh, I really have made a mistake here and messed up here. This is going to be a malpractice claim.” Do you have any thoughts or advice that you would share in terms of, what do I do with my client? Should I just run out and fall on my sword and say, “[inaudible 11:18], I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll make it right?” What is your advice? Walk through that, that issue of client information or management. JOHN: That's a tricky one. Knock on wood, I've never had to deal with that, even when I was in private practice. I can understand that's a difficult situation. I think most attorneys really want to tell their client, “I'll make it right,” or they feel bad. If it's a missed statutes of limitations, for example, they feel bad inevitably. Any error I guess an attorney feels bad. Then the next question is, “Well how do I communicate that to the client?” Well I guess we all tell the insured that you can be honest with them and tell them that the mistake was made. The only thing you can't do is tell them that the insurance company will pay you a certain amount, or that the insurance company will fix it somehow. You have to limit it to just, “I made a mistake. Here's what the error was.” You can't say, “And you've been damaged in the amount of x dollars. Just call up John and he'll cut you the check on Monday.” In the policy, it requires the insured to cooperate with ALPS. Part of that is to not undertake any debts or any obligations with your client. Within that limitation though, you can pretty much tell your client anything that you feel is necessary. That you feel bad, you wish it never happened. All of that's fine. It will come back in your deposition, so you have to be aware of that. If you say that you feel bad and you wish it never happened, you'll be asked about that. Keep that in mind. I think the best advice is just to tell them succinctly as possible, “I made an error. Your case is no longer viable. I've reported this to my insurance carrier. Here's the claim number. Please call him or her as soon as you can.” That's good enough. MARK: Well, my takeaway here is not to be afraid. If I am concerned that I've made a misstep, just to call and talk to the people that are experienced in handling these kinds of things and you will work with any of the attorneys calling in to try to understand, “Is this reportable or not?”, understand, explain how the process works. The other takeaway that I have here is, “Hey, if I am afraid I've made a mistake, I want to call ALPS first and have some discussions about how to handle this because I can get into some trouble in terms of just coverage issues and these kinds of things. I want to be informed.” For those of you listening, any time a claim comes up, I would just, “Hey, call John and he'll take you through the process. Well John, thank you very much for spending a little time. Thanks to all of you for listening to our show. If any of you happen to have any questions about the issues we've discussed today, please don't hesitate to contact me at mbass@alpsnet.com. We'd love your feedback on the podcast, including other issues you'd like to hear us cover. Thanks again. It's been a pleasure.

Good News from Mark - Do you still have no faith? - Mark 4 : 35 - 41

Tim, Mark & Marisol Interview 00:00 Tim: When you rape a child, you lose rights forever. That’s it! You lose rights forever. Somehow we don’t understand this. And again, you can serve your sentence and everything else, but you still have lost rights. One of those rights you lose is you don’t get to travel around the world with anonymity. We are going to talk about where you are. We are going to watch you. Is that so unreasonable? I mean, the argument is that, well if they travel to some place like Iran and we tell the Iranian Government, they might kill him. Well, you know what, that is his choice to travel to Iran after raping children. Don’t rape kids! How about that?! Let’s start with that. 00:36 Mark: If you do it twice, we are sending you to Iran with a big tag on your head, ‘I rape kids’. 00:40 Tim: That should be the punishment, right? That should be the sentence. 00:42 Marisol: We do that for terrorism and we give up their rights that way. It should be no different. Intro 00:50 You are listening to Slave Stealer. 00:54 Tim: It is a world I know and understand better than most people, because you don’t even know how real and how huge it is. There have been laws put in place to protect kids, and one of the laws - surprise, surprise - is that you can’t sell them. If you guys are traffickers, you have come in just like this. This is what happens, this is the core of the problem. Tim: Marisol, thank you for joining us on Slave Stealer podcast. Marisol: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Tim: Marisol Nichols is our friend, and actress, and social activist. She has been on ‘Criminal Minds’, ‘24’, ‘Blind Justice’, ‘NCIS’ - all these cop shows. Does that have anything to do...or is that just a coincidence with your passion to fight crime?   Marisol: I am sure it does. I am sure it does. I did so much resource playing different kinds of cop roles and agent roles and stuff that it just kind of, by default, dealt with me into this world.   Tim: Tell us about your foundation, and we’ll talk about how we met and what we are doing together with you. Marisol: Sure! So I have got involved in trafficking maybe three or four years ago, and the whole reason I started my foundation was... Well, there are a couple of reasons. One was, like, the more I learned, the more I found out about it, the more I was like, "I have to do something." I can not do something. It can’t be something that I can sit back and say, "Those poor people over there, how horrible for them." That’s… I can’t sleep at night unless I do something. And there were many, many, many nights that I wouldn’t sleep because the more I learned, the more, you know, horrific it is. So forming my own foundation - it was sort of a natural thing that came out of meeting with different organizations and legislators - you know, the people that live and work in this field - to see how I could help, what could I do. I have, you know, many, many friends in the business, both in front of the camera and behind the camera, and anyone and everyone I would talk to were like, “What can I do? How can I help?” And because of that is how I started doing these briefings and big events, educating a particular audience about what is happening not only in our world and on our planet, but also in our own backyard. Tim: So, question for you, because I don’t know the answer to this question but it bugs me. I mean, this is the greatest plague on the planet. There is nothing worse than this and yet, we, our presidential candidates, aren’t talking about it. It is kind of still a vague word, you know, people, trafficking… What is going on? Why can’t people see it? Marisol: Two reasons. And I don’t actually even blame people for not seeing - I blame the people that are in charge of our entertainment. I blame...I really do, I truly do, because I think that we have created a world where we can’t get purposely distracted by Kardashians and social media and whatever other things that they want coming down the line as a buzzword of the week. So we don’t pay attention to what is really really going on. And that our news channels are not very forthcoming - some of them are really wonderfully, will do pieces on it and pieces on it, but to me, like you said, is nowhere near fit to what is needed. And I am sure that you have had this strange [inaudbile] that when you do meet people that find out about it, their world is completely rocked and they are completely changed and they want to help. Tim: Yep. Marisol: And I honestly believe that there are, you know, certain forces out there that don’t want to see this end. Mark: Name names. Marisol: Well look, who is profiting? I mean, you can follow money: who makes the most money from this? Whether it is sex slavery or labor bondage or what. Who is making money from this? And you can trace it back and trace it back. And Tim hit it right on the head - why aren’t our presidential candidates talking about this? This is a huge issue; it is bigger than anything. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: He is right. Why isn’t there a giant spotlight on who is profiting from that? Who is benefitting and keeping people enslaved? Tim: It boggles my mind, but I do believe like you believed it - if we can get people to see it and they become converts, our politicians will have to start talking about it if there is a demand for that subject.   Marisol: Exactly. Tim: And we are not yelling loud enough yet. We are trying to yell loud and be a voice for these victims. Now you got to come with us - we took you down to visit some of the victims that we had rescued in Haiti, and then on our way back we stopped in an unnamed city. Marisol actually went undercover with us, and... Tell me, tell me about the whole experience, how you felt seeing those kids. And then, I mean, you kind of got this cool experience where you got to see these victims and, all of a sudden, you are thrown into this - one of the people who travels and abuses these kids, one of the partakers. What was that like?     Marisol: It is haunting because it is one thing to read about the issue, talk about the issue, hear the stories, look at videos; it is another thing to see it firsthand, and particularly meeting the abuser... I mean, this was... You know, you wouldn’t recognize him down the street. You’d think this is your college guy, this is your neighbor, this is your… You know, he looks like an everyday Joe. And the casualness in which he would talk about doing these things to girls was astonishing and also heart-breaking. You realize that these are human beings, right? You realize that you are talking about someone’s sister, someone’s daughter, someone’s mother, one day hopefully...   Tim: Yeah. Marisol: And it was....you know, it was haunting because you go, “Ok, that is the mindset that allows this to occur.” That is the mindset - partyyy, woohoo, or whatever it is. It was haunting; it stayed with me. Tim: And can you tell us...what was the role you were playing? You were awesome, by the way, and it was obviously natural. You know, it’s funny... People think like, you know, like undercover operators... Just because you are a cop, you think you are going to be good in undercover work. It is not true. And when I was in the law enforcement, it was difficult to find good undercover operators because, again, it is not inherent to a police officer. It is more an actor or actresses, and that is where you were being able to pull it up. So, tell us what role you played in that?   Marisol: Yeah. So, I was playing the person who sets up the sex parties basically, who sets up the situation for men to come and abuse these girls. You know, it was very, very like spur of the moment. I think we had, what, half an hour to plan it or something. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: You know, when I saw that the only way I am going to pull this off with this guy is if I pretend to be one of those people that just don’t care. Mark: What did you do? Give me some lines. Marisol: You know, I have... I did things like, “Hey, yeah, you know, it’s all good.” Tim: Yeah, she was sitting like really sexy, like just loosey-goosey. It was perfect. And the guy was like watching her more than anything else, and he understands that she will be able to get girls for us, better than we can get them on our own. Marisol: One of the facts that I was surprised to learn about is that some of the traffickers are girls - they are. And they lower young girls just as men do. Tim: Even better. Mark: Let’s say you get a big role as a trafficker on a film coming out in a couple of years. What do you do to prepare? Marisol: It is interesting because prior to coming into this world, you know that there are evil people out there, but you think, you know, you just don’t have that much reality. And then playing the trafficker or playing someone like this...now I’ve started to play some sort of, you know, one or two bad guys here and there, and I am like, “Oh no, no, no, it is 100% evil with no remorse and no feeling and no nothing.” That is how you would have to be to do this. You have to be one of those people, that ‘there is nothing left’. Tim: You are looking into their eyes when you see these people - I mean there is no soul. I mean, it is like past feeling. It is just unbelievable. Like the woman we have talked about, the trafficker, the beauty queen, who was going and luring these girls at 9, 10 years old, telling them that she will teach them to be famous. She is famous, she is also in music videos, and the families were sending their kids with her. And she is going and selling them to us who she believed were men coming down to violate. And Marisol, you talked about this guy we met and you played your undercover role... I mean, I am literally sitting here, we are late for the podcast, I have twenty dudes sitting here, and they look just like that guy. I mean, I have a couple - I am not kidding you - I have a couple right now who are coming together to abuse who they believe to be a 13, a 12-year-old and a 9-year-old. And they are all excited - they tell me what they are going to do and they both want to do it together. They will be arrested next week when they show up. Marisol: It sound like how can you not do everything you possibly can, and, like, why aren’t there writings on the streets, why aren't we talking about this? It should be on the tip of everyone’s tongue. And I believe that if we did, it really would end it fast.   Tim: Yes. And the problem is this concept that people think, "Well, I have heard of it, but law enforcement is taking care of it. The government can take care of it." And not to slam the government, but it is too big of a problem. There are 30 million plus slaves, depending on what numbers you look at, 2 million at least or more, probably, kids in the sex slave industry. If people knew… And it reminds me of the slavery in the 19th century where it was the same thing. They were not talking about it. It was just like people knew what was happening, but: "Oh, the government will take care of that." It wasn’t until people learned through, like, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote "Uncle Tom’s Cabin." It wasn’t until the people rose up and it got so loud that the government said, “Oh crap, we better do more, we better do something.” And then you start to stop it. We can do it, we can stop it! Marisol: And it comes down to people demanding that the government do something about it. These are just demands that it will end, and it will end it. But you need multitudes and multitudes of people demanding, showing more, and educating others to really put an end to this. But it can be done. I believe you, 100% it can be done. Mark: I have a question, Marisol. In your dealings with trafficking, who were the good guys? Why don’t we just start shouting out people that are amazing? You may have worked with them directly or not, you have known them or are friends of yours. Marisol: Yeah, ok! Well, first of all, Tim, Tim Ballard, whom I met at Osborne - for sure, 100% top of the list. Tim: Thank you, you are so nice. Marisol: What they do is incredible. And I have mentioned it before, but it is when you first learn about this, you are, “Let’s go get the kids. Can we just go and just get the kids?” And that is what they do. Mark: Yes. Marisol: And I mean that is vital. There is, obviously, a lot more they are doing. There are so many people doing this particular fight. There is Kim Biddle, from an organization called Saving Innocence in Los Angeles, that has dedicated her life. She is this beautiful, brilliant, brilliant girl, gorgeous, and she has dedicated her entire life to saving girls from trafficking and then rehabilitating them and seeing it through, like seeing it all the way through - not put them in a home and walk away, but seeing all the way through until the girl graduate from the home, goes to college and has her entire life back. She is dedicated. Mark: More influencers... Anyone in your world, acting world? Who are the good guys in trafficking? Marisol: There was this one movement that Sean Penn and other celebs got involved in and it was quick, but it really made a difference. It was "Real Men Don't Buy Girls." I don’t know if you remember that, but it was a whole Twitter and hashtag thing, and they got giant celebs to do this. And I thought it was really effective because people look up to actors, musicians, incredible artists as opinion leaders. For these guys to stand up there and say real men don’t buy girls... I thought it setted up a little bit which was really, really good to set a precedent of like, "Hey, who are we looking at that really does this?" and maybe, maybe make someone think twice about it. There needs to be more. I mean, just to be honest, we need more shows focusing on it. We need more episodes of crime shows focusing on it and really telling the stories. On "Law and Order: SVU," they have done a fairly good job on that because that is their ‘Sexual Victims Unit’ - that is the entire title of the show - but I believe we need more.  And recently - I don’t know if you saw "Room," but "Room" did a really good job of taking you through a girl’s experience, what it would be like to be trapped and under the control of someone else who is monitoring your every single move. I don’t know if you know the story, but she was trapped for seven years and had a baby by the trafficker and eventually escaped. And this particular story in this movie did such a good job. But it is based on so many cases of girls being trapped in the exact same way, having children from their traffickers, all of it… And it really... I thought they painted a really great picture of what it is like for the victim, and they do sort of wake up, like, “Wait, this exists. This happened.”       Mark: Are there certain writers or studios or groups that do a better job of talking about trafficking, and are they getting the ratings when they do it? Marisol: That is a really good question. There are definitely episodes that focus on it, but not anyone where I can, “Oh yeah, this particular writer," or, "Fox is dedicating an entire series to this,” or anything like that. It is still not there. And, like anything right now, it is just an episode or two that would be dedicated to it rather than an entire show. Is that make sense? But when they do air, they make just as equal ratings as they would any other crime, because it usually goes on crime shows. What I would like to see is that at the end of those things, "To find out more, go to www..." or statistics. Mark: Yes. Marisol: Or, like, “Hey, this is actually based on a real case,” to get the audience going, “I had no idea.” Because anything that is based on real life events will always get more interest. Mark: Do you feel like we speak about trafficking correctly? In general, how it is messaged? How should it be messaged in your opinion, if you were PR for the movement? Marisol: If I was PR for the movement, I would call it slavery. I would call it modern-day slavery and I would make sure that it was on the forefront of everything. And I would really, really, really validate the people who rescue the kids - not only OUR, but also police officers, FBI agents, sheriffs...because when I would tell people, they would go, “Why isn’t the police doing anything about it?” I am like, “Because the police is the same people who have to respond to a burglary, to a murder, to a cat caught up in the tree, to all of it.”     Mark: Yeah. Marisol: And I think if we started validating more and more the officers and sheriffs and agents that are focusing on this, and on getting results, freeing girls, and, most importantly, putting the traffickers away... I think the more validation you give that, or anything, the more of that we will get. Mark: Yeah. Marisol: You know, there is a fascination with murder. You know, there are a thousand TV shows about murder, about this, and I have been in all of them, so I do know. And I think we need to shift our focus, because, for one, I think you get whatever you validate. So, if you validate that, you are going to get more of it. We can use that to our advantage and validate those guys that are doing this, and not only getting the girls, but arresting those traffickers and making sure it sticks. Because it is not easy. And I know this from law enforcement, I know this from meeting with different legislators, and all of that. It is that trafficking is not an easy thing to prosecute.   Mark: It is not. Marisol: It is crazy to me, and I have certain ideas that I am working with to make it a lot easier and what I think could be done. But we will get to that whenever you are at that point of the program.   Mark: Well no, if you have certain ideas, let those out. Marisol: What is hard, at least in this country, is you have to get a victim to testify against her trafficker and the johns just walk free: "Well, she approached me," or, "I don’t know… answered an ad," blah blah blah… There is an existing law in the book called statutory rape that doesn’t matter if the girl was consensual or not. It doesn’t matter at all. So if you would start prosecuting johns and traffickers with statutory rape, you don’t have to get the girl to go through a whole testimony, and how he forced her, anything. Is she under the age of 17 or not? Tim: Yeah. Marisol: That... It is done. And when you start prosecuting johns and traffickers with rape, that is a different story now. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: And charging traffickers, by the way, with facilitation of late, where you are creating an environment, where a girl can be raped extremely easily, should be under the age of 17, it is done. Tim: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. In fact, a lot of our approaches to this is all about figuring out how to prosecute these cases without needing to put the victim on the stand. These victims are so... They have been so terrorized and so rewired. For their own well-being, you don’t want to put them on the stand to have them have to relive this. Also, they are not the best witnesses because they do not know who they are, they don’t know who to trust. And so, this solution of prosecuting different crimes to get around that is one approach. Something we are doing, especially in foreign countries, is we do these sting operations and film everything. And they don’t really do that, especially in developing nations. We film every part, from the day we meet the trafficker until we buy the kid. And so, at the end of the day, we just give a hard drive to the prosecutor, and it is like they are watching the movie, and they say, “We don’t need to put the kid on the stand because we have the true intent of this trafficker from seventeen different angles."    Marisol: Yeah. And you know, Tim, I have had these conversations with Lieutenant Mark Evans, who is head of all Los Angeles Vice and all of the trafficking in Los Angeles on the Valley side, and he is like, “We would do this if the DA/district attorney would prosecute.” So my next step is to meet with DA and go, “Would you prosecute them?” Because all depends on are they going to prosecute a case like that or not. The cops can actually charge them with anything that they want, so if we just start instilling the mindset... And also johns... Can we just take a moment about the customers? Because if, right now - and I don’t know if this is the case all over, but at least in California, you know - let’s say there is a 12-year-old-girl. Someone answered an ad on Backpage and went to a motel and had sex with the 12-year-old girl. And the guy is 55 years old - he gets a slap on the wrist and he goes to john school and he gets a misdemeanor and gets it wiped from his record, just like traffic school. I don’t understand - how that is ok? Tim: Yeah… It is not ok. Marisol: And if we started prosecuting the johns with statutory rape, and you advertise that, you are going to take away the demand a lot faster. Tim: Absolutely. Marisol: Because people don’t like to be charged with rape by any means. But right now, there is no consequence. Tim: Yeah. Marisol: There is no consequence. They walk free. It doesn’t matter. So there are mindsets and things that can be changed within our already existing laws, at least in this country, that I believe can go a long way towards making a difference. Continuing with the customers... And then, as the johns get arrested and as they do get prosecuted, or even just arrested, why are we protecting them? If you look on the back of a newspaper, or whatever, you can read like who got arrested for what, drunk driving, blah blah blah blah, but you can get arrested for this and it is not there.    Tim: Yeah. Marisol: So I think we should make the johns, particularly the rich white guys, pay for a billboard with their face and their mugshot in their neighborhood. Tim: The Queen of Sweden did this. She did this thing where if you got caught trying to have sex with a child, you got your face plastered on a billboard for everyone to see. And guess what happened? They stopped. They stopped soliciting kids in Sweden. They left. It is exactly what we need to do. Marisol: Exactly. Tim: Unfortunately, there are a lot of groups out here who would stop us from doing that. Trying, worrying about child rapist rights. Marisol: It is insane to me. And I think, I honestly believe, Tim, that if we could get the certain people in the government that are not scared of that, we could push something like that through. But what I have run into in meeting on the local state and federal level is you get guys that are just, "Oh no, we can’t do that. We will be fought,” and they don’t even try. But I believe if you would try hard enough, we could push something like that through just based on the statistics alone that you ended this.      Tim: These politicians answered to the people. If we would get the people loud enough, then they would say, "Of course, I will put their face on a billboard!" Because the people are demanding it, and that is where we need to start this, right. And that is what you are doing - that is what we are doing - is trying to create this grassroots movement - get so loud that these guys have to start doing stuff like this. History tells us that they will do it if we get loud enough. Mark: You mentioned politicians that are scared, and we don’t know what the exact story is on H.R.515 right now, which is before Congress, which is a big cause that we are going to take up.     Marisol: Which one is that? Mark: It is International Megan’s Law. Marisol: Oh great, yes! Ok. Mark: It will allow better communication between governments as bad guys travel abroad and come in. Right now, you cannot really get the information quickly enough to be actionable intelligence. Now, it went through the House, it went through the Senate, the Senate put some amendments on it, threw it back to the House - now it has a 15% passage rate. We have got a brilliant girl from the Podcast Congressional Web that just dissects bills. She is amazing.    Marisol: Who? Who does she work for, do you know? Mark: She is, totally... It is just her, totally independent. Marisol: Oh, ok. Mark: I don’t know what her politics are. I have listened to her shows - I have no idea, which is beautiful to me. She just dissects bills and sees what the [inaudible], sees what the hold-ups are in...what day, I think February 10th, we are going to be on with her and she is going to walk us through the bill and dissect who is holding it up and why. Marisol: Great! Mark: That is going to be awesome, right? Tim: This thing has been in Congress for over a year. It is ridiculous. Now, I actually testified with [inaudible] of Utah. We testified before the House on this bill because we were so frustrated, like, “Why can’t you pass this?!” It is a place that actually creates what is called the Angel Watch Center, a center where non-profit, private groups, government groups all get together and they talk about... They bring intel together, they start communicating better. And like Mark was saying, it is a notification program. If some French child rapist/former convict comes into our country, they are going to tell us, “Hey, this guys is flying into JFK. You might want to either deny him entry or watch him,” you know. We did the same for other countries. And again, what the issue is is their rights, the criminal’s right to travel without being notified. Mark: As we start to find more about H.R.515, maybe we engage you. Marisol: I am looking at it right now and I am kind of seeing where possibly the hold-up is because they are talking about any sex offender, and what I found in the past of certain other laws was that the definition of sex offender also includes, like, the person who was caught urinating in a park drunk, and he is labeled a sex offender for the rest of his life. And they are using those cases to cause an uproar to stop the whole thing, and say it is discriminatory against them. It is a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense, but that is where I am guessing - it is a guess - some of the hold-up is. One of the things that could go a long way is we will prosecute people for aiding and abetting. If they knew about a murder or they knew about a robbery that was taken place - so they were the driver but they didn’t do it... But we don’t do this with [inaudible].     Tim: It is a great point. It is true. Marisol: That would be another angle to getting the johns going, "Hey, you knew about this?” to get prostitution illegal in this country. So, did you really answer an ad for a massage? Do you know what I mean? And cast a wider net when you can actually prosecute people for aiding and abetting, for helping along, for being an accomplice...you know, looking in terms of existent laws that we already have in the books and prosecute differently to make a bigger dent. Tim: Agreed. We could make a list and shout it out to the world: "So, here are the things that need a change," and just be loud. Get the footage, get entertainment industry, get everyone to be so loud - Harriet Beecher Stowe thing, right - and then say, "What do we do?" "Here is the list, call your congressmen, get this stuff changed." Let’s do it, we are going to do it! Alright. Thanks so much, Marisol, we will have you back soon. Marisol: Alright, thanks guys! Thanks for having me! Tim: Alright, thank you! You know, the thing done is at least there are people out there because what this requires to save kids... You have to think outside the box. Just like to get rid of slavery in America, you had to think outside the box. And the model we are proposing is this private public partnership where we need our law enforcement. They have the badges, they have their prosecutors, they have the jail system, they have the judicial system, they can do this. But the problem is, this is such a unique problem and it is so enormous you have to be proactive and creative. Because these…the bad guys are being creative, and most law enforcement agencies don’t have the wherewithal to cover the homicides, the drug dealers and all the things they have been fighting for years and years and are trained to do. And now, you have trafficking problem on top of that. It is relatively new in terms of trying to react to it and most don’t have the tools they need. And that is why I left the government. Because I recognized all the gaps in the agencies that were fighting this problem. Again, not to slam them, but there are gaps everywhere. I got turned down by half the time when I put out request to do an operation. I got shut down because of X,Y, or Z. I always kind of understood the reasons, and I thought, “Alright, I don’t see the government fixing these gaps anytime soon, so I am going to leave - start my own organization that fills those gaps.” So I can go to any agency and say, “I know your problems because I had them, and I am going to solve them for you. We will do this, this, that and the other.” And the law enforcement agencies that want to save their kids are like, “Yes, come on in!” and we go and conquer together in the private-public model.  There are other law enforcement officers who... I will not name them right now, but have them in my head right now, and I am pissed off at them. So close-minded. Mark: What did they say? Give me a conversation. Tim: "You shouldn’t be doing this work. This is just for us. This is for a SWAT law enforcement." "I was a SWAT law enforcement for 12 years, I know how to do this." "Well, you cannot do it. I do not like you doing it." “The parents of the kids, who are being abused - they like that we are doing it. And where we are working, no one is doing it." So there is no answer, no answer to it. It just the partners we work with - they are not this way. If you are this way, we don’t work with you. But you would be surprised how many come back and say that they literally gave up the opportunity to rescue more kids because of pride, because of ego, because if you don’t have a badge, you shouldn’t be consulting or helping or anything like that. They can’t see outside the box. And it is sad because kids are getting hurt. I have had a conversation, actually - and I will not name the people, the agency - but I have literally had a conversation that went like this: "So you are telling me that you or your boss would rather let these kids continue to be raped than work with a private organization that you know together we can solve the problem?" And they said, "Yes." Mark: Wow. Tim: They said yes. It wasn’t them... The person I was talking to said, “I want to do it, but yes that is... My boss has made that deliberate decision.” They don’t want to admit that they need help or that they don’t have a handle on it. It is sick, it is sad. But you know, you have all sorts of people, and the good news is that there are a whole bunch of law enforcement agencies out there and prosecutors all over the place that put the kids above everything else, and that is who we work with. Yep, that is who we work with. And there are so many of them that we don’t run out of work. So, you know, I was talking to some folks at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who are a wonderful asset - all law enforcement works with them on so many areas to find kids, to find child pornographers - such an amazing organization. And I was talking to them about some of my frustrations and they said, "You know what? We did the same thing." They went through the same thing in the 80’s when they created the organization. There was a major - and I won’t name the agency - a major agency in the United States government that actually put out a policy/memo to their agents, to their law enforcement, saying, "You will not work with this new National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. You will not work with them. We got this. We don’t need help."    Mark: Farm Bureau. Tim: Yeah. That was a farm bureau. You got it.    Mark: Gosh…you know, the pressure was their heyday. Tim: Between that and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, yeah... They just went...yeah, unbelievable. But now, guess what? That agency has agents in their office that work inside the National Center. And so they say, "Just don’t worry. Buck up, little Timmy. Just work with those that will work with you. And success will be built upon success." And so we just have to put the negative aside and put the haters aside and we will work with those who see the vision. And they are the best ones anyway. They are the ones who are getting it done. Mark: Today, more than any other day, in talking to you, I feel momentum. I feel really pumped. And I don’t know what you had for lunch, or what your pre-workout was, but you are on fire, man. You are going to kill it. Tim: You didn’t feel that before? Mark: I did. Tim: You jerk. Mark: I didn’t... I felt like... Tim: ...how to take a compliment and just throw it in the trash. Mark: No, listen. I have felt like you are pushing a boulder uphill before, but now I feel like the boulder is moving. You know what I am saying? Like, we were getting people and we're shedding light on the problem, but really I just feel a new energy and not sure what it is. Tim: Well, what you are feeling probably is... I am in the middle of a case. I am back in my... Mark: You are... Tim: ...I am back in my agent days right now as an employee of this law enforcement agency. It is… I have been given authorization to get back and get my hands dirty back in this. And when I do that, I get very energized. Well, friends, sign us off, Timmy. Buck up, little Timmy. Tim: Thanks for joining us, guys. Looking forward to see you again on Slave Stealer Podcast.

Timothy Ballard has met and arrested hundreds of child traffickers. They are different genders, ethnicities, ages, and religions, but what was the one thing they all had (have) in common? An addiction to pornography that started years before. In this bonus episode, Tim sites recent research about the effects of pornography on the human brain. He and his team, known as Operation Underground Railroad, often begin investigations into trafficking by following the trail of child pornography directly to traffickers on their way to act out the very things they have been watching in the videos. [caption id="attachment_12137" align="alignright" width="49"] In Episode 003 of the Slave Stealer Podcast, Timothy Ballard points to pornography as a root cause of child sex trafficking. This infographic, by FightTheNewDrug.org supports his claim with anecdotes and evidence.[/caption]     Full Transcript: Intro: You are listening to Slave Stealer.   Timothy Ballard: Ok, welcome to Slave Stealer podcast, this is a bonus edition. This bonus edition has to do with the topic of: Pornography. Not something people love to talk about, especially, the evil effects of it. But it was a tangent, that we started talking about as a result of the Vicente Fox interview, that we did recently, and it is my opinion, and I think science backs it up, that pornography is, in fact, creating a lot of the demand that we are seeing for child sex. This is me diverging from a conversation about Vicente Fox, and I am hitting pornography, and talking about the true evil that it can be, and creating sex addicts who hurt kids. So, roll it! If you saw the amounts of child pornography, that are being transferred and distributed every single day, and we know this, because we have worked these cases with our partners. It is stunning! It is mind-blowing! And, the largest consumers of pornography in the world are from the United States. So, we are producing these sex addicts. And what are we doing about that? And, I am not satisfied with what the U.S. Government is doing about that. Mark Mabry: What do you propose they would do? Tim: Well, one thing is, we need to start talking about the evils of pornography. This is not popular. Why? Because 98% of guys are stuck in pornography. Mark: Do you think 98%? Tim: I think so. That is what the studies say. Mark: 98%? Tim: Yeah. Mark: Of guys? So, between me and you, you are looking at pornography a lot? Tim: I am in the 2%. Mark: Me too! Tim: Ok, well, congratulations!   Mark: It must be Chris over there, our sound guy. Tim: Yeah, Chris. How is your porn use these days? Chris: I guess, I am in that 98%. Mark: Oh, great! Wrong answer! Tim: So, what is hard about porn, the porn issue is, that not everybody, by long shot, who looks at pornagraphy, is getting end up raping children. But, I would say, 100% of men who rape children are porn addicts.  And so, like anything else it needs to be education around it, like it can be a drug. Pornography can be a drug. Mark: Yes. Tim: Especially if it is in certain levels, and it becomes an addiction, like any other drug. Like alcohol is a drug, right? So, people need to drink responsibly. We need to educate people, kids especially, about what pornography could lead to. I have arrested dozens and dozens of pedophiles. I have interrogated dozens and dozens of pedophiles over my career as a special agent, and also in the work we are doing with Operation Underground Railroad. And every single time when they talk, they talk about how it all started when they were 12 years old, when they picked up a Playboy, or they looked at this naked picture or whatever, and their mind starts going there, and then it is a progression. And, the science backs it up. You can go to our friends at fightthenewdrug.org, and they talk all about the science behind what this pornography... how it is in fact a drug. I mean, it over-stimulates the frontal lobes of the brain, it creates shrinkage in the brain. It creates brain damage. And, what happens to people who are addicted to it, it is not the naked pictures they are addicted to. What they are addicted to is the chemical reaction, the dopamine, the endorphins that the images produce in their brains. That is what they want, and they will do anything to get that. And, when the naked pictures aren’t working anymore, just like marijuana eventually starts to wear off on the use - I need to progress to something more powerful to get that same chemical reaction - and, frankly it is very similar chemical reaction to pornography. So, they need something to... they just want that reaction, they want that dose of dopamine. They know their brain can give them, but they have got to shot their brain now, because the adult stuff, the legal stuff ain’t working. Mark: When we were… Tim: So what they do..wait! Mark: Dude! I heard what you were saying. I am not interrupting.. Tim: But, I am about to end it. I am about to give my final line and you cut me off. So, what they turn to is Mark: It is a long final line. Tim: Well, it is powerful. Mark: Alright, let’s go. Tim: What they turn to is child pornography. That becomes their heroine, their crack, cocaine, and it shots their brain enough to get the reaction they need. And, these guys are almost brain-dead at this point, but they need something, and then when that wears off, they travel to Cancun, Mexico to find a child. And, again, a very small percentage of porn users end up in Cancun, Mexico, but there is enough, that there is 2 million children who are being sold for sex in the world.   Ending: Get more Tim and Mark at slavestealer.com.

Heyang: The national golden week has just come to an end. The holiday brings us not only enjoyment but also headaches. Netizens have listed the top ten tortures during the holiday period. What are they and have you fallen victim to it.Mark: I mean one of them which actually isdebatable is no Internet or Wi-Fi.Heyang: Yes, that’s number ten, so it’s the bottom of the list.Mark: I mean it depends on where you go though, doesn’t it, and what kind of plan you have. How cheap you are. As you know, in my case, the answer is extremely.Heyang: Thank you for being so honest.Mark: Therefore, if I’m not in this building or in my flat, I don’t have access to WeChat because I can only use that on the Wi-Fi you see. I can’t use it on the 3G because I keep it switched off. Once I switched it on it cost me 70 yuan just for one day. I think that’s cause I’m on the wrong plan with the provider. So some people are used to sort of being a bit out of touch as they walk from building to building. I know actually some people mightsay it’s a good thing not being in contact with everyone, but no it’s not. You miss it, and it’s nice to keep in touch. So that’s something that I would miss if I went camping for example somewhere in China.Doris: Yes, Wi-Fi would definitely be on my top list when I look for hotels or places to stay. If they don’t have Wi-Fi, then I don’t stay there, because being connected, being in touch with family and friend is very important to me during the holidays whether you are with them or far away from them.Heyang: Yes, of course. I totally agree with you. But I think now it’s not just about keeping in touch with your family and friends. Often it’s about you need to show where you are or what you are going through or just plainly show off in your friend circle or moments on WeChat, and I just don’t get it why people can’t get off the internet for a little bit, or just get away from the social media platforms for a little bit. During the past holiday, the joke in my friend circle was that two of my friends, they accidentally bumped into each other in a restaurant in Beijing. They couldn’t speak to each other because one is supposed to be in Canada, and the other one is supposed to be somewhere in Europe according to their friend circles, but actually they were just in Beijing. But it’sjust like part of this whole culture and I’m like you Mark, I can’t believe that. Yes, I’m a bit cheap, I would want to stay away from the paid internet flow data thingMark: I resent that comment that you call me a bit cheap. I’m very cheap. Don’t insult me! Heyang: Ok, well, you win this battle I suppose. I’m one step behind you. Apparently number nine on the list is someone forgot their smart phone and they are crying about it.Mark: It’s amazing if we start thinking back to how things were before smartphones and before the internet when people had to go to a library if they wanted to know anything about the world that wasn’t in the daily newspaper. So you had to go and look up information that was maybe twenty or thirty years out of date. We are spoiled now with the amount of access we have to freshly updated information, so I can see that someone forgetting their smartphone like innumber nine on this list. It would be very annoying. For practical reasons, say you wanted to go camping and you wanted to know where there was somewhere you could get some water or something like that, so for practical reasons, it’s good to have a smart phone with you when you are somewhere like that.Doris: I know, I recently had my phone shut off for some reason, and people were trying to call me, connect with me and invite me to dinner.And I didn’t have the phone with me, so I left it at home for just two hours, and people got mad at me, because I didn’t answer my phone during that period of time.Mark: Including employers as well. So this is, you know, they know where we are all the time, don’t they now. And there’s no real reason for not answering your WeChat if it’s your boss on there, for example, if they are on your list, because they know that you are using your WeChat to talk to your friends.Heyang: For people enjoying the holiday, it’s not just about having fun, but it’s also about for some people getting up early and getting stuff done, be itmeeting your travel plans.People have really packed their schedule for a holiday. Isn’t it kind of just missing the point of the holiday?Mark: But I think traditionally, holiday was something where agricultural workers didn’t have to go to work and they were exhausted and they just stayed at home. Sometimes, merchants couldn’t go to the bank. This is where in Britain we get the name “Bank Holiday”, which is what we would have called October the first “Bank Holiday”. So if the Bank wasn’t closed, then you didn’t want to leave all the money in your shop that day, so in other words, you didn’t open because you couldn’t take the money to the bank, that’s how bank holiday got started. So yes, I kind of agree with you there.Heyang: Yes, it seems like waiting for others, keeping a diet… Why would people keep a diet during the holiday? I don’t understand that part on this list, because ok, it’s personal sharing time again. What did I do during the holidays? Mark: Do tell us.Doris: Please do.Heyang: Like you guys want to know, I see those eager eyes in the studio.Doris: What did you do?Mark: Suck up! We are gonna find out anyway. You are gonna tell us. Go on, what did you do? Was it interesting? Heyang: It was great! It’s the best thing in the world.Mark: Why don’t we ask the listenerstoguess what it was?Heyang: Basically, I ate ateate and then just lazed around, and was just a total couch potato, and that is the best thing in the world. As you guys know, I’m very much into fitness, like I do a hundred sit-upseveryday. Mark: Well, sounds like it.Heyang: But during the holiday, it’s time to just completely turn off and just enjoy the wonderful food and just laze around. Doris: So the holiday isn’t just a break from work for you. It’s also a break from exercise.Mark: Why do you want abs?Heyang: Well, because I want to look good. Is there a problem with that? I’m getting challenged by a person who doesn’t have it. Once you’ve got it, you love it.Mark: I’m just jealous. Have you actually seen the abs then, already?Heyang: Why are you suddenly so interested in my body? We should not go down that path. Can I please just read out a couple of messages from our listeners? One is WeChat listener Bob, he says that the greatest torturous moment of the holiday is the horrible traffic. The part we didn’t devote a lot of time for is actually No.1 death penalty--when you have no money. Yes, I think it sums it uppretty well.

Xiaohua: A teacher’s pet is someone who is greatly favored by a teacher. To become a teacher’s pet it will take a bit of work, but the results are phenomenal. When you are a teacher’s pet, the teacher is more likely to accept excuses from you, give good opportunities to you, and write positively on your evaluation. But of course everything comes with a price.While favored by a teacher, you’ll risk being hated by the entire class. 在班上老师总是会偏爱一两个学生。他们虽然会被班上的同学鄙视，但是被老师偏爱的好处也是无穷的呀~今天Round Table就来教你如何成为老师的宠儿。Yes, so we are giving you advice on how to become a teacher’s pet. But really is it worth trying to become a teacher’s pet?Mark: What we should do is what we said should be done with teaching gifts. We should all declare an interest if we have one. Were any of us the teacher’s pet? I can say that I definitely was not. XH: What about you Amy?Amy: I think I definitely was. Mark: Really?Amy: I was a total goody two shoes. I definitely sucked up to the teachers. Not on purpose, it wasjust I was usually in the gifted and talented programs and stuff. And so, I don’t know, I just had this compulsion like be good. (XH: Please people.)I could get in trouble I’d feel like terrible and I’d cry if I got in trouble. Mark: You’ve gotten red, Amy. You’re blushing. XH: Amy’s a Cancer. And as a Cancer myself, I can totally understand your feeling. Cancers don’t like to upset people. Satisfying people is their biggest wish in life. Somethinglike that. They cannot feel the same rebellion that’s in other people’s heart. They just don’t want to do that. Amy: I always wanted to be a rebel. I just couldn’t find it in my heart to do it. XH: Exactly, so that’s not your fault. But anyway, Amy, maybe you should read out all these advice on how to become a teacher’s pet. Is there anything that impressed you?Amy: Let’s see. I think asking questions, always having your hand up when the teacher said “Does anybody know the answer?” “I do! I do! I do! Call on me! Call on me!”Mark: I did that. I did that too. Amy: You did? See, maybe you were a teacher’s pet. Mark: Perhaps I was a teacher’s pet anddidn’t know it. XH: Yes, perhaps. Also you have to ask the right question. Asking questions I think is always good. The teacher encourages some class participation. But if you accidentally ask the question that the teacher doesn’t know the answer of, then it’s not very good. Amy: I don’t know. I think in the States, that’s like a sign that you’re a good student. So the teacher will be like “That’s a very good question Amy. Let me figure that out for a second. The teachers like the smart students. They like the well-behaved students. They like the students that talk to them. So I guess if you spend a lot more time with the teacher than you do with the other students, that’s teacher’s pet. Mark: I’ve just remembered a terrible thing I did to our teacher, a German teacher who was actually German. I would take CDs of these sort of German punk songs. I knew there were full of rude words. And then I’d ask her to play it, and “Could you translate it for us?”XH: What?Mark: And embarrassed her.Amy: Really?XH: That would be regarded as a challenge of authorities, and not welcomed.Mark: I think she said something that I knew it wasn’t right. I just had to accept whatever words she said it meant. Amy: See, you were a teacher’s pet. Mark: No, that’s the opposite of being a teacher’s pet. You can see that I really would not want to be a teacher’s pet. For us, it was the last thing you’d want to be. So I’m fighting against this accusation of being a teacher’s pet. Amy: But nobody wants to be the teacher’s pet. That’s like a very bad thing to be. And I think I was only the teacher’s pet because I was just like kind of a weird kid. Mark: Do you think teachers respect the teacher’s pet, or just feel sorry for them?Amy: I think they feel sorry for them. XH: I don’t think so. I think it depends on whether you acted it out naturally or whether you were being too pretentious, and trying to make too much effort. I think teachers can see that. You know, you’re kids. The teacher is like several decades older than you. So they know whether you’re pretending to be nice, or whether you’re just naturally nice. Mark: There’s a difference though. There’s a difference between being a teacher’s pet, like Amy was, or being the English monitor, like Xiaohua was, cause you were made to do it, won’t you? Xiaohua: I was made to do it. Mark: You were instructed. You didn’t volunteer for it. Xiaohua: No I didn’t. Amy: What does that mean, the English monitor? Xiaohua: The English class representative meaning I have to help the English teacher with a lot of assignment collecting and things like that. Mark: That’s fair enough. That’s not a teacher’s pet. Amy: See, if you did it voluntarily, that would be a teacher’s pet. Mark: It would be. It’s easy. It is all to do with not what you do but what your attitude is while you are doing it, whether you’ve volunteer for it. Xiaohua: I don’t think it’s a healthy attitude. What is wrong with being helpful? For example, if the teacher finishes a class and there’s a blackboard full of chalk writing, and the first one who came up and tried to wipe those will that be considered as a teacher’s pet or trying to impress the teacher? Mark: I mean I think it’s all to do with maturity and being an adult really. Cause now I totally agree with you. I mean I think if I was a teacher I think it will be great if someone volunteer to help out. This is how we function at work. Everyone helps each other out. But at school, it’s a different situation. In British school, anyway you must not be seen to be siding with the teachers or helping them. Amy: You will definitely get picked on for helping her clean the black board. Xiaohua: I think even in China, that’s true. What about helping your teacher hand out some sheets of paper or test results? Mark: I think that’s OK. Because that’s a sort of you don’t really often have a lot of choice, do you? You were given them and you have to give them out. Xiaohua: So it depends on whether you willingly want to help out. Amy: Exactly, that is the difference. Teacher’s pet or not a teacher’s pet. Xiaohua: OK. People are being punished for being a good person. That’s all.

Heyang: 大家好，欢迎来到这周Round Table的英语词汇小百科节目，我是Heyang，Mark会跟我一起聊一聊关于器官的那些事。We are going to talk about organs and the phrases related to that, and often it sounds a little bit religious and biblical sometimes. But anyway, let’s go into it.Mark: Okay, what are we gonna start with?Heyang: What about this phrase, “a man after my own heart”? It sounds like you are professing your love to someone. Is that what it means?Mark: Do you know, I mean I’ve known this phrase ever since I was a little boy learning English. But, you know, I’ve never thought of it in that way before. Yeah, “a man after my own heart” is the sort of thing that, maybe a woman might say or something like that. It doesn’t mean that at all. I mean, what it means is someone that has the same sort of ideas as you. For example, I mean, you know, if you love football, for example, and your friend loves football, then you can say “Oh yeah, he’s a man after my own heart”, meaning that he follows the things that your heart follows in the same way. Heyang：那也就是说，这是一个合我意的人，跟什么爱情啊表白啊没有任何的关系。What about another phrase, which I think we see it more often, saying that something costs someone “an arm and a leg”.Mark: Yes, well that’s very, very interesting what I mean, you know, obviously the things that we would least like to give up, you know, if we were buying something, is part of our own body. So, that’s why this is quite a shocking one, really. If something’s really high-priced in a shop, you can say “Look at that! It would cost an arm and a leg to buy it.”Heyang: Or maybe a kidney to get an iPhone.Mark: Well, it’s happened, unfortunately, hasn’t it? And the other thing is, if we go back 500 years to the works of William Shakespeare, then Shakespeare wrote a play called The Merchant of Venice, which featured a character called Shylock. Shylock used to lend money out to people, and there was one particular man that he lent the money to. When this man couldn’t pay it back, the deal was that that man would give Shylock one pound of flesh.Heyang: Ouch!Mark: Now, that could have been an arm or a leg. But of course Shylock wanted his heart, obviously therefore wanted his life. So, that’s another reference in literature to this idea of giving away part of your body. In this case, in payment to the debt. I won’t tell you how the story ended, because it’s one of the great plays. And there’s a really great film version online, which stars Jeremy Irons, a great British actor, not as Shylock, but he’s the role of the man that borrowed the money.Heyang: Yes, and I do love his voice too, as he was Scar in the Lion King. A pound of flesh means something which is owed that is ruthlessly required to be paid back. Pound of flesh,一磅肉，这个意思呢，也是形容以借款人的惨重损失和痛苦为代价的债务。也可以说是合法却极不合理的要求。来自《威尼斯商人》，也是莎士比亚的名剧之一。You can check that out.Mark: And even now, say a husband and wife have been arguing, and then the wife continues to argue, even when the man thinks that he’s, you know, done all he can to calm her down. He might leave, go out and visit some of his friends. And he would use the phrase today, still used today, he’d say, “You know, I mean I kept apologizing to her, but she wanted her pound of flesh”. Meaning that she just wouldn’t let it go, and she wanted to extract everything she could from him.Heyang: Or maybe it’s because he did something really terrible in the first place, and what the lady should have said is “go and boil your head”!Mark: That sounds horrible, some of these are really horrible. Do you know, the one I hate would take about go and boil your head, I mean that’s a horrible image, isn’t it? Someone boiling their head.Heyang: That means in Chinese, “滚!” It’s not a good word or phrase to use.Mark: It’s a really horrible one, isn’t it? And the other one I hate is, a lot of American show-biz people say this, “Eat your heart out”.Heyang: Ewwww…Mark: I think that’s the most… I think that’s actually obscene imagery. I can’t stand even the thought of thinking about that phrase, but you hear it all the time…Heyang: What does it mean, by the way?Mark: It means, say for example at the Oscars, if one actor has got one an Oscar, and the others thought they were going to win but they didn’t, that one that want it in a very bitter and kind of nasty kind of way, can say, “eat your heart out”, you know, meaning “too bad on you”, “I’m better than you”, that’s what it means, you know. It’s when you achieve something, and the other people don’t. And maybe they’ve been criticizing you before, and you’ve proved them wrong or something like that. So, personally I can’t stand the phrase, I think it’s a horrible visual imagery. I mean, it’s like something out of the Walking Dead.Heyang: It’s all the time we have for this week’s 英语词汇小百科，we’ll see you next week!

Xiaohua: Hello and welcome to Round Table’s Word of The Week. Today we’re going to talk about things girls say versus what they actually mean. Mark: Now Xiaohua, before we start, do you mind talking about this subject. Xiaohua: I don’t mind at all. Mark: Are you just saying that. I have to interpret what you mean. Xiaohua: And by the end of the conversation, you’ll know whether I do mind or not. Mark: Yeah, ok, which one should we start with?Xiaohua: Let’s just say with one thing girls say all the time. Girls tend to say when they are dating ”I’m not very hungry right now, I have a very small appetite.”Mark: The translation though is “After you leave, I’m going to eat an entire cake.”Xiaohua: That unfortunately can be true, especially on the first or second date. Mark: I didn’t know that. Interesting. Xiaohua: It’s just to leave a very good first impression. Mark: I am learning actually quite a lot from this already. Now I know that sometimes at a date, a girlfriend will say “It’s fine. Oh no, Mark, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” They say it in a certain way. I never know what that means. What does that one mean?Xiaohua: Now guys hear this line “I’m fine” are not in luck. Because what we actually mean is “I would appreciate if you could have a long conversation about this. No shorter than 45 minutes. If not, I would appreciate if you get out of here right now”.Mark: Yes, I know from sometimes, from the consequences that must have been what they meant. Why didn’t they just say it at the time?Xiaohua: As a girl who used to say this a lot, I’ve no idea. The thing is we want to appear strong, but deep down we are still very vulnerable and we want someone to comfort us and to make us feel better about something. Mark: Here’s another one I like off the list. Number three, when girls say “I just want a guy who makes me laugh.” What they actually mean is “I just want a hot guy with a great personality who is rich. And if he can make me laugh, that would be great.”Xiaohua: I think that is a little bit mean. Now I don’t know about guys, Mark. But I don’t think a lot of girls know exactly what they want. That’s why they say “I just want a guy who makes me laugh”. What about guys? Do you actually know what kind of girls you want, and you can describe it, and be straightforward about it?Mark: Yeah. Obviously it varies doesn’t it? One who is not needy and clingy; one who is independent. This is to describe personal sort of…I might as well use this radio show for something useful to get myself a date. Independent, interested in things in life, with an opinion about things that she’s willing to discuss. Oh, I think describing Zhou Heyang.Xiaohua: Oh okay! I’m gonna tell her. And I think our listeners are hearing it as well.Mark: Okay, so here’s another one that girls sometimes say when you are in the middle of talking to them about something. They’ll just say “it’s whatever”.Ok. So here’s another one that girls sometimes they say, when you’re in the middle of talking to them about something, they’ll just say: “It’s whatever!” As though they really don’t care. Apparently the translation, though, what they really mean is: “Actually it’s very significant and it’s affecting every single part of my day!”Xiaohua: Oh, I like this, and unfortunately I think it’s true for a lot of women. Again, we’re just generalizing here, right? But, I like the following two generalizations a lot. So when women say: “I like him, but…” what they actually mean is “I don’t like him at all”. It’s just a nice thing of putting things forward. Mark: It’s just so confusing, Xiaohua. Xiaohua: Because there’s a but, right? I like him, but…you know. But then there’re some aspects of him that I don’t like that much. And that actually means I don’t like him at all. Mark: But then, later they might say: “I don’t even like him anymore”, which translates, we’re told, as “I cry myself to sleep at night thinking about him”. Xiaohua: That is the worst. This sentence is usually heard when there’s a breakup. And the girl says “I don’t even like him anymore”, and it actually means “I’m extremely hung up on this guy”.Mark: Do you know, finally, after years of trying to work out what women mean, I think I’ve worked out a formula for understanding what women mean. Xiaohua: What? Mark: I think whatever women say, they’re not talking about the present moment. They’re talking about an ideal situation. So for example, if she says I don’t even like him anymore, that’s what would be perfect, but it’s not the truth at the moment. The fact is she thinks the complete opposite and she’s crazy about him. I think this formula works. For example, if she says I’m not hungry right now, this would be in an ideal situation. So what she actually means is I am hungry right now. I think we’ve cracked it. I think we could write a book about it. Xiaohua: You’ve cracked it. I’m not sure I’ll be on board. But let’s give it one more try on this sentence. When girls say “I don’t care where we go to eat”, what they actually mean, or we actually mean is, “I care a lot about where we go to eat and actually have some very specific preferences about where we need to go. And I just need you to start naming restaurants. And make sure to name the right one within five attempts.”Mark: So it’s absolutely right. The formula actually works with this. So if she says “I don’t care where we go to eat”, it means in an ideal situation I wouldn’t care where we go to eat. But it’s not ideal, therefore I do. So I wish I didn’t care where we go to eat, but I do. I’m beginning to see how to interpret what women say. And when women say: “You don’t know when my birthday is”, the translation of that is “you’re dead”. Xiaohua: That is true 100% in any circumstances. And that’s all we have for this week’s Word of the Week.

Xiaohua: This week we’re going to talk about something that I think Mark you’re going to be interested in again: what men say when they first start dating and what they actually mean. Mark: You say I’ll be interested. I know what men say when they start dating women, cause I’ve probably said them. But I’d be interested to know what women say and what they mean. But hopefully we’re doing that one next week. But yes. So what men say and what they mean. Listen up girls. You can learn a lot about us here in this bit now. OK. What’s the first one?Xiaohua: I’ve got a lot going on right now, so I’m not really looking for anything serious. Mark: Yes, I think generally you know, from my perspective as a man, we just say what we mean, don’t we? Well, let’s find out. According to the research, and this is not according to my own experience, Xiaohua, this is not me, but apparently it means “I’ve got profiles on a million dating sites. I want to have the option to date you if I want, but I also want to have the option to date 30 other women if I want to.”Xiaohua: OK. 所以当男人说……不太重要。Mark: This is a bit mean, isn’t it, really?Xiaohua: But I think this is to be expected from men when they say they’re not looking for something serious. There’s another thing that I think women don’t quite understand when men say that to them, what they actually mean. That is: I don’t care. You look great in whatever you put on. Mark: Now we’re entering a minefield for men. We have to be very careful with this kind of thing. If a man says “I don’t care. You look great in whatever you put on.” It seems that what we mean is that “We’ve watched you try on 16 or 17 different outfits, and if we have to wait any longer, we’re going to snap!”Xiaohua: Is this true?Mark: Do you know it is true, I mean, eh, now I am speaking from my own point of view. There’re very, very few sorts of clothes that women don’t look great in, whatever the woman actually. In my estimation, anyway, I think women look great in any clothing really.Xiaohua: But you know what they say in China, they say that straight guys usually don’t have a great sense of beauty. So if your boyfriend is kind of impatient at what you choose to wear or what you look great on, that means they’re straight, so you should be happy about that. Mark: Well you know, we’re drifting into the world of general broad stereotypes, and why not, cause we do it so well, don’t we, that sweeping brushstrokes of humanity and so forth. Of course that’s not a general rule, and the thing is, though, you know, why can’t women just choose a bit more quickly? Why?Xiaohua: Because the process of choosing outfits is such a pleasure. But of course, I know maybe not for their boyfriends. Mark: Yes, it’s an activity in itself I suppose, isn’t it?Xiaohua: Let’s move on. The next one that women get fooled all the time is when men say “no you don’t look fat!” what do you guys mean? Mark: Yes, I want to demonstrate something to you. Ask me that question now, go on. Xiaohua: Mark, do I look faaa…Mark: No! So it’s not just about saying no, it’s about how fast you say no.Xiaohua: I barely said the word fat. Alright. Mark: “NO!” If you leave a big gap, oh dear, you’re going to be in trouble. We will have a terrible day and you will make sure we do. Xiaohua: Let’s go to the next one that both men and women have been guilty of. So when men say “sorry, I’m just now seeing your text.”Mark: Oh my goodness, this is a terrible one. This one comes back to haunt me two or three times a week, I think. You get a Wechat message or perhaps a text message or email. And then you think oh yeah…okay…I can’t be bothered to reply to it. I’ll reply to it later. Coz you are not sure how you want to reply maybe. And then just as you are about to reply to it 4 hours later, they call you on the phone. And they say did you get me message? Of course you did. And then you have to lie and say you didn’t, don’t you? What can you say to that question? Yes, I did and I totally ignored it, which is the truth. Or, oh yeah, I just saw it just now. I haven’t checked my messages all day. Xiaohua: So don’t get fooled by that, girls! And guys! I think it can happen on both sides. Mark: Yes, I think that’s a universal one, isn’t it? We’ve all done it. Xiaohua: And the next one I think is strictly limited to guys. Guys like to say “It’s up to you” to girls all the time. Mark: Well, cause we don’t care. What we want is a quiet life. That’s the key golden rule of being a man. We just want a quiet life. We actually couldn’t care less what you wear. We don’t care what we’re having for dinner. And we couldn’t care less what restaurant we go to. But we do care about what TV we watch. Mark: That’s our domain I think really. We can be a bit picky about that. Xiaohua: I guess having slammed men for so much I think we should give them some credit for telling the truth. Shouldn’t we?Mark: Yes. The last one we are going to talk about is what do men mean when we say “I like you”. What do you think that might mean? Xiaohua: I have no idea because I know when women say this it could mean a zillion things. Mark: It could mean anything if a woman said it. When a guy says “I like you,” it means “I like you.” Cause we are straightforward and simple creatures. And we really just generally say what we think. Xiaohua: That makes it a lot easier on us girls, Mark. And I have to say “I like you Mark.” But that could mean anything. Mark: And I like you, which means what it says. Xiaohua: Thank you. And that brings us to the end of this week’s Word of the Week.

Xiaohua: Hello and welcome to RoundTable’s Word of the Week. This week we’re goanna talk about ways to talk about weather. And who better to talk about this topic than Mark? Mark: Yes. Why is that? Cause I’m from Britain. And British people have the reputation of always talking about the weather. And you know what? It’s true. I mean I found myself doing this. If I’m in the lift for example, here at the radio station, and I don’t want there’s to be just silence in the lift if there are someone else in there. I might say “It’s a hot day today, isn’t it?” And this is how British people always start a conversation in those circumstances. Xiaohua: OK. So let’s learn some of the ways to start a weather conversation. Shall we? Mark: Yes. Well you can say something like “Lovely day, isn’t it?” Xiaohua: “It is indeed!” Something like that should be the answer. Mark: I think so. Xiaohua: What about this? I’ve heard British people say “It’s a bit nippy today.” What exactly does that mean? Mark: That’s very interesting. You know in Beijing in the winter, sometimes when it might be -15°C outside, you go outside and you can feel a kind of pain on your ear as your ear gets very, very cold very quickly. And it’s as though someone is pinching it with their thumb and four fingers, and a nip is kind of like a pinch like that. So it’s to say your ears been pinched by the cold weather. So you can say “It’s a bit nippy today.”Xiaohua: 英国人有的时候会说“bit nippy today”，这实际上是说天气非常冷把耳朵都冻得有点疼的那种感觉。Mark: Another one which is interesting very,very old phrase, hundreds of years old, is a kind of weather forecasting phrase used originally by shepherds, and it refers to what you see in the sky at night and in the morning, and then it predicts the weather of the next day. The first one is “Red sky at night, shepherds’delight.” This means that the following day will be sunny. But the other one is “Red sky in the morning, shepherds’warning.” This means it’s going to rain a bit later.Xiaohua:所以在很久以前羊倌儿们就会知道通过看天色来预计第二天的天气是不是好了。Mark: I mean you could say “Red sky at any of the time of the day, and you are living on Mars maybe.”Xiaohua: All right. Did not expect that! What about if the weather is bad? What are some of the things you can say to complain about it to other people? Mark: Well, people will complain about the weather and I think it’s the same in Beijing, cause recently we’ve had some lovely warm weather in Beijing. Warm. And that’s of typical British on the statement. It’s being like 40 degrees like an oven. Xiaohua: I see. 好吧。所以当英国人说“It’s a bit warm,”他们可不是在说天气很暖和，而是说天气已经热的快受不了了。Mark: But you can put a positive spin on bad weather though. I mean generally people agree that they don’t like rain. So if someone is complaining about the rain, you might hear somebody saying “But never mind, it’s good for the garden.” Cause British people those who are fortunate enough to have a garden, usually they like gardening, and so that’s what they will say to make a positive out of a negative. Xiaohua:英国人的乐观和幽默可是出了名的，所以当连绵不断下雨的时候，你可能会听到英国人说：“Never mind, it’s good for the garden.”不管怎么说，对花园还是有好处的。Mark: Do you know Xiaohua, another interesting phrase is that has been traced back to 18th century British naval ships is, I’m going to say it now people would think this is very rude, people might say “It’s cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey.” But that’s not as rude as it is might sound. The “Brass Monkey” was the brass tray that cannon-balls were used to stack up cannon-balls on a naval ship in the 18th century. And you know when metals contract and expand, so in the winter on these naval ships when they were at sea, if it’s cold, the cannon-balls metal would contract slightly. The cannon-balls would get slightly smaller. And that meant the pyramid shaped stack that they were in would collapse, hence the saying “cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey.” It’s not rude at all. Xiaohua: 在十八世纪的海军用语当中有这样一句话是说天气非常冷，冷得把装炮弹的盘子上的炮弹都冻住了。但是因为装炮弹的盘子那个时候叫做“Brass Monkey”，所以这句话也经常会被人曲解成另外的意思。Mark: But you know what they say there about weather forecast that’s supposed to be true? There’s an eighty percent chance that tomorrow will have the same weather that we have today. And the weather forecasts on the TV never get it right eighty percent of the time. So we are better of just assuming that there’s four out of five chance that tomorrow’s weather would be the same as today. If we believe that, then we are doing better than the professional weather forecasters. Xiaohua: That’s interesting. And judging from the current weather conditions, I’m going to bring an umbrella tomorrow as well. Mark: I think you cannot go wrong in China. Have an umbrella with you all the time, and you can use it if it’s raining, or if it’s a bit too sunny. Xiaohua: That’s true. And that all the time we have for this edition of RoundTable’s Word of the Week.

Xiaohua: Hello and welcome to RoundTable’s Word of the Week. This week we’re talking about dogs, again one of Mark’s favorite topics. Mark: I do like dogs. You know when I was a boy, we had a couple of dogs at home, and just ones that we got from an animal rescue center. And then when I became an adult and left home, I had a cat. And now I’m in Beijing, I’ve got a dog. And you know, I think I’m a dog person. I prefer dogs to cats I think. Xiaohua: And we’re going to talk about some breeds of dogs. One of the most popular ones in China is the golden retriever. Mark: That’s right, yes. I see a couple of these every evening when I’m walking my own dog. And these are said to be quite intelligent dogs. If we look at the word retriever, this gives us an indication of what that dog was bred to do. It was supposed to run out and bring back things like pheasants and other birds that had been shot by people going game hunting. So that’s why it was called a retriever, because it retrieves or brings things back. Xiaohua: Golden retriever, 金毛，是作为用来猎捕野禽的寻回犬而培养出来的，它们非常聪明，而且友善热情。But interestingly, because of their being over-friendly, they’re not very suitable to become a guard dog.Mark: Yeah, you don’t want that, do you? You don’t want a burglar breaking in, and befriending the dog, and then stealing your stuff. You want something a bit more aggressive. Xiaohua: Yeah, that’s right. Let’s talk about another kind of dog, the husky. Mark: Do you know the word husky actually originates from a word referring to Arctic people in general, the Inuits or Eskimos, known as Huskies. The word’s actually a contraction of the word Huskimos.Xiaohua: 哈士奇犬也是有很多人养的犬种。它的全称实际上是西伯利亚雪橇犬, it’s the Siberian husky, that’s the full name. Mark: That’s right. These dogs are very tough. I went to Alaska once, and when I was in Alaska, I saw the start of a husky dog race. It’s called the iditarod. And it goes for hundreds of miles across the snowy wilderness of Alaska. And you can see from the fur on them, I mean they’re quite sort of hairy dogs really, and they need that to keep warm. Xiaohua: Husky跑得非常快。哈士奇是狼的近亲，性格也比较多变，有的是非常胆小，但有的却比较暴力。另外在中国哈士奇由于它的表情非常可爱也被称作表情帝。Mark: Isn’t that the dog in Game of Thrones? You’re not a fan, are you? I’m perhaps the person to answer my own question. (Xiaohua: Yes, please.) Cause I’m a big fan of Game of Thrones. I think it is actually. I think these are the Dire Wolves, and I think that it’s a type of husky that they use for that character in the Game of Thrones. This has actually led to a surge in the popularity of husky breeds. People want to have their own Game of Thrones dog. But of course, you gotta remember, you know, a dog needs love and affection for all 15 or 16 years of its life, not just until the end of the next season of the TV show. Xiaohua: Yeah, you have to be a responsible dog owner. And we’ve talked about some big dogs. Let’s now talk about a very, very small dog, a Chihuahua. Mark: The Chihuahua! These are funny little dogs, aren’t they? These are the dogs that women of a certain age perhaps and a certain social status, like to have in their handbags. Xiaohua: That’s right. I’m always afraid of stepping into one whenever I come across them. Mark: They look so fragile, don’t they, these little dogs? But the temperaments actually differ according to the temperament of the human owner. That’s what people say that own Chihuahuas. And they can be quite easily provoked to attack, which is very brave of them, considering how tiny they are, isn’t it really. They’re not said to be suitable for homes where there’re small children. But they are said to be very loyal, and may actually become overprotective of their owner. Xiaohua: 吉娃娃是属于小型犬种里的最小型，它有坚韧的意志，优雅、警惕和粘人的特性，另外它也不喜欢外来狗。There’s another kind of dog that you see a lot in Chinese homes, that is called the teddy bear. Mark: So I know the ones you mean. They’re sort of light brown, quite fluffy. They do look like a teddy bear come to life, really, don’t they? It’s supposed to be a type of poodle. These are said to be quite intelligent. The hair doesn’t fall out very often. They’re not known as shedding dogs, which is very good for people who might be allergic to dogs, or who don’t want to have their rugs to be full of dog hair. Xiaohua: 泰迪犬其实是贵宾犬的美容造型之一，但是因为泰迪犬不经常掉毛，所以也是受到很多人的喜爱。And there’s another kind of dog that actually originates from China. But today you don’t see it a lot on the streets of Beijing, and that’s the Pekingese. Mark: Oh the Pekingese dog! How could we forget that? Yes, that’s right. You know, some people used to call them lion dogs, because they said they look a bit like the Chinese guardian lions. And that breed is over 2,000 years old, and has hardly changed in all that time. Xiaohua: Pekingese叫京巴，也有叫狮子狗的。这其实是一种非常古老的犬种了。And it’s supposed to be favored by the imperial families. Mark: I heard they also make very good watch dogs as well. You know Xiaohua, I’d love to stay and chat more about dogs, but you know what, I’ve got to go now. I’ve got to go and walk the dogXiaohua: And that wraps up this edition of RoundTable’s Word of the Week.

Cardinal Thomas Collins delivers a reflection on the Gospel of Mark - "Do you still not understand?" (Mark 8:11-33)