Podcast appearances and mentions of mark here

Welcome to the Personal Development Trailblazers Podcast! In today's episode, we'll share  powerful insights, real-life stories, and actionable strategies to help you learn how to reclaim your energy, purpose, and joy.Mark Sanchez has spent the past three years helping people reclaim their energy, freedom, and joy through his coaching packages. As a Joy and Shadow Fuckery Coach, he guides individuals to dive deep into both the light and dark aspects of their lives. "Joy" is all about living in alignment with one's true self, tapping into genuine happiness, and embracing life's fullness. On the flip side, "Shadow Fuckery" involves confronting the messy, hidden stuff—those unspoken fears, frustrations, and limiting beliefs that often drain energy.With over 20 years in the hospitality industry, Mark experienced firsthand the challenges of being stuck in toxic environments. He once blamed his job, his bosses, and his circumstances for his unhappiness—until he realized the problem was within him. In 2015, he transformed his life by facing his own shadows and shifting his mindset. He lost weight, left unhealthy habits behind ("alcohol"), fell back in love with his serving job and his life, and became a coach in the process.Now, he helps others do the same. Through his coaching, he helps people dig into the shadows and use them as fuel for transformation while cultivating joy to feel more alive and empowered. His approach isn't about perfection—it's about embracing the chaos and learning from it, turning life into a training ground for deep personal growth. Mark creates space for people to break free from patterns of self-sabotage and toxic environments without needing to change anyone or anything outside of themselves.His mission is simple: to guide others toward reclaiming their energy, freedom, and joy—no matter what shadows they're facing.Connect with Mark  Here: https://www.instagram.com/mark_my_magnificence/https://www.facebook.com/share/166xdJm6rd/?mibextid=wwXIfr  ightbrations.launchware.ai/lightbrations/social-page/rtedGrab the freebie here:https://lightbrations.launchware.ai/journeys/388?sign-up ===================================If you enjoyed this episode, remember to hit the like button and subscribe. Then share this episode with your friends.Thanks for watching the Personal Development Trailblazers Podcast. This podcast is part of the Digital Trailblazer family of podcasts. To learn more about Digital Trailblazer and what we do to help entrepreneurs, go to DigitalTrailblazer.com.Are you a coach, consultant, expert, or online course creator? Then we'd love to invite you to our FREE Facebook Group where you can learn the best strategies to land more high-ticket clients and customers. QUICK LINKS: APPLY TO BE FEATURED: https://app.digitaltrailblazer.com/podcast-guest-applicationDIGITAL TRAILBLAZER: https://digitaltrailblazer.com/

As a business owner, you face high highs and low lows. People often talk about the physical grind to build a business, but the mental battle is just as tough.    My guest today, Mark Appel, knows what it's like to mentally battle through deep failure and loss. In 2013, Mark was drafted as the #1 overall draft pick in the MLB. But 5 years later, Mark was written off as one of the biggest busts in baseball. Then at the age of 30, after 9 years in the minor leagues, Mark made his MLB debut.    Today, Mark shares how he mentally processed his own high highs and low lows while being injured and fighting his way back to the major leagues. And today, how he's navigating those same thought processes as an investor and entrepreneur.    Plus Mark shares how he managed his thoughts while playing for an organization where his identity was solely based on his performance—and how you can protect your thoughts as a business owner. Even when you feel completely misunderstood and a total failure.    Connect with Mark HERE.    Get access to Simple Teen Success HERE.   Order your copy of the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling book Good Money Revolution here: https://amzn.to/34hSonE   Ready to take your business to the next level? Schedule a call with Derrick today here: www.GoodMoneyFramework.com/consulting   For daily tips to help you make and save money, follow us on Instagram @derricktkinney   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com.   S4E29 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and once again, it is time for us to talk about the autumnal equinox, one of the eight stations of the wheel of the year of holidays. Yucca: That's right. It just keeps turning and turning. So here we are. Mark: Here we are once again, you know, looking at The, the the calendrical arrival of autumn anyway. I mean, I I'm pretty clear that I'm into autumn here where I am already, and I think you are too, Yucca but, Yucca: though, because the beginning of autumn and the end of autumn are very, very different seasons here. Mark: yeah. I mean, autumn and spring are the transitional seasons, and they things change pretty radically during the, during their extent. Yeah, so, well, we can talk about kind of what tells us that autumn is coming, but we can also talk about the holiday, and what it means to us, what we call it, how we celebrate and kind of its positioning within the wheel of the year and how that relates to the things around it, and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Sounds good. Well, let's start with names. Mark: Okay. Yucca: So, for me, the equinox, and of course it's one of the equinoxes, but it's pretty clear which equinox we're talking about during this time of year. And it's also first fall or first autumn, Mark: Mmhmm. Yucca: because here I look at the seasons like there's either eight seasons or there's two seasons. Mark: Mmhmm. Yucca: So there's the Because the traditional temperate four seasons, really as we were just saying, early or first fall and second fall are two very different seasons Mark: Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Yucca: But then there's also really, there's just the hot time of year and there's the cold time of year. And this is the transition between the hot into the cold. This is one of those, those gateway or door holidays. For me it feels like we're going from one season to the next and so it's a very busy season. Very busy holiday, very busy season here. Mark: Sure. Yeah, you've got to get everything prepped and everything buttoned down for, for a cold winter. Yucca: That's Mark: Yeah I call this holiday Harvest. And of course it's not the only harvest holiday, but this, this is the time when kind of the cultural imagery of cornucopias and all that kind of stuff really, you know, starts to pop up in all the media and all of the winter vegetables are producing abundantly out of people's gardens and the earlier vegetables are pretty much petering out at this point. The, the grape crush. The grape harvest and crush is happening right at the point of the equinox, it starts usually in August but it extends, what happens is the whites get harvested first, and then the reds, and then there are what are called botrytis vines, which have the botrytis fungus growing on the berries. And they create so they, they sort of shrivel and they get very, very sweet and concentrated in flavor. And those are used to make dessert wines and ports and things like that. So there's this, you know, there are several phases to the grape harvest and crush. And it's just... It's a lovely time. The leaves are changing in the vineyards and and in some of the trees around here, and there's a feeling of industriousness Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: uh, you know, people have gone back to school, they've gone back to work, all that summertime playing is pretty much over now so there's just, it's just a, as you say, it's a very busy time, but it's also a very lovely time and so I call it harvest. Yucca: Yeah. And neither of us are in areas where we have lots of broadleaf trees that are churning, but I have a few here and it's just so lovely. to see the, to see them changing and watch that, that very traditional fall look start to, to start to happen. And there's a, there's a smell to it too. There's this very lovely crisp smell that comes with the changing of the leaves. So, do you smell the Like, when the crush is happening, is there a, you smell that in the air, Mark: If you, if you drive around the country roads, it smells like rotting grape juice everywhere. It's, Yucca: you like? Mark: I do. It's a, it's a it's a sort of quasi wine smell. It's not quite there, but it's working on it kind of smell. And you know, and there are truckloads. So grapes going by and, you know, farm equipment all on the roads and all that kind of stuff. We do have a lot of broadleaf oaks here. We have a lot of valley oaks and California coastal oaks and black oaks.  Yucca: Do they change during the autumn? We have a, we only have a few oaks here, we have these little scrub oaks, and they hold on their leaves, really, they, they really hold on to them for a long time, and then it's just, they turn brown, and then they're... They, they don't even drop them really till the spring, till they're growing new ones. We don't, and we just don't really have any other oaks at all. So I Mark: Huh. Yucca: do all oaks do that, or is that's a very special Mark: No, I mean, there, there, there are what are called live oaks. There's California live oaks here, too, and the live oaks, they don't drop their leaves at all and and they're kind of unpleasant to be around because the edges of their leaves are prickly. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, you know, you end up walking on them and it hurts. We had one in the last place that I lived, we had one outside of our yard that leaned over into our yard and dumped huge numbers of those sharp pointy leaves into our yard every year. Yucca: If they don't want to be eaten, Mark: no. Yucca: that, yep, Mark: And they have adapted ways to prevent that from happening. Yucca: yeah. Mark: So, but yes, the, the oaks do change, except for the live oaks, they do change and they do drop their leaves. But they don't turn red and yellow, they just turn kind of a rust color. And that then eats in from the outside of the leaf into the, into the center of the leaf and then it drops. And I particularly love the look of the oak trees in the late autumn and winter. Yucca: hmm. Mark: Because they're so crabbed and Halloween y and, you know, wonderful in the shape that they have. And, you know, there's just such a stark sort of gothic quality to those trees when they've dropped their leaves. Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, So yeah, harvest. And thematically, that really is kind of the centerpiece of how I think of this time. It's, it's a good time for feasting with friends and relations. Sometimes I think of this as pagan Thanksgiving. And, of course, Canadian Thanksgiving is right around this time. They have it figured out much better than, you know, late November. I don't know who's, I don't know who's doing harvest celebrating in New England in late November. That, that just seems a bit off to me.  Yucca: Well, I suppose you have all of your harvest in at that point, right? You're not in the process of harvest, you've gotten everything ready, Mark: historically that first event almost certainly didn't happen in November. It just got declared as a holiday by Abraham Lincoln some, you know, century later. Or quite a bit more than that actually. Fourscore and seven years ago plus. The, so I think about this not only as a time for, you know, coming together with loved ones and feasting, but also to reflect on what the last cycle has been like and what the fruits of that have been, of the cycle of the last year, what I've invested my energy in, and my creativity, and, you know, what I've had hopes for, all those, all those dreams and aspirations and plans, you know, that happened around the February Sabbath and And the, the spring equinox, you know, those got implemented, and there was a lot of work involved, and all this energy got invested, and all that kind of stuff, and then now is the time when it's like, well, how did that work out? What, what actually emerged? Oftentimes it turns out that what emerges as a harvest from your year is not what you planned to, to have happen. And that... That's a very useful exercise, I think, that this holiday really lends itself to a lot of gratitude and appreciation for living, which I think is true of all of the holidays, but this one particularly, I think, is really a life is good kind of holiday but it's also a time to think about what didn't work out, you know, what, what crops did you plant that did not come up you invested OK, And why? What lessons did you learn? Because maybe it's just that that sort of thing is not really the sort of thing for you, Yucca: hmm. Mark: or maybe it's that it was just a bad time for it and you can take another crack at it later. But, you know, Part of learning is assessing how things have performed. Yucca: Mm Mark: And it's interesting that we, we have a society, the economy of which is built around all these performance metrics all the time and annual performance reviews and, you know, all that kind of stuff for, for people who work. Yeah. But we don't do that very much in our personal lives very often, Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Are you still there? Mark: and I think it's, it's helpful to reflect, not in a self critical way, but in just a, you know, sort of transparent and open minded way to take a look at, well, what was I trying to accomplish this year? What were the strategies that succeeded? What were the strategies that failed? What has, what is the result? What is before me now? And what does that tell me about The next cycle, what, what I would consider doing next. Yucca: Yeah, I think that's really important, and having, I think that's something that we should be doing throughout our life, but that it's very useful to have a time that is dedicated to thinking about that in particular, right? And that's one of the really lovely things about the Wheel of the Year. And, you know, next month we'll be talking about the death stuff and all of that, and then, you know, getting into the dark part of the year with the real deep self reflection and it's just lovely to have, to have it sort of built into life that, oh yes, this is when I come to this time and do the reflection upon what did I harvest, right? Maybe literally and in terms of a metaphorically. Mark: Yes. Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's one of the things that I find very beautiful about the pagan practice of the Wheel of the Year is that it, it programs for us the kind of good human habits of thinking about certain things at certain times of the year and remembering to be grateful and, you know, all, you know, Remembering to to pay attention and you know, to be frank in our, our assessment of ourselves and, you know, looking at, at who we are and how we behave all that kind of stuff. I, I just, well, I wouldn't be doing this practice if it wasn't very, you know, moving and meaningful to me but it really is and that's one of the main reasons that it is. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And another thing that I do that I should mention because I always. But in a plug for it is that, and I've spoken about this many times on the podcast before, that I think of the Wheel of the Year as metaphorically embodying the arc of a human life. So with birth you know, with, so, sort of, conception at at the winter solstice, and then, you know, birth at the February Sabbath. And then, kind of toddler childhood at the spring equinox, and young adulthood at May Day, and then kind of full adulthood, and then middle age, and now this comes around to the time of the elderly. This is the time when, because that's the time of life when you look back and you realize, you know, what did I, what did I achieve? What's, what, what is the harvest that I... What is the crop that I grew in, in my life, right? It doesn't mean that your life is over, that you can't do anything else, but it's a time when most of your years are behind you and you can kind of assess. You know, hmm, I did that. That was cool. I'm glad I, I'm glad I did those things. And it's also a time to really be appreciative of the accumulated experience of people that are elderly, which we don't do much in our mainstream culture. We don't value old people very much. And I really would like to change that. I, I really, I, I think that elderhood is something that should be honored. Rather than viewed as something to avoid through all kinds of surgical and Yucca: and whatnots, yes. Mark: and exercise regimes and diets and, you know, all that kind of stuff that people do desperately to try to prevent themselves from being old. So, yeah, that's another, another piece that I think of here. I think of you know, toasting the old people in the community when you're having your harvest feast. Yucca: hmm. In fact, I mean, I think it was created mostly as a marketing thing, but wasn't it just Grandparents Day? Actually  Mark: I don't know. Yucca: I think it was, yeah I think that's in mid September. Mark: Hmm. Yucca: I love, I, I really love the way that you structure your Wheel of the Year and the different stages of life. And I really appreciate seeing, sometimes in the Facebook group or in other groups, people will share their different approaches to the Wheel of the Year. And I also assign different meanings. to the different seasons, but I have a slightly different approach. So when I'm looking at the seasons, I look at different components of the ecosystem, or large ecosystems, like the grasslands or the forests. And for this time of year, It is a recognition of the decomposers and the microbes the fungi and the bacteria, because this is the time where, this is the only time of year that you're going to be able to walk around in the forest and see mushrooms, first of all, because it's just too, too hot and dry during the rest of the time of the year. We have lots of types of fungi, but in terms of seeing, like, there's your bright red mushroom, don't touch that one, right, like, that's only going to happen. This time of year and really up in the mountains but this is also when for temperate climates, the, the fungi are just getting going, right? They're really doing their work. We forget that the mycelium, it's all down below the debris, the leaves that have fallen and the old plants that have died down, and they're down there. This is their feast, right? They're getting ready to start decomposing, and they'll be working all through the autumn and the winter into the spring breaking that down, and returning it into a form that then life uses again. And the bacteria, and it, it leads quite nicely into, the next season for us is about, is the ancestors. Everything that came before, and of course we start first. We go far enough back and our grandmothers were microbes, right, and so it kind of is this nice lead into that. So we, we really like to be thinking about that sort of on an intellectual level. And recognizing that, you know, we're making some of our pile, you know, compost piles and things like that. Of course, we do that throughout the year, but this is when it's going to be sitting and doing that. Mark: Mm hmm. Mm Yucca: And then, as I was saying at the beginning, that we sort of see there being two, either eight seasons or two seasons. And this is the, this is the beginning. of the cold time of year. But not quite. The days are still hot, but the nights have a chill in them, right? The wind, we're closing the windows at night and we can kind of, it feels that chilly in the morning, and you might have to, you know, in the morning you've got to, for the first half of the day, maybe have a sweatshirt on, and then you take it off by the end of the day, and you're like, oh, it's so hot. But there's just so much that It's clear now winter is coming and you've got to get ready for winter, and it's lovely to watch. Where I'm sitting right now, I'm looking out, and I'm seeing we have jays and squirrels, and they're doing their, that industrious feeling you were talking about. They're out there right now, getting... Plump, and we've got our, we have a little bear family that lives nearby, and you can see they're trying to get all plump as well, and and so that's what we're doing, too, is going, okay, well, the cold's not here, but what do I need to have ready when the cold does come, because there's just certain things you can do at one time of the year and others you can't, right? So there's some flashing that I need to put on some of my windows. That's not going to stick once it gets cold. That has got to happen before the cold comes. It's time for us to change the angle on our solar panels and to open up the, the shade cloth on the greenhouse to let the heat in. And so it's just a time of making lists. And making sure, okay, before the winter comes, does everyone have hats? Do we all have hats? Because it's a, it's a hassle to need a hat and not have it. What about boots? Because when the mud comes, we're gonna want those boots, right? And it's, there's, there's a, it's one of the two big prep times of the year, right? There's the spring prep and there's the fall prep. And I like to do like a big, lots of people like to do spring cleaning. I like to do a fall cleaning before we're gonna be inside for... Months and months. And so that's sort of the other side of the harvest, right? Like there was this whole year that happened, but now there's the whole half that's going to happen. And how am I going to prepare for that? Not in the the growing way. It's not the starting new projects kind of way that is in the spring, but it's the being ready for and prepared, sure that everything is, is buttoned up and finished up and that there's no, you know, we haven't missed any loose ends or anything like that. Mark: mm hmm, and if you have outdoor projects, you gotta get those finished Yucca: Absolutely, yep. Mark: before, because you can't bring them indoors, and you gotta get it done before it starts to rain and then snow, Yucca: Right. And I mean, and there's some that, there'll be a few projects that are much more pleasant to do when it's cold. But there's things that have to get done to have that prepped to be ready to do it. So there's just a very, it's a thoughtful time of year. It's another one of those pause and think, Mark: mm hmm, Yucca: be prepared times. And, and for us, these are our specifics of the way that, that Our climate is, but each climate is going to be a little bit different and so for some people, maybe this is, right now, that's not when it's happening, because that's not when the seasons are quite changing. For some people, the seasons are changing earlier, or later, or, you know, what you're going to be doing if you're getting ready for a winter in Wisconsin is very different than a, you know, a winter in Southern California. Mark: yes, because they hardly have winter in Southern California, oh no, it's freezing, it's 70 degrees, Yucca: Well, but that's the thing, like there's, that each climate is going to be different, and it's not, it's not less valuable to be in one climate versus the other. What's happening in your climate, some of those themes may be still happening, but what that holiday means to you in Southern California may be somewhat different. different because that, it might be a little bit more appropriate to have that sort of prep time happening at a different time of year. Or maybe it's not quite as intense, right? For me, it's really an intense time period, we've got these few weeks, and it's gotta happen in these few weeks. For somebody in a climate that doesn't have quite as huge swings as mine does, Maybe it's something that you spread out more throughout the year, and you think about a little bit each you know, maybe each full moon or something like that instead of, boom, it's, it's fall, right? Mark: Yeah. Yeah, that, that, that completely makes sense to me, and I even think about how... In a very, you know, very temperate climate like Southern California, you know, if you're, if you're in the coastal area, for example, it may even be like an opportunity to do things that most of us associate with the summertime, because like the beaches aren't going to be nearly as crowded as they were in July and August, right? So, as the weather cools off, you might be able to get a little bit more privacy and, you know, time to yourself and stuff at a beach. Yucca: Mm hmm, yeah. Mark: Yeah, so, as always, we are really interested to hear what how you're celebrating the holidays, our readers. You can reach us, or, sorry, listeners, what am I saying? You can reach us at thewonderpodcastqs at gmail. com, and we always appreciate getting your emails. We are not going to have a show next week. Because I am going to be flying to Washington, D. C. to lobby for wilderness protections so that's kind of exciting. And I've decided that I'm going to wear a Sun Tree button on the underside of my lapel, where they can't see it, but I will still be wearing it on my lapel in the Capitol when I'm going to meet with congressmen and senators. Yucca: that's wonderful. So you'll still, it still has the meaning for you, you know it's there. Mark: That's right. Yeah, yeah, but the problem is, if I wore it the other way, then it would always be stirring up conversations about what does that mean, and it would derail from the conversation we want to have, which is about new national monuments, BLM's new public lands rule, things like that. Yucca: right. So it's one of those things to be thoughtful about is when do you... So, what are you trying to accomplish, and what do you need to do in each of those cases to accomplish that? So, very fitting for the time of year we've been talking Mark: Absolutely. And actually, as I mention it oh, never mind, the public comment period is closed. Yucca: Wow. Mark: There's a Many people don't know this, the largest holder of land in the United States is the Bureau, it's the the BLM, the Bureau of Land Management. And it does not list in its priorities for land management conservation. It, it lists things like mining, and oil and gas extraction, and timber, and grazing, and all that kind of stuff, but It does not list conservation values at all. So there is a proposal that has been launched by the Biden administration to change that, to add conservation into the mission statement of the BLM so that they will make decisions not only for extractive purposes, but also for the purposes of the ecosystem. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. That's Mark: And that's one of the things we're going to be advocating for. You know, it sounds like a bureaucratic thing, but it's really not. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, these agencies are legally bound by their mission statements and and they will make decisions and allocate resources accordingly. So, it's it's an important thing. The, as I said, the public comment period has closed. The public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of the rule. Yucca: That's Mark: They got something like 300, 000 comments, and they were, you know, they ran like 90 10 in favor of the rule. Yucca: That's great. Mark: Yeah, so Yucca: I know my state, I have to look at the numbers again, but my state, BLM is, owns most of my state. Forest Service has a lot of it too. Mark: Huh, Forest Service is the second largest landholder in Yucca: it's more, yeah, it's, it's, the federal government owns most of New Mexico. Mark: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I, I got to meet your senator, by the way, Kurt Heinrich at an event a couple of weeks ago. Martin Heinrich, I'm sorry and wonderful guy very, very thoughtful, very strategic around climate change and You know, we had a good conversation about public lands management and just good. Yeah, great leader. Yucca: Yeah, well I hope you have a fun I guess fun, a very productive and enjoyable time talking with all, all those DC folks. Mark: I'm gonna get to meet a bunch of atheopagans from the D. C. area. I'm arriving on the 17th and on the afternoon of the 17th. If you're listening to this and you're in the D. C. area, I am saying, staying at the Yotel on on Capitol Hill, and you are welcome to come. I'm going to set myself up in the hotel bar at around two o'clock, and people are just going to drop by and we're going to visit. So, I'm really looking forward to meeting some of our East Coast folks that I haven't met before. Yucca: Great, well give them hugs for me, if they're hug folks. Yeah. Mark: Yeah, I'll ask first, of course, because I know you would. I would too, but... Yucca: Yep. Well, wonderful. Mark: All right, so Yucca: you Mark: you in a couple of weeks. Thank you everybody so much. Yucca: Have a wonderful equinox, harvest, whatever you call it. So, Mark: I hope your harvest has been bountiful. Yucca: take care folks.    

I know that you want to grow your business' reach and impact more customers. But to do that, you need to get your product or service in front of more eyeballs – and then nurture more relationships to generate more sales.    My guest today, Mark Lachance, is known for his unique method of growing businesses quickly. He uses creative sales and marketing strategies that turn leads into paying customers. He's also the CEO of Maxy Media, one of the largest social media marketing agencies in the world.    Today, Mark reveals how you can start building an audience on social media – specifically TikTok – for absolutely free. And then how to repurpose your social media content across different platforms to reach more people while saving more of your valuable time and money. Plus, Mark shares how to utilize connections with people you already know to scale your business and how to get them to spread the word for you.   Get Mark's book HERE.  Learn more about Mark HERE.   Order your copy of the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling book Good Money Revolution here: https://amzn.to/34hSonE   Ready to take your business to the next level? Schedule a call with Derrick today here: www.GoodMoneyFramework.com/consulting For daily tips to help you make and save money, follow us on Instagram @derricktkinney

In this episode of ALPS In Brief, Mark and the founders of Sensei Enterprises discuss cybersecurity options and support for solo and small law firms. Somebody's got to take care of you and that's just what they do. Transcript: MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: Hello, I am Mark Bassingthwaighte, the risk manager here at ALPS, and welcome to ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence Building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I am back from a trip into the home office in Missoula, and back in the satellite office here in Florida, and have with me two folks that I've just had the joy and pleasure of getting to know over the years, and the privilege to work with a few times over the years at various ABA events, and it's just been a lot of fun. MARK: Please help me in welcoming Sharon Nelson and John Simek. Sharon and John are President and Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, which is really the heart of the topic we're going to talk about today. Before we jump into some of the questions and things I'd like us to visit about Sharon and John, may I have each of you take a couple of minutes and share whatever you'd like to share about yourselves? What would help our listeners get to know you a bit better? SHARON NELSON: I'll start, and then I'll turn it over to John. What we do at Sensei Enterprise is managed information technology, managed cybersecurity services, and digital forensics. We have three branches, and that means we're running a fire station without a Dalmatian here, so there's always emergencies. It gets very difficult to keep all the balls in the air. We are also married with six children and 10 grandchildren. We're together all day and all night too. MARK: I love it. JOHN SIMEK: You didn't tell [inaudible 00:01:53], you're a lawyer though. SHARON: Oh well. JOHN: Do they care? SHARON: Maybe. John is the veteran technologist and I am the lawyer, and that's why we decided to work together when we started the company some 25 years ago, more than that now, just a little bit. John was the talent and I was the lawyer/marketer who could sell ice cubes to Eskimos, so that worked out really well for us both. JOHN: I'm not a lawyer, as you can probably tell. I'm an engineer by degree, and been involved in technology informally even before the internet. I remember that presidential candidate that was trying to create [inaudible 00:02:40]. Whatever, but back in the days of the modems and all that stuff. But I have a lot of technical certifications, formal training as well. I guess a lot of people think that I should be wearing a pocket protector and have a propeller head. But yeah, as Sharon said, I do the technology stuff, testifying expert as well, because of the forensics and all that. I just got done with a deposition a couple weeks ago that was really entertaining, at least to me, but not for the other attorney. SHARON: That's how it's always supposed to turn out. I forgot to say Mark, that I was the President of the Virginia State Bar a few years ago. That was [inaudible 00:03:25]. JOHN: That's how we ended up in Montana one year. SHARON: Yeah, that's how we ended up coming to see you folks out in Montana. MARK: Indeed. That's right. That was a good time. SHARON: It was a wonderful time. JOHN: I did go fishing when we were out there. MARK: There we go. Boy, there's no place better. You want to talk about some quiet country time on the river with a fly? A lot of fun. One of the things that I've never really visited with you guys about, I'm genuinely very interested. Sharon, you've talked, years ago, you've been a lawyer for quite some time. How did you make this jump? Was that always the plan to go into this Sensei Enterprise type business, the alternative practice, a non-traditional track if you will? How did this all come about? SHARON: Life is full of accidents. As I was a young [inaudible 00:04:22]. JOHN: We're experts at that. SHARON: Oh yeah. When my first child was born, her condition required me to stay home through several surgeries and several years. She's fine, but I ended up working from home as a lawyer. And then, later on after I had been a lawyer and been seriously involved in the Bar Association, I had this very nice man who taught technology to anyone at colleges, and he was helping me computerize my law practice back in the '80s. I was pretty wired up for a solo. But then, he got relocated because of his job, and I said, "What am I going to do without you?" And he said, "Well, I've got this friend down the street, and he's really brilliant, but he's a pain in the butt." And he said, "But I'll set up a lunch, and if you can stand him, then he could do a better job even than me." SHARON: I met him for lunch, I could stand him, and so, we started out with him helping me with my law practice technology. Ultimately, he had always wanted his own company, and he just looked at me one day and said, "You know, I could be the talent of a company, and you're a lawyer, and you can sell anybody anything, so why don't we hook up and form a company?" And that's how we got started. MARK: Wow. That's awesome. I love that. I love that. Oh my. Can you tell me a little bit about the types of services? You can a little highlight or overview, but can we dig in a little bit in terms of the types of services that you offer? I'm also interested, how would you describe your typical client? I know that you do a lot of work I think with businesses that are not just... You're not limiting your services in other words to law firms. Is what you have to offer, would it be useful, beneficial to solo small firm lawyers around the country? SHARON: We actually are devoted to solo small firm lawyers, not that they are an exclusive client roster. We have a client that has over a thousand people. JOHN: Not a legal entity. SHARON: No, not a legal entity. But in any event, we do all sizes. But we have a special feeling in our hearts for the needs of the solo small, because most companies are not interested in them. They don't really want them, because they can't get much of a profit out of them. JOHN: They might have some minimum. Unless you've got 10 bodies or more, they're not interested to even talk to you. SHARON: And so, somebody has got to take care of these people, so we really specialize in finding cost-effective things that they can use to do what they need to do. That's been something that we've been celebrated for, is that we do take care of solo and smalls along with the bigger firms. It's been a mix, Mark, and I really feel strongly about that because I was a solo myself, and I know how hard it was to get competent help and to get things that you could afford. And now that cybersecurity is so important, it's really critical that the solo and small firms have people to guide them in a way that's budget-friendly, because this stuff can be really expensive. MARK: Yeah, I'm well aware. What types of services can you help? If I'm just a solo stuck here in Florida, or Montana, or Iowa, what can you do for me? JOHN: Basically, we do an assessment, an initial assessment, come in there to see what you've got going, and is it appropriate? Should we forklift some things? Are you in the Cloud even? Because today, it's so much more affordable and flexible to be in the Cloud. SHARON: And secure, more secure. JOHN: Maybe you should be considering that. We do have some clients that are remote, up in Massachusetts as well as down the coast, and we can do a lot of things remotely. Sometimes though, you do have to have boots on the ground, and some folks might have a local person if they need hands-on to something. But generally no, we can get equipment, we can figure it, we can ship it, do all that. But essentially, get you in a position where you're a heck of a lot more secure with your technology. SHARON: And you're getting good recommendations from us about what [inaudible 00:09:08]. JOHN: Stability, backup. SHARON: Practice management systems, document management. We can help them work with the companies who have appropriate pricing for solo and small. That's really our niche, is to be able to do that for those people. The solo and smalls are really neglected. JOHN: But it really is a unique thing though, because there's not a template. You can't go to the green drawer and pull out a system for a solo. SHARON: No. I mean, they all have different needs. JOHN: They've got different needs, different things that are important to them, different types of practice, their workflows are different. We really do try to, as Sharon said, customize and make sure that they do have a cost-effective solution. The other advantage I think we have is that we know a lot about the law, and a lot about what lawyers' responsibilities are, and what their- SHARON: And what's ethical. And what's ethical has changed, Mark. In today's world, you have to take reasonable measures to protect client data and confidential data. These days, we have gotten to the point where one reasonable measure is having two-factor authentication, because it's almost always free. It comes with Office 365, which so many solo smalls use. You just have to turn it on. That's where of course the problem comes. JOHN: That's got to be really hard. SHARON: It's the convenience factor, though. They want to get right in. They don't want to have to get a text on their phone, or push a button on their phone. JOHN: Type a code. SHARON: Type a code, and whatever it is. There's all kinds of two-factor authentication obviously, and you have to help them get past the I don't want the extra step to, I have to have the extra step, because ethics demands this of me, because multifactor authentication stops almost 100% of credential-based account attacks. You don't get us that much better than that. JOHN: Especially not when it's free. SHARON: Yes, especially when it's free to do. You just have to put up with one little annoying thing that you have to do. JOHN: You can trust devices too, so it's not every time. You don't have to do this 30 days, or whatever it is, whatever the period of time is. A lot of folks I don't think realize that. They think when they hear this, they go, "No, I'm not going to do this every darn time I connect." You don't have to. SHARON: You said, tell a story. Here's a story. We've been able to successfully convince most of our law firm clients that they must ethically do this. There were several who protested, and they dragged their feet, and they dragged their feet, and then one of them got hit by ransomware. That's what happens when you don't take some advice. First thing they said was, "Okay, we got hit. We were attacked. I guess you were right about that 2FA thing, so could you come back and fix that for us now?" MARK: Hard lesson learned, but boy is it a good lesson once they understand it. I'm hearing you can do lots of advising and guidance on terms of how to become secure, taking into consideration regulations we're subject to, the ethical rules, et cetera. I just had somebody call me up yesterday about, they were talking about some other things, and a side question came out. It's a solo setting up her own firm, and she's interested, are there services and people out there that can help monitor the systems to give you a heads up? Her question was, how do I know if I'm breached? Can you help them answer that, or help them deal with that risk? SHARON: You have today an ethical obligation to monitor for a breach. That's pretty much been established. Now that you know you have to monitor, that's one reason why we are a managed service provider, because we have all sorts of alarms, and alerts, and we check things like backups to make sure everything is going the way it should. JOHN: There's a lot of automation. SHARON: There's a lot of automation. The thing is, when something goes wrong, we'll get a notice, so the lawyer is protected by having the managed services and the alerts that will go to their provider. That way, they know right away, they can usually fix it right away, or if the power is out or something like that, they have to wait until power comes back obviously. But that's why you want someone watching over all of this for you, because the average lawyer has no idea what any of these alerts mean. These things go off, and they're clueless. You want that in the hands of a professional, and it's not very expensive to get it. And so, this idea of endpoint detection and response, this is another thing that we would say is reasonably required in order for you to monitor for those breaches. JOHN: It's not just monitoring, it's also- SHARON: React. JOHN: Yeah, it reacts to it. Artificial intelligence is a part of what the tool uses, in conjunction with human beings in a security operation center. If you get a ransomware attack as an example, or there's some rogue process that comes and starts and the system sees that, wait a minute, this is outside of baseline operation, and it can even automatically take the device off the wire, off the network. But they have, at least the solutions that we're implementing for our clients, it has a rollback capability. If it's got a problem, and you say, "Shoot, you know what? Let's go back to 30 minutes ago," and put your system back into a state before this happened, and we've got that ability. SHARON: It's really kind of magic to lawyers. As much as we try to explain it, and John did in fairly simple terms, they really don't get it. They just get that the magic works. MARK: Right. That's okay. They don't need to get it. If they have somebody like you behind the scenes taking care of it, they just need to make sure these kinds of things are in play or in place. May I also assume that if I have, I do stupid on my laptop, and I get hit with something that we talk about ransomware as a classic example, are you also offering services to help me address and deal with these kinds of breaches? SHARON: Absolutely. That's what you do. JOHN: I do want to point out though Mark, all the technology and things that we do do, you cannot fix a human being. MARK: Right. Oh boy. SHARON: Who clicks on a phishing email or a phishing text? JOHN: Sharon talked about a story. We had a story from... What's today? Thursday. I think it was either Friday, or it was no longer than a week ago. We've got all these things in place, the software, [inaudible 00:16:33], whatever, and yet we've got a lawyer that gets this message, and then he actually initiates a phone call- SHARON: To the bad guys. JOHN: To the bad guys, and then is carrying on this conversation, and under his own ID, he's opening up his machine to this caller, and I'm going, "I can't stop that." SHARON: They finally asked him to enter some bank information- JOHN: And he got suspicious. SHARON: Then he finally got suspicious and severed the connection. JOHN: He called us and we said, "Whoa, hold on." SHARON: But that kind of thing happens a whole lot. People do stupid stuff, and of course now everybody is on their phone a lot, and so the phishing via text has become a big deal. They call that smishing. People will fall for that. They'll get something that says, "You just made a purchase for $500, and if you didn't make this purchase, you've got to do this, or call there." JOHN: Click here or whatever. SHARON: Whatever. Don't click. Don't call. People are not thinking. MARK: I'm hearing we have full service, which I'm not surprised, but I just want to underscore all of this. John, you raised a very, very good point. I'm often writing and lecturing about some similar things. Regardless of what IT does, we still have to deal with the reality of the human factor. You can't patch that. You can't. We have to do some training here. Is that something you guys do as well? Are there any training resources available for solo small firms? SHARON: The best training resource I know of is somebody who is not in your own company, in your own law firm. It's somebody from the outside who carries a bigger bat and has a reputation. That's why we started out long ago doing cybersecurity awareness training for law firm employees, and we do it remotely, which of course people have gotten used to that now. We have a PowerPoint, and we talk through the PowerPoint. We only charge $500 for an hour. Trust me, they can't absorb more than one hour, because this stuff is complicated, and they have to pay attention. An hour is about right. You might want to do it more than once a year. You might want to do it twice a year. At $500, most law firms can afford that, even the solos and the small firms, because it's a whole firm price. We're there for an hour, and we answer questions as we go along, but we can show them the phishing emails and all the stuff. We talk about social engineering, and all the stupid stuff they do, like sharing and reusing passwords. JOHN: The latest attacks. SHARON: The latest attacks. We [inaudible 00:19:30] the latest information. Nonetheless, people forget. The stat that's most interesting to me, Mark, is that over 80% of successful attacks involve a human in some way or another. MARK: Right. Good stuff. One of the reasons I really was excited about visiting with the two of you again, is to try to find or create awareness about resources that are out there, because there are so many places where there is, if you will, nothing locally. When you talk about this preventative educational piece, just as an example, at $500 a pop, I sit here and say, as a risk guy, two or three times a year? That's chump change, and absolutely essential to do in my mind, when I compare the potential loss of time, worry, money, data, all kinds of things, if somebody just does something stupid and clicks on the wrong thing, and we get hit with ransomware, and it's all gone, locked up. JOHN: I think the other requirements you're going to have Mark too though, and what we're seeing a lot of, is that the cyberinsurance carriers are now in their renewals and in their applications, they want to know, are you getting training for your employees? SHARON: That's one of the questions, and they don't want to hear no, or they might charge you more, or they might offer you less coverage. We've seen it all. Cyberinsurance is driving the solo and small firms crazy. MARK: Here's one as a side comment following up on that, please folks, if you're filling out these applications, don't lie. If you say you're doing something, and a policy is issued based on those representations, it's just the same as malpractice insurance or anything else. If it turns out you aren't having these trainings and you don't do these other things that you say you are doing or have in place, that's going to jeopardize coverage. Just a little side note there, be very careful and honest about answering this. I don't want to keep you too much longer, and I really, really appreciate you taking some time today. Could we close maybe with some thoughts about what are the top two or three things that you think lawyers in this space need to be concerned about, focused on perhaps, and/or a tip or two to address these kinds of things? Just a quick wrap. SHARON: Are you talking about cybersecurity in particular, Mark? MARK: Yes. JOHN: I think Sharon has talked about the things that certainly are really high on my list, and that's the multifactor authentication, the EDR systems, endpoint detection response. SHARON: And an incident response plan, which only 36% of attorneys have an incident response plan, and it is so critical, because if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That's an old chestnut of a line, but it's really true. You have got to have a plan, and you probably need somebody to consult with you a little bit, because there's no absolute template out there that fits everybody. You can start with one, but you really need to have somebody who knows what they're doing help you out with developing a plan. It's not all that hard, it's just that people don't do it. And then, if they do do it, then they leave it to molder, and of course nothing stays the same in this world, especially cybersecurity. In a year, if you haven't looked at it and done anything with it, some portion of it is probably quite obsolete. JOHN: But I think the critical foundation for that whole thing, before you even get down to saying, how am I going to respond, what does my IRP look like, is inventorying your assets and your data. If you don't know you have it, you can't protect it. MARK: That is an excellent point. Yes. That's absolutely an excellent point. I appreciate your time here. Before we wrap it up, I do want to give you a moment to share. If any of our listeners have a need and desire to reach out to you to discuss the kinds of things that you can help them out with, how can they get a hold of you guys? SHARON: Our phone number is 703-359-0700, and our website is senseient.com, or of course you could search Sensei Enterprises. We have all different kinds of folks in the office, and we'll funnel you to the right people. Very happy to do that, and always happy to have a no-cost consult if people have some questions they'd like to ask. We do a lot of that at the beginning, and then it turns out that they do in fact have a need, which is harmonious for us both. But if it doesn't work out, at least we've tried to help. And so, we would encourage that, Mark. I hope that's helpful. MARK: Yes, it is very much so. To those of you listening, I hope you found something of value out of today's podcast. My intent again today, I just am trying to find solutions. I get so many calls of, who do I turn to? This is a rough space at times, and lawyers just feel left out and unsure who to reach to. I assure you, these two and the business they have, these are good folk, and it's a great business. I would not hesitate reaching out at any time. John, Sharon, thank you very much for joining me today. John, good fishing, and hope you guys take care of those grandkids and kids. Boy, that's a busy, crazy life, but I'm sure it's exciting. That's just awesome. I'll let you get back to it, guys. Thank you for listening. Bye-bye, all. SHARON: Thank you very much. JOHN: Bye-bye. MARK: Bye-bye.

Mark Cocco is the Safety Manager for the Martin County School District in Jupiter, FL, and President of the Florida School Plant Management Association. "Responding to Challenges" September 12-14, Doubletree by Hilton, Orlando, FL Mark talks about the challenges being: Staffing Technology Trends and of course Funding From workshops and classes to vendors and mingling, the conference is the highlight of the year for 2022.  Come find out what you missed the last two years and what is coming in 2023. Everything you need, all in one place. FSPMA Conference Reach out to Mark HERE! Connect with Mark on LINKEDIN Here   There is always more to the story.  Find out what it is in this week's episode of Beyond Clean With GEM For educational videos on healthy and proactive cleaning, be sure to check out the Academy YouTube channel at Academy of Cleaning.   Be sure to subscribe to your favorite podcast app so that you don't miss it or any other podcasts!  

Mark Cocco is the Safety Manager for the Martin County School District in Jupiter, FL, and President of the Florida School Plant Management Association. "Responding to Challenges" September 12-14, Doubletree by Hilton, Orlando, FL Mark talks about the challenges being: Staffing Technology Trends and of course Funding From workshops and classes to vendors and mingling, the conference is the highlight of the year for 2022.  Come find out what you missed the last two years and what is coming in 2023. Everything you need, all in one place. FSPMA Conference Reach out to Mark HERE! Connect with Mark on LINKEDIN Here   "Remember to keep your journey healthy, positive, and proactive." Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok www.AcademyofCleaning.com Subscribe, like, share or comment on our YouTube channel at Academy of Cleaning.   Subscribe to us here, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast from #BeyondCleanWithACE 

In today's episode, Alisha talks with Mark Graban about his podcast my favorite mistake, how learning should be happening in all directions, as well as practicing lean. Check out more from Mark Here: http://markgraban.com/This week's Sponsor is Fike + Co. Connecting People and Culture! https://fikeandco.com/Do you have questions you want me to answer on the show? Email me at awielfaert@yokeandabundance.comIf you love the Yoke and Abundance Wise Women Podcast Consider Supporting us through Patreon.

Mark Wildman - from Sydney, Australia Once hitting the Sydney club back scene the love for electronic music grew even stronger especially finding a strong heart for hardstyle and hardcore. From super clubs to some of the biggest festivals in the world now finding his passion around the vast world of Techno. Creating sound from the melodic, peak time energy realm to heavy hard banging industrial. More information on Mark Here - https://linktr.ee/Mark_Wildman

Dr. Mark Cucuzzella has been running his entire life and has many marathons, six completions of the JFK 50 and two completions of the Comrades Marathon. But this fall he ticked of his first 100-miler! We talk to him about his great achievement and what he learned at the first inaugural Rim to River 100. We also reminisce about his 20 episodes with us beginning in the 2012! Here is a link to the first episode we did with him. Here is the finish line VIDEO of Dr. Mark Here is his race report

We brought together running representatives from three continents Asia: Mark Agnew, Hong Kong Europe: Hillary Gerardi, France North America: Jamil Coury, USA We asked them to talk about running topics that are current in their corner of the world. Photo: Jubilee Paige Find out more about Jamil: Run Steep Get High Youtube Channel & Cocodona 250 Race Photo by by Martina Valmassoi Find out more about Hillary HERE. And check out this cool VIDEO   Mark Agnew climbs on the Annpurna 55km ultramarathon trail race. Photo: Flawsome Pictures Learn More about Mark HERE and the SCMP Page. You also might be interested in his team's ocean rowing HERE  

Lawyers become lawyers to help people. To right wrongs, to champion for justice. While law school prepares you substantively for the legal issues you'll face in private practice, it doesn't address the systemically unhealthy cultural expectations of the profession.  Five years in, one new lawyer found that the tremendous workload, low associate's salary in the face of huge student loans, and endless extra hours to stay on the partner track simply weren't worth missing out on his daughter's childhood. 84% of new lawyers we surveyed agreed. So is the culture of law doomed, or could building in a structure of support — to help people — be the answer? ALPS Risk Manager Mark Bassingthwaighte and ALPS Claims Attorney Shea Sammons discuss.   Transcript:    MARK BASSINGTHWAIGHTE: Hello, and welcome to ALPS In Brief, the podcast that comes to you from the historic Florence building in beautiful downtown Missoula, Montana. I'm Mark Bassingthwaighte the risk manager here with ALPS, and it is my pleasure to have Shea Sammons join me this afternoon. As we talk a little bit about a survey that we did with young lawyers here at ALPS. But before we get into that, Shea, can you just tell everybody that's listening a little bit about yourself?   SHEA SAMMONS: So I'm a claims attorney at ALPS. I'm originally from Montana, long line of Montanans. I think I'm fifth generation. Went to undergrad here at University of Montana Western down in Dillon. Had a professor kind of talk me into going into law school. I was a little bit interested anyway, but he definitely swayed me. So I went to law school here at the university. Graduated, went into private practice, was in private practice for about five years and then came on board with ALPS. MARK: Very good. Well, very good. Again, I appreciate your joining us. Why I thought it would be fun to talk with Shea. We did a survey of young lawyers and had some, not completely unexpected responses. But as we looked at the responses and chatted about it with some of the younger lawyers here at ALPS, it became apparent that that Shea, as an example, in his own path, his own experience, really mirrored a lot of the responses that we saw. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about that and share part of your story. And see if we can get some insights and learnings from what your generation is struggling with in terms of young lawyers. You talked initially about a professor sort of encouraging you to head into law. Is there more to that? I mean, why did you end up going to law school? What was the dream, for lack of a better description?   SHEA: Yeah, so originally I went to school to be a teacher. A lot of people in my family are teachers, educators. Decided that I didn't have the patience to deal with young children after I did some field experience. So I had a degree in history and I had a degree in political science. What am I going to do with these things? It was either grad school, law school, something like that, continuing my education. And then I had something happen with a family member in law that I didn't really understand. And it was pretty out of my control, which I also didn't like. So that was kind of what maybe peaked my interest in law. And then going through my last semester of school, I had a professor, constitutional law was a requirement for me to get my political science degree. Took that class. Became not really interested in it, but it was an interesting class. And I loved the professor and he was like, "Well, have you ever thought about going to law school?" I said, "No." Just took the LSATs kind of on a whim type of thing. And then I just set my mind that I was going to go to law school. Applied here at the university, got in and ended up going. I guess that's how I went into law school. MARK: All right. Actually, your expectations in terms of what ... I think we all go into law with an idea in our head anyway, of what it's like to be a lawyer. So I'm kind of looking at what were your expectations versus the reality, both in law school and post law school? Did they line up at all? Was I ... SHEA: I think my expectations of law school were pretty spot on with the amount of work that it was, the dedication that it was, the financial burden that it is, and that it became. I knew those things going in.  The thing that didn't really align with my expectations was private practice. I think one of the reasons is I went into law school wanting to be a prosecutor. I wanted to be this champion for justice and had these noble goals of doing the right thing for people that couldn't do the right thing for themselves and righting wrongs. And then we start getting into these little kid cases and like crim pro. And I'm just like, there's no way I could be a prosecutor if I have to deal with this kind of stuff. I was interning at a law firm that first year, and I was coming home. And just thinking about these nonsense housing development disputes that we have until like 11 o'clock at night. I couldn't imagine bringing that kind of work home with me. So I switched over and started focusing on civil litigation. Because I always did want to be a litigator, be in the courtroom. I liked that sort of thing. Got through law school. My entire law school career, I clerked for ... Up until the last semester when I got hired on at the firm that I wound up working for here in Missoula, I clerked for a firm in Missoula that primarily does civil defense. We defended insurance companies, basically. At that point, I kind of realized that I had, I don't know if consigned is the right word for it. But I had just given up that the noble law avenue. And I was just going to pursue this avenue through law that provided a good living. That I knew that work was always going to be there, that our clients were going to pay their bills. That sort of thing. Graduated, went on with a firm here in Missoula. And I did not expect the amount of hours that I had to put into things to be as heavy as it was in law school. Even clerking and seeing the amount of work that partners were doing, that sort of thing at the firm that I was clerking at. And some of that might've been my own personal way that I work. And not being able to figure out right away the most efficient way to do things or get through a brief or whatever it is. I was kind of in a lucky position. The firm that I stepped into had a couple of really good partners that really wanted to bring me along and were dedicated in developing me as a litigator. Really good at basically just holding my hand through a lot of it. "This is the motion. This is how the motions games work. You want to file this motion when this sort of thing happens. Don't make that argument. You're just giving the court reason to give the opposing party what they want," that sort of thing. So I was lucky that I had that handholding, but still the amount that I was expected to work and the amount that I had to work were not something that I was prepared for from law school. I think that they do a good job, at least the law school I went to did a great job of preparing me substantively for the legal issues that I was going to encounter like intellectually. They did a great job of preparing me for it. Trial wise, I don't know if I had ... I did trial class and I was on moot court team, but we didn't really have any trial prep outside of that. Or we didn't do any sort of deposit ... How do you go through a deposition with people? Motions in limine, that sort of thing. There was no preparation for that in law school. And maybe you can't prepare for that. MARK: I think it'd be hard. I think you can, through perhaps ... I've looked at the medical school model practicums and internships and things. Maybe there's something there, but law schools ... I'm quite a bit older and your description of law school is very, very similar to mine. I've always thought, I think law schools really do a pretty good job of teaching how to be a lawyer. But a horrible job at teaching you the realities of how to run a legal business. How to make this thing work day to day in any kind of same way. That's sort of how I responded to all of that. But any regrets? Would you do it again? SHEA: I think that I would do it again. I would try to get in the door at ALPS a lot quicker than ... Not to kiss boots or anything, but that's a little bit. I mean, I think private practice was just so demanding just by its nature. You have to put those hours in or else you don't get the work done, and you're going to have mad clients. You're going to have poor work product, that sort of thing. You're not going to have a job eventually, but other than just, maybe I wasn't prepared for the amount of work that it was, or the way that the work is also expected to be done. But I wouldn't say that I regret going to law school. I would have thought a lot harder about it. The other part of that, the other side of that coin, I guess, would be the financial burden that you have after law school. I knew that I was taking out student loans going through law school, but it's not something that really hits you until you get out of law school. And you're like, "Holy cow. That's some loans." And then on the outset, you're just making first year associate money. Which lawyers make a decent amount of money as compared to some other professions or whatever. But I would say that, or I'm going to say that, I think that lawyers are probably underpaid for maybe the first two or three years. Considering the amount of financial burden that a lot of them have to take on to get out of law school.  I had friends that were making $45,000 a year with $120,000 worth of debt that they took on just to get through law school. And I mean, you can't even pay the principal on the loan with that amount. MARK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And at what you're sharing for those listening here today, a lot of Shea's insights really match what others have said on the survey. That just tremendous cost and not having a true realistic understanding of what the work environment and the financial side of all this is post law school. You see some same things in Madison. Some people think you can make a lot of money and some people do. But a lot of people—   Shea Sammons: —Don't.   MARK: It's day to day. I mean, it's okay. Pardon me. I have a little cough here. Excuse me. But at that load it, you see the same thing in Madison. It's just sometimes even quite a bit higher. And they just can't ever get out of that. SHEA: I think- MARK: Yeah, please go ahead. SHEA: I'm going to just interrupted you a little bit. MARK: No, please. SHEA: I think also the way that the business is structured in law with the partnership structure, which is usually the common way that firms are structured. You're on partner track, you put in three, five, seven, nine years, whatever the partner track is at your firm. But until you make partner, you're still making that associate money. And then you're hoping to maybe supplement that with some kind of bonus that your boss is willing to throw you, or hopefully you get a raise. Otherwise, it's just, you're making that little amount of money to make partner. MARK: Would you say the environment was sort of a sink or swim environment or was it more really geared to mentoring and they really did ... What was your experience? SHEA: I think that's the one, and maybe not just the only one, but one of the areas where my experience isn't really the norm from what I've talked to with my classmates, at least. Because I was really brought along, I had two partners that were very good. They'd been attorneys in the area. A lot of them were practicing for 30 years. They'd help write some of the laws in this state. Really great attorneys. And they really cared about bringing me along as an attorney. So I had, it was more of that mentorship for sure. But I think that's the exception to the rule in some places. MARK: Wow. That's again, what we see a lot on the survey. Yeah. I think your experience is a bit of an exception there. What really led you to say, "Okay, the private practice life isn't, you know ..." SHEA: Not for me. MARK: Yeah. You start looking elsewhere. SHEA: I think it was a couple of things. So I have a four-year-old daughter. The main thing was that I was having to work enough that I was starting to miss things in her life. Like they're going to go fishing, once I get off work we got a brief due on Monday. I'm going to have to be at the office for another three hours. You guys got to go without me. Or she's in T-ball or whatever it is. And I have to miss a game. That sort of thing. That just in my experience, is something that I wasn't willing to sacrifice, just so that I could put in enough hours to make partner, make as much money as I possibly could. That sort of thing. Work at that point, wasn't worth more than missing out on things with my daughter. So that was the main driver, I think. The other one was just the workload, it's crazy. But I mean, by nature, it sort of has to be that. And some of my friends that I graduated with, love it. They were born to be letting [inaudible 00:14:33] 70 hours all week, every week. You know, those sorts of people. That's just not how I'm wired, I guess. And that comes to another point that a lot of people were making on the survey that it's really hard to find that life-work balance. You feel worked to death and there's no area, no room for anything else outside of work. MARK: Yeah. I love how you talked about your daughter and the importance of that and driving the change. I've spent a lot of years on the road. And in prior years, long before you got here, I was traveling two weeks every single month. And again, we had five kids and I feel why [crosstalk 00:15:29].   SHEA: It takes a toll. MARK: It does take a toll. And I think I did what you did just in a different way. You just have to find ways to ... And we've talked about this a little earlier. For me, it's not about finding balance. It's about finding creative ways to make each day aspect of your life, whether it's work. I don't like this notion of compartmentalizing either. SHEA: I don't either. MARK: And really sitting and saying, okay. So although I'm 2000 miles away, I may sit down at a restaurant, get a glass of wine and call my wife. And we'll just chat for 15 minutes. And the kids know, okay. One of the other things that I did, it was kind of fun. I took each one out on the road with me. And they got to see what my life was like. SHEA: Exactly. I bet they loved it. MARK: And then they had some great dad and son or dad and daughter time. On a weekend, we'd go. And we have some really good times. SHEA: I bet. MARK: I'd love your thoughts, if you can take a couple minutes and say, speaking to both lawyers that ... or young lawyers that are thinking or people think going to law school or in law school. And young lawyers that are the first couple of years of whatever their professional life looks like. What are your thoughts, thoughts about what can we do in light of the current reality of a lot of debt for a lot of people to go to law school? And I don't know that that's readily solvable, but the long hours. Let's try to shed a little light or offer a little, a window of hope perhaps, for those that sit here and say, "Oh man." You started to second. So I'll let you run however you want to run with that. It's a bunch of things in there.   SHEA: I think then the first thing, at least that helped me to accept. Just to accept that the way to you achieving some sort of happiness. Because I think that's what you're talking or we're talking about with this, the concept of life work balance. It's being happy while also being able to maintain this lifestyle of being a lawyer. The work aspect of it. MARK: Okay. Yes. SHEA: So I think part of it is just accepting that the profession, at least the way that lawyers work, that's just the way that it's going to be. If you're not up for working or putting in a certain amount of hours. Like with me, I litigated. If you're not up for putting in those 60 hour weeks at the beginning, especially when you start practicing, then you probably shouldn't be a litigator. There's other areas of law that don't require that hour workload. I think the other thing is as well, is it ... And this is something that I've kind of gained perspective on just recently in coming on with ALPS, I think is that I worked a ton when I very first came out of law school. But I got more efficient at getting my work done. And I maximized my hours in a more efficient way, I guess, for lack of a better term. I think people need to view that our load and that the insane amount of hours that maybe they will have to work as soon as they got out of law school or whether they do or not in a more of a longterm perspective. The first five years of practice, you might have to bust your butt and work 60 hour weeks every single week. And you get a week of vacation every year and that's it. That's all you get. But maybe on that sixth year, you make partner and you don't have to do that anymore. You didn't have this ... I don't know. To use the term again. And I agree, I don't really like the term life work balance because it insinuates something that they're separate and you need to put this amount in this one and this amount in this one to balance them out. And how do you do that? That sort of thing. I think the point is, is that you might not have that balance at the beginning of your career, but by the middle of it, you probably will. At least that's been my experience. And I obviously I switched out to get that balance. I'm not private practice anymore. But as I was coming up on those five years, I had a decision to make. The partners were kind of retiring and I could take over the bulk of business that we had at the firm and our clients. And just continue on with this thing as my own, or I could go do something else. And I made the decision that I wanted to go do something else. And that was with ALPS. Yeah. MARK: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I have some takeaways on that and I'll share shortly. The one thing that my thought is ... And I think your experience was a little better in terms of having some mentoring and those kinds of things. SHEA: It was, for sure. MARK: But I'm not convinced. I guess I'm further down the road in a non-traditional legal career. Boy, I've worked with thousands of lawyers and you look at all the data on how unhealthy our profession is. I'm not so convinced that once you hit that partner track that it's- SHEA: I agree. MARK: It's all roses. Sometimes I think it can get even crazier. SHEA: Worse. MARK: Which just underscores the value of getting to this balance thing, getting to this finding a health and wellness in all aspects of your life. I mean, some of the things that I take away from Shea's story. I liked the fact again, that you really sat down and said, "Okay, I went into law with I think a relatively good understanding of what you're getting into in terms of studying long hours, that kind of thing." But the other side of that experience, I hear a little bit about, it's not everything that I thought it would be. SHEA: No. MARK: And you are sitting down and saying, "Is this what I want the rest of my life to look like?" And it's in no small part driven by this sweet little thing that you brought into this world. And you look and say, "What are my priorities here? Am I living to work or am I wanting to work to have a life?" And I think you made a very well reasoned and intentional decision in your career. And to me, that's one important takeaway to all of this. When I look again at a lot of the survey responses. I want to say to these folks, at the end of the day, whether you have regrets or might do things differently. You are where you are and you can make choices. This is your life. I'm another great example. I actually kind of was very interested in doing the same kind of thing you did early on. But I also there's a non traditional legal career and there are lots of lawyers that are non traditional legal careers of all ... There's just so many things. I think that's one of the value adds for lack of a better description of a law degree.   SHEA: I agree. [crosstalk 00:24:00] MARK: Because you can do all kinds of stuff. If you listening to this are sort of ... can relate to Shea's story or feel some of the things that we're sharing with some of the others young lawyers in this survey, in terms of these responses. You are in control. I mean, not saying it's easy but you really have to sit down and ask some tough questions and decide what are my priorities in life. But the other thing that I think is important too, that I like. Sort of underscoring the difference that you shared with your own experience in the law firm. This is where I've made a big mistake. I kind of jumped out and hung up my own shingle with a law school classmate. We were both green and had just no clue what we were doing. SHEA: It's so tough, right? Yeah. MARK: You feel alone. You feel scared. You feel isolated. And let's be honest, you feel incompetent because you don't have any real experience under your belt. SHEA: Because the way that they teach you a law is not necessarily the way that it's practiced. Then all those little pointers and tips that you get to pick up with a mentor. MARK: Yeah. Pardon me, I need a little sip here. My throat's dry. But if you feel alone, isolated, not entirely competent. SHEA: And any of those. MARK: All of those, any and all of this stuff, I think it's very, very normal, first off. So don't feel like, oh, it's just you." SHEA: I felt that way. And I had somebody holding my hand. MARK: Yeah, I did too. And I really do hope that ... To those that are can relate to this whole discussion, you are not alone. You are not unique in feeling what you feel. I'm not saying it's great. I mean, it, unfortunately, in some ways it comes with the territory. But the good news is, again, you can control some of that. But I also think reach out and look core mentors and try to find people. SHEA: I don't know. I might be speaking out of turn. MARK: No, please. SHEA: I don't know if this program still exists in Montana. It did when I was in law school, but there's a mentorship program here. That if you get ahold of the state bar, they can hook, they they'll set you up with somebody to ... You meet up, you have coffee, you bounce ideas off each other. How should I write this brief? What do I need to do here? MARK: Right. And a number of bars all over the country have various programs. They may be structured a little bit differently, but mentoring, there's a tremendous need for it. But what a lot of folks don't realize, particularly in terms of the younger lawyers, there are also a lot of people out there that are more than willing to do it. There is an availability, particularly the more senior among us. SHEA: Right. And you get on the backside of the practice. MARK: Right. It's a way to give back. They start to slow down. I've talked with enough lawyers that do say, "I have something I would love to give and share." And here's another thought, some of these lawyers still want to practice for a number of years, but you know what they're afraid of and not competent in? And sometimes it's just how to use some of the tack. And what I have found at times, some really interesting mentoring relationships where the senior lawyer's talking a little bit about- SHEA: Just back and forth. A little symbiotic relationship. MARK: "Here's how you do a [inaudible 00:27:46] and don't do this in front the judge." And the other lawyer's saying- SHEA: This is how you [crosstalk 00:27:50]. MARK: Yes, yes. "Here's how you put the screen up one Zoom." It really can be-   SHEA: Value goes both ways.   MARK: Value goes both ways. But I also think at the end of the day, you can get some really meaningful relationships out of it, in terms of just support systems, professional support systems that really add to life.   So this has been awesome, Shea. Do you have other thoughts or points or things that you'd like to share? I want to make sure you get- SHEA: Yeah. Well, the only other thing that I was thinking is I think we've touched on this subject that people are having these experiences. My experience might be a little bit different than your experience. There were a lot of different experiences in the poll. I think the last point that I'd really like to make is we're all obviously individual. And what's going to work for me in trying to find happiness and with my personal life and work might not work with the other person. One of the ways that I started to try to relieve that work stress and try to relieve my mind from working was going running, or getting outdoors. That sort of thing. And that's what worked for me. Maybe for somebody else it's knitting or playing racketball, or sitting there starting a new TV series or whatever it might be. I think again, to touch on your point of it's about internalizing, figuring out what works for you and making a really intentional decision after that thought process on, is this the way that I want to go? Is this the way that I want to go? Is this something that is going to be able to work for me? And then just following through on it. Yeah.   MARK: I absolutely agree. You're speaking, you're saying things, I think I would have said myself in your shoes. I'm just, again, many years further down the road. But for me it's bike riding and cooking. I love.  And interestingly enough, even the choice to be a road lawyer. That like you were saying, some people love to the hours of litigation and the thrill of the courtroom and all that. I am a guy that just loves to move. I mean, I really do. And so I had my challenges to find ways to make that work for my family, because I need to support and take care of my support system. And I'm also a support system to them. So I need to be there, but you can do that. It just took me a little while to learn that I'm the one in control of these decisions. SHEA: Yeah, exactly. MARK: And so I think we'll leave it there. That's, I think the message that we're both trying to make. And I hope that again, walking away with, reach out to support systems, be a support system. But really you're in control of your life. And all that you're feeling is normal. We all feel it it. It's just natural, but there are so many opportunities out there. Just take the time to find ways to reach out and make it work. So I hope you found something of value today. Shea, thank you for taking a little time.   SHEA: Thank you. Yeah. This was fun.   MARK: It really truly has been a pleasure. For those of you listening, please don't hesitate to reach out to me anytime. If there's something I can do in terms of risk question, an ethics issue, a cyber concern of some sort. You do not need to be an ALPS insured to visit with me. My email addresses MBASS, M-B-A-S-S @ALPSinsurance.com. That's it, folks. Thanks. Bye-bye.    

Takeaways – Life. Lessons. Learned. explores learning from the wisdom of others. This is a special edition of Takeaways. I am committed to helping my fellow commercial real estate agents thrive during these times. You can find a new post every day from April 1st to April 30th on my Facebook and LinkedIn. If you need motivation or new ideas take a look. I am here to help! I got my real estate license in 2004. Not long after I read an article in the Las Vegas Review Journal about this guy name Mark Stark who outbid a Warren Buffet affiliated company to buy a local real estate business. "What is he thinking?", I thought. The rest of the story has also been well documented in local newspapers. Mark went through the ashes of hell during the Great Global Recession and came back to thrive! As the CEO and owner/broker of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services in Nevada, Arizona and California, Mark's operation is the 3rd largest within the BHHS network. He leads 40 offices in the 3 states, 3,300 Sales Executives, selling over 13,000 homes a year to the tune of $5.6 billion dollars in transaction value. Listen in or watch as we discuss how Mark is approaching the current crisis. He shares what the greatest Sales Executives are doing right now to thrive. And what you can do to come out of this crisis as a winner! What else can you learn from a person like Mark? Here are just a few of the Takeaways that we discussed in this episode. • Why it's critical to have a plan. Even if it's the wrong plan. • How your attitude will drive everything! • What does it mean to live in an "and" world? I hope you enjoy! Thank you for listening! Please subscribe to “Takeaways”. If you like what you heard please rate and review Takeaways wherever you get your podcasts. It helps other people find it. You can find Takeaways at any of the links below: • APPLEPODCAST • STITCHER • GOOGLE PLAY • SOUNDCLOUD

Mark Metry is originally from Egypt. He is a Forbes featured speaker and host of Humans 2.0 Top 100 podcast, interviewing entrepreneurs, NY Times bestselling authors and world-class human beings. Once upon a time, he couldn't make direct eye contact with anyone and suffered from social anxiety from health issues & not living life he was strategically designed to live. Outside of his podcast, he speaks and consults start-ups, individuals, and businesses to help them scale in the competitive marketing world. Connect with Mark HERE. More about Mark HERE.

Native Opinion Episode 186 THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOUTH AT THE TABLE. How To Reach Our Show: E-Mail: hosts@nativeopinion.com Twitter: @nativeopinion Facebook: facebook.com/nativeopinionpodcast/ Our Website: nativeopinion.com CALL OUR SHOW! Click or Tap to call: 860–800–5595 ________________________________________________________ Listen LIVE every Saturday Morning, 9am Eastern Standard Time Through Our Website or via the SPREAKER APP SUBSCRIBE to our Podcast! Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, i-Heart Radio, Spotify Radio Public or wherever you get your favorite podcasts from… ________________________________________________________ PLEASE help grow our show! Share us with your friends!. Tell folks you heard about something on Native Opinion, or give us a review in i-tunes or on Facebook! It truly does help our show get discovered! ________________________________________________________ Episode Summary Lots of stuff to unpack in this episode… Co-host Michael Kickingbear is back with Storiesssss… Perfume company Dior commits appropriation, The Nipmuc Nation Buys Land in Petersham and Poor reservation roads making it harder for students to learn… Plus Listener feedback and other Native News ________________________________________________________ The Native Opinion theme song “Honor The People” is by Casper Loma Da Wa. FIND THE SONG AND MORE OF HIS MUSIC HERE: ________________________________________________________ ARTICLES DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE: ‘We’ve got to let the past go’: Catawba Indian Nation Chief talks about the future Nipmuk group buys land in Petersham for cultural center. TV host issues tearful apology after saying her black co-anchor looks like a gorilla…. Poor reservation roads make it harder for students to learn. Native Americans living in rural America are being left behind in today’s digital age. ________________________________________________________ Another Company yet again Appropriating Naitve American Culture…this time its Dior, the “parfume” company… Francoise Demachy Sad attempt to justify his product “Sauvage” Dior Criticized for Appropriating Native American Culture With ‘Sauvage’ Fragrance Ad. Sanders Kennedy: “DIOR Cancelled For Indigenous Cultural Appropriation In New Ad Campaign For ‘Sauvage’ Fragrance” WATCH HERE:. ________________________________________________________ 1619… Truth regarding Slavery In America… Example of Whites HATING True American History: The Misguided Focus on 1619 as the Beginning of Slavery in the U.S. Damages Our Understanding of American History Building a nation where “We the People” truly means: ALL the People… MarkCharles2020. Listen to our Interview with Mark Here. ________________________________________________________ One Reason American Politics are Corrupt: Commission on Presidential Debates. ________________________________________________________ FEATURED RECODING ARTIST: ARTIST: Marcia Chum TRACK: Undone BIO: Marcia Chum is a captivating, Indigenous folk-pop singer-songwriter with an earthy, resonant voice, who was born in Kapuskasing and raised in Timmins, in Northern Ontario. Of Cree heritage, Constance Lake First Nations, Chum is a traditional hand drum singer from the age of 14. She took up pop music when her father showed up at her place one day with a guitar, and told her to learn it. “It was a hard beginning, but I was eventually able to express myself in a way that I didn’t think I could. When you’re born with a purpose it will find you no matter what. I wasn’t planning on music but music found me,” says Chum. Describing herself as ambitious, friendly, and confident, Chum has had her singing voice compared to that of Buffy Sainte-Marie and Stevie Nicks. The veracity of that comparison is evident in her current single and video, “Undone,” which examines the way bad timing can circumvent a possible romantic relationship, and how being hurt in love can prevent people from risking the prospect of loving again. Find out more Kutupitush! (Thank You!) for listening!  

At Quiet Light, we recently sent out a survey to our buyers to get insight into what they really want to learn about the buying and selling process. Today the hosts of Quiet Light are sharing the number one thing that first-time buyers want to know about getting the inside track to a deal. How do they break into the industry if they lack the experience in acquiring? This episode is just Joe and Mark, guest free, talking about breaking into the business for the first, second, or even the tenth time. They are sharing five things to keep in mind when shopping. There are a whole host of things you should do as well as things you should not do. Joe and Mark have built, bought, and sold businesses and have helped countless deals come to light, so you can trust that they learned all of this from hands-on experience! Episode Highlights: Give really good feedback. Review as many listing as possible in detail. Put time into the process. Make it a job. Prepare your financials. Get out on the conference circuit. Make a checklist of wants. Act quickly. Be likable to the buyer and the broker. Tell us what else are you doing. Be willing to overpay for a great business. Transcription: Mark: As you know we recently put out a survey for our buyers. And by the time this airs we're already going to have closed on that survey … that poll and we should have some really good conclusions. Nobody at Quiet Light other than myself knows the results of the polls yet. And I've been maniacally hitting refresh seeing what people are saying both the good and the bad and sometimes the ugly of what's being said. But I'll share one thing with you, Joe, right now that has come through that we've heard from a number of buyers and that is wanting to know how to get the inside track on deals. Basically feeling like there is this completely competitive disadvantage if they're a first time buyer. And there's some truth to this right? I mean if I've got three buyers looking at one of my deals and I have one that we've done four deals with already I'm probably going to prefer that buyer just because I already know them. They're a known quantity. We're going to be able to go through due diligence with them. We know what to expect. We know that they're going to not get cold feet at the 11th hour and so it's a problem for new buyers. How do you break into this industry? How do you break into your first acquisition? How do you get the best deals when you're competing against some guys that maybe have done three or four deals with us already? So this episode is containing no guests. We don't have any guests. It's just Joe and me talking about how to get the inside track to deals. And Joe I gave you an exercise at what … like 7 o'clock this morning I texted you and I told you to write some things down. Joe: You did. But first I want to say that to those listening that are first time buyers I've been at this for seven years, Mark's been at it for more than a decade, and I can only think of one buyer that has bought three listings from us. Maybe two actually if I think Shakil and 101. So there's only a handful of people like that that have bought more than three and then maybe a few more that have bought more than two. So I think the competitive advantage is in preparation and instilling confidence. We've had new buyers that beat repeat buyers. So I don't want anyone listening to feel like they're second in line, there's no way to break in. And that's the purpose of this podcast correct? So yes you gave me a task this morning. Thank you. I did not sleep last night and I know I'm doing the podcast and then you send me a text that says “Come up with a list of five things buyers can do to get the inside track on our listings.” Thank you for that. Mark: You're welcome and I came up with a list a little late like 10 minutes ago of five things as well. And I had to think about it because five was just kind of an arbitrary number right? If we want to get really minute we could probably come up with 12. If we want to talk about the big points it's probably three or four. But I think that what you said is true. I hope people that are listening to this, especially first time buyers that maybe have been looking a while and feel like they don't have inside access to deals will end this episode knowing that there is more myth to that than reality. And you can be an established buyer by following some basic principles. We'll go over some of those today. So I think the reason I sent you that text Joe I thought it'd be kind of fun to compare lists to see if you and I would agree on what these five things are. And honestly, I made my list a little bit with the knowledge of what I thought you would be putting on your list. So I purposely tried to avoid things and also get a little bit more creative. Joe: I did the same. Oh my God, we're a match made in heaven. Mark: Well no doubt. Now we're not going to be hitting any of the key points because we're going to be avoiding the obvious. So if we missed the key points we'll include them at the end here. But I don't know how you want to go about this, do you want me to just go with my first and then you talk about your first? Joe: Yeah. Mark: All right the first is really simple. It's super simple. Give really good feedback. Like just give us some feedback on what you like and didn't like about a listing. It's really easy … if I'm talking to a buyer and you look at one of my listings and you don't like it, it doesn't fit, that's totally fine. Let me know. But in addition to letting me know maybe give me a call and say “Hey I really appreciate you showing this” now you don't have to say that but you can say “I took a look at it it's not a good fit. I was kind of looking for something more along these lines”. The more conversations you have like that with someone like myself or Joe our anybody at Quiet Light Brokerage, the more that sticks out in our minds. Not only does it A. give us really good feedback on our listing which we can use to help get that listing sold but it also helps establish a relationship between us. And when we're bringing a business to market oftentimes we think about well who's a good fit? Who are some people that I know? And obviously, we can go into our database and start to do some matching. But if there's somebody that we know and we know they're a good fit yeah they're going to get … we're going to think of them, they're going to become like top of mind. We actually had this recently with a discussion we had internally at Quiet Light. Often when somebody is taking on a new client and they want some feedback on maybe the valuation or their approach or any strategy we'll have an internal discussion about it. We have just a generic email address and we all talk about it. And one of the brokers, Bryan was talking about a client that he was kind of worried about whether or not he'd able to find a good match for it and he wanted some feedback. And what immediately came to mind was one of our buyers Matt and we said maybe you should talk to Matt and see what he thinks about it and you know this will give him a chance to have an advance look at the listing. And sure enough, Bryan came back and said I already talked to him. And you know why two of us thought of him? Because we talk to him on a regular basis and he reaches out to us and we consider him a friend of the company. So that's my first item, give good feedback. Don't just say not interested. You can say thank you, you don't have to say thank you. I had somebody say that recently and said “thanks not for us”. All right that's nice but that doesn't really help me that much. Tell me why. Explain to me why so that I can at least have that in my mind. Joe: And that's the building of the relationship. Whenever I get feedback … I ask for it every time, all of us do saying if it's not for you, let us know your thoughts on the listing. And the professional buyers … meaning they're just professional people, thoughtful people they send us that kind of email. And my response to them is “Understood. Thank you. We will find the right one for you eventually”. If I've written that 500 times, I've written it a million times. I'm not sure if that math makes sense but I write it all the time. And I mean it because I know that it is an arduous search trying to find the right listing and these people are trying really hard to find it, they're reviewing the listings and it's a long, long process. So that goes to my first list of things to do here and these are in no particular sequence. But the first thing I wrote down and I've said this at least a thousand times over the last few years, review as many listings as possible in detail. And I wrote in detail in capital letters; IN DETAIL that's the most important thing. The more listings that you look at … not just the teaser that's on our website or a competitor's website; you can't really learn anything from that other than well that seems interesting but you don't really know what it is. You dive in, you look at it, and you learn what it is that you like about these listings and what you don't like about these listings. You learn what excites you about it and what scares you about it. And you begin to develop a sense for the right fit when it comes along. And that's really important because when that right fit does come along you're going to want to be able to act quickly and you've already looked at 300 listings. So you need to look at them in detail, digest the financials, look at the history of the business, look at all the products and the SKUs that are offered, and everything that we've prepared in our packages and really digest it and make your decision. And you're going to look at a lot of them. It's not an easy process. It's not a quick process. It takes a long time. One of the things that I love when I'm talking to … I'll say a new buyer, someone that I haven't spoken to before and they tell me they've been looking for a year. To me, that's great because they've gone through a lot of this and they've worked really hard to find that right listing. When someone says they've been looking for a couple of weeks or a month to me I know that they've got a longer road ahead of them and this is one of the things that I advise more often than anything else. Mark: It actually fits in really well with the next point that I had in my list and a point on there will just kind of piggyback on what you said are two just kind of general philosophies when you're talking about this process. Obviously, what you're talking about Joe it takes a lot of time and everything else I think to complement the first point I had and your point here would be two things. One, when you're looking for a business and you want to get that inside track be intentional about what you're doing. Intentionality right? So it's taking that time like you said to actually digest what you're looking at and reviewing it. I can't tell you how many times I deal with buyers or I talk to buyers who summarily dismiss a listing based on something which is frankly not an accurate assessment. But because they've already made that conclusion and despite the best efforts to be able to explain otherwise that conclusion becomes gospel truth to them and this is … they're missing out on some really good opportunities because of that. Or maybe they're not missing out, maybe they would say no otherwise but they will say no for more appropriate reasons than what they're saying no to. So that would be the first thing, intentionality. The second thing is … to piggyback on what I was in before is this is a relationship based business right? At the end of the day finding that really good business for sale is going to require some level of relationship and you need to find that blend. I think as internet entrepreneurs we love our processes. We love automation. We love efficiency. I mean that's the hallmark of what makes internet businesses so great. But you have to find that blend between slowing down and taking the time being intentional and having a process because there are a lot of listings out there that you can get a lot of deal flow coming your way. I know RJ over at 101 talks about how many deals they have looked and the numbers stay green. I mean it's well in the hundreds so you do have to have a process. But processes should not take away that intentional spending of time. And that leads into the point- Joe: Let me jump in I just want to say something in terms of the relationship Mark and being intentional. We're talking about the five things to do in between each of those five there are a number of things that you should not do. And one of them is in that relationship building don't send an email that says “I think you've overpriced this business it's only worth a 2x multiple, it's not for me”. Because the 10 year old in me wants to send an email back to them saying “thanks for your feedback it's actually currently under LOI at this time at full price”. And I've been in that situation a dozen times where I get a semi rude email on a listing that … it's been out for a week or two and some folks have looked at it we've had some conference calls and somebody sends me an email that says essentially “Joe you're a fool, you've overpriced this business. It's not worth merely what you and your client is saying it's worth.” and then that very same day where just prior to that email it's under contract at full price. That little boy in me wants to reply to that person and say “thanks for your feedback it's actually under offer at full price”. I say “thanks for your feedback we'll find the right one for you eventually” because I'm not 10 anymore but I want to. And so it is the relationship thing … again in between each of these five things to do, there's probably a half a dozen things not to do and that's really one of them. Mark: I admire your restraint. You know an appropriate response there … because look when it comes to valuations I tend to get very philosophical on this sort of stuff mainly because I've been around for 11 years and I've seen multiples that have went up way higher and I've seen a market where people weren't willing to pay more than 2.5, 2.6x on anything at all. Rather than saying you overpriced this business you can just simply say the price is too rich for me it's not a good fit at the price that it's at. That's fair. Well, you've got a price that makes sense for you. We get it. Don't tell us though that it's overpriced for the market. We listen to what every individual buyer is saying and if every … if all the individual buyers say not for me then yeah you're right. So I think that's a good point to have. All right so my second point, you're talking about going in detail. We're talking about making sure that you're talking to the broker and giving us some information about who you are, what you're looking for, why you like that, why you didn't like this. You might be hearing all of this and thinking that sounds like a ton of work. Yes, it is so that's my second point; make it a job. If your goal … when we did the survey by the way this … I'll give you another insight when we did the survey I'll tell everyone listening who took the survey a little secret. We actually had two surveys. One was just open ended questions the other one was very quantifiable information. Those that filled out the ones … the survey with very quantifiable information we asked how many businesses have you bought and the vast majority of our buyers have not bought their first business and are seeking their first acquisition within the first year. Okay, if your goal is to find a business within the next 12 months make that your job. This is what you get up in the morning, this is what you think about when you go to bed at night; how are you going to go about finding that business? Deal flow is difficult. When we put out a listing … I put out a listing recently that was 8 figures and we had almost a hundred inquiries within a couple of days. Okay, that's a substantial amount of inquiries on a single listing and that's not even close to what we get on something that's going to be in a more accessible price range. It's a competitive field so you have to make this your job. You have to dedicate the time to it. Read up on it. Subscribe to the podcast if this is the first one you're listening to it subscribe to the podcast because we're going to tell you how to do these things better and hopefully give you some insights. But read up on these materials, learn just like you do with any other thing and apply yourself to this in a full time way. Set up those processes to be able to filter through all of the noise and to be able to really take a look at the information in depth. So that's my second point; make it a job. Joe: And along those lines, my second point is prepare your financial approach. You can't get to the end point if you don't know what it is. If you're a cash buyer it's a little bit easier to understand what you're capable of stroking a check for but you also have to figure out okay if I'm buying an ecommerce business I have to buy that inventory too right? Okay is there a seller no possibility maybe on much, much larger listings but I'm over listening certainly not for the most part but that goes back to well … to whatever other points coming up. You need to prepare your financial approach if you're … if you have a limited amount of cash and you're going to do an SBA loan I love to hear from folks that are doing that that they have been pre-qualified for an SBA loan up to X dollars. And then they tell me the name of the lender. If it's somebody I don't know I'll reach out to them so we can build a relationship. If it's somebody I do know it's great, fantastic. I feel good about that because it's people in the network that we know and that we trust and that we know work hard to get deals done for buyers and sellers. If you're going to do get something under LOI now where somebody is going to be rolling over their 401k … I think it's called the ROBS. Mark's written an article on it “Quiet Light Brokerage and ROBS” and you'll find that article in Google. But that's another way to source funds to buy a business but it also … you need to understand the timelines there and how long it takes to do that. Mark, can you do a ROB without having the asset chosen that you'll purchase yet? Do you recall; yes or no? Mark: I don't recall, no. It's been a few years since I wrote that article. Joe: If you can … well read the article everyone if you can, which I think you can and you know you going to buy a business; do it, roll it over. Are you going to incur some cost up front that you're … if you're committing to buying an online business and making it a job like Mark says then you'll be prepared to buy that business because going back to my point number one you got to look as many listings as possible in great detail so that you're going to know the right listing when it comes along. And then you're going to want to be able to act fast because other people are too. It's not like you're making a quick decision here because you've been doing this for six to 12 months and looked at a hundred listings and you're prepared to act fast and you've got your financial ducks in a row. Because I can assure you if it's a great listing other buyers are looking at it and they've done this; they've prepared. It doesn't matter if it's all cash. It doesn't matter if you're rolling something over into a ROB and it doesn't matter if you're doing an SBA loan as long as you're prepared and instilling confidence in the broker and the seller of the business that you're capable of going from letter of intent all the way through to closing that's the most important thing be prepared. Mark: And to answer a question no you do not need to have the asset chosen before you convert to a ROBS. But take a look at the article; consult an expert on it because it's definitely a trickier thing to do. It's not something to do on your own I should say. You definitely want to have a consultant. All right, cool. All right I'm going to diverge from some of the traditional advice with my third point that I'm bringing out there. And it's not too crazy and it's pretty simple and that's get out on the conference circuit. More importantly get out on the conference circuit where brokers are going to be and you can meet them in person. And this comes back to this basic principle that this is a relationship based business. If I see you in person, if I have dinner with you you're going to be far more memorable than somebody who sends me an email once every two weeks saying “Hey do you have anything in this sector with this sort of EBIDTA?” you know what? I get a lot of those emails and I don't have a face to go with that email. It's very impersonal. If I see you at a conference and we spend a little bit of time together I get to know what you're doing. I get to know what your background is. That's way more memorable and honestly, the conference circuit is a great place to just meet all sorts of different connections that can help you. I know Stephen Spear who we've talked about from an SBA lending standpoint he's gone to a lot of these conferences. And think about this you're now dealing with people that you've met in person. Maybe an attorney, Shawn Hussein who shows up at a lot of the conferences, Stephen Spear who might end up helping you get an SBA loan. And then any of us here at Quiet Light Brokerage, you've seen all of us, you've met all of us, we've all talked, we've all joked, we've all had drinks together and everything else. It just helps pop of the mind and get to know everybody a little bit more closely. So that's just a very simple way to get some of that inside track. Joe: Let me add to that. For those folks that are spending a full time job on top of a full time job and pinching pennies to be able to buy this business, if you cannot do what Mark is suggesting which is a very very wise suggestion because there's nothing like human contact; emails doesn't work as well. This podcast is a great example. Mark had written amazing content for 10 years and then we started the podcast and we've been at it for just over a year now and people call us and they say “I feel like I know you already, I just listened before to your podcast”. We never got that kind of call when someone said “I feel like I know you already, I just read four of your articles”; very different. So if you cannot go to the conferences and get that face to face contact, Scott Voelker from The Amazing Seller gave me a great great tip about a year ago. We were talking and he said he was trying to break through to an [inaudible 00:20:25.5]. He read the guy's book, he loved it and wanted to have him … I forgot if he wanted to have him on the podcast or just have a conversation with him and straight up email wasn't working and he didn't have a friend to introduce him. So Scott turned the camera on himself clicked record and said “Hey so and so this is Scott from the Amazing Seller I just want to tell you I've read your book. I loved it and it's fantastic. I'd love to chat with you for a few minutes because I've got some things that maybe we can help you with and I've got a very large audience yada, yada, yada” 30 second video inside of an email, hit send, he had a response within about 30 minutes. If you can't go to the conferences, that's a free option. If you're uncomfortable in front of a camera, that's okay. It puts a face to it. It's one of the things that we've started doing with our listings. As many of you know that are looking at our listings we now … for the most part on most of the listings we do a 15 to 20 minute recorded interview with video and audio of the client … our client, the person that's selling the business. We don't do that to convey a lot of detailed information. We do that so that you can get a feel for who they are. If you feel like they're a good person. If you feel like they're likable. If you feel like you could trust them, feel, feel, feel. If you can't get to the conferences that little video I think … shooting email to one of us or all of us with something like that. But I tell you what don't do a template email … a template video because that's the … again the thing not to do, I want to throw it in here between, don't send a template email to every broker in the industry because we'll know it's a template. And generally, those are unpersonal … impersonal and we don't pay much attention to them. Okay, why don't I go ahead and I want to jump to a different … it's my third one I guess right not my fourth one? Third one, create a checklist of your wants. Now, this isn't necessarily a thing that you could do to get the inside track to our listings because it's all of the other things that we're talking about. But for you, it will be conveyed to us that you are preparing, that you are really diligent about your approach. I was at eCommerce Fuel a few years ago and someone that we sold a business to got up on stage and talked about his processes and his experience. And he put a checklist up on the screen and it had a checklist of all of the things that he wanted to buy in a business; all of the features the business must have. Whether it's re-locatable, whether it's got virtual assistants, whether it stores its own inventory, whether it's a software as a service business, etcetera. And then on the right hand side, he had a checklist of the business that he bought from Quiet Light and all of the boxes down beside it. And not all of them were checked off and he still bought the business. So if you've got this list and Kevin Petersen was on the podcast Mark a while back and he's got a portfolio of SaaS businesses and this is what he does. It is a checklist of things that they know what they want and then they always, always, always, always use that checklist on a listing that they were viewing and see how many of the boxes and checking. They've developed a process to score it. They've made this a job like you talked about. But doing that gets you away from the emotional approach and more to sticking with the logical approach. Because this as a buyer you're going to put your life savings on the line it can get emotional. You can get frustrated, you can know that there is a deadline … a horizon to your job, to the bonus that you've taken and it's going to run out and you're going to feel pressure to buy a business. You want to avoid the emotional decision of buying a business and buy it with logic and reason and a checklist I think is a great way to go. Mark: Did you know Joe that I tried to start a podcast before we actually started this one? Joe: No, I didn't know that. Mark: Yeah I actually did like two episodes and I had four recorded and as anyone who's trying to start a podcast knows getting started is often the most difficult thing. Because you get the first few done and you're kind of excited about it and then you realize it's difficult to keep the momentum up. It's not easier when you have somebody else on the podcast, a co-host who records 70% of the episodes like you do Joe. I did and I think the second episode … I don't know but you can still find this this somewhere back in the industrial archives of QuietLightBrokerage.com. There was a blog post and a podcast on do you have an acquisition checklist. It was the exact same thing, right? How do you process these deals quickly and how do you keep it objective. And it was … I have a checklist that you're looking for and modify that checklist and understand that it needs to be this balance between being too broad and too narrow. And that you're not necessarily going to check off all the items in the box on the checklist but are you hitting the major points enough to warrant that deep dive, that deep investigation that somebody makes. So that's one of the good tips as well. I see a thing developing in these as well right? An overarching thing that you want to have this blend of having processes in place but also somewhat of an analog approach … a non-digital approach to this as well. So Joe is talking about … you're talking about recording a video of yourself, just a personalized introduction so that we can see your face; that's very personal in human relationship and somewhat analog in that sense or going to a conference and meeting there some person or calling and having a conversation but also making sure that you have a process and you know what you're looking for as well. And I'm going to pirate I think my last point … I'm going to flip them around and that is when you see something that you like act quickly. And I'm going to put a couple of sub points on this. One, speed … when you're in this space and you're trying to buy a business and you're talking to us and maybe you set up a call and all of a sudden that business is snapped up, it goes under LOI with somebody else, you might think that person must have had an advance notice or they have some sort of an inside track. Speed is really the product of solid preparation. It's executed by people who know what they want and are putting in the time to have the processes in place to be able to evaluate these deals quickly and get back to us in a timely manner. I've dealt with buyers who are looking at an opportunity or they inquire on an opportunity, I do my follow ups with everyone that inquires and then I hear back two weeks later “Oh I haven't had a chance to look at the listing yet”. Okay, well you know what … very good chance that you're not going to get this. It's just the nature of it is that there's a lot of people looking at it and those that look at it within the first 24 hours and get back to us are typically going to be ahead of “the inside track”. So the basic lesson here is pretty simple, learn to act quickly. That doesn't mean that you have to make rash decisions. It just means that when you receive the information if you like what you see send out an email and get on the calendar right away for that conference call. The buyers who are first in line often do get some level of preference when it comes to that offer time and there's nothing [inaudible 00:27:28.1] to doing that. So act quickly is my fifth point now I'll do my fourth point last. Joe: And there you go now on Mark's point he said review it and get in line to be on a conference call with a buyer. I don't allow conference calls and we'll do most of the brokers at Quiet Light allow conference calls between a buyer and seller unless or until I have spoken to the buyer. So this goes back to reaching out and connecting with us and getting that out of the way. If we've had a conversation we're not going to have to take an extra 15 minutes to schedule that before scheduling a call with the seller of the business. Okay, I actually have a few more points I'm going to blend two into one. One is be likeable and the other is be likable and squeaky, all right? We're repeating things a little bit here but that's very important. It's because we are trying to hone in on these because they're critical and they make a huge difference. So the be likable first one is actually be likable to the seller of the business. When you get to the point of being on a conference call with the seller of the business your objective is to ask the same questions we asked. See if they answered in the same way. Get to know them a little bit. Get a feel for them. Be on the video. Be on the client interview. Determine whether or not you can trust them and move on with an offer of the business. That's the upper level objective of the call. The hidden thing, the most important thing I think is to make sure that when the call is over that seller doesn't want that call to end or that they hang up that call and think god man I really like Mark I hope he's the buyer of my business. Because if it's a great business as Mark said you've got to act fast. There are going to be lots of people that are really prepared to buy a great business and it's going to move … what feels like fast? Fast maybe three or four days all right, you get 24 hours to review the package, you ask for a conference call, you have a conference call and 24 hours later you make an offer or shortly thereafter you make an offer. We don't let things go under contract one hour after they've been listed simply because there's no way for you the buyer to fully review the package. There's no way for you to get on a conference call with the seller all within one hour. It just doesn't happen. When someone presents an offer this is one of those don'ts in between the lines don't make an offer without having gone through the process of a call with the seller within an hour. Because we know you're just trying to tie the listing up under a lot of intent and then make a decision. We want you to make a decision about a business go under letter of intent and go all the way through the closing. Okay, so be likable. Make sure as a buyer that your seller likes you on that conference call. And then the be likable and squeaky is be likable to the brokers. We're human right? I didn't sleep very well last night. I had a bad day. When you call me and you're hard on me I'm going to remember that the next time you want to buy a business. I have a particular buyer that comes to mind right now where he did just that what I said a few minutes ago. He said “I love it I want to go ahead and put in an offer.” and I said great well let's have a … he and I have already spoken before. He'd given his LinkedIn profile. He was preparing. I said “Great. Well, let's schedule a call with the seller first. When are you available?” total silence 24 or 36 hours … total silence and then the listening goes under contract three or four days later because there were multiple buyers because it was a great listing. And he sends me an email on the next listing that launches and says “I really like this one Joe can we get on a call with the seller of the business?” I said “Yes we can. What happened last time? You're ready to make an offer and then you disappeared on me.” and he emailed me back and said “Well my wife had decided that it wasn't really the business for us. There were some things that she didn't like.” to me that that's fine, that's okay. You got to do your homework first before you say I want to go under contract but it also tells me his intention was to tie it up under a lot of intent and then make a decision to buy it. And that's a big no-no because this is a very emotional process for both the buyer and the seller. So be likable to broker and respect their trusts … our time, respect our time and build that positive relationship. Okay, so that's my fourth I think. Be likable and be likable and squeaky. Mark: So yeah … and I'll just say as far as being likable to the broker, we're not asking you to sit there and give us all sorts of praise and compliments. Unless you're talking to Jason in which case that'll probably get you somewhere but when it comes to the … it's just the basic manners, right? Joe: [inaudible 00:32:02.5] by the way Jason doesn't listen to the podcast. We need to stop making fun of Jason because he doesn't even listen to it. Mark: Well, who can we make fun of at Quiet Light? Joe: Oh, let's make fun of you. Mark: Well, I'm always game but I'd say we pick on the new guy and the best-selling author Walker. Joe: You know what … yes, Walker. Right and we're not making fun of him right now I want to pay him a compliment. Before Walker came on as a broker I had a listing and we had three conference calls with three separate buyers and one of them stood out. He didn't end up buying the business but he stood out to me and I'm going man oh man that guy is awesome. I hope I can find him a business. It turned out to be Walker. And so when you like two months later had a great listing and your seller said “Look I really don't want a million calls is there anybody that comes to mind that would be a great broker, a great fit for this business, a great buyer, a great fit for this business?” Walker came to mind and I introduced you and guess who bought the business? Walker did folks. And now he's, of course, an advisor broker at Quiet Light because he's fantastic. But it's that be likable [inaudible 00:33:06.7]. Mark: Here where I was about to pick on him and just kind of tease him but I'm going to pile on with the compliments because if you guys are listening to the podcast you've heard me say in the past the story where I had a buyer after his offer was accepted told my client at the end of the … you know hey we just got under offer let's plan due diligence, took the time just to say “thank you for agreeing to sell me your business”. Well, that was Walker and the impact that I had on that deal was so significant. I mean it was again such a simple little thing that you can do and just … it wasn't disingenuous it was a genuine hey look I get it it's your asset. It's what you built and you're agreeing to sell it to me. I really appreciate that. Take the time. Be intentional. We've said that before … be intentional and think about all sides of the transaction here. Everybody hopefully benefits from this transaction so we shouldn't be sitting there and thinking man I'm giving you a lot of money you should be grateful. You should also be thinking I'm also getting a great opportunity by buying this business and being respectful of that … of the person selling their business. For the person selling their businesses especially if it's their first time, this is probably the biggest revenue event they're going to have in their lives at least to date and so it's a very personal thing for a lot of people selling their business. Take that time be respectful. I think that helps when you're in a competitive situation and you have multiple buyers. Like you said Joe we have people get off the phone and say “I really hope I get to sell my business to this person” right? Now everything else needs to line up, the offer has to be there but you can definitely help your case with that. All right last point I have is … I'll just go over it quickly because I think we've covered it pretty well but tell us what you're doing. What other businesses are you part of? What are you really good at? Are you really good at CRO? Are you really good at SEO? Are you really good at SaaS businesses? Are you really interested in getting into something different? Are you really interested in certain niches? Don't just send us a blank email on can we get these all the time and if you're listening to this and thinking these guys just want us to cater everything that we're doing to their way. That's not the case. Look work whatever way you want to work but understand we get a lot of noise that comes in through our inboxes. The whole point of this podcast episode is how do you stand out from the noise? How do you distinguish yourself from other buyers? Well here's what other buyers are doing they send us a template email telling us what they want. That's what everybody else is doing. We do look at those. We do categorize those. We have a spreadsheet that we share internally with that data but it's a spreadsheet with a hundred other names on it and growing every single day. If you want to stand out do some things in different. And one of those things is when you do talk to us or have an opportunity to have a conversation with us tell us what you're doing and don't just talk to us about what you're doing in the monologue. Let's talk about your business a little bit. Let's get into it a little bit. Share some details with us. Not because we necessarily want to know but look we're entrepreneurs we like to talk about this stuff anyways. It's always fun. I was talking to a guy the other day who is not a client, probably won't be a client of ours but a fellow entrepreneur and we just spent probably 45 minutes talking about his business. It was a fascinating conversation. I gained some things from it hopefully he gained some insight from it. And you know what that's now in my mind and if he ever does come to the point of buying or if he ever does come to the point of selling one of his businesses that's something that's always going to stick out in my mind. So how do you cut yourself out? How do you stand above the rest of the noise? Again and have a conversation and let's get into some of the things that you're doing because it's a lot easier for you to be top of mind if I know that you're like a Shakil buying just a gazillion businesses or if you're looking for that first time acquisition. I can think of a buyer right now, I've met them for coffee in person here in the Twin Cities. A husband and wife team I know that they've been looking for a long long time and I have a general sense for what they want. And I'll tell you what because I had coffee with them, because they shared a couple of opportunities that they're looking at with me I know what they're looking for pretty well and hey I'd love to find something for them. So if you're listening to this know I'm still looking for something for you and it's still on my mind. So that's my fifth point, let us know what you're doing. Tell us a little bit. Let's get into the details not just the high level details. Joe: Yeah, back to the human part. When you have coffee with them you talk to them as entrepreneur … as a broker in this industry, you get excited. I want to find them that business. I want to see them succeed. I want them to be another Quiet Light success story and five years from now come back to us and sell the business worth five times the value. Or hear that they're traveling the world while running the business and just changing their lives completely because there's something that occurred over a cup of coffee. So I think that's fantastic. All right my last and final point may sound a bit crazy but if you listen to our podcasts and you've heard Ben Carpel on the podcast … Carpel we always pronounce your name wrong Ben I'm sorry. You're awesome though we love you. If you have listened to Ben and if you have listened to one that aired in early December of '18 RJ you would have heard two pretty, sophisticated, intelligent, likable, passionate buyers say the same thing and that is be willing to overpay for a great business period. There are lots of great businesses that come out and when they do they get sold quickly [inaudible 00:38:37.3]. Mark: Hold on Joe are you just saying this because you're a broker and you get paid on commission for the deals that you're doing? Joe: No. They said it not me. I'm quoting them. And it's true I mean … look it's true we had a listing that I put up in August right? We had 10 offers on it. It was squeaky clean. It had the four pillars. It had age, growth, transferability, documentation. Everything was perfect in it. It was just fantastic. I knew it when I looked at it. We priced it right to achieve the buyers and the sellers goals. We didn't over price it because it was perfectly priced at right still and we had 10 offers. And one … actually, several buyers were willing to overpay for it. One buyer got it because of all of the things we've talked about. He was really likable. He was going to be easy to work with in due diligence. He was going to be easy in transition and training and he paid a little bit of extra. And he was okay with that because this is a great asset. We've got an email from him since then about the crazy growth that they've had in the fourth quarter. And my thought is oh I should share this with seller and then my thought is no that might put him in a little bit of a bad mood. But he achieved his goals. He wanted to get out at a certain time in a certain price and we actually overachieved that. So if two people like RJ and Ben are saying it I think there's some validity to it. Because if it's a great asset, if it's a great business and others only were willing to pay a certain amount it's great for you. It's not going to be great for everyone; that's the thing. Be willing to overpay for a great asset that's great for you. If you're into hunting and fishing and it's a hunting and fishing ecommerce business that's doing amazing things it's something you're going to be a little bit more passionate about. And in my experience when you've got some passion for something it's going to help you overcome those hurdles and those tough times that will come to you as an entrepreneur. So if it's a little bit … if you pay a little bit more for it I think you're going to get that return investment quicker than if you buy a complete fixer upper that's going to take some time. Mark: Yeah so I'm going to … based on that go back to what you said earlier about people who email you and say “you're way overpriced like there's just no way that this is priced right. It's overpriced by a ton”. Valuations are relative. That is just the reality of it. In that survey that we put out we had people give us feedback that said I love you guys but I think that your listings recently are getting overpriced. And then I had other feedback come back that said we love you guys but the perception is that you kind of underprice your properties. So we have these two conflicting things where we have some people saying hey you're overpriced and other people saying no you're underpriced. Look when it comes down to it the price of these assets varies based on the economy at the time but also probably, more importantly, they're based on the individual ROI that you can get. And what you can get from a particular business is going to be different from what somebody else can get from a business based on your specific skill sets. And so if you find something that's a good match it comes down to return on investment. What can you do with this business? If you can make that thing work be willing to pay more than what the average person in the marketplace is willing to pay. You're still going to get a good deal. But with the competitive nature of thinking am I going to overpay for this you know crush your ability to get a deal done because somebody else will pay a little bit more. When we price a business one of the big mistakes I think happens in our industry is that people price a business for the marketplace average. That's a mistake as a broker. And for those that are on the buying side here, I'm sorry about this next point but it's just the case, we work for the seller. I'm not looking for the marketplace of buyers. I'm looking for a buyer within the marketplace which means I want to aim towards the top end of that average range or the marketplace range so that I can find that buyer. Be that buyer at the top of the range for the business that matches for you. Otherwise, you're going to be competing against the full marketplace of buyers. I don't know if that makes any sense or not but again the idea of finding that opportunity for you and standing out and making sure that when you find it move on it. Joe: Absolutely I'll just wrap up my side of it with the fact that we're all entrepreneurs as Mark said. And we love what we do. It's crazy but a lot of what we're doing is simply helping people. We're giving up our time and we're getting something in return for it. We are making a living but we love it and it's exciting to work with great buyers, great sellers who are achieving their financial and personal goals. It's a lot of fun and we want to help each and every one that comes through our email or over the phone or text or whatever it might be. Help you achieve your goals whether you're a buyer or a seller. And all of these things that we've talked about we've talked about it through direct experience. We built and bought and sold our own online businesses and now we get to see what thousands of people do both on the buy and sell side. And so it does come from experience. It comes from the school of hard knocks more than anything else. We've learned a lot of things that people shouldn't do and a lot more things that people do right that stand out in these five things that we've each talked about or all these things. Mark: Right. So, Joe, you know what I'm going to do right now? Joe: I have no idea. Mark: I'm going to end this podcast episode because I have an appointment with somebody who wants to buy a business and wants to spend some time talking on the phone with me. Good for this guy. He's doing the right thing. Guys if you're listening to this and you have ideas for an episode like this where you have a question … again that survey [inaudible 00:44:06.9] some great feedback from everybody. If you took it thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm serious- [crosstalk 00:44:12.5]. Mark: Answer a question that we're trying to tackle in your quest for your first acquisition or your tenth acquisition. Yeah, send us an email … send me an email at mark@quietlightbrokerage or joe@quietlightbrokerage.com. We'll either find an expert to bring on the show to talk about it or Joe and I will jump on it on a show like this. And we'll cover the topic as best as we can. Joe: Perfect. Go and hunt that buyer. Mark: All right, sounds good.     Links and Resources: https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/  

Panel: Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Special Guest: Edgar Pino    In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Edgar Pino who talks with the panel about the latest version of Ecto! They discuss Ecto’s new features and how easy of a transition it was to go from the previous to the newest version. Edgar Pino is a software engineer who currently resides in Utah! Check out today’s episode! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job!  1:04 – Mark: Hello! Please give us your background? 1:16 – Guest: I have been in Elixir for the past year or two and I have been living in Utah. 1:48 – Mark: I love the nature and state parks. Winter is coming, so I hope you are ready! 1:58 – Guest: Winter...hopefully it will be great! 2:20 – Panelists and guest go back-and-forth. 2:30 – Mark: Let’s talk about your blog posts about Ecto. What are your new announcements? 2:52 – Guest: Our new version was released a few weeks ago. 3:32 – Panel. 3:38 – The guest talks about the old and new versions of Ecto. 4:03 – Panel: What is new and how is this going to affect me (the new version)? 4:11 – Panel: The transition was pretty painless for me. The only change was the breaking-up of the adapter ad also the timestamp bit. That was it. 4:34 – Panel: Yeah that micro-timestamp surprised me for a second, but it wasn’t that bad after all. 4:52 – Guest: Yeah it was painless for me, too. 5:19 – Panel: Edgar can you talk about the change and what they did with the timestamps? 5:32 – The guest answers the question. 5:54 – Panel: Elm opted to use the micro-millisecond, too. Time zones aren’t a thing. 6:24 – Mark. 7:08 – Panel: My tests are the only reason why I care about the millisecond. 7:21 – Mark: With the upgrade don’t do what I did. Mark talks about how he updated and the issues he had. 8:47 – Guest: Pattern matching? 8:53 – Mark: Yep that sort of stuff. I didn’t need to do it and it was a learning experience. Edgar, please give us an introduction to the blog posts? Why did you want to document it? 9:18 – Guest: I always used Ecto with Phoenix but started learning Ecto by itself. I jotted down notes that I thought was interesting. That’s how it started. 10:17 – Mark: See links in the show notes. Using a gen to use the repo – this is one thing that I didn’t know was an option. 10:46 – Guest. 11:01 – Mark asks a question. 11:10 – Guest: Not really PHP applications but listening to web messages and hot topics but you are doing the database and serving data... 11:40 – Guest talks about Ecto and the different versions and features. 12:09 – Mark chimes-in. 12:23 – Panel: Yep – it’s under the hood and it’s for business logic and doesn’t have a web piece. Stop writing tings for the web – it’s a fad. 12:50 – Mark: It’s an umbrella and saw this through the Phoenix generators. 13:54 – Guest talks about web applications. 14:06 – Mark: Let’s talk about schema and databases? 14:23 – Panelist chimes-in. 14:51 – Panelists and guest talk about schemas, apps, and more. Check it out here. 16:13 – Guest: You will get the data and pass it in as a structure and... 16:23 – Mark: Here is a map of what I’d like you to do on my behalf. It goes to a chain set and I will turn it into a string and this is why it’s failed. 17:25 – Panel. 17:31 – Mark: It’s not hard and it’s pretty easy. Let’s talk about blog posts.  18:10 – Panel. 18:22 – Mark: I use Absinthe in the library in Elixir to support GraphQL. 18:50 – Panel. 19:06 – Guest: The total number of results and only once did I need a more complicated thing. 19:34 – Mark: I haven’t had a need for those. 20:01 – Panelists and guests talk about the hypothetical situations where and how they would use certain features for said situations. 20:23 – Guest: You don’t have to understand right out-of-the-box. 20:40 – Panel: Have you used stored functions as meta-columns in an Ecto schema? 20:48 – Panelist explains. 21:24 – Guest: I have used them in the past and now I don’t. For me it was hard to debug – maybe it’s just me. 21:43 – Panel: I was introduced to them through a colleague of mine. 21:53 – Mark chimes-in and talks about him being a DOT NET developer. 22:18 – Panelist chime-in, too! 22:50 – Mark. 23:16 – Panel: It was an awful time and not a good idea. 70 pages! Debugging it was hard. 23:35 – Mark: That experience was apart of that burn that I had before. I wanted to stay far away from it as far as I could. 24:00 – Panel: When I was doing it in DOT NET we didn’t have migrations. 24:12 – Panelist continues. 24:32 – Guest: I wonder if... 24:37 – Panel: It’s just a sequel – it’s not just an Ecto specific feature. 24:48 – Guest. 24:53 – FreshBooks! 26:01 – Mark: Edgar you were interested also in HOW Ecto was built. What experience did you have? 26:21 – Guest answers the question. 28:22 – Panel: No you typed REPO there. 28:30 – Guest: Whenever you save or make an update it’s a method. Unlike Ecto you have to all it something else. 28:47 – Panel: Hey let me get those article posted and someone did it in Loop and that is a lot of queries. 29:03 – Guest: Yeah that’s a good point. 29:45 – Mark: Something I’ve noticed is that they talk about performance improvements and better memory usage. Go read about it- it’s great. They talk about HOW Ecto is working and what is behind the scenes. 31:15 – Mark: Another feature that I have seen is UPSERTS. 31:50 – Guest talks about UPSERTS, too. 32:34 – Mark: Say I have a system that has 3 servers and it’s rolling updates (it will take down one and put up the new code, etc. and it will cycle) one thing they added was a lock on the migration table. I don’t know if you’ve had this – once it hits production data it is slow. Mark continues. 33:20 – Panel: I think it was just luck of the draw. 33:30 – Mark continues. 33:57 – The guest talks about his experience with the above-mentioned scenario. 34:20 – Mark: I like that you both have had goo experiences with your upgrades. I want people to be excited and know that there are great features out there. 34:49 – Guest: Yes, I have found that the blog post is helpful. It’s good to get adapted to the new changes. 35:17 – Panel: Yeah I normally don’t have teasers up to the actual upgrade. 35:28 – Panel: The community is nice and people made a good effort to communicate and help people. They did a GOOD job of helping people to feel comfortable within the transition from one version to the next! 41:37 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Edgar Pino A sneak peek at Ecto 3 Ecto Active Record Pattern Repository Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Plex Josh This Erlang Life Guest Ecto Documentation! Edgar Pino – My blog!

Panel: Mark Ericksen Josh Adams Special Guest: Edgar Pino    In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Edgar Pino who talks with the panel about the latest version of Ecto! They discuss Ecto’s new features and how easy of a transition it was to go from the previous to the newest version. Edgar Pino is a software engineer who currently resides in Utah! Check out today’s episode! Show Topics: 0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job!  1:04 – Mark: Hello! Please give us your background? 1:16 – Guest: I have been in Elixir for the past year or two and I have been living in Utah. 1:48 – Mark: I love the nature and state parks. Winter is coming, so I hope you are ready! 1:58 – Guest: Winter...hopefully it will be great! 2:20 – Panelists and guest go back-and-forth. 2:30 – Mark: Let’s talk about your blog posts about Ecto. What are your new announcements? 2:52 – Guest: Our new version was released a few weeks ago. 3:32 – Panel. 3:38 – The guest talks about the old and new versions of Ecto. 4:03 – Panel: What is new and how is this going to affect me (the new version)? 4:11 – Panel: The transition was pretty painless for me. The only change was the breaking-up of the adapter ad also the timestamp bit. That was it. 4:34 – Panel: Yeah that micro-timestamp surprised me for a second, but it wasn’t that bad after all. 4:52 – Guest: Yeah it was painless for me, too. 5:19 – Panel: Edgar can you talk about the change and what they did with the timestamps? 5:32 – The guest answers the question. 5:54 – Panel: Elm opted to use the micro-millisecond, too. Time zones aren’t a thing. 6:24 – Mark. 7:08 – Panel: My tests are the only reason why I care about the millisecond. 7:21 – Mark: With the upgrade don’t do what I did. Mark talks about how he updated and the issues he had. 8:47 – Guest: Pattern matching? 8:53 – Mark: Yep that sort of stuff. I didn’t need to do it and it was a learning experience. Edgar, please give us an introduction to the blog posts? Why did you want to document it? 9:18 – Guest: I always used Ecto with Phoenix but started learning Ecto by itself. I jotted down notes that I thought was interesting. That’s how it started. 10:17 – Mark: See links in the show notes. Using a gen to use the repo – this is one thing that I didn’t know was an option. 10:46 – Guest. 11:01 – Mark asks a question. 11:10 – Guest: Not really PHP applications but listening to web messages and hot topics but you are doing the database and serving data... 11:40 – Guest talks about Ecto and the different versions and features. 12:09 – Mark chimes-in. 12:23 – Panel: Yep – it’s under the hood and it’s for business logic and doesn’t have a web piece. Stop writing tings for the web – it’s a fad. 12:50 – Mark: It’s an umbrella and saw this through the Phoenix generators. 13:54 – Guest talks about web applications. 14:06 – Mark: Let’s talk about schema and databases? 14:23 – Panelist chimes-in. 14:51 – Panelists and guest talk about schemas, apps, and more. Check it out here. 16:13 – Guest: You will get the data and pass it in as a structure and... 16:23 – Mark: Here is a map of what I’d like you to do on my behalf. It goes to a chain set and I will turn it into a string and this is why it’s failed. 17:25 – Panel. 17:31 – Mark: It’s not hard and it’s pretty easy. Let’s talk about blog posts.  18:10 – Panel. 18:22 – Mark: I use Absinthe in the library in Elixir to support GraphQL. 18:50 – Panel. 19:06 – Guest: The total number of results and only once did I need a more complicated thing. 19:34 – Mark: I haven’t had a need for those. 20:01 – Panelists and guests talk about the hypothetical situations where and how they would use certain features for said situations. 20:23 – Guest: You don’t have to understand right out-of-the-box. 20:40 – Panel: Have you used stored functions as meta-columns in an Ecto schema? 20:48 – Panelist explains. 21:24 – Guest: I have used them in the past and now I don’t. For me it was hard to debug – maybe it’s just me. 21:43 – Panel: I was introduced to them through a colleague of mine. 21:53 – Mark chimes-in and talks about him being a DOT NET developer. 22:18 – Panelist chime-in, too! 22:50 – Mark. 23:16 – Panel: It was an awful time and not a good idea. 70 pages! Debugging it was hard. 23:35 – Mark: That experience was apart of that burn that I had before. I wanted to stay far away from it as far as I could. 24:00 – Panel: When I was doing it in DOT NET we didn’t have migrations. 24:12 – Panelist continues. 24:32 – Guest: I wonder if... 24:37 – Panel: It’s just a sequel – it’s not just an Ecto specific feature. 24:48 – Guest. 24:53 – FreshBooks! 26:01 – Mark: Edgar you were interested also in HOW Ecto was built. What experience did you have? 26:21 – Guest answers the question. 28:22 – Panel: No you typed REPO there. 28:30 – Guest: Whenever you save or make an update it’s a method. Unlike Ecto you have to all it something else. 28:47 – Panel: Hey let me get those article posted and someone did it in Loop and that is a lot of queries. 29:03 – Guest: Yeah that’s a good point. 29:45 – Mark: Something I’ve noticed is that they talk about performance improvements and better memory usage. Go read about it- it’s great. They talk about HOW Ecto is working and what is behind the scenes. 31:15 – Mark: Another feature that I have seen is UPSERTS. 31:50 – Guest talks about UPSERTS, too. 32:34 – Mark: Say I have a system that has 3 servers and it’s rolling updates (it will take down one and put up the new code, etc. and it will cycle) one thing they added was a lock on the migration table. I don’t know if you’ve had this – once it hits production data it is slow. Mark continues. 33:20 – Panel: I think it was just luck of the draw. 33:30 – Mark continues. 33:57 – The guest talks about his experience with the above-mentioned scenario. 34:20 – Mark: I like that you both have had goo experiences with your upgrades. I want people to be excited and know that there are great features out there. 34:49 – Guest: Yes, I have found that the blog post is helpful. It’s good to get adapted to the new changes. 35:17 – Panel: Yeah I normally don’t have teasers up to the actual upgrade. 35:28 – Panel: The community is nice and people made a good effort to communicate and help people. They did a GOOD job of helping people to feel comfortable within the transition from one version to the next! 41:37 – Ad: Lootcrate.com END – CacheFly! Links: Ruby Elixir Elixir: GenServer GenServers Elm JavaScript Visual Studio Code React Edgar Pino A sneak peek at Ecto 3 Ecto Active Record Pattern Repository Sponsors: Loot Crate Get a Coder Job! Fresh Books CacheFly Picks: Mark Plex Josh This Erlang Life Guest Ecto Documentation! Edgar Pino – My blog!

  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

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: Tongdao, a web celebrity, has published two posts on his WeChat account, listing the behaviors that make men and women appear mean or low. What are these behaviors, and do you agree with what’s being said?知名微博博主“同道大叔”最近发布了两篇微信，历数了那些让男生和女生显得很掉价的行为。他都列举了哪些行为？你同意他的说法吗？Let’s take a look at these behaviors. Do you agree?Heyang: I think this is a very interesting list. I think I agree with most of them. Just think that if one guy combines the ten traits being listed here, he will never get a girlfriend. Number one is beating up your girlfriend. That is not acceptable what so ever. I think that’s definitely the bottom line there. And, I think also speaking ill of this girl who’s refused to go out with the guy or speak ill of a girl that has gone out with you, these are pretty bad things from these guys.Mark: Most of them are bad. Talking about details of your romantic life to your friends: that’s going to upset your girlfriend if you start doing that kind of thing. Being stingy is on the list as well. I mean there’s a difference between being careful with your money and being stingy. Eventually, there comes a time when yes you do have to pay for things, but it’s no good expecting to sponge off other people all your life. But being careful with your money is another issue. Do you know there’s one thing on the list that I strongly disagree with, which is number six. It says, “Posting selfie photos showing your body even though you don’t have a good figure. This makes others feel disgusted. If you have nothing good enough to show, then don’t show it at all. It will only make people feel sick.” This is so biased. There’s probably some sort of phrase among politically correct folk to describe this like its “bodi-ist” or something. If I want to roll up my shirt in the summer and show everybody my “da du zi” and parade around Beijing like that posting selfies, why shouldn’t I? I should be proud of that stomach that I’ve been working on in the “Ma La Tang” shop for all these months. I think it’s very mean to say that unless you conform to somebody else’s idea of what’s attractive, then you shouldn’t be allowed to put up selfies of yourself.Heyang: I admire your confidence in saying that you should be proud of that part, and yes, I think we shouldn’t be judgmental. That should be my slogan on the show: don’t be judgmental. And, when it comes to body form, yes, you shouldn’t judge people or judge a book by its cover. That being said, I have a couple of male friends—ok there’s only one, actually—and he doesn’t go to the gym, he eats a lot of McDonald’s, and he shows off his porcelain white and pudgy “du zi” and chest a few times in my WeChat moment, and I have to say it’s very disturbing. I think, sometimes, take a moment and think for those who are seeing the stuff you’re posting maybe have a second thoughtXiaohua: Maybe kindly advise your male friends who have a more chubby belly not to do that, but it’s not to say that if they have done that, then they are mean or something. That is an overstatement. But let’s go on and look on the girls. Do you think there are some unjustifiable criticisms there, or do you think they all make sense as well?Mark: Well to be serious, yeah hitting anybody in anyway is unacceptable, and this is the lowest of the low for a man, I think, to hit a woman. Or, indeed, I don’t think it’s acceptable for a woman to hit a man either.Heyang: And also, I think that the one that I honestly cannot agree with as a behavior from the ladies is, well, what’s being listed on this list is only saying “praising your ex-boyfriends,” but I think what essentially its aiming at is those girls that only can see their self worth by what kind of guys they end up with or date. And, if you’re with a rich guy, does that make you better? I think that kind of value system, let’s just call it that name, I think is just not good for you, and I think you should be finding your self worth and your own values independently. And, I think it’s what you create for yourself that is most important, and it shouldn’t be because some guy that you date.Xiaohua: And, another one that I can agree with is treat other guys as backups even if you don’t like them at all. Guys sometimes can be guilty of that, as well.Mark: Here’s a question, and it’s not on the list, I just thought of it. Is it low behavior to tell a woman the truth, for example, when she’s trying on a dress in a shop, and she says, “does this make me look fat?” What is the correct response?Heyang: Fat? That word cannot be related to you in any way. And there should not be any pause in the middle of the responseMark: So in other words, is it low behavior then to tell the truth in this situation?Xiaohua: I think it’s not low, but it’s just plain stupid.