Podcasts about michael how

  • 39PODCASTS
  • 67EPISODES
  • 49mAVG DURATION
  • 1MONTHLY NEW EPISODE
  • Mar 28, 2025LATEST

POPULARITY

20172018201920202021202220232024


Best podcasts about michael how

Latest podcast episodes about michael how

Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show
A mistake putting these people in govt | JLP Fri 3-28-25

Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2025 180:00


Mostly Balanced
232. How To Stop Dating With A Scarcity Mindset & Be More Abundant with Michael Tennant

Mostly Balanced

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2025 54:34


Welcome back! Today we're joined by Michael Tennant, author, entrepreneur, and founder of Actually Curious. what we talk about:the meaning of abundance and how to create more of itwhat is compassion fatigue and where does it come from?how to support your partner when you feel annoyed by their ventingsigns your operating with a scarcity mindset in datinghow gratitude plays into abundancejealousy, comparison, and other things keeping you from abundancesigns you're not actually ready for a serious relationship& more!Past episodes with Michael:How to Get Clear On Your Values For A Better Dating LifeThe One Trait That Could Save Your RelationshipsFind Michael on Instagram @michaeltennantnyc and @actuallyc_rious and check out his new Abundance journalhere.As always, find me on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mostlydating⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. And if you're enjoying the pod, please leave a rating & review! To have your question answered on an upcoming episode, submit it ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.Ready to Level Up Your Dating Game? It's time to make dating exciting again with First Round's On Me! Discover real, meaningful connections that go beyond the small talk. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Grab a FREE month of FROM's premium Terracotta subscription⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with the code MOSTLYDATING.

The Patrick Madrid Show
The Patrick Madrid Show: January 30, 2025 - Hour 3

The Patrick Madrid Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2025 51:03


Patrick begins with the complex international tensions surrounding Israel and Hamas, featuring insights from experts like Douglas Murray and Natasha Hausdorf. He then discusses the nuanced perspective on the ethics of euthanasia and its alignment with Christian doctrine. The conversation shifts to the importance of informed confession practices within the Catholic faith. Audio: Douglas Murray, “they don’t care about Palestinians, they hate the Jews” (00:53) Audio: British attorney Natasha Hausdorff stunned the audience by completely destroying the Palestinian narrative about the conflict (03:10) Paul - Is it legit to say when I am in a confessional that I am confessing my sins with a priest? (08:01) Michael - How can we get people to listen to other sources of news? Both sides are convinced they are true. (14:51) Audio: President Trump addresses the nation about last night’s horrible tragedy (19:17) Jane - People make out that assisted suicide is normal is bizarre (29:16) Tom - I don't see how euthanasia fits into Thou Shalt Kill. (37:55) Rose - I wanted to commend you on your calm approach to callers and how you respond to them. I appreciate it. (48:59)

The Patrick Madrid Show
The Patrick Madrid Show: December 09, 2024 - Hour 1

The Patrick Madrid Show

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2024 49:12


Patrick answers questions about the validity of mass from home, fasting before Communion, Church's teaching on True Presence and importance of feast days in the Church.   Patrick answers email questions about valid mass from home, why we believe Mary was immaculately conceived and why some bishops are not valid in certain rites of the Church.   Julie - What is the reason behind fasting an hour before Holy Communion? Can I have coffee and donuts after mass?   Patrick takes a deep dive in explaining the importance of belief in the True Presence and why the Church says the Eucharist is truly Jesus.   Michael - How does the Church decide to move feast days on the calendar?

The Dental Marketer
Effective Hygienist Retention: The Connect, Measure, Coach Framework Explained | Josey Sewell | MME

The Dental Marketer

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 9, 2024


‍Imagine a dental practice where team well-being takes center stage, resulting in enhanced patient care!In this Monday Morning Episode, Josey Sewell reveals groundbreaking dental practice management strategies, particularly focusing on effective recruitment and retention of hygienists. Emphasizing that the team's wellness is as crucial as patient care, Josey shares how attending to the needs of your dental staff can transform your practice. We get an insider's view into the common pitfalls in leadership that often drive valuable employees away and discover Josey's transformative "Connect, Measure, Coach" framework designed to uplift leadership and engagement.Dive deeper as Josey introduces her comprehensive five Ps framework—Purpose, People, Power, Prosperity, and Performance—where each facet plays a pivotal role in creating a thriving work environment. By setting and tracking goals within these realms, leaders can mitigate burnout and boost workplace satisfaction. Josey also shares valuable insights on how the delicate balance between vulnerability and authority can cultivate trust among the team. This episode empowers dental leaders with practical tools to enhance their leadership skills and build a dedicated, satisfied dental team.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Innovative strategies for enhancing dental practice management.Key leadership mistakes that lead to high employee turnover.Insights on the "Connect, Measure, Coach" framework.An introduction to the five Ps framework for improved engagement.Techniques for reducing burnout and boosting workplace satisfaction.The role of balancing vulnerability with authority to foster trust.Dive into today's episode to learn more about team growth and the team-centered approach!‍‍You can reach out to Josey Sewell here:Instagram: instagram.com/joseysewellEmail: josey@joseysewell.comOther Mentions and Links:‍People:Simon SinekJohn C. MaxwellBenjamin HardyDan Sullivan‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey, Josie. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Josey: Oh, I'm so excited about this. My piece of advice is that your number one customer is absolutely your team. Over your patients. And I know a lot of dentists probably panic when I say that, but we spend a ton of time and effort and energy on marketing and taking great care of our patients.But when we take great care of our team, that's going to translate to great patient care. And today I'd actually like to talk in particular about recruiting and retention of hygienists. Having been a hygienist myself, been a hygiene director, I've been a COO of a dental group. And what I will tell you now as a coach helping people across the country is that every single one of the clients that I work with, they are struggling with finding and retaining dental hygienists.And what I find is that a lot of people typically use COVID as an excuse. They'll say, Oh, COVID happened. It shut the world down. And we saw hygienists leave the profession. And we know that about 10 percent of hygienists did leave the field. And I think that that's really unfortunate. But now what we hear is that people just say, there's just not any hygienists available.They just don't want to work. They don't want to be in clinic. And what I would say from being a hygienist and being in the hygiene community is actually that hygienists do want to work. They do love clinical, but the reason that we've seen some of them leave the field and the reason that we see a lot of hygienists who have chosen A permanent job as temping is because we have a leadership crisis.And what I mean by that is hygienists are choosing not to work in your company because you're not leading them in a way that is meaningful to them. Michael: Okay. Gotcha. So then what specific leadership behaviors have you observed that push Hygienist and team members to leave and how can practice owners correct these behaviors before losing valuable staff?Josey: Yeah So I have a very simple framework That I find works really well for you to remember when you're thinking about leading and that is connect measure coach and so what I mean by that is to connect with people in a meaningful way and I mean trying to get to know them as a human being understand what's going on in their life even You Taking time to find out what their dreams and their goals and their aspirations are.So that's connect. Measure is how do we appropriately measure success. And that includes utilizing key performance indicators or KPIs. But with hygienists in particular, sometimes they're afraid of numbers and metrics. So they feel like if a practice is asking me to be a high producer or to track my numbers, that means that they care more about money than about patient care.And so what you have to do in helping hygienists understand metrics is you have to connect Those metrics to patient outcomes and to clinical care. And you also have to teach them a little bit about the business of dentistry, because when they have a greater understanding and they know how these numbers fit in, they absolutely will engage and appreciate those numbers.So there's a special nuance into introducing numbers and metrics. And the last one is coach. I love the quote by Dan Sullivan, that he says, people don't want to be managed. People want to be coached. our team members, whether they are hygienist or not, have a very different expectation in what they want from us as employers and in our work environment.And they want to be coached. It is not just about their job. It is about their life. And so we need to coach people up into a position. So maybe I'm a front office person and I'm growing into a manager position or I'm a hygienist and I'm going into a hygiene lead.That's up in my position is primarily what we do in dentistry is we're helping people achieve mastery over time. But so many hygienists feel like there's a very short ceiling to their career. I will tell you, I left clinical because I thought there's nowhere for me to grow. And yet I was motivated and excited about advancing what I did as a clinician, but I felt limited because my doctors did not actually engage in the same CE or passion that I had.for prevention or treating periodontal disease. So providing a pathway to grow. And then sometimes, Michael, we have to coach people out of our business. Because sometimes our business outgrows our people and sometimes our people outgrow our business. For those of you who are especially getting started in dentistry, some of you have this expectation that I'll graduate from dental school.I'll have my practice and I'll find this amazing team. And this amazing team is going to be with me forever. However, lifelong employment is a thing of the past. And a lot of people don't. grow up as a little girl or a little boy dreaming about answering the phone at her front office. And so we have to just know and recognize that people are going to come and go in our business and our relationships don't have to be dependent on an employment agreement.So again, connect in meaningful ways, measure performance, be very clear what your expectations are, and then coach people up in or out knowing that sometimes it is better for them in their life to move on. And that doesn't mean we can't still remain friends. Hmm. Michael: How would you connect in meaningful ways?Josey: Great question. So we actually have a framework that we've developed after working with literally thousands of employees and helping hundreds of managers grow. we call it the five Ps, and that is the various different parts of their life where we will have people.Take a look at these five important critical areas of their life and challenge them to set a vision for themselves and then also to set 90 day goals. So a very specific example is we have one of them that's called power and power is my physical, mental, and spiritual health. And it's encouraging people to have healthy habits for how they take care of themselves.In dentistry in particular, one of the saddest things that I see is when clinical careers are cut short due to different musculoskeletal things or injuries, and so Are we encouraging our people to have regular habits of exercise or mindfulness or whatever that is? And so we have a framework that we have people fill out what their goals are.And we sit down within the first 90 days of employment and we go through that and we just get to know our people in a meaningful way. And then we check in on them occasionally about every 90 days on their goals. So some people, it makes them feel really uncomfortable to think am I really going to ask?My people about their personal goals. And the answer is yes, you are because they are a person with dreams and goals and aspirations. And the more that you understand who they are and what's important to them, the more that you can connect those goals to what the business goals are. And then we can win together.Michael: So you said there's five P's, right? Josey: Yeah. You want me to go through all five? Michael: Yeah. Real quick. That'd be Josey: great. So the first P is purpose. And that is like your personal Y or your personal core values. And so this one is probably the toughest one for to define a vision for themselves or their 90 day goals.But what I have seen after working with so many incredible entrepreneurs, and I'll speak to you as the owner dentist for just a second. Is dentists have been successful their whole life. They probably did well in high school and got great grades. They got them into college and then they did well in college and they got into dental school and then they get out and they buy a practice.And so often I see people attach their personal worth. To their practice and yet the practice is going to struggle. Not if it's going to struggle, it's when it's going to struggle. So things like struggling to make payroll or having a team walk out or not being able to fix, you know, marketing, your practice is going to struggle and you have to have a purpose in your life beyond what your practice is.So that's what we help people do in purpose. The next one is people. So people is about relationships. And our relationships really are the greatest indicator of longevity and health. And what you will find is that when you're struggling in your relationships, whether it's with a spouse or a partner or with kids, or your people are, they're not going to show up as a 10 at work.And so how can we encourage people to take care of the people that they love and to have positive relationships. Number three is power, which is physical, mental, and spiritual health. The fourth P is prosperity. And so prosperity is going to be, it might be wealth, especially for you as a practice owner, but for some of your team, prosperity might be more autonomy of their time, or it might be saving for something like a house or a car, or, preparing for something in their life.And then the last one is performance. And that's what connects this personal stuff to the professional stuff. So performance is how are we doing in our job? How are we performing in our position? And that is a critical part of having this whole life. We talk about how everybody has one life space.And if we're not minding those five different areas, we will struggle. Now I'll quickly say, we hear a lot about burnout. We hear a lot about overwhelm and most people are blaming that burnout and their overwhelm on work on what they do on a day to day basis and they're quitting their job and they're hopping around searching for greater work life balance, which is the lie.right? There's no work life balance. It's work life harmony. And what I find is actually that burnout may not be happening from what we do every day in the dental office. It may be because I'm not minding my relationships or I'm not taking care of my physical health I'm not in alignment with my personal values.So what I find is as you utilize these five P's and helping people set goals, Long term and short term, you might find that there's decreased overwhelm and burnout because they're actually taking better care of something that's going on in their life. Michael: Interesting. So I feel like that's so complex though, Josie.every 90 days, do you follow up and be like, where are we deficient on which P Cause I feel like it would always change, right? every level. Josey: absolutely changes. So first of all, if you are a manager or a practice owner, it is not your job to ensure that your employees are checking off the boxes and achieving their goals.So you're not going to like, Hey, you set a goal of saying, saving 5, 000. Why are you still getting Starbucks every day? That is not what we're going to do. It's actually just about creating a safe place where people can verbally share their goals and feel as though they're seen as a human being. And so I do it once a year.I'll really just dig deep into their goals and I'll ask them questions. Then every 90 days, I recommend doing what we call a quarterly check in. That is a structured conversation where we use this idea of connect, measure, coach, and on that connect part, I just simply say, how are you doing on your goals?You know, How are your five P's? You said last quarter you were going to call your mom once a week. How's that going? So I check in so that they feel heard and seen, but it's not my job to track. To manage, to ensure that they get it done. It's really just about seeing and knowing who they are. And it's incredible.The experience that the employee has, I've had many people come back and say, I was shocked, Josie, how many tears there were. And not that it was tears of sadness or discomfort. It was that nobody had ever asked them what their vision for their life was. Michael: Yeah. Now that's interesting. I like that a lot. it opens the door a little bit more, So Josie, in your experience, how do leadership blind spots practice owners contribute to team frustration and disengagement and how can owners uncover and address these blind spots? Would it be? doing this? Josey: This is one great way to absolutely uncover those blind spots.I think that in many ways if we're a dentist and a practice owner, so much of what is happening is about achieving our goals. The practice is mine. This is, my business, my dream, and everybody's helping me. And that's actually not what most employees are excited about is helping you build your dreams.They want to build their own dreams too. they want to help you win, but they also want to win. So I think that that is a blind spot that sometimes we can be very self centered as an entrepreneur. And that is not shame or judgment. I am an entrepreneur myself and totally know. But the other blind spot that I would say is that we just don't have a good system for this and you need a good system for leadership.And so I'm sure if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably also a pretty avid. Reader or listener to other podcasts and there's incredible people who talk about leadership like Simon Sinek or John Maxwell or, Ben Hardy. There's all of these authors that we love, but how do we take the idea of what it means to be a leader and how do we actually execute on it?And that's where you need a system. And I think that's what I've seen. spent the better part of the last 10 years of my career doing is how to create a systematic leadership approach, meaning how do I do this connect measure coach, but how often should I be meeting with my employees? What should we be talking about?How do we have difficult conversations and how do we align with what I need in the business and what you want with your life? So I think that one of the blind spots is there's not a good system or there hasn't been a good system. And that's what we're trying really hard to build. Michael: I like that. I like how you mentioned how can I, ask these difficult questions, talk to them, play like, just for example, when you're approaching them and asking them about, did you call your mom this week?Kind of a thing, right? It's kind of weird asking your employee, right? So I guess, how can owners or leaders, right? Balance vulnerability with authority to foster a culture of trust and support, especially during times of high stress or change. Josey: Yes, I love that. That is the constant need of how we do. I love that you called it out vulnerability and authority.what I share is that I want to help you create an environment of high love and high accountability. a lot of people think those are two things on the opposite end of a spectrum. spectrum, but we can't have high love and high accountability. Now there is absolutely an important nuance and that is that I can love and care for you as a human being without being your buddy, where it's like not appropriate for us to go out on the weekends together or us to go on vacation together or, doing things like that.There absolutely has to be a professional line in how much we're sharing our life, but I do think that vulnerability. allows other people to be vulnerable. So a specific example is where business owners or managers feel like I have to have all of the answers and I can't tell people that I'm struggling.And yet, when you're real about the struggle or real about the fact that you don't have the answers, it actually gives your team permission to do the same. And we create an environment where it's a greater partnership and we work together. So, There is absolutely a nuance in understanding who people are and what motivates them and not getting like too involved in their lives, right?Not inserting ourself or feeling like we know too much or ask too many questions. Michael: Awesome. Josie. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find her on the dental marketer society, Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly? Josey: So my email is just Josie at Josie Sewell.com. Make sure you spell it right. j O S E Y S E W E L L. And then on any social media platform, you'll find me at Josie Sewell. Really happy to answer any questions that you might have on how to create a healthy, happy team. Michael: Nice. So that's going to be in the show notes below. And Josie, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode.Josey: Thank you.

The Dental Marketer
Calm Leadership: How Strategic Silence Empowers Leaders and Teams | Dr. Manrina Rhode | MME

The Dental Marketer

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2024


‍How often do leaders find themselves in situations where silence could have been their most powerful tool? In this episode, we dive deep into the leadership journey of Dr. Manrina Rhode and learn about the transformative lessons she's embraced as a business owner. Dr. Manrina candidly reveals her shift from a leader eager to express every thought to one who masterfully chooses her words. She shares intimate reflections on learning when to "shut up," a tactic that has redefined her approach to managing teams and maintaining a harmonious workplace environment. Her story is a compelling exploration of the inner changes she made to lead more effectively.Drawing from her own experiences, Dr. Manrina offers a toolbox of strategies vital for any leader aiming to foster accountability and support within their teams. From scheduling regular meetings to address concerns in a steady, composed fashion, to the importance of documenting and constructively addressing recurring issues, her advice is both practical and refreshingly honest. This episode is not just an insightful peek into her leadership evolution but a guide filled with actionable ideas any practice owner can implement to refine their communication style and team dynamics.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The power of silence in leadership and when to "shut up."Strategies for managing emotional reactions in the workplace.How to foster a supportive and accountable team environment.The importance of scheduled meetings for conflict resolution.Effective techniques for documenting and addressing recurring issues.The impact of calm and constructive communication on team morale.Tune in to discover how to communicate more effectively with your team!‍‍‍Sponsors:‍‍Gusto: Dentist payroll for the modern practice. Gusto's cloud-based software provides all the payroll and HR tools you need to run your dental practice efficiently. Having it all on one platform keeps our prices low, and makes your job so much easier. Enjoy best-in-class support, benefits like health coverage for your team, and more. Visit or copy and paste the link here for a special offer! https://gusto.com/tdm‍You can reach out to Dr. Manrina Rhode here:Instagram: instagram.com/drmanrinarhodeOther Mentions and Links:‍Brands:Botox‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: amen. Rena, so talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Manrina: My piece of advice is to learn to shut. Michael: Expound on that a little bit. is that advice? Manrina: I think it's something that I've had to learn as a business owner and it goes against everything I learned before I was a business owner. So as young lady growing up and then as an associate dentist, I always believed it was important to speak my mind. And if someone had upset me, offended me, done something that felt like an injustice, To speak out loud about it, and I kind of pride myself for being that person and doing that. and as a business owner, I've learned that's not always the best way to go. And with your team, if every time they do something wrong that upsets you, like, I don't know, like I had someone today send out one of my patients, the wrong skincare product. They wanted one product and they sent them another product, you know, and I was like, why, why did you send the wrong product?And, you know, they said, oh, they were next to each other. And I think, you know, the, the old marina and the way that had been brought up and what I'd always believed to be correct. would have really wanted to talk about that and explore it and understand it and be like, but how is that an answer to sell me that because they were next to each other?If someone's ordered hydrate lip oil, you send them, hydrate lip oil, why would you send them plumpbut what I have learned, being a boss. Is it's not my place to then have that conversation. it's just my place to listen and accept and say, okay, and that's it.Shut up. Okay. And that's such a journey for me. because it went against my essence of just like really explaining how I feel. and to the point of like, then when you see the,person later on and, you know, in the staff room and they say, Oh, I'm really sorry about that. skincare thing. just smiling at them genuinely back and saying, okay, maybe how I was feeling, but I've had to learn this mass suppression of emotion opinions. So just, obviously it's important to take note of everything that's going on around you. I'll make notes understand what's happening with my team and bring it up at the right time in the correct way. But what's not correct is like my life has been up until now dealing with friends and colleagues that you can just be quite open about how you're feeling, about what's happening Michael: at the time. Interesting. So then how do you know when to bring it up in the right time in the right way, especially like that scenario? Manrina: Yeah, so we have meetings, scheduled meetings. with everyone, right? So I have a daily huddle, definitely a group environment. I bring things up in a group environment as team learning for everyone, not using a specific person as an example, but doing a reminder saying, Hey, we're all going to have a this morning. what product is this? What does this product do? Let's do a spot test. Does everyone know what's going on here? we have weekly meetings, which are designed to go through these things. which be a more appropriate place to do the spot skin care test. We have monthly practice meetings. we have monthly reviews for new team members and three monthly, reviews for team members who have been with us for longer. do it monthly for three months and then it moves on to three monthly and eventually six monthly. I also have, like, different team members, with my practice manager, for example, I have a weekly meeting. if she does something that I can make a note and in the weekly meeting, if I don't want to make a big deal out about it, then in the weekly meeting, when we're having a one on one, I can say, Hey, by the way, this happened this week. And that's made me feel a certain way. And is everything okay? And I guess it's also that it's being like, is everything okay? Rather than getting upset with someone and saying, I don't want to say it, but like, are you stupid? You're just going to be like, is everything okay? Well, you know, is there a reason why you felt like, did this happened or these mistakes happen this week?Is there something that I can support you in? so it's a whole like reframe you think when you're open to practice, everyone might think they're going to be the boss and they're going to tell everyone what to do, but I think it's almost the opposite. It's easier to be the boss when you're an associate, Whereas as a boss, to actually keep a happy team, you need just very calmly, Go through anything that goes wrong then put actions in place to make sure it doesn't happen again and obviously know everything down.So rather than acting on it immediately, make a note of it and then decide the appropriate action to take, the correct time to have that discussion. it's not necessarily something that you have immediately. Michael: interesting. So then it's almost like as if. Shutting up is part of the calming down process, could you think of something in that moment to, you know, I just need to be nicer, but I'm going to tell it to you straight. Yeah, Manrina: when like the skincare thing happened today, then I responded and said, Oh, okay. That's unfortunate that you're not familiar with our, with our sentence. read about them and watch all the videos. if you could do that for me, then when I see you next week, I'll schedule a time for me to go through that with you and test you on them. So this doesn't happen again. Could you please send an apology message to the person you sent the wrong skincare to? Arrange when you want to be sent out, just to let you know the cost of the skincare will be deducted from your wages. So that was my immediate response. Which was quite measured and, fair, with all the points for what needs to be done. there's nothing emotional in that.It's just very fact. This happened. This is what we're going to do about it, to make sure it doesn't happen again. And this is how we're going to fix what's happened right now. and these are the actions I'm taking because you've done something wrong. Michael: How do they react? Manrina: They said, okay, I, um, yeah, I was going to say you should deduct it for my wages as well. And yeah, sorry again. Michael: Oh, okay. Interesting. So then how did this come out to be Minrina? Like, how did you realize I probably should start shutting up more? Manrina: I think it was really early on. I had a nurse and He gave pounds worth of Botox. To the lab guy, like the lab guy came to collect lab work and he picked the lab work out of the fridge and picked up a bag of Botox as well.And gave the lab guy my lab work and 500 worth of Botox, which is a prescription medication and it's useless once it's kept out of the fridge. So couldn't even be returned. and then the lab called and said, Oh, you've given us this bag of Botox. And I think at the time I was so shocked like, you know, early boss days.And I'm just like that's incompetent. I feel like that's incompetent behavior. What do you think about it? And then he was like oh yeah, I made a mistake, but you can't call me. incompetent. That's not allowed. then I, you know, asked my, my HR and they were like, yeah, youcan't tell someone that they've done something wrong.Like say that this is what you are. You can only say to them, do you think that was competent? Do you think that was competent behavior? And so I was like, Oh, it's so interesting. Like in normal life, normal conversations up until now it's just been a conversation that you'd have about, this is what you are in my opinion, but you're not allowed to have that opinion as a boss.You have to ask what their opinion is. Michael: Okay. I like that. Interesting. Yeah, no, it's good. So then in the moment of you trying to create this relationships with your team whether it's like, Hey guys, we're a team or we're more than a team, we're friends, right. or we're a family or anything like that.Where's the line to where you're like, Hey, for example, you're really close with the team member and you're like, Hey, you know, you know me, right. you've seen my children and everything. But then you. Decide to be like, Oh, I didn't know that offended you me calling you incompetent. I apologize. Right. But then it kind of,creates a riff there or something like that. So where's the line for that for you? Manrina: I don't have an issue now. We're just talking to everyone very calmly. And I feel like as long as I'm telling them all very calmly and not in a bullying like, This is incompetent.That's, you know, I would never, I wouldn't say it like that. Anything they do now. Oh no. Did you give the Botox? how do you feel about having done that? what do you think we could do to make sure it doesn't happen again? It's almost quite maternal. It's almost like a family.or maybe it's like a really nice mom, rather than a mom that shouts at people and says, are you stupid? It's a really nice. Oh, okay. This happened. What should we do about it? What can we put in place to make sure it doesn't happen again? But also I make a note of it. I've got a folder where I make a note about all these things with the date and what happened with each team member.So if we see a pattern and it's recurring, then I've got, series of evidence. And obviously if it's recurring issues, then need to do something more. always calm now. passionate response to anything is gone.Everything's like, Oh, Michael: You ask questions right to your response. You're like, oh, why'd you do that? What were you thinking right in that moment? Manrina: anything, I'd just be like, why do you think that happened?What do you think we could do to stop it happening again? Michael: Yeah, no, that's interesting. So then with that being said, what are some exercises you're doing to remind yourself, especially in the heat of the moment where you're like, what the heck? What are the. Exercises that you're doing to remind yourself to shut up or be calm.Manrina: Yeah. So when um, feel myself having an emotional reaction that's not positive. So it's fine when I'm excited when things happen, then it's all good and let's celebrate. If something happens and I can feel it inside me that I'm like, Oh, that makes me want to make that noise. Take a deep breath in.Then I know that's when I need to shut up. So as soon as I feel that something goes off in my brain, it says, shut up, because you're feeling an emotion and better to respond to this when you don't, and there's no rush to respond to anything. So just take it in and say, okay. And then work out how you want to respond to it once that, it's calmed down.Michael: You started doing this like a couple of weeks ago or? Manrina: a progressive. So my clinic opened just over two years ago and it's been a progressive change, but it's something that I was only conscious that I started doing when I sent it to someone this week.I said, Oh yeah, when things happen, then I just don't say anything because it's just easier that way. And then I just deal with it when it's the right time. And then I was like, Oh, I didn't even realize I started doing that. That's what I do. I don't respond anymore. And I've always been, I've always been that person that you're, you know, how I'm feeling at all times.If I get upset about something, I'll tell you I'm upset about it. And then, you know, five minutes later it was done and it's gone and we've cleared it. But I don't tell you I'm upset anymore. Michael: That's so funny. No, that's awesome. Thank you so much for that advice. We appreciate it. And we appreciate your time.And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find her on the Dental Marketer Society, Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly? Manrina: On my Instagram is a really popular way to do that. It's Dr. Manrina Road, D R my name, Manrina Road. I manage my own account.So that's a good way to reach out. Michael: Nice. Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below. I'm Marina. Thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Manrina: Michael.

The Dental Marketer
From Provider to Healer: Embracing Empathy in Your Career | Dr. Alan Stern | MME

The Dental Marketer

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2024


Are you a provider or a healer? In this warm and insightful episode, Dr. Alan Stern shows us the transformative power of leading with love and empathy, seamlessly balancing professional duties with genuine human connection. Dr. Stern shares actionable advice on nurturing compassion in the most trying situations, offering vivid examples of handling conflicts empathetically, whether with team members or patients. He imparts deep wisdom on how these principles not only foster better professional relationships but also personal growth.Throughout our conversation, Dr. Stern also shines a light on the importance of self-compassion and the value of learning from our mistakes. He passionately advocates for reframing how we view our roles—from merely providers and professionals to empowered, evolving healers. By the end of the episode, Dr. Stern extends a heartfelt invitation to listeners to continue this pivotal discussion, emphasizing that both empathy and professional growth can flourish in tandem.What You'll Learn in This Episode:How to lead with love and empathy in challenging office environments.Ways to maintain your humanity in an increasingly digitized world.Effective techniques for resolving conflicts with team members or patients empathetically.The vital importance of self-compassion for personal and professional growth.The powerful shift from seeing yourself as a "provider" to a healer.Real-world examples of balancing compassion with professional challenges.Boost your journey with empathy and stay attuned to our core humanity by listening to this episode today!‍‍Sponsors:‍‍Gusto: Dentist payroll for the modern practice. Gusto's cloud-based software provides all the payroll and HR tools you need to run your dental practice efficiently. Having it all on one platform keeps our prices low, and makes your job so much easier. Enjoy best-in-class support, benefits like health coverage for your team, and more. Visit or copy and paste the link here for a special offer! https://gusto.com/tdm‍You can reach out to Dr. Alan Stern here:Website: https://betterricherstronger.com/Email: alan@betterricherstronger.comFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/betterricherstronger‍Mentions and Links: ‍Brands:UPS‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey, Alan, so talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Alan: Michael, thank you. The one thing I would like people to think about in a digitizing, commoditizing, depersonalizing and often dehumanizing environment we live in. we got to remember to approach our work with love in our hearts because when we have love of humanity.And love of humanity is not the same as the love of our spouse, love of our children, love of our parents, siblings, et cetera. But if we love the people and extend love out to our teams, to our patients, to the UPS guy, to the mailman, to anybody, life gets a whole lot better. We forget sometimes when we're trying to do that perfect crown prep or when the endo just isn't right.Or if, oh my heavens, a crown falls off, we go into offense, defense, right? If we approach people a little bit differently and just be in there to love them to listen to them and to treat them as human beings who are scared or anxious, all of a sudden, we become healers. We're no longer providers. I hate that word, Michael.Providers, we are practitioners of a profession. And we know that and it emanates from the pores of our skin. Life gets better. But it's got to start, Michael, with yourself. You have to look in the mirror each morning and see something really good, a well trained, well intended human being who's not perfect and never will be, but gets out there and gives with everything they've got from their hearts, from their minds, and from our well trained hands.Love in their heart is the magic ingredient, Michael. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So then if you can give me descriptors of what this four letter word love, looks like specifically. Yeah. a scenario of a. Practice owner with their team. And then in the scenario with their patient, Alan: Beautiful. All right.So a team member screws up. Why wasn't that scanner set up right on that table? Alice, the assistant, what the bleep is going on with you? That's how not to do it. That's a tug of war, that's a power struggle. That's the owner dominating and saying, Bam, I'm in charge here, you better listen. Because you and I both know that doesn't work.That's one of the reasons for massive turnover in dentistry today. How about this? Hey Alice no big deal. the scanner wasn't set up quite right. And we had to spend a little more time. Alright, we got through it. Tell me what's going on. How can I help you? So that everything is exactly the way we need it to be or as close as possible Tell me what's going on and alice might say oh man doc, I got a lousy night's sleep My baby was up all night or heaven forbid, you know, I got into it with my spouse That's cool alice.And by the way If you need five minutes to air it out, I'll listen to you. I'll sit down with you at the end of office hours. And if you need an outlet, I'll be there for you because I'm there for you, just as you are there for me. We need each other and we support each other. Align with the problem. Don't talk back and forth, Mike.Align Alice, the assistant with the problem that she had, get to the why and help her figure it out With a patient. Dr. Arias, That tooth didn't hurt until you started drilling on it until you did I had no problem at all doc and you can say I work to the standard of care and if you hadn't been so negligent and stupid if You had invested in a simple toothbrush.This wouldn't have happened Mm we could send that passive aggressive message in many different forms I'm being a little cute But how about this? Hey, Michael McNasty, I understand. Oh my goodness, your tooth hurts. Did it keep you up at night? Yeah, it did, Doc. Oh my goodness, nothing worse.we gotta get you out of this. Let's get you back to the operatory. Let's sit you down. We'll take an x ray. We'll take a look at what's going on priority one right now. Let's get you out of trouble. You good with that, Mr. McNasty? Yeah, alright. So now you have empathized with him, instead of confronting him and just saying, dope, don't you know you get inflammation when you drill on a tooth?you let it go so deep that your tooth blew up. Not my problem, but instead it still isn't your problem, but you are doctoring him. You are helping him heal Both emotionally and of course dentally and you may go on to explain to him the reality that 94 percent of the time When you drill on a tooth nothing happens, but just like in surgery when you cut somebody open There's inflammation around that surgical site and you could gently explain to him that this is how it goes with a tooth but first and foremost Align yourself with that patient, empathize with the problem because the patient is hurting.The patient is angry from being up all night, who wouldn't be? And also the patient in the back of their minds is thinking, this is going to cost me more money. And they're thinking falsely. This wouldn't happen if Dr. Arias had not talked me into doing that cavity.Michael: I like that a lot. So I guess. Whenever these scenarios come up, it's easy to have that motivation to say these things when we're having a wonderful day, right? It's, a beautiful day. I woke up great. Everything's going good. And you're like, you know what?Not everything's bad. Flip side, we're having a horrible day, horrible week, right? Somebody just quit, we've been patient with someone, another team member, they didn't care, spouse, family, I don't know, all these things, and then this patient comes in like this, and now we're at our wit's end, how do we know then, Alan, whether we're replying in a fantastic, loving way, or we think we're replying in a loving way, but then we blanket it where it's I'm just giving you the facts.Alan: Sit down for this one. Because you're gonna blow it every now and then. You all have bad days. And, leading with love means loving yourself first and you have to forgive yourself. Michael, that happened to me. Shortly before I sold my practice and retired, the denture bag lady came in and you know what I'm talking about.and I really thought that I had the answer for her. And I was patient. She also was mentally ill. And I knew that going in, she was referred by a friend of mine, a dental colleague, and I was having a bad day and I snapped and I said, nothing more I can do. I'm giving you your money back.Please find somebody else. literally at the end of the day, I was very upset with myself I wasn't my best self that day, but we do have a filter. We do have an executive brain that if we are careful and we can recognize, wait a minute, what good is going to happen when this verbiage comes out of my mouth.If we just keep our filters on but we have to be forgiving enough with ourselves And compassionate as compassionate with ourselves as we need to be with our patients and with our families. Sometimes you're going to blow it. You're not perfect get over it, but forgive yourself learn from it and move on can't undo that.Michael: Yeah, so you can't be dwelling in it. So it sounds like alan a good indicator You Whenever you start feeling like this like you're about to blow a gasket or something or anything like that. Two things, right? What good is going to happen when I say this, but before that, what you said, ask ourselves, what would love look like in this situation?Yes. And then go with that. Alan: Very good. Exactly. And sometimes your best friend is time. So when you're feeling that, with me, it's in my upper thorax and in my throat, I feel that stop, say nothing, pause. It's okay to take a moment to reflect on what was said and even use my three magic words. Tell me more. And that will allow the upset assistant or maybe the assistant who's demanding this, that, or the other, and you can't give it to them. Tell me more. And let 'em drain their limbic system. Let 'em get it all out. Get to the bottom of the issue as you process and ponder, what can I do here that will result in something good?Michael: How do you not dwell on this? Let's just say you did do that. All that happened, they walked all over you. They felt like, okay, he listened. Thank you, Alan. But then in your mind, you're like, Oh, I could have said this. I could have said that. And then you start playing the scenarios in your head.Alan: Although it's already Michael: passed. Alan: So instead of saying, I blew it, say, what did I learn from this? What can I do better next time something like this happens? you can't turn the clock back. Look, we could turn the clock back, you and I would be in different positions maybe than we're in now, but you can't.So every mistake you make. I read this from Adam Grant, there's no such thing as win lose. There's such a thing as win learn. So if we can learn from things we can do better and get that phrase, I blew it out of your head and say, all right, it's done. It didn't turn out good.And yeah, I'm going to feel lousy about it for a period of time. I accept that and I'll let it pass, but what did I learn from it? And then the other thing to heal yourself. is go to your Google reviews, please. Because an overwhelming majority of people have great things to say about you. And look at that and see yourself the way most others see you.As something really good. if one person thinks you're lousy, and 999 other Google reviewers or people you know think you're wonderful, who do you think is right? And if you're questioning your own self worth or self efficacy, and you see 999 Google reviews that say, Dr.Arias is the best thing to come to dentistry or come into my life, who are you going to believe? 999 or two. Michael: Yeah. The 999. Any final pieces of advice that you can give to our listeners about this? Alan: Yeah. I would like you to understand that doctor is not provider. Get that word out of your vocab.You're a doctor. You didn't go to provider school. You went four years and how many thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to become something special. You were a healer. You're a professional. You do the right thing. And you're a practitioner. That means you're practicing. That means you'll be better tomorrow.And you are today and just keep growing, have a growth mindset and don't let anybody convince you that you're anything other than something very special who does sacred work in the world. Michael: I love it. Alan, I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on dental marketer society, Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?Alan: Reach out direct to me, Alan, A L A N, that better? Richer stronger. com My facebook group is better richer stronger find me any way you can I will speak to you I will give you a half hour of virtual coffee whenever you'd like Michael: Nice, so that's going to be in the show notes below and definitely reach out to alan and alan Thank you so much for being with me on this monday morning episode.Alan: My absolute pleasure michael‍

The Patrick Madrid Show
The Patrick Madrid Show: August 01, 2024 - Hour 3

The Patrick Madrid Show

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2024 51:20


Patrick covers some powerful ways to engage in faith-based conversations, especially when bridging gaps between different beliefs. He discusses essential reading materials for solidifying your arguments and how audio resources can facilitate sensitive discussions. Plus, he tackles the Olympics' controversial artistic choices and the deep resonance of personal stories through faith journeys.   Bev - We found out my husband is a product of IVF and his parents never told him. He is struggling now with his identity and his parents are denying it. What should we do? Should we have children now that we know where he came from? (00:34) Michael - What do you think of the John Lennon son 'Imagine'? They played that song at the opening ceremonies. They said it has become a staple at the Olympics. I find that song insulting to religion. (11:21) James - How can I take Philippians 4 verses 6 and 7 to heart and not feel anxious? (18:29) Dusty - When did the Catholic Church come up with the idea of the Trinity?  If Mary had to be free of sin in order to carry Jesus, wouldn't her Grandmother need to have been free from sin? (25:29) Michael – How do I talk with a fallen away Catholic family member who is now a fundamentalist Baptist? (35:49) Jessica – There's an article in The Guardian that the Olympic “Last Supper” scene wasn't based on the famous painting. (40:25) Luke – I called in 2017 when I was a protestant.  Just wanted to reach out and say I converted to Catholicism.  I'm married and now have a child. (46:43)

The Dental Marketer
Discovering the Perfect Spot for Your Dental Practice: Go Beyond the Numbers | Dr. Chris Green | MME

The Dental Marketer

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2024


Are you thinking about launching a dental startup but don't quite know where to begin? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Chris Green to dive into the essentials of setting up a new dental practice, beginning with the crucial steps of demographics analysis and site selection. Chris shares his insights on the "windshield test," a simple method to augment data analysis with hands-on site evaluation. He also reveals practical strategies for identifying promising locations, accounting for natural barriers, and balancing commercial and residential areas—all keys to making sound, long-term decisions for your practice.The conversation continues with essential advice on how to work effectively with real estate agents and what to consider during site visits. Chris also discusses his book, "The Eminently Qualified Dentist," which includes a valuable self-evaluation scorecard to help dental professionals assess their leadership skills. As the episode wraps up, you'll get tips on regular self-assessment and Chris' philosophy on being always a work in progress.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why demographics analysis is critical for dental startupsHow to perform the "windshield test" to evaluate potential practice locationsEffective strategies for identifying the best areas for a new dental practiceTips for navigating natural barriers and balancing commercial-residential zonesHow to collaborate with real estate agents to find the perfect siteInsights from Chris' book on self-evaluation and leadership in dental practiceThe importance of regular self-assessment for continuous improvementTune in now to equip yourself with the tools for a successful startup!‍‍Sponsors:Studio 8E8: Dentistry's story-driven marketing agency. Traditional marketing repels. Story-first dental marketing attracts.We bring your story to life in a way that captivates and connects: https://s8e8.com/affiliates/tdm?utm_source=tdm&utm_medium=affiliate&wc_clear=true‍You can reach out to Dr. Chris Green here:Website: thepracticelaunchpad.comEmail: cmgreendmd@gmail.comChris' Book - The Eminently Qualified Dentist: https://a.co/d/3AgXjbI (Reach out to Chris for a free copy!)‍Mentions and Links: ‍People:Dr. Thomas Reed‍Software/Tools:CoStar‍Podcasts:Jocko Willink Podcast‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: Hey, Chris, we'll talkto us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Chris: Hey there, Michael. I'd like to talk about demographics and actually the analysis of driving and having the area or the location you pick pass the feel and the site test more so than just the numbers test.talk to me a little bit about that like driving around and just looking or.Yeah. So it's a little bit.more intuitive than that. we have our demographics reports. We might be looking at them. We're looking for that 3, 001 dentists to population ratio, you know, the high income area.But then we have to look at how does it feel? Does it pass the windshield test? When I drive by behind the numbers, what does it feel like? So that's what I like to do. Michael: What's the windshield test? Chris: Yeah, so just. behind the steering wheel, you know, you're looking out the windshield and you're looking around and you're like, oh, cool.There's a lot of homes being built or. Oh, wow. You know, The demographics report said this was only like 1800 to 1, but I'm not really seeing the dentists. where are they at? so does it pass the eye test? So to speak would be maybe another way to say that. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. I like that.So then if you can, let's just say we're listening to this and we decided to do that. We're taking a drive strategically. How should we start? What are we mainly looking for that are red flags and what are some things that. We can probably let pass. Chris: Sure. So one thing that's well, known, if you've researched anything on demographics with a startup are natural barriers, like a highway that maybe people wouldn't want to cross or by us, there's the foothills in Colorado.So there's no real homes along the foothills. So now I've just eliminated growth to the West of me completely. Right. So if I'm butted up too close to there. And a couple more dentists come in and there's not a lot of room for new homes. I could be in trouble long term and I'm praying for turnover of the existing home, so to speak.The other thing would be, how much commercial real estate is in the area. Is there more commercial than residential, We want a nice balance of both and a lot of times in these newer areas that are up and coming The residential is there before the commercial is developed. So a lot of these projects are ground up commercial that we see a lot of startups going into they're waiting for the developers to finish to give them that great show Michael: How do we know that's a good balance then the commercial? And then the residential, Chris: some point you got to go with your gut and say, this is the location, right? You've worked with plenty of startups over the years. I'd turn the question back on you. What's your opinion on, some of that?Michael: Oh man. so when we focus, we focus just on ground marketing, right? So if it's commercial. We do want a lot of commercial, if it's residential, you have the HOAs, you have a lot of other specific things that you can be a part of. So I don't know, I guess it just depends on the type of practice you want to be right in the city, specific suburban area.Chris: Yeah, that's a great point. Are we talking a city and urban type atmosphere, rural or suburban for me? Just, I would say 80 percent of people are going to go to a larger suburb close to a major city. Let's say within 20 minutes to an hour outside a major city, Denver, Chicago San Francisco, whatever it may be.Michael: Yeah, gotcha. Okay. you're investing so much money into this, right? Your startup. Why wouldn't, not everyone just want to do this? Chris: And you said, hey, bring something that's unpopular. It's a little ambiguous, right? What I'm saying, it's not quite a science. It's a little bit of driving around, analyze the competition.Maybe your real estate agent didn't show you place that was available that has great visibility that meets the demographics and everything. But it just isn't on their radar and you have to say, Hey such such real estate agent. Would you mind looking into this place? It looks like it's vacant.Looks like it could be a good opportunity. I've seen situations like that work out really well for startup clients. Michael: Okay. So when you talk to them, real estate agent, is there a way you would want to bring that up to let them know like, Hey, you missed a lot of stuff. Or no, Chris: Some of them might be directing you where they know they're going to get a nice commission on it. But other times it's just not on the market, right? Maybe the hasn't listed it. maybe it's just doesn't show up on their searches on, what is it? CoStar or whatever. or maybe they didn't realize it was in a good demographic zone.Based on your demographics reports. So it's a team approach. Remember no one is more invested in this than you, the startup doc, So they're dealing with maybe, 20 clients at a time or something like that, you have your one little baby, you gotta do everything possible to make sure it's a home run.Michael: Nice. I like that. So Chris, you also have a book that you just came out with, right? Chris: Correct. So the book's called the eminently qualified dentist. I was listening to the Jocko Willink podcast and he talked about the eminently qualified Marine and I printed out this sheet and itit's about Marines and likethe levels of leadership what would signify that you're good at your job as a Marine.And I was like, wow, what if there was a scorecard that we could more objectively evaluate ourselves as dental practice leaders. so myself and Dr. Tom Reed compiled with or 12 categories the practice culture.Marketing leadership so on and so forth.And then some descriptions and ranking yourself from zero to five. And at the end, you could fill out the scorecard let's say you did that today, and maybe you've been working on some things you check in, six months from now, take test again and you see, Hey,it looks like I'm doing a little bit better as a leader.It looks like I am growing in the trajectories in the right direction.So that was the idea behind the book and it's quick read, more of an evaluation something that you might take on a flight,fill it out, read it, and then, reevaluate yourself. Michael: So if you can, one of the main things on there that you do, would you recommend, Hey, we should probably reevaluate ourselves every how often, Chris: maybe quarterly, there used to be a scorecard that I would use and evaluate quarterly, definitely annually when you're doing your maybe annual goal setting and things like that.but for maybe a book like this, twice a year, Michael: If you can let us know right now, where do you feel like, okay, I need to improve on this? Chris: Sure. I would say if a hundred percent, means. You've got it all dialed in. I would say we're probably lying to ourselves. I would say where I could improve a little bit more is with hard So you could always get better at having those hard conversations and not putting hard conversations off. I would say that would be an area for me to focus on. Michael: Yeah, man, that's interesting. So it does dive deep into the, not just like, what's your production looking like? What do you want it to be? But it's. goes into the granular part of conversations, which honestly Chris like, I feel like that's hard for anybody. You know what I mean? Like that's a, a difficult, nobody loves to be like, I love coming in and having difficult conversations.Maybe like 01 percent people, but that's good, man. Okay. So then this is available where? Chris: This would be available on Amazon. It's called the eminently qualified dentist. I it's 19 or 20. I've sent out a lot of free copies as well. So just hit us up if you want a copy I've got some good feedback so far for the people that have actually gone through it.It's, a reality check, right? When we introspective and evaluate how we're showing up to the world. we're always a work in progress is how I look at myself. So. There's always room for improvement and it's like when one category starts to do well, maybe another one suffers and it teeter totters.So it's hard to find that balance and everything. Michael: Yeah, no, a hundred percent, man. We go through seasons all the time, but awesome. Chris, I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the dental marketer society, Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?Chris: Sure. I'll just give my personal email. C M green D M D at gmail. com. You can also find me at the launchpad. com, which is our startup coaching group. Michael: Nice. Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below and Chris, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Chris: Hey, I really appreciate you having me, Michael.Thank you.

The Patrick Madrid Show
The Patrick Madrid Show: July 12, 2024 - Hour 1

The Patrick Madrid Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 12, 2024 51:05


Patrick dives into the latest kerfuffle at the White House, discussing President Biden's so-called "Big Boy Press Conference," which raises eyebrows with gaffes like calling President Zelenskyy "Putin" and referring to "Vice President Trump." He explores the intriguing dynamics behind why the administration might be using what sounds like mocking language and its implications for leadership and national stability. Join as Patrick unpacks the serious concerns and unexpected twists in our country's political landscape.   Patrick comments and shares audio from President Biden's Big Boy Press Conference from last night (00:37) Andrea - Would it be more Christ like not to spread gossip and talk about the good that happened Biden said and accomplished last night? (14:17) Michael - They tried to push out President Woodrow Wilson after his stroke. This is similar to that situation. (19:46) Anthony - I agree with you about President Biden. I'm not part of either party, I'm here for Jesus (23:42) Michael - How long have they been covering this up with President Biden? (30:48) Patrick and Cyrus shares some of the many emails coming in both for and against what's been said so far this morning (36:51) Susan - America is supposed to be the top of the world. How does this effect how the world sees the office of president and America? (45:41)

The Hake Report
Dylan Burns '1776' for Ukraine | Fri 7-5-24

The Hake Report

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2024 119:14


Super chats, Calls: America not coming back? GUEST: Dylan Burns in Ukraine... Pro-Russia foolishness? Solving US homelessness? The Hake Report, Friday, July 5, 2024 AD GUEST LINKS  https://www.youtube.com/@DylanBurnsTV  |  https://x.com/DylanBurns1776  |  https://linktr.ee/dylanburnstv  TIME STAMPS * (0:00:00) Start / Supers * (0:02:10) Supers: Lin Yen Chin * (0:05:34) Hey, guys! * (0:07:47) HADEN, TX: JLP: USA not coming back? Bothers me * (0:20:58) STARKEY, Charlotte 1st Trump like Job, taking licks, vs Biden * (0:32:00) JIMMY (Jaime), MN: Big picture, America is back * (0:39:00) DYLAN BURNS TV, T-shirt tip, Happy 4th * (0:44:55) Happy w/ Ukraine? Not hopeful. Not decided. * (0:53:48) History can go any which way. War loss. * (0:58:48) Surrender? Support for Ukraine. War crimes. * (1:04:25) MICHAEL, Canada: Ukraine life. Blackouts. Russian ships sunk. * (1:08:40) MICHAEL: How the men feel? Tired. Dodging. * (1:11:14) MARK, CA: I support Russia. Will Trump end it? * (1:19:03) MARK: Ukraine racket. Corrupt? * (1:24:43) Anti-Americanism, Russia's evil! Putin memes got us boomers * (1:30:51) Supers: Zelensky birthplace? War end? NATO? * (1:38:08) CONNOR, IA 1st Ukraine media coverage? * (1:41:48) COLEY, Tacoma 1st support forever war? * (1:45:10) COLEY: If Russia takes Ukraine? * (1:48:40) HECTOR, NM: Homeless solution? Enabling? * (1:56:51) Happy WHM* (1:57:36) Dylan Burns TV * (1:58:48) "Listen to Hake News" - Adriana LINKS BLOG  https://www.thehakereport.com/blog/2024/7/5/dylan-burns-1776-on-the-5th-fri-7-5-24 PODCAST / Substack  HAKE NEWS from JLP  https://www.thehakereport.com/jlp-news/2024/7/5/hake-news-fri-7-5-24 Hake is live M-F 9-11a PT (11-1CT/12-2ET) Call-in 1-888-775-3773 https://www.thehakereport.com/show VIDEO  YouTube  -  Rumble*  -  Facebook  -  X  -  BitChute  -  Odysee*  PODCAST  Substack  -  Apple  -  Spotify  -  Castbox  -  Podcast Addict  *SUPER CHAT on platforms* above or  BuyMeACoffee, etc.  SHOP  Spring  -  Cameo  |  All My Links  JLP Network:  JLP  -  Church  -  TFS  -  Nick  -  Joel   Get full access to HAKE at thehakereport.substack.com/subscribe

Piers Morgan Uncensored
Can Democrats Replace Biden?

Piers Morgan Uncensored

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2024 51:46


Amazingly, it seems that last week's car crash presidential debate has done little to persuade the Democrats to change course, as Joe Biden remains the candidate they back to take on Donald Trump in November's election. Piers Morgan not only believes this to be a colossal mistake, but also openly wonders if the incumbent will make it to election day. The main target of his ire is First Lady herself, Jill Biden.Piers brings host of 'The Michael Knowles Show' Michael Knowles, host of 'The Bitchuation Room' podcast Francesca Fiorentini, host of 'Tomi Lahren is Fearless' on Outkick Tomi Lahren, streamer and commentator Destiny and Fox News medical contributor Dr Marc Siegel on the show to discuss the abysmal state of affairs in the Biden camp.00:00 - Introduction04:00 - Should Joe Biden remain the democratic candidate for this election?06:50 - Tomi says Biden would be the easiest competition to beat09:40 - “The thought of Kamala Harris terrifies the Democrats more than Dementia Joe”13:30 - Francesca: “Donald Trump represents a far worse threat than Biden” 16:07 - Michael: “How does the entire liberal establishment campaign for this guy?” 19:20 - Dr. Marc Siegel diagnoses Biden as a “bumbling idiot” 27:50 - “MAGA is a cult of conspiracy theorists” 30:00 - "Will people vote for a corpse over Donald Trump?"34:30 - 'The public can smell a political hit job'43:20 - Trump's conviction 'embarrassing' for America46:00 - Who would the panel parachute in to save the Democratic Party?”47:10 - Where are we heading?Piers Morgan Uncensored is the global arena for fearless debate, bold opinions and major interviews. Subscribe for all-new and exclusive daily content. YouTube: @PiersMorganUncensoredX: @PiersUncensoredTikTok: @piersmorganuncensoredInsta: @piersmorganuncensored Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Hake Report
Free Speech and 'Denazification' (Putin-Tucker calls!) | Fri 2-9-24

The Hake Report

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2024 119:27


Calls discuss mess in America, free speech, the Putin-Tucker interview, and what "denazification" means to Russians vs Americans and Jews. The Hake Report, Friday, February 9, 2024 AD TIME STAMPS * (0:00:00) Fri 2-9-24 * (0:01:15) Topics: Tucker-Putin interview (Didn't get to peanut allergy!) * (0:02:19) Hey, guys! Rebuilding the Family/Man BOND tee* (0:04:33) JOE, AZ: HR350 supported by Biden* (0:09:17) JOE: JLP's message * (0:11:31) JOE: Not a Fed, Obama, bashing Mark caller * (0:16:42) MANUEL, CA: Voter ID, Affirmative Action, Sports* (0:20:49) MANUEL: Weed thoughts: Sports, Mechanics, etc. * (0:23:52) MANUEL: Bashed Joel, Sean (JLP Rumble Rant) 2A parents * (0:29:10) Putin-Tucker interview* (0:44:01) Putin unhinged? (Scott Adams Says) * (0:49:59) MICHAEL, CAN.: Tate: Putin gentle on America* (0:51:51) MICHAEL: Hake, Tucker: Free speech. Silenced. War. * (0:54:21) MICHAEL: Bret Weinstein, Darien Gap, Migrant Crisis, China * (0:58:39) MICHAEL: How do you get ready? (in French!) * (1:00:14) Andy Lau - "Everyone Is No. 1"* (1:05:27) Supers: FE fired! Banned caller(s), Ukraine chatter (Kevin Howe) * (1:08:21) Super: Math books, Censorship, Riot voice of unheard* (1:10:12) ALEX, TN: Putin, denazification, Christian, buzzwords * (1:21:45) ALEX: Court of public opinion; God allows the Devil to exist * (1:24:04) Putin on China * (1:29:25) Supers: B-day, What is a RINO? Trump? * (1:34:39) FREDERICK: Putin: Hungarian and Russian, Neo-Nazis? * (1:42:45) DANIEL v F. Poland-Hungary-Russia, Op Barbarossa, NatSoc * (1:49:22) AL, TN: Some Jews joined Nazis, ideology not simple * (1:53:14) AL: Judaism is like a club. Anti-Semitism. Education. JLP * (1:56:17) Frog Eyes - "Bells in the Crooked Port" (2004, Ego Scriptor) Hake is live M-F 9-11 AM PT (11-1 CT / 12-2 ET)  Call-in 1-888-775-3773  (Also see Hake News on The Jesse Lee Peterson Show)  https://www.thehakereport.com/show  BLOG https://www.thehakereport.com/blog/2024/2/9/the-hake-report-fri-2-9-24 PODCAST / Substack  VIDEO  YouTube  |  Rumble*  |  Facebook  |  X  |  BitChute  |  Odysee*  PODCAST  Substack  |  Apple  |  Spotify  |  Castbox  |  Podcast Addict  *SUPER CHAT on platforms* above or  BuyMeACoffee, etc.  SHOP  Teespring  ||  All My Links  JLP Network:  JLP  |  Church  |  TFS  |  Nick  |  Joel   Get full access to HAKE at thehakereport.substack.com/subscribe

The Patrick Madrid Show
The Patrick Madrid Show: February 08, 2024 - Hour 1

The Patrick Madrid Show

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2024 53:46


Email – I have a relative that goes to a medium and believes her father's ghost is visiting her (6:33) Grace 7-years-old - How did we get here? Why are we here? (27:19) Michael - How do you respond to someone who asks why we need to do a pledge every 3 months at Relevant Radio? Kathy - I was baptized but never confirmed I was married and divorced civilly, I remarried civilly. Then I got more into my faith and was confirmed, and my marriage was blessed. I was told that my marriage was not validly blessed, and I needed to annul my first marriage. Is that true?

Fadegrad
Psychedelika und das Christentum (2/2 mit Florian Elliker)

Fadegrad

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2024 16:27


Wir befinden uns inmitten der Fasnachtszeit und farbige Gewänder, bunte Konfetti und laute Guggenmusik prägen die Tage. Viele Menschen lösen sich aus ihrem Alltag und begeben sich in eine andere Welt.  In unserer neuen Podcast-Folge geht es gewissermassen auch darum, in eine andere Rolle zu schlüpfen oder zumindest Abstand vom Alltagzu nehmen: Wir sprechen über Psychedelika. Dr. Florian Elliker, ständiger Dozent für Soziologie an der Universität St. Gallen, angestellt an der «School for Humanities and Social Siences (SHSS)» forscht zum Thema Drogen und hat sich dazu mit Gabriel Imhof, unserem Podcast-Host unterhalten.  Was sind Psychedelika, was machen sie mit dem Menschen und weshalb befinden wir uns in einer sogenannten «zweiten Renaissance» der bewusstseinserweiternden Substanzen? Diese und andere Fragen gehen wir in diesem intensiven Gespräch an.  Das erwartet dich in der Podcast-Folge über Psychedelika: 00:40 Renaissance der Psychedelika 05:24 Psychedelika und der Umgang mit dem Tod 07:11 Was Psychedelika und das Urchristentum gemeinsam haben könnten Hier findet Ihr den Google-Talk von Michael Pollan zu seinem im Podcast besprochenen Buch «How to change your mind»: ⁠https://youtu.be/KuhmZSFvhL0?si=1e2kB1STN2WkOOlr⁠ Wenn euch das Thema näher interessiert, findet ihr hier einige spannende Bücher zum Thema Psychedelika:  Pollan, Michael: How to change your mind / Verändere dein Bewusstsein Muraresku, Brian: The immortality code Huxley, Aldous: Die Pforten der Wahrnehmung – Erfahrungen mit Drogen Und wenn ihr mehr über unseren Gesprächspartner Dr. Florian Elliker erfahren wollt, findet ihr auf dieser Seite weiterführende Informationen: ⁠https://www.unisg.ch/de/universitaet/ueber-uns/organisation/detail/person-id/205f58fb-71b2-42cf-925b-a2cab1ee29db/⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fadegrad-podcast/message

Fadegrad
LSD, Pilze, Psychedelika und Mystik (Teil 1/2 mit Florian Elliker)

Fadegrad

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2024 22:07


Wir befinden uns inmitten der Fasnachtszeit und farbige Gewänder, bunte Konfetti und laute Guggenmusik prägen die Tage. Viele Menschen lösen sich aus ihrem Alltag und begeben sich in eine andere Welt. In unserer neuen Podcast-Folge geht es gewissermassen auch darum, in eine andere Rolle zu schlüpfen oder zumindest Abstand vom Alltagzu nehmen: Wir sprechen über Psychedelika. Dr. Florian Elliker, ständiger Dozent für Soziologie an der Universität St. Gallen, angestellt an der «School for Humanities and Social Siences (SHSS)» forscht zum Thema Drogen und hat sich dazu mit Gabriel Imhof, unserem Podcast-Host unterhalten. Was sind Psychedelika, was machen sie mit dem Menschen und weshalb befinden wir uns in einer sogenannten «zweiten Renaissance» der bewusstseinserweiternden Substanzen? Diese und andere Fragen gehen wir in diesem intensiven Gespräch an. Das erwartet dich in der Podcast-Folge über Psychedelika: Teil 1 02:13 Wer ist Florian Elliker und was macht er an der HSG 05.55 Zur Begriffserklärung von Drogen und Psychedelika 07:28 Was geschieht beim Konsum von Psychedelika? 17:12 Was hat es mit dem All-Eins Gefühl auf sich? Hier findet Ihr den Google-Talk von Michael Pollan zu seinem im Podcast besprochenen Buch «How to change your mind»: https://youtu.be/KuhmZSFvhL0?si=1e2kB1STN2WkOOlr Wenn euch das Thema näher interessiert, findet ihr hier einige spannende Bücher zum Thema Psychedelika: Pollan, Michael: How to change your mind / Verändere dein Bewusstsein Muraresku, Brian: The immortality code Huxley, Aldous: Die Pforten der Wahrnehmung – Erfahrungen mit Drogen Und wenn ihr mehr über unseren Gesprächspartner Dr. Florian Elliker erfahren wollt, findet ihr auf dieser Seite weiterführende Informationen: https://www.unisg.ch/de/universitaet/ueber-uns/organisation/detail/person-id/205f58fb-71b2-42cf-925b-a2cab1ee29db/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fadegrad-podcast/message

Accidental Tech Podcast
549: Unauthorized Trash Can

Accidental Tech Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2023 119:11


Sri Ramana Teachings
How to cultivate the sharpness of mind to hold onto oneself?

Sri Ramana Teachings

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2023 12:23


In this episode recorded on 23rd May 2023 Michael answers the following question asked by Geetha: ----more---- “Bhagavan talks about holding on incessantly to the self in several places in Who am I. In verse 130 of Guru Vacaka Kovai he provides the lizard analogy to illustrate how tightly one should hold on to the self. Elsewhere in Who am I he says that as soon as a thought appears, one should enquire to whom it has appeared. To enquire or shift attention back to self even before the thought takes shape requires a great deal of vigilance and sharpness of mind. How does one cultivate such vigilance or sharpness of mind and sustain it?” This episode can also be watched as a video, 2023-05-23a Geetha and Michael: How to cultivate the sharpness of mind to hold onto oneself?, and a more compressed audio copy in Opus format (which can be listened to in the VLC media player and some other apps) can be downloaded from here.

The Patrick Madrid Show
The Patrick Madrid Show: May 17, 2023 - Hour 2

The Patrick Madrid Show

Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2023 51:09


Patrick answers listener questions about purgatory, can someone be “baptized by the Word,” and is it okay to go to a non-Catholic funeral? Marie Therese - She has been meeting people that say that there is no purgatory. They say: what proof can you give me? Did God said anything about purgatory? How can she answer? Michael - How do you explain to a protestant why we believe in Sacraments? Email – Can someone be “baptized by the Word?” Christine - Funeral Question: I have an aunt who was baptized as a Catholic, but didn't practice. Can I go to her non-Catholic funeral in a Protestant Church? Larry - My wife died 6 years ago at 3:16 am. Many times she comes to me at 3:16 am.  Bob - My wife and I were married 30 years ago in the Catholic Church. I was unmarried and she was divorced from her un-Baptized husband. Is our marriage valid? MaryAnn – My brother has been married for 24 years, they both have annulments, but they haven't had their marriage blessed? My sister-in-law has memory loss, but the priest says they need pre-Cana. What should we do? Paul - I once heard Patrick mention a facility for those with an alcohol addiction. What was the name of that place? Patrick recommends www.hopereborn.org Patricia - My husband died two years ago and he claimed he was a non-believer. Would my husband receive the final judgement and go to heaven?

The Patrick Madrid Show
The Patrick Madrid Show: March 20, 2023 - Hour 3

The Patrick Madrid Show

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2023 49:12


Patrick takes calls from kids who ask some pretty tough questions Mila 9-years-old and Gia 11-years-old - Mila: Did Saint Peter the Apostle make the holidays? Gia: Since the devil was a serpent, is it okay for me to like snakes and dragons? Melissa 11-years-old – If Jesus was born Christmas and the year BC is “Before Christ,” why is the new year not on Christmas Day? If my mom cooks with blessed Salt, do I need to finish my food? Keith – 9-years-old - What are the corporal works of mercy? Benson - Are the people in the Old Testament saints? Pat - How do I explain to my husband that he can't go to communion because he is not Catholic? Michael - How do indulgences work? I have two sources that disagree with each other. Nancy - How do I deal with hearing about a Cardinal in our diocese who was accused of child abuse and pedophilia? Anonymous – Our daughter has decided to be a surrogate mother. Please help us! John - Extended family members received communion even though they are not practicing. How do I talk with them about this? Rick - Can I receive communion in a Baptist Church? Gary - I am struggling with sleeping at night. Could some of it be demonic?

Super Serious 616
E192: Superhero branding, branding, and re-branding (Avengers #15) -- April 1965

Super Serious 616

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2023 17:13


In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss the battle between the Avengers and the Masters of Evil - not to be confused with the Brotherhood of Evil. Ed explains the importance of differentiation in your brand - you don't want to be confused for someone else. Mike wants to know if every superhero also has to be a tailor in their spare time. How many costumes does someone like Spider-Man own? Is his summer costume made with different material than his winter costume? Is the real benefit of being on a super team the laundry services? And why is Giant-Man re-branding yet again? The red and blue suits you, big guy, now stop fiddling with it and just embrace the fit!Behind the issue:This is the last full issue of this Avengers roster. The next issue, Avengers #16, completely changes the membership (more on that when we cover that issue). This issue ends on a cliffhanger but is wrapped up quickly in the next issue. The battle is used as the driver of why most of the team members decide to leave the organization. Also in this issue, Captain America battles Baron Zemo one-on-one and kills him. But that takes place in a far away country and is, at this point, unknown to the wider public.In this issue:Steve Rogers is contemplating a career change. As he does so, he notices the supervillains the Enchantress and the Executioner drive by, and he chases after them but they get away. Steve changes into his Captain America gear and reports back to the Avengers about the evil duo being in the city. They resolve to deal with them, but before they can do so, Rick Jones is kidnapped right in front of them by henchmen working for Baron Zemo. The Enchantress and the Executioner then break the Black Knight and the Melter out of prison and have them join their team with Zemo, the Masters of Evil. Iron Man and Thor do battle with the Black Knight and the Melter high above the city, while Giant-Man and the Wasp chase after the Enchantress and the Executioner at street level. The villains are ultimately defeated. At the same time, on a separate mission, Captain America locates Rick and frees him, with Zemo dying in the process by his own hand (accidentally).Assumed before the next episode:People are keeping an eye out in the streets for large muscular people in costumes, and then running for their lives so they are not caught up in a super-person battle.This episode takes place:After the Avengers have defeated the Masters of Evil.Full transcript:Edward: All right. That's what I'm talking about, Mike. We got the Avengers fighting a League of Evil super villains in the city. They're back to doing what we pay them to do.Michael: Or somebody pays them to do , but definitelyEdward: our tax dollars at work. Mike, our tax dollars at work,Michael: back to business, doing what we want them to do and not dealing with what was the last thing that they're caught up in, just. Regular,Edward: regular, regular what wasn't like giant man dealing with the mafia, I just felt like know, like get, get, get back on track. We have police that can deal with the regular stuff, but when you have a guy who can melt walls and an enchant who's casting magic spells and an as guardian and executioner, now is the time to step in with superpower people.Michael: That's right if we're anything Ed, we definitely believe in specialties and specialists. and superheroes are by definition specialists in super villains, not just, you know, rescuing cats stuck in trees and, and, uh,Edward: oh, my, I would be mundane, angry if Thor was spending his time getting cats outta trees.like, I feel like, like, not, not a good use of tax dollars. I dunno what we're paying him, but I figure we could pay someone a lot less to get the cats outta the trees. .Michael: But that being said, if my cat got stuck in a tree, I'd rather Thor flew up there than I had to climb a tree and possibly break my neck trying to rescue the bloody cat. But anyways,Edward: I, okay. Like you are not specialized in getting cats outta trees, that is not your specialty either. You stick to the law. Thor sticks to the super villains, and we can get the firefighters to get the cats out of the trees.Michael: All right. I think we've settled on it, on what should happen, certainly with cats and trees, but also with superheroes addressing super villains and so, It's back to business as usual, not great that we had to have them as, you know, having evil super villains, the masters of evil coming back and battling the Avengers, but at least, yeah, fine. The Avengers are tackling this discreet issue.Edward: Let's not even talk about the fact they're called the Masters of Evil. Again, we have the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, we have the Masters of Evil, we have the frightful four. Like these guys are just throwing themselves out there as being, I am not to be trusted.Michael: I know. Bless. I don't know. It's like good and evil are just, there's no like room for gray in here. Maybe there's . There's no misunderstanding.Edward: The masters of Gray we're the brotherhood of ambiguity, .Michael: How about misunderstood, tough childhood and trying to work through it. People together in a union, fighting for own version of justiceEdward: I will say as a marketing guy the bigger problem is, it's just confusing because right, there's the brotherhood of evil, but, and there's the masters of evil, like, I think. The evil is the key word in both those brands and it's easy to confuse them. Mm-hmm. So to be clear, the masters of evil who fought the Avengers this week there was the melter who could melt metal, not magni, who could move metal. Totally different people, unrelated, different teams, different names, but the same team name. Using that evil.Michael: There's some overlap there I guess, but I think they maybe, well you gotta wonder why they haven't consulted with, an agency about branding, which would make sense.Edward: So the key thing on branding is, number one is be descriptive. And I guess they're being descriptive. We are evil, mean people. And they've handled that part of it. But you also need to differentiate yourself. The other people who are doing similar work. And so if there's two teams of evil people doing evil super stuff, you just can't, you need to find a new name for yourself. And Frightful four does it, right? Frightful four does not use the evil name. They went to their local Theora and they've, looked up evil and they're like, you know what else is similar to evil is frightful. How about frightful instead of evil? And they're like, let's go with it. And there's no confusion there. But I think Masters of Evil and Brotherhood of Evil, to me, those are too close. And one of them should re. .Michael: That leads to the next question. We talked about lawyers might specialize in super powered people and insurance might be responsive to it. I wonder if there's any, well you would know, are there any agencies that deal with this kind of stuff?Edward: I don't think it's, the market's not big enough, Mike. The market's not big enough. Hmm. And, and especially if you're dealing with, nobody wants to be the marketing agency to. The criminals and the mafia. There's no mafia doesn't have a marketing agency working for them. They might have marketers as part of their team, but it's not like they need, they don't need them the way they need, lawyers and accountants.Michael: I'm not saying that General Electric is evil or anything, but you know, , they, they, they definitely, and they, they don't practiceEdward: the, the General Electric of Evil .Michael: No, but I mean like, like they're big corporations that, that, actually I don't wanna get sued by General Electric never meant nevermind about that. But, but regardless, I would imagine that there's agencies that would, for the right price would certain. Wanna be engaged by the Masters of Evil to say, let's call yourselves, maybe not the masters of evil, but the master, you know, the brotherhood of people. I don't know. Or something. Brotherhood of people. Some kinda, some kinda like, I said the, brotherhood of evil. Like the idea is like there's some kind of more palatable name that they could have to achieve their goals. I would imagineEdward: they could take the name they have right now, instead of the Masters of Evil, just be like, How about just the masters? The masters, the masters of super, the ma, the masters of powers, take the other characteristics they have other than evilness and lean. Lean into those. .Michael: Yeah. Like maybe like, they're really smart, I don't think if they're getting in fights with the Avengers, they need people to tell them that they're the antagonist in this dispute. Cuz the Avengers have clearly occupied the superhero world. Why don't you just call them some, call themselves something else? Like the masters or the, uh, the terrifics or something. It's the positive. Be positive by yourself, the public.Edward: Take the Avengers name and play that. Like, they can be the Avengers, like they can, they're the anti Avengers and the anti Avengers. You could define yourselves as being the opposite of your competitor.Michael: And leave it open as to whether they're in the wrong or not, that's what I find so confusing about the branding of automatically saying, we are definitely in the wrong, we are evil people. Evil, evil, evil. Or we are frightful, terrible, terrible people, , we just call themselves the amazing four, let people find out that they're bad. ,Edward: surprise, also evil.Michael: Surprised I was evil. But you know, we kind of had you there. You bought our action figures, because we're the amazing four hey Rob banks and try to destroy nuclear powered, power stations. But anyways. Mm-hmm. we're the amazings,Edward: I think the part of the has become is we don't see a lot of rebranding we've seen groupings of superheroes that come together and created a new brand, but the Avengers haven't decided, oh, we're gonna change our name. Or the Fantastic Four haven't been like, you know what? We've, we totally made a mistake. There is a possibility we could add a fifth member . Um, we need a new name. Um, yeah. It seems like everybody's commit. Well, I guess with one exception, ant Man has rebranded, right? Right. But apart, but apart from Ant Man, everybody's basically stuck with the. Brand since they started. We have any superhero that's switched brands along the way, or super villain for that. .Michael: No. And again, I kind of was being a little tongue in cheek about having agencies that might be involved in branding, but there's probably something to it, if not the name, certainly in the costumes or the outlook or the perspective on, or at least the narrative that they wanna advance. Because we do know that there are some superheroes who are more popular than others, why is Captain America more popular than Spider-Man? It might. because of the name. It might be because he's not covering his whole face. It might be just a costume, but, I'd imagine that there's something there. There's value in being popular and being celebrities as we know the fantastic force. Certainly there's a value in that and a financial benefit to that. So you think it might be worth their time to actually consult? Maybe a lot of them have, certainly the Fantastic four have already consulted with a brand expert and they say, you know, yeah, sure you might be limited in your membership numbers, but you're doing everything else right? You have a very clean, clear lines in your costumes. You're not hiding your face. You don't even have se secret entities. And that's led to them being not only popular, but making money from the whole enterprise. And you gotta wonder, maybe other people would. From it. Or they've already gone through it and just are just trying to play out the whole marketing plan.Edward: We don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We can just see the effects and like I can say there are certain things that are pretty consistent in the world of branding that are important. Mm-hmm. , so things like affiliating your brand with good things. , right? So this is why we run advertisements. That's why beer commercials show people drinking beer and having fun. And now you say, oh, you know what, if I drink beer, maybe I will have fun too. Maybe I will be surrounded by attractive women. And I think there's no difference in superheroes where if Spider-Man is continually getting affiliated with bad things, we start to affiliate Spider-Man as being bad. And if Captain America's affiliated with winning World War ii, which was a pretty good thing that. Leans off onto his brand. So that's number one. Number two is brand longevity matters a lot too. So a brand that's been around for a long time, people tend to like the things that stick around. And part of that's a trust thing because if you have a brand that's brand new, you don't know whether to trust it or not. But if something's been around, like ivory soap has been around for 60 years or something like that, they have a pretty good consistent record on, they're gonna do, they're gonna make you clean. And I think that's part of the reason why Captain America is so loved is he's been around longer time and they, he's consistently stuck on message and delivered that same message over and over and over again, over an extended period of time. And so we can trust him. But Spider-Man, he's like a brand new dude who knows what's what he's gonna do.Michael: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Well, yeah. And of course, this is something you have an expertise in about branding. But that leads to the question then. But the question I asked earlier is do you think that most these of these superheroes have consulted with a brand expert?Edward: No. No, of course not. No. they not talking to anybody. They peop, but like, just like most companies don't spend a lot of time with brand experts. They figure out things on their own, uh, and mm-hmm. and the biggest companies have lot. They're spending money on everything. But smaller companies, and I think most superheroes, you can think of them as fairly small companies. They're small, like little tiny startups trying to figure stuff out and they're not gonna have a budget to go. Spiderman doesn't a budget these spending on public relations people and a marketing team and a advertising organization and like they, they don't have that stuff. Most celebrities may have a publicist and a manager at best. And I think most superheroes are behind. .Michael: Well then let's talk about the one superhero who seems to be constantly rebranding and who would probably benefit from having some assistance. Antman, I mean, giant Man. I mean, okay. , whatever he is. How many costume ?Edward: Well, he's just had three. Right. So he had Antman and he was fairly consistent as Aunt Man. Yeah. And then he rebranded to Giant Man, and that was very confusing. Yeah. For a long time we didn't even know the Giant Man and Antman were the same person. And then, and now he has a new costume again, so this is. His second rebrand, and as far as I know, he's sticking with the name this time. He's not rebranding the name, just the look and. .Michael: But it's sort of funny, so if you go through those cautions first, when he is ant man, he clearly looked like, he's small and stuff and it's just like a red costume and stuff. And then when he is giant man, he still had those sort of funny antennas on his, head that suggests like, all right, okay, and he's bigger, he's walking around and like all giant, he's a giant now. He's a giant ant. Like it's just like, why don't you just call yourself like big aunt or something, and then, cuz that's what he's like, why if you're now giant, man, when I think of giants, I don't think of having an antennas on their heads, but whatever. That's what he did and now he seems to have. Well, let me think about, look at the news. Did he, does he still have those antenna on his head in his new costume?Edward: I don't even know. I haven't, I should have done more research. I feel like I haven't spent time really examining this new costume of hisMichael: Well, regardless, it's another rebranding and so that's where I'm wondering. Okay. If he, if this isn't part of a plan, then what is it? Is it just that he's like, I don't know, I don't say this, but insecure about his, you know, he's just like, oh gosh, doesn't make me look so good.Edward: So I think it's like, Hey, stay. Staying with a consistent costume can't be easy on any of these guys. Now the advantage is they don't need to think of what they're gonna wear in the morning, but the disadvantages is how many costumes do they have to have? Like you, you and I, I think I have a fairly consistent brand in terms of what I wear. I don't wear, I'm not gonna show up to work in like, I don't know, green tights. I'm gonna wear the consistent clothes every time I go to work. , but it doesn't mean I wear exactly the same clothes. I might have a blue suit or a black suit. I might wear a white collar or a blue collar. I feel like I can change up within a range. Yeah. It feels like superheroes don't do that and maybe giant man is just trying that. He's like, you know what, today, I just didn't feel like the antennas.Michael: Well, okay. Just to loop back on that, I've looked at the, the reporting still going with the antennas, , I don't get it, but regardless,Edward: he's, keeping, so there you go. That's his consistent theme. Yeah. He was like, he was an ant man to a giant man, to a, new giant man, and he kept like the ant theme all the way along. And, that's a branding choice too. So you take some brand elements and you carry them forward so people can still, when they walk into the store to pick up their. Tide, the new Tide brand looks different, but it looks similar enough to the old brand. They're not gonna get confused.Michael: Okay. So he is following some of the rules that you've identified, but when you're talking about this costume idea, so leaving aside the branding issue is just how is it working with costumes? Because, you know, like I like to exercise as you, as you know, and so do you, and I've got a number of outfits that I use. For any other reason than practicality. If I exercise, I need to wash the clothing right away. So these guys are like, let's say take Spider-Man for example. That guy is swinging through the city. He must be sweating like crazy . And you think he just goes home? Is he doing laundry every single night,Edward: Do you think he has a summer version of his costume and a winter version? When it's cold out, he wears his warm tights and then the summer he's wearing I dunno, really, really thin tights.Michael: You'd have to, it'd be a winter weight and a summer weight but also on top of that, in the summer, you probably have to have way more versions of this costume . And so who's making it for him? Or is he just laundering it every night? Who made it to begin with, but then. , who's clean, who's continuing to make other costumes for 'em, or same version of the costume, which looks complicated. You see all the design elements and then clean.Edward: I guarantee if I was a superhero, I would be wearing block colors. There's no way I'm gonna making, these are like small black lines on my, I'd be like, I'm gonna wear red and I'm gonna go buy some red stuff and just make a red costume. The idea of sewing together the blue and the red, and then to your point, not doing it once. It's not like the guy behind Spider-Man's mask is, maybe he's a tailor for his side job, but, he's not making one costume. To your point. He, he must have dozens of costumes for the different seasons and, for the smell. If he has so many and to make them all identical.Michael: Yeah, it's quite an enterprise and to my knowledge, I don't think Spider-Man makes money from what he's doing so it's quite an investment. It's not just one costume. Maybe he could have gotten away with having a few of those costumes if he just was dressed in all black, for instance, with a funny mask and maybe you don't to, well, he had to wash the mask every night. If you're wearing this full head on mask, It probably It would stink too.Edward: Yeah, like crazy. And maybe that's, maybe he only has one or two costumes and he just washes them every night. He goes home. He has his own, he's clearly not taking them to like a public, dry cleaners. He probably has his washing dryer in his house and he's just running the washer and dryer. Every he gets home, takes off his outfit, washes it, dries it, and it's ready to go the next day.Michael: Or has the most discreet laundromat in the world, , you know, in addition to the most discreet Taylor, but that's not just him, right? It's all the, these heroes, they present with the same costume. And if we're comparing them to say, The police or the military, they have multiple versions of their outfits when they're on duty, when they have to wear outfits for work. It's mindblowing to me. So let's go to a team element, I'd imagine that, if you want to find out, I suspect they all know who each other are on this, on the Avengers. So we wonder if, find out who they were. I bet if they all are having their costumes washed by somebody or they're having mul tailors, , you know, prepare their costumes for, somebody's gonna speak about it. You know what I mean? It should, they should find out. Oh,Edward: well the Avengers are different though, right? The Avengers, we know they we're close with Star Corp. I'm sure Star Corp has like a supply of tailors and stuff to make these costumes, right? So whatever giant man's secret identity is, he's not taking the costume to a tailor a secret identity. He's just passing it into the, through the stark corpse team of people and they make the costume. They probably have industrial cleaners that take care of it every night for them. I think that's all veryMichael: standardized. . Can you imagine? What's your job? It's star carp. Okay, I've got a really top secret job, but job, I can't talk about it. And then as this man's telling his wife, I can't even talk about my job. It's star carp. I just cannot tell you. I can't tell you what I do. And then he's sitting alone in a dark room. He's like, I wash giant man's clothing. .Edward: I get, I get, that's what I do. I get the stand. You think your trouble tough, he was attacked by a lava monster. Getting lava stains out of these costumes is impossible.Michael: yeah. It's just like it. But that's what it would have to be. , it would be top secret, right? To keep his identity secret. So whoever's washing his clothing would have to like oh. Under, under penalty of like imprisonment. Don't tell, you can't tell anybody. You know anything about Captain America's the underwear he wears outside of his pants or whatever. It's just wild to me. It's just what a job.Edward: Well, I think I, we figured out the number one recruiting technique. I feel like if I'm an independent hero now, the number one reason to join the Avengers is not the money. It's not the fame , it's the laundry service.Michael: Sign me up, Eddie. Sign me up. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.superserious616.com

In the Club by Club Colors
Elevate Your Goals by Narrowing the Knowing-Doing Gap with Michael Goncalves

In the Club by Club Colors

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 16, 2023 43:24


On this episode of the In the Club Podcast by Club Colors, we feature Michael Goncalves, the Vice President of Business Development at EZRA Coaching. Knowledge blindness is our inability to see the things we're good at naturally, and this is where a coach comes in handy to realign perspectives.Ezra discusses the Knowing-Doing Gap and how to narrow it down through self-reflection on the competencies that are lacking to bridge that gap. He also digs into the universality of coaching as different companies have relatively the same goals, and similarly, the mindset needed to succeed is industry agnostic.   Investing in people remains the most common denominator among Ezra's most successful clients. He shares how they help sales enablement folks realize their targets and get adoption on tools that truly help the end users.HIGHLIGHT QUOTESKnowledge blindness hides our natural talents from us - Michael: "We always think of knowledge as power, yes, but if you don't know you have that knowledge, then it's not powerful because you're not necessarily utilizing it. And of course, we can tap into coaching helps identify look, where am I strong, where am I weak, and let me work on what I need to work on to get to where I want to go."EZRA helps sales enablement drive adoption rates - Michael: "What's even more powerful than that, when the folks utilizing it, when it's from their mouth, their words, their feedback that says this thing is incredible, and we have plenty of that data to show that look, here's the adoption, here's the feedback, here's the impact it's made. Because I can say it's great, the person who bought it on the enablement side can say it's great. Of course, they're going to say it's great, but the people actually using it, when they say it's great and they share the impact it's had, different story."Achieve big things by focusing on the small things - Michael: "How do we stay focused on the big things? I always say, forget the big things. When you're playing a football game, you're not staring at the scoreboard. You're staring at your opponent. You're looking at the line. You're visualizing your route. You're doing all the things you must do because if you do that well, the scoreboard will reflect that."Connect with Michael in the links below:LinkedIn| Website

Super Serious 616
Episode 190: Intergalactic peace treaty? Seems simple enough! Send in the Fantastic Four! (Fantastic Four #37) -- April 1965

Super Serious 616

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 16, 2023 12:07


In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss the peace treaty between Earth and the Skrull Empire, as negotiated by Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four. How does Reed have the authority to sign such a treaty on behalf of Earth? Do the ends justify the means? Don't the Fantastic Four have a conflict of interest given that a Skrull killed Sue Storm's father? How would we feel if a Russian super team completed this negotiation? And now that we have gone to another galaxy, are we going to be able to go to Mars?More detailed summary of the podcast (from AI):Edward and Michael are discussing the Fantastic Four's recent mission to the Skrull's home world. Edward believes that peace has been achieved, thanks to the efforts of Reed Richards. Michael is skeptical and points out that there is no evidence to support Reed's claims, and that the Fantastic Four's actions could be seen as hostile and unauthorized. He questions who authorized the mission and if it was sanctioned by the United Nations. Edward believes that sometimes the US needs to take action, even if it's not sanctioned by the UN, and that in this case, it worked out. Michael is concerned about what would happen if it didn't work out.Behind the issue:This is the first appearance of the Skrull home world, but it is not named here (and is not named until 1983 — “Tarnax IV”). The Skrulls keep their promise not to invade Earth for three years, but change their minds in Captain Marvel #2 when they discover that the Kree had an interest in the planet.In this issue:Sue Storm is unhappy that the Skrulls were not punished for killing her father. This leads to Reed Richards deciding to take the team to the Skrulls' homeworld to bring the murderer of Sue's father to justice. And so the team embarks on this mission, flying in a spaceship of Reed's design, and with the blessing of NASA. They land on the Skrull. homeward and battle the Skrulls, leading to their capture. They are held captive by the Skrull who murdered Sue's father, Morrat, who plans to murder the Fantastic Four too. Just before they are killed, Reed offers Morrat unlimited power in exchange for sparing their lives. Meanwhile, Morrat's girlfriend Anelle tells her father, the Skrull King, that Morrat has captured the Fantastic Four. This angers the King, who races to confront Morrat. Before he arrives, it is revealed that Reed tricked Morrat into repowering the team (they had been depowered when they were captured), and this time the Four are about to defeat the Skrulls when the King arrives with reinforcements. Anelle is nearly killed by accident by the soldiers during their standoff with the Fantastic Four but is saved by Sue's invisible forcefield. This leads to Reed negotiating with the King to deliver to them the Skrull who killed Sue's father. They learn that it was Morrrat, who has been killed in the firefight. The Fantastic Four then journey home, safe and sound from their adventure.Assumed before the next episode:Reed starts to wonder how far he will go to impress Sue. What do you do after nearly starting an intergalactic war?This episode takes place:After the Fantastic Four return from their wildly irresponsible revenge mission to the Skrull homeward.Full transcript:Edward: Reed Richards has done it again, Mike. There is peace in the world. Peace in the universe. There's peace in the galaxy in the entire universe. We are no longer at war with the scrolls. Thank you. Reed. Richards.Michael: Well, okay. ? Yes. If we believe what Reed Richards says, then sure. But much like a lot of Reed Richard. Advice to us about battles and adventures that are unseen. There's no other proof beyond his good word. And what's kind of crazy right now is that what we're talking about is how Reed Richards and his team, the Fantastic Four, went to the scroll home world.Edward: That's right. We took the battle to them. They've been invading us, and we said, you know what? Enough of this, we're gonna take the battle over. I was gonna say overseas, but it's not overseas. It's over stars. What do we have vocabulary for? What they.Michael: over empty space. They went to the squirrel home world. A home world of people of, sorry, of like beings that can shapeshift and turn into,Edward: I think you can call them people. I think squirrels are people.Michael: Well, okay, let's call 'em people. They,Edward: they're not human people, but they're still people. Like, I think that we can use the broad definition of people. I think it could be insulting to call them. Not people. They're an animals. They're, they're people.Michael: Okay, well, sure, we'll call 'em people. So, but they're people that can take the form of anybody. So we're taking the word of Reed. Richards that he. To the scroll home world to negotiate a peace treaty, but at the same time also bring a killer to justice like somebody who killed his future father-in-law to justice. So let's break this down a little bit. ,Edward: there's a lot going on here, Mike. And we haven't even gone to the fact they didn't go there alone. They combine the technology that they've developed with research scientists at NASA in order to develop this, subspace traveler to travel to other galaxies. Like we've just opened up the universe for human explor.Michael: Okay. That's fascinating. And so, and I,Edward: you don't seem to care, like you don't seem to care on theseMichael: I aren't you, Lou, aren't you a little worried, ed, that it looks like either, there's a few things happening. Number one, the Fantastic Four took it upon themselves to basically invade a planet for no shifting people.Edward: It was with, nasa, it was Fantasic, Four, and nasa.Michael: I haven't read that being, I know that they had NASA technology, but did NASA Greenlight the plan to go invade another planet, to grab somebody and then also negotiate a peace treaty? And does NASA has a capability to do that? Is that within their authority?I doubt it. Number one, ,Edward: I don't know. I'm not sure The founding fathers really decided on what NASA could or could not do, was wasn't on their list of priorities when they were making the constitution in the 1700.Michael: Well, it, it wouldn't be, but that's just assuming that this only affects America, which it doesn't. What happened here is that American citizens went to another planet and in a hostile way to grab one of their citizens to bring them to justice, number one. And number two then apparently had free reign to negotiate a peace treaty with these people. And that isn't,Edward: what do you prefer? They didn't, Mike, do you want them to go there and then start a war? They went there and they ended a war. That's good. That's good news.Michael: Well, I don't know. I mean, this is what we're hearing.Edward: What you don't know. You don't know. Do you want us to be at war with them? You, we. Peace is good news, right? We can agree on.Michael: No, no, but hold on a second. We have to go through the proper channels on this to figure out this is done right, and this is actually in our interest. So number one, who green lit this? Who authorized this? Is this an American thing only or is this on behalf of the world? Did they go to the United Nations and get, and somehow, for the first time in human history, Get all the nations to agree to one thing, which was that we're gonna send these four people who aren't trained in any form of diplomacy to go there in an active war and negotiate peace. That is wild to me that that would be authorized by anybody.Edward: Well, I'm pretty sure the UN did not authorize it, but if we waited for the UN to authorize things, nothing would get done and we'd still be at war with the scrolls. And so sometimes the US has to take things into their own hands and just take action. And we did take action and it worked out.Michael: Okay, this time, okay, let's say what would happen to it if it didn't work out. Like it's like we send the Americans send these envoys being the Fantastic four who have no training in this type of activity of negotiating peace. Send 'em over and it backfires. And at least the, to this girls actually, redoubling their efforts to take over the earth. Well, and it's not just Americans pay the price of the entire, it'd be the entire Earth.Edward: Are we at, would we be at any worse place than we were?Michael: Yes,Edward: the scrolls were already ready to, these girls have already attempted at least two or three invasions that we know of. They're, they're coming after us. They're trying to take over our planet, and now they're.Michael: So I'm wondering yet if they're trying to invade us because Reed Richards ghost to their planet and kidnap their citizens . You know what I mean?Edward: Like this is the, this is the first time he's gone there. They, unprovoked, they came after us and they came after us again and again trying to take over our planet and now we've turned the tables on them. This is like Japan has attacked us in World War ii. And we turned the table and said, no, no, no, you can't take our Hawaii. We're gonna come after you and go to your islands. And that's what we did. And we did it well enough. And, and not only did we do it well enough, we did it with a small little Strikeforce team. We didn't have to blow up a scroll planet or even a scroll city. He went in and spoke with the emperor himself, herself, emperor somebody. He, negotiated with somebody over there and they've agreed to not attack us. .Michael: But Ed, if you bring in like the, world War II and America fighting Japan. Japan attacked America and America responded by. That was an act of war, which led to America actually fighting Japan, which is, yeah, I don't wanna sound too Pollyanna, but limited between those two countries. At least at the start of it, right before the countries actually can volun, can actually declare war on the other nation here effectively. The United States declared war on the scrolls and thereEdward: no declared war on the planet Earth and they and America stepped up and got them to say, No,Michael: no, but America has to go, has to go through the proper channels. They can't just decide something so significant about going to war with another nation without actually getting the rest of the world on board with it.Edward: Well, they're not, but they're not going to war with the other nation. The other. The nation declared war, not the nation, the emperor, the empire, the squirrel empire declared war. On earth, on all the countries on earth. Cause they don't care to them. We're all the same. We're all, we're all people, we're all humans. And so the US says Hey, no one else is taking care of this. No one else has the technology to take care of this. But this fantastic four working with nasa, developed the technology to go after the scroll home world. And they went straight there and they negotiated a piece so that the scrolls, wouldn. Anyone on Earth again, it wasn't like they negotiated a piece just with America. They could have done that, but why would that, that would be a terrible thing for them to do. They said, Hey scrolls, go ahead and invade our planet as long as you leave this continent alone.Michael: How would you have felt if Russia, which does have Superpowered individuals and does have, technology, what, how would you feel that they went to the scroll world and tried to do what the Fantastic four did and it back.Edward: Well be a, be a problem if we backfired. But it didn't back. If it didn't backfire. If the Russians went over there and negotiated the scrolls, I'd be like, given like a little swastika, high five, no, well, not swastika. What do they have? Would I be doing that hammered hammer sickle? I'd give a little sickle high five. There are enemies, but they, but they helped us. They would, and that's great. Sometimes the Russians and the Americans need to get together. Were on the same side to stop the squirrels from.Michael: But Ed, but so right now on our earth, we actually have international organizations that are designed to work cooperatively to actually achieve the goals of the group, right? We have the United Nations, which is the entire earth. We have nato, which actually is set up to to deal with the Warsaw Pack group of countries. And so there, it's not like one NATO country could decide to attack Russia without having. , quite frankly, the rest of the nations in NATO objecting to it. There's a system in place and I think the same thing should happen here when it comes to dealing with intergalactic relations.Edward: Well, maybe there was May.Michael: I don't understand why there isn't.Edward: May, maybe there maybe NASA and Fantasic Four talked to the rest of nato. I don't know. We don't know exactly what the channels they went through. I'm pretty sure they did not ch check in with the Soviets before they did it. But I think that's just the world we live in. We live in a in the, in reality, we don't wanna be sharing our subspace travel technology with the Russians for as long as we can anyway.Michael: But right now, the first question is there a clear and present danger presented by the scrolls to the planet Earth? And you're saying, well, because they've invaded before and they've been repelled. The answer is yes. Okay, fine. Assuming that's correct, then, is it that every country for itself can deal, can figure out how to deal with it and then how do they and I think the answer has to be no, it has to be that there's no,Edward: you're right, you're right.Michael: You're in a democratic, the democratic nations that are involved in military alliances that they wouldn't actually consult with us to figure out what the right plan is. I dealt the right plan. If I was in, involved in it would be, we're gonna send these, just these four people. If you're really truly deciding to invade this grow planet. You probably had a lot more than four people, butEdward: Well, they were trying to invade though, they were trying to create peace. They were, they were creating peace. They're not, they weren't, you're not gonna invade a planet with four people, but maybe traveling through subspace in these spaceships. We probably don't have the technology to send battalions. We don't have the technology to send warships and stuff with us. We have this technology to send four people, and so we sent the four people that we thought could handle it, and they did.Michael: Well, they didn't consult me and you and I aren't doing interview this. I'm offended on behalf of the rest of the earth, number one. But number two, I would say this, if they consulted with the Avengers, they could have had access to giant man's technology, shrunk them, everybody down, shrunk down, all like the ships and the planes and all the soldiers and stuff, and then gone there instead of letting Reed Richards go off in some kind of, Cowboy Justice Mission to, to grab the scroll that had killed Sue storm's, father, and then incidentally negotiate peace, which is I think, which is what I think happened. I'd rather have had an authorized military action by the world, or at least the majority of the world, it's something that, at at least smacks of democracy or democratic approach to these things because there's the consequences will be felt not just by America, but by the entire world. And then actually start thinking about using the technology that we know exists in a proper military application in a military way.Edward: I lo I love the idea of giant man shrinking down the US military into ants and sending the whole whole army over there. And hopefully growing them when they get to the other side. Otherwise, Having a bunch of ants fighting that this girls made have been a problem. But, I think it be hard, but the risk with that now is now you're risking a real war. Right? If we go and actually invade their planet with thousands and thousands or hundreds of thousands of soldiers, that risks escalating the war, and instead of escalating, we sent four people who they went in, they had a polite conversation with the emperor explained the miscommunication, explained that we were a people's too, and that we shouldn't be invaded. And if they did invade, we would hit back hard. And they were able to prevent intergalactic war.Michael: But that's my discomfort. They sent the fantastic floor who clearly had a bone to pick with the scrolls and were looking for a tray. They were trying to get them the person or the, the scroll that had killed, one of their fathers. I don't think that's how typical diplomacy works. It's not like we send over emissaries to like Russia. We don't send like the son or daughter of somebody who's killed by a bunch of Russian spies or soldiers. They might have a bit of too much skin in the game for that. They might not be objective when they're negotiating the peace treaty, I think would, I'd rather send somebody over that ha could be a little more objective and uh, and.Edward: Yeah, fair enough. Can negotiate properly. Sometimes you go to war with the army. You have not the army that you dream of, right? Like we had the Fantastic four who were able to go and do this. They had the technology to get over there. They had the diplomatic skills to do it. And did they have some conflicts of interest? Sure. . But, but, but, but they, they, they worked around those conflicts of interest and they saw, they saved the day. They saved the planet. They saved potentially the galaxy. They may have saved the universe, and I think we should give them some credit.Michael: Well. . Okay. Tell you what, let's just, at the risk of making this ad hominem, you sound like a typical business person saying, sure, there's some conflict of interest. is, did we, did we break the law? Did we do something that was totally in our own self-interest? Guilty is charged, and I'm saying as a lawyer, it's a conflict of interest. Hold on a second. That poisons the whole, in that the whole analytical approach, these things. So again, I work for businesses, I work for business people. I think they're all great. I don't wanna hurt my. Business structure, but come on, Eddie . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.superserious616.com

The Patrick Madrid Show
The Patrick Madrid Show: February 06, 2023 - Hour 2

The Patrick Madrid Show

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 6, 2023 53:44


Patrick tackles dinosaurs living with Adam and Eve, is the Mormon or Catholic Church the “One True Church,” and how to talk with someone who keeps putting down Catholics Rod - I disagree with you about when dinosaurs were around. I think they were around during Adam and Eve's time. Michael - How can the Catholic Church say that they are the true Church but the Mormons also claim that? Who is right? Philip – I'm talking with someone who keeps putting down the Catholic Church. What should I do? Mary – The Trinity is like water that has three phases, but it's still one substance. Does that metaphor work? Modesto - What is a good Catholic bible to read for someone who has English as a second language? Anna - I took my kids out of public school in the last two years because of all the bad things going on in the school.

Super Serious 616
Episode 186: Where do sabertooth tigers come from? The past … or Antarctica? (X-Men #10) -- March 1965

Super Serious 616

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2022 8:55


Apologies for no episode last week. Here in 2022 we are also shutting down for the Christmas holidays. We should be back the first week of January. Also: Welcome to all the new listeners. If last episode was your first with us, we would love to hear how you heard of us. Apparently we are now the #25 top Marvel podcast, but that was published on December 11th, and we picked up many new listeners on November 30th. Where did you all come from? If you subscribe at www.SuperSerious616.com you can reply to the email we send you and you can tell us. We would appreciate it if only to satisfy our curiosity! See you in the New Year!In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss the mind-bending news that a sabertooth tiger has been found in Antarctica. Does this mean that other previously assumed extinct animals are not actually extinct? What about dinosaurs? Questions abound!Behind the issue:This is the first appearance of Ka-Zar and the Savage Land, which will go on to be a major environment in X-Men comics and the Marvel Universe more generally. There are rumors that the Savage Land and Ka-Zar may make an appearance in the MCU during the Thunderbolts movie due out in a couple of years. This is where it all began.In this issue:The evening news broadcasts a video from Antarctica of a Tarzan-like figure with a sabertooth tiger fighting explorers to the frozen continent. The X-Men suspect that this wild man may be a mutant, and they decide to investigate. They head to Antarctica and find a secret passageway through the frozen environment to a tropical land filled with dinosaurs and other strange creatures. They also encounter warriors fighting with preindustrial weapons. The wild man Ka-Zar and his sabertooth tiger Zabu come to their aid and help turn the tide of the battle. The X-Men leave, having made a potentially valuable ally.Assumed before the next episode:People are still wondering whether the sabertooth tiger is real, and if so, whether other extinct animals may return from the dead.This episode takes place:After the amazing news that a sabertooth tiger has been cited has been somehow lost in the new cycle.Full TranscriptEdward: Mike, when did Sabertooth Tigers go extinct?Michael: I don't know exactly, but I thought they were prehistoric. Did they not go out at the time of the Willie Mammoth? Think so. 2000 years ago.Edward: I feel like, my understanding is that they, ex, number one is they existed. They're not like a unicorn. Unicorns never did exist. I know some people think that unicorns went extinct, but they did not. There was never a unicorn as far as we know. But sabertooth tigers, which kinda. Kinda unicorns. Cause they have giant, huge, giant teeth that kind of stick out. They existed and I think they were North American. I think they existed in North America. Yeah. And then when people came across that the land bridge into Alaska and then came down through the continent, there were all these crazy animals there. And humans just basically killed them all. By the time the Europeans got there, there weren't many of these big animals left. There were still bison and there were cougars, but, things like the mammoths and the sea two tigers were all killed off.Michael: Were they killed off or they just die? I don't know if there's historical record for it being killed off by humanity, but I thought,Edward: I think the record is, they overlapped with humanity. So humanity was there at the same time as they were. And, humanity lasted and they didn't. So they died off at some point after humans were there. And it turns out humans liked to eat animals. So there's a possibility that humans. Them all.Michael: I thought it'd be more temperature. I thought it'd be more temperature related.Edward: It could again, maybe, maybe Was Willie Mammoth ? Well, there's, there's wooly mammoth in Europe I think as well, but they also went extinct. And we know that humans ate those things for sure. Mm-hmm. , I think there's a lion, but regardless Europe, there's a lion in Europe too, and that, that also went extinct and we know that humans kind of wiped that out. I think I was curious what's going a lot of these animals in, in North America, they basically, they didn't have a defense against humans. Like all the animals in Africa. They evolved along with humans and the ones, and so they had defenses against humans. But I think all those animals in North America, we were an invasive species and we showed up and the animals had never seen us before, so they didn't know what.Michael: That's interesting. Well, anyways, you asked me, but going back to the beginning. Yeah. So Saber Tooth Tigers haven't been around for a long, long time.Edward: Except now they are.Michael: Except now they are. Yeah, I mean, likeEdward: they're back baby. They're back.Michael: They're back. They're back. And they're better than ever. So the people, uh, they watch thisEdward: not just as a sports team logo, basketball. No.Michael: Well, like, so what we're talking about,Edward: I feel like there should be though, shouldn't there be, why isn't there a sports team with like the Philadelphia Sabertooth Tiger.Michael: Well, I, support it, but now they could probably get one maybe, but, for people that aren't, that haven't, haven't watching the news lately, what it is, is that there's a recording, a video recording of a man who looks like Tarzan walking with a sabertooth tiger who's attacking people in Antarctica. And it's like, it's so,Edward: can interrupt thatMichael: crazy.Edward: He looks like Tarzan. What does that mean? That means he, that means what does Tarzan even look? You mean like the drawings, the things that were on the covers of his books like a hundred years ago.Michael: Yeah. Like a bear chested, loin, loincloth, guy walking around Antarctica, which is odd with a se tiger.Edward: When you're saying he looks like Tarzan, you're basically saying there was some dude without clothes on.Michael: It's for our younger listeners. I didn't wanna get too graphic, but Yeah. Some, some dude is basically wearing Speedo, walking around Antarctica with a sabertooth tiger.Edward: Mike's gonna go to the next swim meet and he's gonna be like, Tarzan Tarzan's everywhere.Michael: Well, that's what comes to mind when there's a man dress in a loin cloth with a prehistoric animal. Yeah. It kind of makes sense. Or with a big cat, like a saber tooth tiger. But there's a saber tooth tiger.Edward: Yeah. But, Tarzan was never a, didn't have prehistoric animals in those books, did he? He was just, it was a chimpanzee, elephants,Michael: the lord the jungle. No, he's in charge of the jungle and this guy's in charge of, it looks like from the video that he's in charge of the sabertooth tiger. And so, no, that's why, that's my connection, . But anyways, the Tarzana, the tar side. What I'm really getting at is that it's nutty.Edward: Don't get confused by the Tarzan reference. Tarzana is not evolved.Michael: I'm moving on from it. Moving on from bit, but here it is. So a sabertooth tiger. And, 10 years ago we would be, it would've blown our. If there's a video of a saber tooth tiger, that would be the front page of the news. I don't think many people know about this. Number one, and number two, we can't. We, you and I were talking before our show. Neither of us can totally agree on what is the most likely reason. There's a sabertooth tiger right now.Edward: Yeah. There's a couple of things going on. Number one is, there's a sabertooth tiger. They went extinct thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, and now there's one back. So that's weird. Number two is it didn't appear in North America where they were last seen. It appeared in Antarctica. , which is like a weird place for it to be. And then number three is of all the, the weird places for it to appear. How does it survive in Antarctica? Like nothing survives in Antarctica. There's penguins.Michael: And, and then so you say, well, where would it have come from? Because presumably, if there's been a line of savory tooth tigers for thousands and thousands of years that we didn't know about, there would be some evidence of that. And, people that investigate these things and the study of prehistoric animals just got it wrong and missed it and missed the evidence of years and years and years of sabertooth tigers prowling around or, the evidence, their bones or whateverEdward: Be fair fossils if sabertooth tigers were really prowling around Antarctica this whole time, we haven't spent much time in Antarctica. I just think the evidence that any animal could survive in Antarctica is so low. That's the reason why we haven't been exploring Antarctica, is it's not really a place where animals survive.Michael: Well, so that leads, okay, so number one, sabertooth tigers can survive in Antarctica. That's number, that's the first question, but it doesn't make a lot of sense because there are mammals, they're furry mammals that would live in,Edward: they're predators. They have to eat other animals. If this sabertooth tiger is surviving in Antarctica for any period of time, that means there are prey animals living in Antarctica for some period of time. And I don't think it's just penguins. Like I think we've studied penguins in Antarctica as far as we know they do not have lions preying on them.Michael: No, no. And so, it's kind of odd, but that's the most logical thing is that just it, we just happen to have missed it. And that's the conclusion that we'd have to draw if this was 10 years ago. But we have to entertain other possibilities. Could it be that we know time travel exists? So maybe it's a time travel thing.Edward: That sounds a really easy answer, right? Like if, Kang who came here and tried to take over our timeline, take over our world, what would stop him from just going back in time and picking up a caveman in a sabertooth tiger and bringing them into our time. That sounds very reasonable.Michael: It's a possibility or maybe it's another dimension that overlaps with our, we know that there's other dimensions and overlaps with ours and just maybe that. There's a crossover point down there. Maybe,Edward: maybe in that dimension, Antarctica is like hot and bombing because we also know that a long time ago in humanity, Antarctica was hot and bombing, it was a nice warm right place with lush forests and so on. Maybe there's another dimension where that never changed and we got a portal to that dimension and these guys hopped through.Michael: Maybe it's an alien because we know that there have been alien attacks and they seem to be similar. The aliens seem to be relatively similar to how we look, so maybe there's versions of mammals on other planets and this is just an alien either left their sabertooth tiger here, or maybe the sabertooth tiger is an intelligent species from another planet and we just haven't found the spaceship .Edward: And he brought along his prehistoric man as a pet .Michael: That's right. That's what it is and then maybe the other one I was thinking maybe it's from Asgard or something. Maybe it's from where Thor comes from. Because just a magical beast just like Thor's a magical Oh, that's true. God, I don't know.Edward: And then this magical beast might be tens of thousands of years old. It's an un aging magical tiger.Michael: Yeah, but the point is that we don't know. And so,Edward: oh, I have another, I have another possibility.Michael: What's thatEdward: robot? You know what I mean? We've had robots be we're we thought they were aliens. Turns out they were robots or we thought it was Iron man. Turns out it was a robot. It feels like robot impersonators are a thing. Why not just make a robot cat?Michael: How about, and that's a good idea. But how about this also, it came from underneath the earth.Edward: Oh, we, Atlantis is we know there's, there is an Atlantis underneath the earth. That could be a, it's almost like another dimension at this point, but yeah, that makes sense. Totally.Michael: Boy, this all leads though. Is thatEdward: Maybe this old Atlantis kidnapped primitive humans. Mm-hmm. and and, giant cats and mammoths and stuff. And then breeding them underground in zoos. And these ones just escaped from the zoo.Michael: Well, the point is that these are all now equally logical. , right, because it's just because there are of theEdward: broadest sense of the word .Michael: Well, but there are, there, they, we know that there's these are things that are, have happened last few years and so it, it doesn't stretch the imagination to believe that this is that there are sabertooth Tigers through any of these various reasons. So this is why you and I have been doing what I consider to be the hard news Ed, where we've been talking about the real stories. And I do think, these things have to be studied so that people, we, we could turn to, a more scholarly academic source to say, oh no, we've looked into this and turns out the robots who promote it, and now that people can study itEdward: like mad scientist, it's a mad scientist who found ancient DNA and recreated primitive man and and tigers.Michael: Oh my, I love it. I love it.Edward: It's, it's The Thing. It's The Thing for an academic to dive into.Michael: Yeah. Well, you know, Ed, if you and I, if our legacies that we're encouraging scholarship, so be it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.superserious616.com

The Remote Real Estate Investor
How you handle adversity determines your legacy

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 8, 2022 33:03


In this final episode with Aaron Chapman, we discuss how adversity can shape your legacy. In this current market environment, many investors will be challenged, but that does not mean they must fail. Your mindset, work ethic, and ability to learn from the external forces that turn your world upside-down will be the deciding factor of your long-term success. Aaron Chapman is a veteran in the finance industry with 25 years of experience helping clients better understand, source, and finance cash-flow positive investment properties. He advises over 100 clients a month in the acquisition and financing of their investment properties and primary residences. Aaron is ranked in the top 1% of mortgage loan processors in the country, in an industry of over 300,000 licensed loan originators, closing in excess of 100 transactions per month. Episode links: https://apps.apple.com/uy/app/qjo-investment-tool/id1533823468 https://www.aaronbchapman.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor Podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the remote real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me I have for our third and final episode of this series, Aaron Chapman and Aaron's a lender, and he's gonna be talking to us today about how well you take a beating determines your legacy. So let's get right into it.   Aaron, what's going on, man? Welcome back for part three of our conversation. How are you?   Aaron: What's up, brother. Man, it's looking forward to this one.   Michael: Me too our last few conversations. If you didn't catch them, I highly recommend you go back and give them a listen to Aaron drop some amazing wisdom and knowledge. Today we're talking about how well you take a beating determines your legacy as a theme. But for anyone who didn't catch the first two episodes, give us a quick and dirty who you are. And what is it that you do, Aaron?   Aaron: So I am in the Real Estate Investment Finance space. I'm one of the few conventional lenders that focuses on real estate investments. And I do about 1300 transactions a year for investors, I've been doing that since 1997. Got a great big team of 30 plus people, and we're into heavy into the education and helping people build a business while at the same time getting financing done. And it cost them nothing to have all the experience and the the wisdom, we're trying to give them the guidance while it is getting their financing done like they would do anywhere else.   Michael: Yeah, I love it. And so many lenders, especially conventional lenders, I've come across and you might have shared experience are just trying to push the biggest loan that someone qualifies for on them. And they don't really care what that's gonna be used for. They don't really care what how it's gonna affect the end user. But it sounds like you take a little bit of a different approach.   Aaron: It does bother. Well, there's two things about this industry. You know, I think I may have even referenced it, maybe not among the last two episodes is that humans are the apex predator, we fall prey to no other species except other humans. And I found that our industry is just full of predators. They don't care what you do, as long as you close, they will use every sales technique, everything they've ever been taught to try and find a way to get you to close on that transaction.   Myself, I'm of the mindset is I'm gonna do everything I can to ensure that you close and are successful in that transaction. Because if you're unsuccessful and what you end up doing, you're not going to do deal number 2-3-4-5, I don't care about deal number one I care about deal number 10. Why do I care about deal number 10. Because if you made it to deal number 10, you're a badass, you're getting stuff done, you're achieving your goals, if you get to deal with and pretend that I'm a badass, because I'm getting more deals done, right?   But one, if you have that bad experience, man, I'm never gonna see 10. So we don't when people come to us, and they've got questions that they've never had before. They've got decisions they got to make that they've never had to make before. There's a good chance they've never had to really experience what it's like to make that kind of decision. Well, what I do 1300 transactions a year and I've been doing it as long as I have, I don't answer the question with an answer. I give them stories, what I've seen people do in that same scenario, and then give them the outcome of those decisions. So they're making decisions based on practical data, not speculation, in theory.   And then I also if they're questioning a deal, like, I'm not sure if this is right, if it's wrong is like Well, let's take a look at some things I tell them what to look at, and what questions to ask and who to go get the answers from. Take notes and bring them back to me. And we'll evaluate those answers together. And what I'm doing is helping them to determine whether they move forward or they walk away. And they also got to education about it at it. And they also learned about the other people they're working with are these people that are in it for the closing, or they're in it for them and the longevity of their business. And we get to find that out. And you get to talk to people really, really quickly.   And sometimes it takes time you have to investigate things. You have to spend money on appraisals, you have to spend money on on inspections, and things like that. And it could be costly, but you never stay in the deal because you spent money that you spent the money to walk away from it. And we help them understand that they're their CEO, their real estate investment business, and we're here to support it.   Michael: Yeah, no, I love it. Sunk cost was definitely something I got exposure to early on in his business. And it's could be a very tough concept to wrap your head around. If you're not familiar with it, you know, don't throw good money after bad.   Aaron: And that's a heavy duty sales tactic to get people to follow the sunk cost, thought process and process and get really, really caught up a man have already spent this money. If you understand why you're spending the money. There's never a sunk cost. Yeah.   Michael: Yeah, no, it's so true. It's so true. So let's talk about I mean, where we are today is very different than we were six months ago, a year ago, 18 months ago. And I think people might be in for a little bit of a whirlwind. So let's kind of talked through this concept of determining how well someone takes a beating really determines your legacy, which I think is a really great theme. So why do you think it's pertinent to talk about today, Aaron?   Aaron: Well, we're going into what could be a rarity A very big beating. And the fact that, like you just said, we're coming into something we were this different than what we experienced the last little while. It's different. It's something we've ever experienced. When you go back into the market and started researching what's happened in history of these markets that we that we've been following all the way back in the 1800s, we don't have any data to tell us how the economy and how the market or the world is going to react to the last What is it 12 years, 13 years, since 2009, January 1 2009, we started the quantitative easing, and it's continued to keep going $8.9 trillion $8.9 trillion that put into the market. And now we don't know we have no idea how the markets can respond to that as they're, as they're trying to back off of that 40% of the of the world's currency, or I guess the US currency has been produced in the last 18 months. So for people to tell me, Hey, markets go in cycles, and we can get this particular loan, and we'll just refi later, like, Dude, you can't think that way. Because we're not in any cycle we've ever seen.   The last cycle last tilt since 2009, was really the cycle. Sure, there are some little mini cycles in there. But for the most part, we had extremely low interest rates, never seen before we had a housing market has just been on a tear for 13 years. And now you're thinking that some cycle is gonna come along the next five that you can risk getting a five year loan, and do that. No, I think weren't, it was. And I just know, I think Warren Buffett said the 30 year fix is one of the greatest instruments in the world, because it's a one way bet. If you bet on the 30 year fixed and you're wrong. Worst case scenario is you refinance the house. But if you bet on the 30 year fix, and you're right, you're save yourself 1000s and 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of dollars, depending upon the size of your portfolio. So don't get suckered into these short term loans on a long term investment.   So now going into what we're going to be experiencing here, one, I don't know what it's going to be. But if we go back to 2008, here's my own personal story in 2008. You know, I shared my story about coming into the industry and the beatings that I took getting into it, right, and now we're getting into what happened in 2008. Everything starts crashing, everything's falling apart. I at that time, was still doing pretty well. I was making a good six figure income. I had decent clients coming in in 2008. And I was doing kind of a night thing for two throughout two months. I had a buddy of mine I I'm a former fabricator, I've worked on vehicles, I built a hot rods, all kinds of stuff, build jeeps, a lot of things and I have that kind of a background. Well, a buddy of mine says hey, we need you in on this deal. I need another fabricator on this and what we were doing was taking a double decker Bristol bus an English bus. We cut the top off of it, turned it into basically a mobile strip club is what we did. And we did this for a guy that wanted to take it to Burning Man, you guys can look it up. It's called shaggileic. Rapping it's this white bus wrapped in for a cruise ship horn on the front. I mean, it's just it's one of the craziest things you've ever seen. What a trip, I was fabricating everything up top building in the DJ booth. There's a bed going up there places for the poles, all that and that's what I was building.   While I was doing this thing where I was sleeping maybe three hours a night I go to the office, keep working on my lending business. And at night I was fabricating all night long for these guys. Because they were doing during the day and I was doing my part at night. Well then August 8 rolls around am I lucky numbers always been eight. And so as a result that this is August 8 of 2008. I was jumping on the bike, heading out of town for a three day ride through New Mexico just to clear my head. So it's a crazy time in my life and mind that my head was not in the right place. I'll guarantee I just tell you that. Cruising down the highway and right next to this guy is in a black truck and I've been by him for a while so I knew he knew I was there. But Donald suddenly flips on his blinker and he starts coming over to me. Well, I quickly looked over to my right, nobody was there. So I hit my throttle, I leaned that bike. What I didn't realize is somebody just then started to pass me and I clipped her front bumper, and I went flipping. So I don't remember the accident self except for my bike kicking sideways. And then I remember waking up in the hospital and we're looking around and this this really bright light and really quiet area and I remember sitting up and I noticed kind of fuzzy there's somebody sitting in a chair and my lapse my vision got clear is my wife. So I asked her where am I at and what seemed like was kind of an exasperated going to tell me for the 40th time you're in the hospital. You had an accident, and she started explaining things.   Well, what what ended up happening is when I went flipping, I used to race mountain bike so I would instinctively talk I realized this because I had such a massive bruise. This is where I initially hit my my my helmet had big ol crack in it. When I hit it just obliterated my collarbone and a bunch of ribs. It collapsed my right lung when I flipped my legs hit and I shattered my legs and ended up skidding to a stop. So if you've ever been to Arizona in August, but the pavements not nice to lay on in August so I had a lot of burns. A lot of road rash And so I was in there for a couple of weeks in the hospital that a bolt me back together my memory at that point because the head injury we had pinwheel would basically flip every three minutes. I could only remember every three minutes and never reset, but little things would would stand out.   So there's some things I do remember, but a lot of it's gone. And then there's actually some stuff in my history that's gotten my I was with my sister and brother in law, and they showed me some pictures from their wedding. I'm like, I don't remember this. And they showed me pictures of me being there. And then they played the video Like, I have no idea about this night. So there's certain things in my history that are gone because of that accident. So kind of the point behind all that is, I wheeled into that hospital I was I was a mountain climber. I was a marathoner. I was in phenomenal shape, best shape of my life at the time, I weighed in at190 pounds, maybe 12% body fat, worse about on paper, because of my investments worth about three ish million dollars. When I wheeled out of that hospital weeks later, I was 156 pounds at six foot one, and I had a negative net worth of 1.5 million everything was taken from me.   So I had to start over from there. So I had to learn how to walk again. I had to train my memory back. And then I had to negotiate with everybody who is foreclosing on all my rental houses, they're coming after me for all the other debts. And because if it wasn't for the fact now, to me, it was a blessing. There's a lot of people that went through the crash. And they lost everything I know of people that ate bullets, they went back to their office and they shot themselves. I know people who did that. But I had the blessing of being able to negotiate with these creditors, and I'd send them my first week's medical bill for $1.7 million, and then immediately back off. And what I have is a certain amount of money left in the bank, that was all I had to my name. And it was about I think it was like five grand or something I don't remember exactly.   Well I called every creditor up that I owed money to that was calling me and I said here, here's how much I have in my account, you look at my credit report and how many people I owe, I will give you that if you agree to that and wipe the credit clean. So I negotiated that with every single person. And what I did then is then I had an underinsured motorist thing finally kick in months later. And I was able to use that to pay off everybody that one negotiated amount. So I got clear of the whole world and they let me do that because the nature of my accident. Not a lot of people had that. So they didn't have the blessing getting their *** kicked, and be able to leverage an *** whoopin to be able to get out of that right.   The other thing that was real tough about this *** whoopin was I came back to an obliterated business. The lending industry was not doing well and I got back on my feet about eight months later. And all the people I was doing business with before the realtors and people like that they were out of business. They were doing something else. There was two left in the industry, my mom and a gal by the name of Carolyn Irby with Coldwell Banker, they at that point, they were still doing business, they're getting deals done. And they call me up say, Hey, I got a client for you need to call this person, they would got to the point that they'd call me back five minutes later say, Hey, did you call that person like what person they said, Get your pad and write this down. So I got to I was carrying a notepad with me all the time, I'd write down what I do all day long. And the calls are supposed to make the outcomes of those calls. And then if it was crossed off, that means I did it. If it wasn't crossed off, then I would have to make this call. I can't tell you how many people I called that weren't crossed office. We just talked on the phone. Right? It's like well, can you can you tell me what we said.   So talk about earning trust, right? That's a real hard way to earn trust with somebody when five minutes before you don't even remember the conversation by explain the scenario. And people were very, very, very kind to me. Now. There were some saying, Hey, I can't do business with that does have a memory. There's a lot of people that were that did. And I rebuilt my business on that. And because of that notepad, I rebuilt my memory and I read, I was able to reconnect those wires in my head by the grace of God. And by just being very, very religious about maintaining my my pad, I wished I had my stack of pads, I throw them away, oh, I don't know why throw them away. But that was how I lived my life at that point. And I recovered back to a business that I built back up from zero to now. I get I start the the real estate investors coming into Arizona, and they're buying these houses that are undervalued. And so I started to do those loans. They were really little loans. There's like 50,000, or loans. Nobody's making a bunch of money on 50,000 our loans by doing a ton of them. And then I went from there to doing more and more they went from from Arizona to Indiana, Indiana, Missouri, Missouri, to Texas, and then over to Tennessee. And so I started doing more and more loans.   Well, then I had one of my biggest competitors, who was also a guy call and he'll give me pointers on how to do some of these loans are a little bit tougher. He decided in 2015 that we should merge our businesses. So when he flipped, they flew me out to Utah, I sat down with him and some of the executives in the company. Let's do that. So I merged the business with him. But you can only do the loans under one person's name. Well, since we're merging into his company, well, the company he worked for as a loan originator was put on to his name. Six months later, he pulled it all apart, took it off himself and left me at zero again. And it took my entire database.   Well, the executives called me up to say, um, we're probably at the fire your staff, and you're just gonna have to start over like, No, give me 90 days. So me and my staff have two or three, we sat down and we said, what are we going to do when the phone rings is going to ring in 10 minutes? What are we going to do with these deals, now, you don't have our big team anymore. And we mapped out a plan. And within six months, I was ranked number nine in the company. And within a year, I taken over the number one spot within the company. And now years later, that guy's out of the business. Because he I mean, that's what happens when you become selfish you and it's all about you, everybody leaves you he ended up all by himself, he end up not having a business anymore. He's completely out. I haven't heard anything from him, he got away from doing investor loans like three, four years ago. And I would venture to say I'm the number one guy in conventional lending for real estate investors. And last I saw by statistical numbers that was just published in a mortgage originator magazine, if you look at how many trends looking at by how many transactions closed per year, I think I'm right, number six or seven, the United States.   Michael: That's wild Aaron. That's so insane.   Aaron: And to me, a lot of people is like, how did you do all that and I'm like, you just every single day you have an objective and you keep moving forward. And it was actually, to me the noise of the world getting turned down around me and I was stuck to my own thoughts. You have to decide whether or not you agree with the person that you were and I would did not like the person I was at that time. I was a really arrogant, cocky prick before that accident. You know, I was dressing the part and acting department being the man. Now it's like, you know, I decided I'm just gonna be me. And if people don't like me, then then that's fine. I don't need to we don't need to do business. It's not about that I would do whatever I need to do to close a deal before. Now. I just want to make sure I get along with a person. And like one guy told me this last week, I thought it was really interesting. He says, Do you you just collect people? Like what do you mean I collect people because you collect relationships, because that's that's your investment, you invest you invest in things, but you spend money to make sure you have more relationships with people. And that's the truth.   And that came up because we talked about flying first class, one guy said he's really really cheap. The other guy said no, I love first class, I got pampered by it. They say you fly first class all the time. So yeah, I'm Executive Platinum with American Airlines, I spend more time in seat 3D and I do at my house. But it's not for the seat, or for the free drinks. It's for the person next to me. Because you'd be amazed at the kind of people you sit with in that environment and the kind of conversation you get to have. And they're all very, very memorable. If you'll just reach out and say hi.   Michael: Yeah, that's such a different way of approaching it. You know, so many people are going for the drinks or going for the big seat. Sounds like you could care less about that. Aaron: No, I mean, it's comfortable being a sibling I hate sitting in the back, because because of how much Americans have the room. Let me I'm not I'm not a fan. I do have to I do fly Allegiant from Arizona to to Missouri. So it's only one one stop to go to my place out in Missouri. So I still do it. I'm not a fan of it. I don't love it. We in fact, my family is dubbed at low rider of the sky. But when we go to kind of fly American, I'm, it's gonna be a long flight. I need to be comfortable. For two reasons. One, I've just gotten used to it. And I like sitting next to people I sit next to number two, I've lived the last What is it now? 12 years, 14 years in pretty heavy pain. And because of that pain, when we hit the sky, and they start pressurizing. I was doing a lot of pain in my shoulders, a lot of pain in my legs, my ankles are just both my feet were snapped off in that in that accident. So the extreme pain I was dealing with that. It's now gotten a lot less because I really took the time to rehab this last year, I went to rehab to physical therapists like crazy and we had loss and I got back to working out I got in a lot better shape than I've been in a long time in 14 years, honestly. And I feel awesome. But now the reasons I sit up there is not for the same reasons. It's for the it's for the relationships and like yourself, right? Well, I'm collecting people right here now. And now wherever I go. I see you as there's my guy. There's Mike.   Michael: Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. So Aaron, I mean, you've been like literally to hell and back again and came out on top. So for people that have maybe been never been through a downturn or a market cycle, if that's what we're headed into. And it sounds like that might not even be the case. I mean, what should people be doing to prepare, if they do find themselves with those shorter term loans coming due now?   Aaron: Well, and they're gonna come to at some point, even if it's not now, I think they need to be on the watch for any opportunity to put themselves into a longer term loan and have to bite the bullet or whatever that expense is. Do I believe, I mean, I think interest rates going to keep climbing to an extent they're gonna have to taper off because I can't see us continuing down this path. Interest rates are just, you know, mortgage backed securities are getting slaughtered, but I also can't see why anybody, anybody want to invest money in the mortgage backed security. Honestly, I don't understand why that money is flowing in there. Because if inflation is as high as it is, and you're going to lend somebody money, potential for 30 years risking it for 30 years, you're not getting your money back, you're losing money. But the marketing engine that is the real estate, the mortgage lending world, for the banking world, the marketing engine has convinced people, if you drop it 1%, you should refinance. And so the majority of people will refi, within the first four to five years, you're looking at an amortization, amortization table, the first four to five years, they're taking advantage of you, because you're all you're doing is paying an interest and then you put you back into a heavy interest period, they're gonna continue to keep them just just sucking money from you is what they're doing.   So they're, I believe, there's going to come a point that we're going to taper off, things might get a little bit better. And if it does that, within the next year or two, I'm going to highly encourage you, if you got suckered into a short term loan on a long term hold, get into a long term loan, get yourself comfortable. I always say control what you can control for as long as you can control it. And you can't do that in a short term loan. It's just not going to work that way. Michael: Yeah. No, I love it. And from a mindset perspective, I mean, it, I could see it so easily where you could have given up when you lost everything in a weight when you woke up from when you came out of the hospital, you know, went from a positive network to several millions and negative net worth overnight, seemingly? I mean, how do you get out of that? Because I think, again, it's so easy to go into despair and poor me. What kind of mindset does it take to lift yourself up from that?   Aaron: Yeah, that that was an interesting question to have to answer. Because not only do you have when you stack it all up, and I have to ask myself several times, how did I get where I'm at? Now, when I look back on that particular thing? It it was, like you said, you get your *** whooped that heavily. You're the everything's taken from you, you can't get you can't walk, you can't think you can't pay for anything. And they're giving you free drugs. And it wasn't just, it wasn't just weak drugs. This was good, good stuff. I don't know if you've ever had a lot of bad stuff. Is that amazing?   Michael: It's not Advil.   Aaron: No, it is definitely not Advil, and they were just willingly handing it to whatever you wanted, I had to get off of that. And I had to point myself in the right way. And I was still in a wheelchair, I was still having to deal with all this intense pain, I still had a lot of rods and stuff, multiple surgeries still being done. And I threw the stuff away and like, I don't want it, I gotta get my mind, right, I gotta get focused on where I needed to go. And what it was, as I've never sat still I just never had in my entire existence. So it was the drive to get up and get moving again. It was also that I always had an objective and a goal and where I was heading in life, even if it was just it was never really defined, but it was just kind of floating out there. I decided I was going to go after that I was going to continue after that. But I don't like to do is what was in front of me that day is day after day after day, day after day after day. But I think to the biggest driver at that point was I did not like the person I was before that accident. So I want to do everything I can to be anything but that man. And I am grateful that he was there to show me the way you shouldn't be doing things. But he was the biggest driver to continue to become something different.   And then after that the next big driver was I had a good friend of mine. His name's Joel. He's like a brother of mine. And it's it's a really long story to tell you how we met because we hate each other first. But now he's basically like my brother. And we went out one night with our wives. And at the end of dinner or after the event, we went to walk into our cars we have the opposite direction goes, Hey, by the way, I'm making a big deal happen right now me and my business partner, and it's going to change your life. Like how's it going to change my life? If you're making a deal, he goes, I can't tell you, he goes, but it's going to close here real soon. But it's going to change your life, believe me, I'm gonna change your life.   And as we parted ways, give him a hug. He turns around and walk in his car with both his hands and he goes, I'm going to change your life. And he yells out to me from like, 50 yards away, not knowing what that is. My colon changed my life, dude. Well, let's see what this is. Well, then, short time after that I found out he closed on the second largest. It's now the second largest real estate brokerage in the state of Arizona. And they'd made a deal with another lender to be their premier lender inside. What he wanted me to do is contact that lender and he told them call this guy, I want this guy in your company to work with us. So they called me and we talked about me coming over there. And to go over and meet with them and went through all the back contracts and everything. I'm like, Okay, well see how this goes. And they said we want you to come meet the CEO of the company, but you can't meet the CEO until you do this exercise and they hand me this five year vision that the CEO had for himself, you know, his five year plan and then they told me gave me the elements of the five year plan.   Cool. So I wrote this out like this is all bullcrap. Nobody does this. None of this crap works as goal setting stuff is stupid. But Fine, I'll do it. Just so I can meet the CEO, Joel opened up the door on going to do a jewel asked me to do like sat down. I wrote out this audacious freaking plan, right? The best month I've had before that was 18 Maybe 18 transaction that due in a month. And I think I closed maybe 20 Some million a year or 25 million, maybe 30 million year my best year. Well, I wrote this thing I was going to do 100 million a year and my staff is gonna grow by this and that in that net over the five year window, no ideas, I set it up as a story. I'm sitting on along Rubicon Trail in my chair with a fire gun. My wife's next to me, we got the Jeep parked there were searing steaks on the on the trail grill, and I'm thinking back on my life or last five years, and I'm writing a letter to myself of everything that happened.   So then I went forward, I met the CEO, he's like, this is the most unique five year plan I've ever seen written, we would love to have you come work for us. Now, incidentally, I didn't go work for those guys. It didn't work out. But I stuck with that five year plan. And I continue to follow that five year plan to go back and look at it look at it. I blew through everything on there and doubled it. Because I wrote it down. And then I discovered a few write things down things happen. So one of the next things that I'm doing, I have a book out there shows people I'm working on another book with Robert Allen, if you know who Robert Allen is, but we're working together on a book. So he wrote the book, no money down in the 80s. The guy was basically   Michael: Oh, yeah. Okay.   Aaron: So he's an absolute bad***. I mean, Robert is awesome. And we're writing this book as if me sitting there talking to an eight year old about how life or 18 year old about how life works. And it's taking a beating. So it's how to take a beating. And that beating is actually how you learn. And explain why believe that. And so on and on be teaching people within the first chapter, then all the way through the book on how to write this out, and then help people come to me will sit you down, I'll take it in an environment. And there's more stories about how that got done. And other ways I've used writing it down to become successful, and show people you write this stuff down. It's amazing how the universe starts to line up to get things done for you.   Now, when it comes to a beating, right, the one thing is that we have noticed that we as humans learn better by getting our butts kicked. And I believe that there's this Bigfoot that wakes up at about 7:30 Every day, this big, ominous invisible foot to kick your *** all day long if you let it. If you so think about this, I wake up at 4:30 in the morning, I get up way before the foot does and I do what I want to do, right I sit down, I send a message to my team, every single morning, I read, I write, I do the stuff that I need to do I have prayer before I get started all that and then I go and I work out every single day. So but if you're a person who wakes up at 7:45, and you got to be the office by eight, the foots already up, right, it's already kicking your *** the second you put your foot on the ground from from the from your bed to try and get to the bathroom, you stumble into this, you stumble into that your day is just wrong from the very beginning.   Get up before the foot does, you got to figure out where your personal foot wakes up. That's out there to kick your butt. And you got to get up before the foot doesn't plan your day and start executing on that. The other things that I've noticed with people, you know, how we learn, we do have to take a beating learn so you need to dissect every beat you've got so what am I learning from this? And how do I need to take from that, and let me illustrate how I know that. That's how that's true. I was six years old. And my parents put me in a Pentecostal school for my first grade year. I didn't go to kindergarten straight to first grade. And it was this Pentecostal church in this small town. And they had everything from first to high school senior all in one church and everybody had their own little thing and you had different teachers for all of it. And I segmented us first graders off for the first three months and we're meeting in the little room and they were teaching us the alphabet and numbers. And as they're going through the alphabet every letter was had a nursery rhyme style Limerick to it and a filmstrip. Now you may be a little too young to remember filmstrips. But it's up…   Michael: No I got it, I got it.   Aaron: Okay, so you got the film strips got the little thing. You'll play the music and here's the beep and you flip it to the next next slide, right? It's basically slides. Well, it was a it was the we got to the letter M. And the letter M was about this mule named Milton. And the way the nursery rhyme when it says Milton the mule he made a mistake as you read a map, you walked in a lake. And as it's going through those filmstrips, you've got this cartoon mule walking down the road, in a suit holding this map, and then you see him falling in this lake. Well me being me, even at six years old, I redid the limerick, and I said it out loud. So instead of having Milton falling out falling in a lake, I had him ******* in a bucket. I know it's stupid. Right? The six year old stuff. The little girl sitting next to me did what you just did, she laughed about it. That didn't go over well with the teacher. Now the teacher happened to be the wife of Noah, who was also the pastor. She heard all this so she grabbed both of your ear lobes. Walk the straight to the principal's office and sat us down in these chairs.   This guy was not a small guy. He was a big man. So he's the pastor. He's the principal. He made me repeat exactly what I said. When I was done. He turns around he picks up this old aircraft aluminum style briefcase, sets it on his desk, puts in the code opens it and very ceremoniously turns it so I can see the contents had a padded interior cut out to houses pattern. So then he pulls the paddle out makes us both stand up and turn around and put our hands on the on the chairs. She got one swap I got two because I'm the one that came up with the limerick. Now it wasn't that hard. My dad's Irish my mom was Spanish Believe me I that way harder buttons for a lot less than what that guy gave me. But it was The gravity of the situation that caused the tears to flow. And then I also knew I had to face my dad that night. He always told me if you go to the principal's office, you're getting an *** whoppin. Well, I did. I got a pretty good one. But ultimately, the main reason I bring that story up is there's how many letters in the English language?   Michael: There's 24   Aaron It's 26?   Michael: That's so embarrassing.   Aaron: I know. I googled that I thought it was 24 as well very recently, and I go, so yeah, there's 26. So 26 letters, which we just established. How many guy remember the limerick for?   Michael: How many did you remember the limerick for? You probably remembered him for all of them. But for sure M.   Aaron; Just one. That's the only one I remember. I remember the letter M. I don't know anything about the other ones. That was 42 years ago, I can only recite the one for letter M I don't remember what the other ones were about. I can't remember you even articulate what the letter A would have said for it be what it stood for. But remember what M step four? Why do I remember it because I got my *** beat. That's why.   So we as humans learn very well through a beating. So what I tell people don't take, don't take a beating is something that's bad, learn whatever you got to do, just don't take the same beating. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes, just make new mistakes. Because you're making new mistakes, you're still advancing. There's nobody, that people who fail to get ahead in life make the same mistake over again. The other there's another thing that they say is there's two types of people never amount to anything. A person that can't do it, they're told, and a person that can do nothing but. I would say take the time, and analyze that to people that will never amount to anything, a person that can't do what they're told, and a person that could do nothing but.   Those are some very, very powerful words to sit and think about. And you have to figure out who am I? What am I getting done? What kind of *** whopping am I taken on a daily basis? And I said the same one over and over again. What do I got to do to make adjustments so I could advance myself and get away from this beating I keep taking.   Michael: Man Mike drop exit stage left Aaron Chapman, everybody. This was so much fun, man. How do people get in touch with you if they need you?   Aaron: Best way is Aaron chapman.com Or just go to Google and type in Aaron chat and you see a bald bearded redneck lender you got the guy.   Michael: That's you awesome, man. This was so much fun. Aaron thank you again for coming on for the third time. This was definitely the one that did it. We'll do it. We'll be in touch man.   Aaron: Thanks, brother. Appreciate you man.   Michael: Likewise, you got it.   Okay, everyone that was our episode A big thank you to Aaron for coming on today and the other two episodes as well. If you didn't catch those, I highly recommend you give those listened to Aaron dropped some really fantastic wisdom, knowledge and thought perspective on where we're headed in the next couple of months and yours with the market.   As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we'd love to hear from you with a rating or review wherever it is get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing

Gumball Love Podcast
Will a Guy Without Kids Understand? Courtney's Story

Gumball Love Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 10, 2022 54:48


Courtney was a single mom with two kids, divorced for six years, single for five, who was successful in all other areas of her life like friendships, career, and health...but her love life suffered. Until she met her boyfriend, but he'd never had kids before. Does it work out? Tune in to find out! Courtney worked with me a few years ago doing one-on-one and group coaching. We chatted to see what she learned through that process, and where she's at now. We discuss: What was going on in her life when she decided to work with me How she struggled with self confidence and being triggered after the trauma of her divorce What was different about her new love, Michael How the struggles of her past relationships taught her lessons moving forward How and when she decided to introduce Michael to her 12 and 10 year old kids Michael didn't have kids..was he understanding about her situation? and more! Work with Melissa Need help stopping the cycle of toxic relationships, living happily single, and finding true love? If you're tired of being the only person in your friend group who's not in a healthy, happy relationship, I can help you! Here's how: The Level Up for Love one-on-one coaching package, which includes taking the Gumball Love Assessment and Relationship Analysis, four coaching sessions with Melissa and one coaching session with Iain and Melissa as a couple, or, The Elite VIP Group Coaching Masterclass sessions Join the VIP Private Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/850443405065504 Follow Melissa on Instagram: @melissajaneroberts

The Remote Real Estate Investor
How to use virtual assistants to grow your real estate business

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2022 37:39


Pete Neubig has been investing in real estate since 2001. He has owned and managed 39, 52, and 100-unit apartment complexes. He currently owns single-family homes and a 52-unit apartment complex. Pete created a property management company based on the motto "by investors for investors". His property management company has clients from Houston and all over the world. His technology-based systems allow owners to see everything that is happening at their property without having to be involved. Pete leverages virtual assistants to do more than he can do on his own. A real estate virtual assistant (VA) is a business admin who essentially acts as your right hand. A real estate VA can offer a variety of business services in-person or remotely. The right VA can cover diverse tasks like lead gen and database management, or even finance and marketing. Tune in for today's episode where Pete talks about how he uses virtual assistants and what real estate investors should be aware of when they want to take this step in building a team. Episode Link: https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and joining me again today for a recurring visit is Pete Neubig and he is the founder of VPM solutions. He's gonna be talking to us today about virtual assistants and what we as investors should be aware of and how we can utilize them to our advantage. So let's get into it.   Pete Neubig what's going on man, you are back for more didn't have enough the first time we had.   Pete: Man, Michael, thank you so much for bringing me back on. I had we had such a blast. You know, last time just talking about my investor jury and then right at the end, we got to talking about my new venture and so I'm glad, thank you so much for having me back to talking about my new venture.   Michael: Of course, no, super, super excited. So for those who didn't catch the tail end of our conversation from your prior episode, give us a quick and dirty who you are, and what you're doing in real estate and what your company is all about.   Pete: Sure. Well, my name is Pete Neubig. I'm out of Houston, Texas, I started buying properties in 2001. I bought so many that I failed miserably at it that I ended up creating a property management firm in 2012, sold that firm in 2019 and in 2020, I started VPM solutions and we went live with our product in 2021 and VPM solutions is think of it as a dating service. It's like it's an online marketplace that connects people in the United States and Canada, like employers, you know, people in real estate, with contractors in mainly Philippines and Mexico, but we're in about 60 different countries where we have different contractors and so that's you know, so we're like, like dating service, like match.   Michael: I love it, I love it, I love it. Okay, so who are your clients? Kind of on the investor side and then who are your contractors on the contractor side, just random, random people?   Pete: Yeah, that's a great question. So we really try to stick with the real estate industry. So because I'm a property manager by trade, we started with property management and so we targeted property managers in the United States and Canada, right, because in property management, as most of your clients know, especially if they self-manage, is a process oriented and is a people oriented business, right? It there's a lot of things you have to do manually and so you can't automate as you can automate a lot. But there's still a lot that has to be done manually. So we started there. So that's our main clients, we're now breaking into the real estate and brokerage side of things because there's a lot of work, there's a lot of help, they need like transaction coordination, and just generating leads and appointment setting, so we're there, as well and on the contractor side, what we're looking we advertise we do quite a bit of advertising in different countries, just letting people know, hey, you can work from home, you can pretty much make a little bit more money than what you can get, you know, in your environment and we actually build some, it's called LMS. But it's video training, that you can literally take video training for free to learn more about right now is property management. But we're going to be built, we're going to be throwing some other videos out there always well, we'll be adding more video training out there and so are our contractors, somebody who's bilingual, someone who's educated, and somebody who's looking to make a little bit more than what they what they make in their own in their own country, and that they want to get into real estate, mainly property management or in the real estate industry.   Michael: Okay, interesting. So I am like, the whole concept of a VA is I understand it, but it's totally foreign to me, I've never utilized one but I know people who have so give all of our listeners who are listening, a little bit of background or insight like why should someone consider a VA, like what benefits do they bring?   Pete: Yeah, another great question, man. It's like, so, here's the main thing, right. What happens is, you get so much work, that you need to hire somebody, right? Whether it's whether you're self-managing, and like me and Steve, what my business partner, we were self-managing properties and next thing, you know, we had all these maintenance requests, we had all these leases that had been renewed and we had all these resident questions and we have lease marketing, and it gets daunting and all of a sudden your conical passive job becomes very, very active very quickly and so now you have to either A) hire somebody or B) you know, hire a property manager or hire somebody internally, right and so when you start looking at assistants in the United States, what happened was, especially after the pen EMIC with inflation. So what's happening is those low level low enjoyment tasks that that you don't want to do as the you know, as the investor or as the self-manager you want to give to somebody else? Well, if you, you try to hire that person United States, typically what happens is that job role doesn't pay what people want.   So for example, it might be like the job role might only pay 30,000 a year, right? That's a full time, whatever, but the person wants 50,000 a year and if you pay that person, what they wanted, you would make you would be negative cashflow, you will make any money. This happens quite a bit when you're managing your own properties and you're kind of building your portfolio and adding more properties to your portfolio. It's like all of a sudden, you're overwhelmed overworked, to hire somebody, now you're cash negative and so and then what happens is with these folks, what I found in my personal job, my personal company, Empire industries, when we when we started, we manage over 1000 units. When I hire people in the US, they have like a GED, or that you're getting very, like you're getting very low, you know, schooled, low education type people, and what happens is one, they're not appreciative of the opportunity get, and then two, they always want more money, and then three, they always bring in their outside challenges into your business, the car doesn't work, they take more time off, you know, they have family drama, that kind of comes into your business and so in the past, what happened was, you have to be stressed out to make money in property management. So I have I have, I have, I have all these doors are managing, I have all this work that needs to be done, I have to hire somebody. But as soon as I hire somebody, now I'm not profitable. So now I have to go get more properties to manage, so that I can bring the income up and now everybody's stressed again and the reason why everybody's stress is because I'm hiring people in the States, which, you know, demand a much higher hourly rate, if you will and so what I realized is, if I, if I hire if I outsourced, in a second or third world country, I can get educated people, bilingual educated people, that will work for a lot cheaper than somebody in the US and it's not, I'm just going to pay them less because they're in the Philippines or they're in Mexico, it's that in Mexico, $10 an hour goes a lot further than $10 an hour in Houston, or $10 an hour in Northern California. So the way I tell people look at is like this, if I took if I was doing the same job in Northern California, as I do in Houston, Texas, I'd get paid a lot more for that job in Northern California, because the cost of living, right, and then I'd get less money doing the same job in Houston, because of the cost of living and I probably make, I probably even get paid less if I was in like Arkansas, because of the cost of living. The dollar still travels just as far. Well just think of Mexico, as you know, as the next level down of cost of living. Just because you're paying somebody $10 an hour doesn't mean you're taking advantage of them. Matter of fact, $10 an hour in Mexico is a very good hourly wage. It's actually a very good wage and then in Philippines, to give you an idea, Michael $4 an hour is a good wage in the Philippines.   Michael: Wow.   Pete: And you think you save yourself? There's no way we're gonna take advantage these people? No, I mean, $4 an hour is a good wage in the Philippines. So it's, you know, as a criminal getting paid very well here in the States and so, the reason why people are outsourcing is because I can get bilingual and by the way, most of these people are either their high school educated or greater. They have some type of education after high school, whether it be associate's or a college degree. So you're getting educated people that that are bilingual, for a fraction of the costs in the United States that you are in the United States and because these low level jobs can, you can only pay so much. Now you can actually pay what the job role requires, which means now you can make more money in the company, right and then I'll turn this around on how we actually helped our US people, because I had people in Empire that were that were making some money. The ones I hired the virtual team members like oh, Pete, you got rid of jobs. Actually, no, they got rid of themselves because I couldn't afford them anymore. They wouldn't work at the level I needed them for the company make money. But once I hired these other virtual team members in the company started making money, I was able to actually pay my US people more, I was actually able to get better benefits for my US people, right because these are contract workers in the Philippines and Mexico and you know, Costa Rica, wherever you're going to hire them from and so they're contract workers, so they work they get paid, that's great. But your team members in the US once a company starts making more money, you can treat your kids because their employees right so you can treat them better stock options or 401k, whatever it was. So for us, it was bonuses, it was higher salary and we started doing we started we started looking at it we start doing health insurance. So that's how we were able to benefit out team. So the next question is, well, what can a VA do that somebody in the US?   Michael: Yeah, that's exactly where I was gonna go with it.   Pete: What I'll tell people is the VA can do anything that the person in us can do except for two things. One, obviously, if they need to be physically at the property, right, right, they can't they can't do that and then we'll do if they need a license, if they need a license to do something, they can't do license act, right. So give you an example, though. We actually had one of our virtual team members do all of our lease renewals? Well, you say, well, P That's a licensee Act and the you know, you need to be licensed to do lease renewals and the answer is actually, you don't need to be licensed to just create the lease renewal, you need to be licensed to negotiate the lease renewal. So what we would do is 90% of our lease renewals were not negotiated, most people just sign the lease renewal, right, most of our owner clients, or our residents would just sign the lease renewal and the ones that would have questions, that would get escalated to our property manager and so what we did just that one, just that one job role, what we did is we literally took 90% of the work away from the property manager gave it to give it to the virtual team member and then a product manager took the escalations. Now, I'm a big proponent of it, the way you can save your company, so to speak, a lot of a lot of stress and noise is can you automate through policy and can you automate through, you know, computer technology, in this case, what we did in this, you have to look at it but in Houston, we know that the average rate, the average renewal rate would go up about 2% per year over time. Now, some years, it would go up more in other years, it wouldn't go up at all, it actually would go down. But over time we…   Michael: need in terms of like the rent, like how much rent, you're getting rent increase the renewal… Yeah, okay.   Pete: So we did is we just create a policy that our rent increases every 2% every year, and we put that in the lease. So there was no negotiating, right on the residence side...   Michael: It wasn't up for discussion…   Pete: Right, so but if people say, hey, I'm gonna leave unless we do XY and Z, well, that would get escalated but we were able to reduce the escalations because of the part because of the policy we were able to automate and then we on the on the owner side, we would send something 90 days out, hey, do you want to renew your release or not, right like, we didn't ask them what the amount was, we because we built the 2% and so we stopped doing CMAs. So it is a lot of grunt work that we can stop doing, which then allows your virtual team ever to actually do a lot more, we have one person for 1000, doors, doing lease renewals, and, and reviewing inspections.   Michael: one person for all 1000 doors…?   Pete: For lease renewals and inspections. Yeah…   Michael: Holy smokes.   Pete: But then I had one person that did all collections. So I'll kind of go through the whole thing, right. So like, you can have a virtual team member, their whole job literally could be making sure that your collections are being done, your notices are getting sent out and that they can if you have if you have a third party company like we did that handle the evictions, they can actually be the gatekeeper with that third with that third party company and do all that stuff. My property managers did nothing with evictions   Michael: What?   Pete: Yeah, yeah. So we again, we had policies in place, right. So if, if the resident owed less than 50%, we, we wouldn't file evictions, if they owed, you know, 50% or more, we'd file the eviction we like so we just put on a different policy. You teach the VA, what the policies are, and then they just follow the process and what's cool is they actually know the process better than you and they, hey, can I do this or this or this instead, and they tweak the process and you're like, yeah, that sounds so much better and then they own the process. So if you're like an investor listening to this, and you don't like magic companies, for whatever reason, by the way, obviously, I own a magic company, I highly recommend. But let's just say, let's just say that you don't like me had a bad experience, and you're gun shy. But what you're finding is your leases aren't being renewed, right? You're your maintenance is overtime, the phone rings you like, I don't want to deal with this. You hate when somebody moves out, because you want to deal with the turn, your books are a mess, because you don't have time to do the books because you're, you know, a high net worth individual working 70-80 hours a week as it is, then a VA could do all of that stuff for you. They can do everything, you got to train them, of course. So just step back, take two steps forward. But they can do your property accounting, they could be your QuickBooks, they could do your business accounting, they could do your maintenance coordination, they could do your turn coordination, they can do your collections or evictions. So they can do your utility turn on and turn offs, like so all that stuff that you like, oh my god, they could do your onboarding for you. So I was going to get a new property you got to enter all that stuff in the in the computer system. They can do all of that stuff for you.   Michael: If anyone's watching the video here, you see that my jaw is like on the floor. So for anyone listening I just want wanted to bring you up to speed. But okay, so peace on, let me just understand. So they could do, like they could do all of this stuff and literally anything I mean sky's the limit is and with regard to things that they can do other than the two things you mentioned the license act, and then anything that requires them to physically be there. But when it comes to accounting, I mean, one thing that I'm thinking about is, there's very sensitive information, there's banking information, there's pat, you know, credit card information, as part of the accounting process that I do personally. So am I going to need to divulge personal information and sensitive information to the VA or like, how does that work?   Pete: Yeah, so, you know, in most in most instances, like in your QuickBooks, and in any property management software, they have different levels of permissions and even in your banking, like I bank with Chase, and Chase has different levels of permissions. So I can give you all the rights to, to my, my, my VA team, right, which I did, I gave them all the rights, so they can see everything, they can reconcile the bank statements, they can, they can look at everything, they just couldn't make any payments, right, they couldn't make any transactions. So that's, that's what we did. Now, we also had two property accountants that they did probably accounts for our third party folks and so they had access to, you know, sensitive information. So what we did is we did a bet we did a thorough background screening, there's a third party company out there that can do background screening, and they came up, you know, pretty, they came out really good. So we went forward, and then we just had our cyber liability insurance policy just to make sure go again, because we're a property manager firm with over 1000 units that we manage. So we wanted to make sure that we you know, we took care of ourselves. But if you're an individual with a handful of properties, or a small property manager, then you can do all of this through the permissions that your banking and that your that your software allows you to do.   Michael: Okay and so as I'm hearing you, you talk about as a man, I'm getting really excited, I'm trying my the wheels are kind of turning on all of the things that I might be able to outsource. What are some things that you should definitely not have a VA do? I mean, have you seen some things go really sideways or go really south because someone said, oh, well, Pete said, they can only can't do these two things. So I'm gonna give my VA everything else. I mean, what should I be thinking about in terms of limitations?   Pete: Yeah, so I gotta be honest, you, Michael I, at first, I always thought like, okay, I'm just gonna give him a list of things to do. I'm going to scan it to him and we're going to just do this stuff off the list, like a checklist thing. I quickly realized he could do much more. Then I said, hey, I own the process and they own the process and they can and now I do believe that I actually had VA supervise people in the States. So I had somebody in Mexico supervising people in the United States. So I believe they can get to that that supervisory level, what I will say is, they can do everything. So I'm not saying they can't do anything. But the one thing is you need to put in place some escalation paths…   Michael: What do you mean?   Pete: So even though they own so let's say for example, they own maintenance, right? Well, they're going to be able to handle 99 out of 10 maintenance calls, no problem. But then there's that mold call that comes in, right where the resident says they have mold, well, right there, that should be a buzzword that gets escalated to the property manager because they don't like they don't have mold in other areas of the country of the world that were that worried about mold as much as much as we do in the US. So if there's like an emergency, that could that can cause you know, a resident can get sick, right, or anything like that we're property code. So each, each state has their own little different property code, right. So like, for example, in Texas, believe it or not heat, if they have no heat, that's, that's a, that's an emergency. But if they have if they don't have air non-emergency, well, we treat no AC as an emergency in our in our company we did and so there was like three or four things that those got escalated a property manager. Now the property manager, at that point would say, I'm going to take it from here, or here's what you should do. But then the property manager is kind of co-managing that ticket. So I believe that in any business that you run, whether you own a property management firm, or you're a you know, an individual landlord that manages your 10 units, there's got to be certain. I call them taps on the shoulder, there's got to be certain tabs that you realize this is a potential problem, right? So let me deal with it or I call them taps two by fours and then getting run over by a man, right? On over by a Mack truck means that you're in a lawsuit, right? The two by four means somebody moved out because you didn't handle a maintenance request in a certain way and the tap is the maintenance request is 10 days, 15 days old, whatever it is, and no one's looking at it. Right, so how can you run your business through tabs? Well, if you have these vas, the great thing is you're not doing the work anymore, right? You're not creating the lease renewal you're not you know, calling, you know roto rooter to get out to the property. You're not doing that but what you have to do is you have to take a step above, right so you have to instead of being at the ground level, you got to be 2000 feet up, right, not 15 30,000 feet up, but at least 2000 feet up and as report you have to review and so if you see a property that's vacant for over so many days, that's a tap, if you see a maintenance request that's open for so many days, or major quests that hasn't been responded to, in so many days, these are tabs. So if you can identify what the potential problems are, your job now becomes manager, right? So I'm not the doer anymore. So you're getting rid of the task or hat, you put it on your manager hat. So if you hire a VA for him to do everything, and then you don't put your manager hat on, I can tell you, you're gonna, you're gonna get in trouble. Especially if you, especially if you do terrible training, which most people do.   Michael: That was gonna be like my next question and so like, for everyone listening, what what's the expectation around training? How long is it before a VA is really up and running and so as people are thinking about, okay, forecasting, I don't need a VA today, but maybe in 369 12 months, I maybe need one. So what's the runway lead up time to get someone effective?   Pete: You're gonna hit the answer, but it depends.   Michael: That's my favorite answer.   Pete: It depends, okay, so the more like, even if I'm a smaller firm, and only got 20 properties, I'm managing, I'm doing everything, you have to teach that VA, every piece of managing that property, right, from onboarding, to, you know, to utilities, to lease ups to move into maintenance, to collections to eviction, to move out, and you have to teach them everything… Well, just because only one move out happens a month, it doesn't make anything any easier, you have to learn, they have to learn how to do that they have to understand basically, property management. So that's going to take a lot longer than say, like, with me, I had one person like all they do is collections. Well, I can teach collections in less than two weeks. Right, especially if you have processes in place. So the big thing depends. So if I wanted to hire somebody for collections, it'd be about two weeks. But if I want to hire someone to do maintenance, the more I call them, if they analysis, the more decision points there are in the job. In the process, the longer the training, right maintenance, so many things go could happen with lease renewals, it's like there's three things, like you teach them the three things, and then they know, okay, I do these three, if this happens, I do this and if this happens, property manager, right. So to my least your own person, it really was like two weeks of training. My maintenance people, it was about two months to three months of training.   Michael: Wow. Okay, so yeah, you weren't kidding. When you said it depends.   Pete: It depends, yeah.   Michael: And then I guess, like, the next question that comes to mind is, what is the turnover look like if I'm an investor, and I'm investing two months, three months into a person really getting them up to speed, and then doesn't work out or they don't like it or they move on, like, what have you seen in terms of turnover?   Pete: That's a great question as well. So what I saw at Empire, I had 23, virtual team members, 23 different roles that that my virtual team members handled, and I had them for about five years, you know, most of the jobs some jobs were newer, but I had people there for five years and in those five years, I had to get rid of I let go of two and one person left. So I had three people, my churn rate was much lower on the VA side of things than they were on the US side of things…   Michael: I was gonna ask… in the US:::   Pete: Now, I'll tell you why my churn rate was low, though, okay, because I treated these people like team members, not like virtual assistants, right? So the old mentality of a virtual assistant is, I'm just going to throw you here's the work, you go do the work, I'm going to make sure it's done and like, that's it right. My guys that we have day out there on our website, they had videos, they were they were part of all of our company meetings, they had, they had ownership of each of their job roles so that they can, they can modify and do things they had, they had more control over certain things. We went down, I went down there to go visit them, because most of my people were one city in Mexico, so I paid them PTO like I gave them like if they even though there were contractors, if they needed a day off Mike just put the time in, that's okay, I'm gonna give you a day. So we the more you treat people like we can we put them on a bonus structure. So if their key performance indicator was met, they got a pat on the back, but if they exceeded it, they got they got 50 bucks, or something small, but $50 to somebody in California that Michael they're going to take the $50 thing it's critical and throw in your face like this isn't even a gallon of gas. You know, and but in you know, Mexico you give somebody 50 bucks that's like a half a day's work, like so again, you so you can make people happier with a lot less with a lot less money, right? because sometimes it's like, oh, it's not the thought. It's like, wow, man, you only gave me $20 like that's like almost like an insult you know, in the US where it's not a over there. So if you treat the people, right, so what does that mean? It's not just like paying them and treating them, right, make it part of the team, but also manage them correctly. A lot of people think like, I'm just gonna hire this VA, but they have, like, they hire the VA and then you're, you're not ready for the VA, like, you hire them because you like you got excited, you heard this podcast, I'm gonna hire VA, right and then it's like, okay, you don't have a good job description, you're not really sure what they should do, you don't know how to manage if they're doing a good job or not and so you hire somebody, and they don't really know what to do, and then you don't know what to do and then it doesn't work out, right. So I recommend anybody do is make sure like you, you create a job description first. So you can go about it two ways:   One is I want them to take this, this process from end to end or two is like I want to be an executive assistant and I want to do the things that I hate doing. So identify the low level low enjoyment tasks that you don't like, create a job description from that, post it out there, say this is what I'm looking for or say, man, I really want to give somebody collections evictions, you know, like that process? So it depends if you're if you're smaller than you may say, hey, I want them to be a property manager and give me all the things I have to do just understand it's a lot more training. So once you have the once you have the job description, so that you know what they should do they know what they should do. The next thing is what are the key indicators that you know they're doing a good job and the rule of thumb is 123 key indicators they call key performance indicators and every job role in the organization should have at least one if somebody has 14, that's way too many, I know because I live this I had my property manager API's and it's not it was way, way too much. So like, for example, your executive assistant. If that's where they are, you know, maybe they have to answer calls, well, maybe a KPI is answering 94% plus call rate, right or response to any email is in less than one day. Now, you the KPIs, you can pull them out of a hat, but they have you have to have a report that can show that, that they can put the KPI and so they have to get the data, the data has to be available, right? So if I say hey, I want a 90% call rate, but my call, my call software doesn't have call answer rate, I'm not gonna be able to get that number. Does that make sense?   Michael: It makes total sense.   Pete: And so you have to be able to report on it. So just because you want a KPI, but there's no way to report on it, then you have to figure out a way to report it and get that KPI. If not, you have to move to a different KPI. So if I have the job description set up, they know what to do that we have the key indicators, so they know what the scorecard is if they're doing a good job or not, and so to you, because so many of you will say, yeah, I feel like that he's not doing a good job. What the hell is that me show you?   Michael: How do you know?   Pete: Especially if they're, you know, 20,000 miles away for you in the Philippines? Like, yeah, like, so how do you know the key indicators and then if you have good training, and you spend the time with them, and then you should once you have the train, So training is like every day, right? You do every day for two weeks, maybe three weeks, you have training every day, hour a day video so they can rewatch it and they can build, they build the process manual, not us. So they build a process manual. Why is that important because if I had 100 page process manual for maintenance, I did Michael I swear at Empire had 110 page process manual…   Michael: We talk in single space, or double space?   Pete: Single space, I think. Like legit, it was legit. Nobody read it. Nobody knew how to navigate it and nobody learned once I had them build their own manuals, guess what happened, they started retaining stuff and they knew how to navigate their manual. So don't be don't be upset if they like let them create their own manual so they can navigate it. So now you know what they what you want them to do. They know what they know what they're supposed to do. You can you can you can scorecard it with the metrics, you train them, and now you manage them and the way you do that is you have a weekly meeting. Now if you're smaller, you're going to have you're going to meet with them every day, right my IV pm or smaller firm was five of us, I mean, when my VAs every day, because we're just we're so small, we have to talk about what to talk every day when I was at Empire because I have 40 people working for me. I met them once a week and I would meet my maintenance team, separate from my accounting team separate from my resident services teams and for my own services team. But I would go over with them each week and we'd go over, we'd say what's a feel good? Tell me something that's good, right because as humans, we have this habit of going below the line instead of like above the line. So let's start off the meeting really good. Let's go over to metrics, right individual and then the group metrics, the department metrics, then let's go over tasks from last week did they get done? Then let's go over challenges and each one of those a five minutes and challenges like 20 minutes, 25 minutes. You don't you can't solve all them all the time. But you can solve you know, a couple of them and if you could solve a couple of challenges each week, you're doing really, really good and then and then one thing I added was what's your stress level from zero to 10. This was interesting because sometimes they'd be at a 10 and it was because somebody was on vacation or we just got 50 new houses that week, it's worth, you know, 10 yeah, okay. But when it's 10 all the time, and that's the standard, that means you haven't to do too much and if somebody's attend all the time, it means they're ready to punch out. Like anybody in your team, you should literally take the pulse of your team on a weekly or monthly basis, right and but here's sometimes the 10 was because they had something going on personally and then I'd get everybody off the off the phone, and then I would talk to them personally and that gives you an incredible opportunity to create relationships with people who you never met, that working with you that are, you know, 5-10 1000 miles away and that is why they didn't leave me because they knew I cared, right, it wasn't a bonus. It was it was I cared, I want them to grow the company, I want them to, you know, to, to feel like they're wanted, but I also cared about their personal lives, I really did and so if somebody had an issue, you know, Hey, man, you know, we talk about so you get to learn a lot about people when you do that. But I did that each week and if a KPI was read two weeks in a row, and went to the issues list, you know, things and so you, if you have a structure with your business, you're the person you hire, the chances at whether that's in the US, like sitting next to you in the US, that's, you know, a few states away, that's working virtually, or a virtual team member outside the borders of the US. If you have structure, the chances of you hiring somebody successfully becomes great becomes very, you know, most cause much greater. But if you don't have that structure, the chances of hiring anybody is not going to be it's not going to be very, very, very good. It's going to be much lower rate of success.   Michael: Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. Pete, have you ever had a VA hire and train another like another VA?   Pete: Oh, yeah, of course. That's the whole job, right? The whole goal, right? So monkey see monkey do, right? So when I forget Empire, the first round of vas, you're looking at the trainer. I was the guy I trained there. Okay but my maintenance team, once somebody would leave, and somebody would get hired, or they would hire a new person, I was out at a training business.   Michael: I love it.   Pete: They train them. So once you train that first batch, and by the way, here, Michael, here's the secret to at Empire, I was gonna hire two virtual team members. That was that's what was in the budget. I interviewed four people hired all four of them and here's the reason why one figure one person is going to wash out right? Can you figure that and then the second thing is, it's, I was hiring two to three people for one person United States.   Michael: Okay.   Pete: All right. So think about that hourly rate, I would get rid of one person us and I'd hire three people in Mexico and so do you think more stuff gets done with three people?   Michael: I would than one probably guessed.   Pete: So. Yeah. So then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna hire four people. So I was over budget, guess what happened within 30 days, I'm able to grow my business because more tasks are being done and so all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, and if one but I hired four, none of them washed out, I was one of them wasn't a good fit, they were a good fit for the organization, not a good fit for the role. So we moved on to a different role. So another important thing is when you hire and this is probably I mean, your team, your, your listeners probably know this. But every business has core values, that can be a sheet on the wall that you never look at, and they're not going to be any, they're not going to be worth anything for you. But you should have core values that you hire, fire, promote and demote on, and give raises to like, that's your core value. So who are the people you want on the bus with you, right and if you are, if you are an individual landlord, that you know has a bunch of house and you're looking to hire that first person. Well, that's a business, right Michael, would you teach that like, as soon as you're hired, as soon as you buy that first house, you are business…   Michael: Yeah, you are business…   Pete: You are business. So you need to have core values and if you don't, as a business, you should have them as an individual. So who are the people I called the fog. So who do people want to foxhole with you? That gets you the right person in the organization. But that doesn't mean they're the right person in the right seat, right because the right see, for example, like, if somebody's super outgoing, you want them in sales, if they're super outgoing, but not detail. You don't want them in accounting, right? I might have the right person. But if I put that outgoing person, and that's shipping and sales and accounting, he's going to do a terrible job. So I found the people through my core values, I then put them through a personality profile test. I like disk. It's super simple. I don't know what you would use. Do you have one that you use?   Michael: No, not personally, but I'm definitely going to be adopting one as I'm gonna get for virtual assistant, yeah…   Pete: There's, there's a lot of them out there. Disk is super easy. I know it very well. It's easy to learn. So I use disk. So that tells me I get the right person in the organization. I put them in the right seat and through my job description and my key performance indicators. I know they're going in the right direction. So if you do all of that, and then you do the training and then you do the managing the chances of you having somebody washed out or somebody leave, it goes down dramatically. It's not 100%. It's never 100.   Michel: Like anything… Yeah, that makes a ton of sense to me, Pete this has been, this has been super eye opening, really exciting, exciting stuff for people that want to learn more want to take advantage of the cam solutions, like how do they get in touch with you? Where should they be going?   Pete: Yeah, so you can go to https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ , and create a free profile. So that's the other thing, Michael, everything on the company side is free. So creating a profile posting a job, searching for people, finding them is all free. When you thought when you hire somebody, they we charge the virtual team member a percentage, and that's how we make our money. So, it's free to the company. So all you're paying is the hourly rate, and a small processing fee that we pass on from the stripes of the world onto the onto the dude the company, but that's what it should go and if you want to email me directly, it's pete@vpmolutions.com and we have over 14,000 virtual team members in 60 countries on our on our site right now looking for work and we have property management video training that your listeners can actually take for free as well. So we have like, I think we have like 12 courses, it's over about nine hours of content it goes from, it's basically the lifecycle of property management. So if you are a, you know, a self-manager, and you want to learn more about how I can manage my property a little bit more efficiently, I highly recommend taking those courses and then when you post the job, you can actually ask your VA, these are the recommended courses that we recommend that you take and then people would actually take those courses on their time and they're done. So you're getting a little bit of people trained before you actually are paying them.   Michael: That's really slick and it probably helps weed out a little bit more of who's serious versus who's not is who's gonna put in the time in advance.   Pete: Absolutely, 100%...   Michael: Oh, man, I love it. Pete This has been so great. Thank you for coming on with us a second time. Definitely, we'll be in touch man.   Pete: Yeah, Michael, thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.   Michael: You got it, take care. All right, everyone. That was our episode a big thank you to Pete for coming on. Super exciting. If you couldn't tell it was pretty giddy throughout the episode. It's something that I'm going to be very much looking into for my personal business. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we love hearing from you reviews, comments, feedback questions are always welcome in the comment section, and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

Nerdgasm Talk
200. Michael Jackson Tribute Show Part 1

Nerdgasm Talk

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2022 125:05


Happy Birthday to the King of Pop Michael Jackson, we here on Nerd Coalition are big fans of Mike and wanted to make a tribute show for Michael on our 200 episode!! We give you a in depth conversation about MJ and thank you guys for supporting us!MJ Outline: First introduced to Michael Favorite eraFavorite Album from J5, Jacksons and Michael How big of fans are you?Thoughts on his changes and charges JOIN THE COALITION:

Top Traders Unplugged
SI203: A new way of doing Trend Following ft. Jerry Parker

Top Traders Unplugged

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2022 83:40


Today, we are joined by Jerry Parker where we dive into some of the highlights from the challenging month of July and how the industry has handled the current high level of volatility and trend reversals, why Trend Following continues to work but how narratives can create vicious reversals in the markets. We also discuss questions from listeners regarding Jerry's strategies for entering and exiting trades, advice for backtesting using continuous futures contracts, how to handle stop losses and including equities in your allocation strategy. Lastly, Jerry describes why he is in favour of accidental diversification and why he is always on the hunt for outliers, why adding more markets has no impact on the robustness of a system and why he prefers to be a “slow tractor”. We finish off discussing how some firms claim that they can replicate the returns of Hedge Funds and CTAs without charging much for it and Jerry reveals a profound change to how he wants to extract trends from markets...even if it means that he will more correlated to Equities. ---- ---- Follow Niels on https://twitter.com/toptraderslive (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskaastruplarsen (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/user/toptraderslive (YouTube) or via the https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/ (TTU website). IT's TRUE ? – most CIO's read 50+ books each year – get your FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide to the Best Investment Books ever written https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/Ultimate (here). And you can get a free copy of my latest book “The Many Flavors of Trend Following” https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/flavor (here). Learn more about the Trend Barometer https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/resources/market-trends/ (here). Send your questions to info@toptradersunplugged.com And please share this episode with a like-minded friend and leave an honest Rating & Review on https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/reviewttu (iTunes) or https://open.spotify.com/show/2OnOvLbIV3AttbFLxuoaBW (Spotify) so more people can discover the podcast. Follow Jerry on https://my.captivate.fm/@RJParkerJr09 (Twitter). Episode TimeStamps: 00:00 - Intro 02:02 - Market overview 03:52 - Major events of the month 16:00 - The importance of narratives 19:16 - How Jerry handles equities 22:39 - Q1, Michael: How does Jerry enter a new trade after he exited his first? 25:55 - Q2, Caleb: Backtesting using continuous futures contracts 30:02 - Q3, Adam: How to use stop losses and equities inclusion 36:09 - Jerry's big reveal: "CTAs focus too much on diversification and correlation..." 45:42 - Tweet 1: Improving equity risk concentration 50:53 - Tweet 2: Diversification - a free lunch 53:01 - Tweet 3: Predictable vs. unpredictable inflation 56:55 - Tweet 4: Tractors picking out sports cars from ditches 58:57 - Tweet 5: Doing what you want is what people actually want 01:02:09 - Tweet 6: Non normal world is uncapped 01:05:01 - Replicating CTA performance at little cost...Andrew Beer style 01:21:05 - Industry performance update Copyright © 2022 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved ---- PLUS: Whenever you're ready... here are 3 ways I can help you in your investment Journey: 1. eBooks that cover key topics that you need to know about In my eBooks, I put together some key discoveries and things I have learnt during the more than 3 decades I have worked in the Trend Following industry, which I hope you will find useful. https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/resources/ebooks/ (Click Here) 2. Daily Trend Barometer and Market Score One of the things I'm really proud of, is the fact that I have managed to published the Trend Barometer and Market Score each day for more than a decade...as these tools are really good at describing the environment for trend following managers as well as giving insights into the general positioning of a trend following strategy! https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/resources/market-trends/ (Click Here) 3....

The Remote Real Estate Investor
How much time and money can an investment mentor save you?

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2022 34:25


Rich Fettke has a passion for helping people improve their businesses, grow their wealth, and live more fulfilling lives. He is the author of The Wise Investor, Extreme Success, and the audio program Momentum. Rich is also a co-founder of RealWealth®. Since 2003, the company has helped over 60,000 members improve their financial intelligence and acquire cash-flowing income properties — so they can live life on their own terms. As a licensed real estate broker and an active investor, Rich was selected as a Rich Dad Author for his expertise as a Wealth Mindset Expert.   The real estate industry is not easy for everyone to jump into. If you have just gotten your real estate license and feel you need extra support before getting your feet wet, or if you are an experienced agent looking to take it to the next level, you may decide to get a real estate coach. Rich who is a coaching mentor and investor will discuss the value of having a coach and mentor and what you can expect to find in his new book.   Episode Links: https://realwealth.com/ https://realwealth.com/the-wise-investor-book/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Rich Fettke, who is an author, investor, coaching mentor, surfer, among many other things, and Rich is going to be talking to us today about some of the mistakes he seen investors make the value of having a coach and mentor as well as what you can expect to find in his book, which is soon to be released. So let's get into it.   Rich, what's going on, man? Welcome to the Remote Real Estate Investor. Thanks for hanging out with me.   Rich: Good to be here. Great hanging out with you.   Michael: Super excited. So before we hit record here, you and I were chatting a little bit about some sports where you both share in common, but I would love if you could give our listeners a little bit of insight into who you are, where you come from and what it is that you're doing in real estate today.   Rich: Sure, absolutely. My name is Rich Fettke and yeah, interesting. The way we got into real estate investing, I'm an I'm an investor and my wife and I also have a company that helps investors but that was what really got us into it was despair. It was about it was exactly 20 years ago, I was on top of my game, I had a book deal, just signed with Simon and Schuster. I was a business and personal coach had a thriving coaching practice, I was giving keynote speeches all over the country. It was like I was just crushing it and I felt so good. I was 37 years old and then I was diagnosed with melanoma, which is an advanced skin cancer but that's not the biggest deal is that they thought it spread to my liver.   So they had me do a CT scan and ultrasound and it kept showing these masses on my liver and so I met with an oncologist and he said, you know, it looks like you got about six months to live and we had a 10 year old daughter. Yeah, it just rocked my world, I had a 10 year old daughter, a three year old daughter. My wife is amazing but she was a stay at home mom and so she was freaking in the sense of what am I going to do financially if Rich dies and so she started to she had a as a coach, we were doing things together, she was also a trained coach and so she had this small radio station in San Francisco that she used to do a radio show on about all areas of life being your best self and personal development and all and she said I gotta figure this out. So she started to help people on that were financially successful, and was interviewing them about how do they create wealth and how do they create financial success and most of them turned out to be real estate investors. No surprise, so she came home all excited. One of them was a mortgage broker and he said, if you get your license, you can come become a mortgage broker. This is about 2003. So you know, things were still the mortgage world is pretty easy back then. So she went and did that. In the meantime, we figured out I had a PET scan, which is the most advanced scan for cancer, and it showed me cancer free. So it was just it was a false diagnosis. It was just hemangiomas little clusters of blood vessels on my liver but that was enough for me to go for those three months of not knowing if I was going to be alive, it was enough to give us the kick in the butt to get out and, and make things happen. So Kathy, and I see after that after I was healed, we started to invest together. We bought a bunch of properties in the Dallas, Texas area and it just took off from there and then Kathy started to help other investors with their mortgages. We had a bunch of friends and family saying, tell us how are you doing this? We you know, how are you doing this out of state investing and so we started we formed a group that we thought would be just a small group of family and friends and people that listen to the radio show. We thought it'd be a couple 100 people and today it's over 64,000 members now at real wealth that we're helping invest.   Michael: It's pretty amazing. Richard, good for you guys, so I I'm curious in your coaching business before you got diagnosed, did you ever come across real estate investors?   Rich: That I coached? Yes. Yeah and my mindset was, I want to invest in real estate someday when I have enough money and so and I was thinking I needed, you know, several $100,000 you know, to buy that first rental property or first investment, not realizing the power of leverage and how much banks love to lend money on real estate and so that was that was the eye opener for us.   Michael: Okay, I love it and what made you go remote? I mean, you're in California and your wife live in in San Francisco. Why did you pick to invest outside California?   Rich: Actually Robert Kiyosaki. It was she because Kathy was on the San Francisco radio station she was and it got bigger and bigger or she was able to attract some pretty big names and then this guy who had just written a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, not long before that, and he had this cashflow game that he was promoting and we had a friend who was his distributor for crypto cash flow game back in the day and so he was on the radio show, and he warned Kathy's listeners to sell their overpriced California properties and to invest in Texas and so we took his advice. Not we didn't sell all our expensive property, sadly, because 2008 crushed us with our California properties but it was, you know, he just saying for cash flow and what's going to happen, he was currently kind of calling out what was going to happen in 2008-2007. That's what sent us out of state.   Michael: Love it. So you also recently have written a book, haven't you?   Rich: Yeah, I just finished my second book. 20 years later, well, I have an audio program back then, too but yeah, it took me 20 years to write my second book and it's called the wise investor and it's a lot different than my first book that was mostly coaching focused. It was a nonfiction, basically a personal development book and this book is a modern parable. So it's story forum, and it tells a story of creating financial freedom and but also living your best life.   Michael: That's awesome and why did you decide to write it?   Rich: Interesting process, you know, I've had my own coach, to walk the talk to over the last 25 years now, I started coaching 25 years ago, and this coach that I that I still talk to every week, or every other week, now, he kept kind of he had read my first book, so he's always kind of knocking on me saying, when are you going to write your next book? When are you going to write your next book and I was like, I'm too busy running this company, you know, we have 27 employees and but then what we did is we applied story branding to our company. Are you familiar with that story branding?   It's a guy named Don Miller. He wrote a book called Building a story brand and it's all about basically telling the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell's work, using the hero's journey, just like great movies, do great books do weaving a story where your customer is the hero, and you are the guide. So the company is the guide, you help your customers and so we changed everything on our marketing around that, and how we served our members as being the heroes and I just got into this whole storytelling thing. I'm like, this is fascinating the structure of how to write a story, a compelling story that engages people that elicits an emotional change all that and so one day when in a coaching session, I said, you know, if I was going to write a book, I'd probably tell a story and then he heard that and you just like, What do you mean, tell me more and then that was the spark. So then then I get obsessed with it and I'm like, I could write a parable about what I've learned over the last 20 years as an investor, what I've learned in the last 25 years as a coach, yeah, and kind of weave them together into a story.   Michael: How cool and without giving away too much of the book. I mean, what could people what should people expect to find when they when they get a copy?   Rich: Basically, it's about this family, man, his name is Ryan Brooks and he's like a hard worker. He's got a wife, he's got a couple kids, and he's making a decent six figure income maxing out his 401k but he has no time for his wife or his kids or even his life and he's not investing. He's basically what we call today, Henry, right? A high earner, not rich yet. So he's…   Michael: I love it.   Rich: Yeah, they're out there does a lot of people you know, especially in California, where I'm based, and that make a lot of money, make a good income, but they're not rich, they're not wealthy, and they're not investing their money. They're spending it on things and so this guy is, is in that same trap. So he just starts to learn from he meets this new friend and mentor, who takes him out on adventures. Of course, it takes him out climbing takes him out mountain biking in in the sessions, when they're having fun together. He teaches him about investing about how wealthy people think, how rich people operate, and how and how poor people operate and think and he really goes over the difference between, you know, truly wealthy people, and people with a lot of money. He even says, you know, I know some people who are so poor, all they have is money and I see that in Malibu, you know, where I live there's a lot of has a lot of money and some of the people are really stoked and really happy and getting the most out of life and investing their money at some of the people are grumpy and miserable and, you know, that's rich in money but not in life.   So there's a lot of lessons about helping Ryan Brooks and his mentor walks them through this on how to invest how to how to really look at life through a different lens. One of my favorite things a mentor says to his mentor is about assets and he just kind of puts it in a different frame. He's like, you know, assets is are anything that will provide you income, or better health or happiness or two time and liability is anything that detracts from your income, or your health or your happiness or your time. So it's kind of a cool that type of perspective is this mentor is like, he's the me I hope to be in the future. He's that in that wise investor who's you know, he's got it all together, he's got this sage advice. He's very stoic, but he shares these lessons. So it covers the journey of five years of when they first met, and Ryan Brooks is struggling and just doesn't know what to do and it shows five years later, what happens and how he becomes wealthy in more ways than just money. I love it in money, too.   Michael: I love it. I love it enrich. Where can people find the book?   Rich: It's on Amazon, all major booksellers, published through Rich Dad advisors. So Robert Kiyosaki wrote the foreword for me, which I'm very grateful for… Come full, full circle, right.   Michael: Totally.   Rich: Yeah. So it's on Amazon. It's called the wise investor. Subtitle is a modern parable about creating financial freedom and living your best life. I got the cover right here. So it's out on eBook. This is what the cover looks like. Perfect. So it's out on eBook. But the printed version, the hardcover and the audio book won't be out until August and it's because of just like real estate supply chain issues. There's not enough paper at the printers, so it's a long wait six, seven months now to get a book printed.   Michael: Holy smokes…   Rich: Isn't it wild?   Michael: Yeah, okay. Well, I'm interested, get your order in now, because it might be a while.   Rich: Right, yeah. So hopefully it all comes out in August. Hopefully it comes out earlier in August but yeah, and the audio book was, that was a fun challenge for me. Big goal, because, you know, it's a story and there's 10 different characters, females, older people, young kids, so I had to become, I had to learn some voice acting skills over the period of a couple of months and really practice it. Oh, how can I think I pulled it off, we'll see how the reviews are.   Michael: Right on. That's great. Well, Rich, I'm curious to get your opinion on something because you're a coach, I will also work as a coach and there are folks out there that say you can take the horse to water, but you can't make him drink and so thinking about kind of the Henry's out there, and I think a lot of our listeners might find themselves in this boat, too. They have friends, family, folks around them that don't get real estate investing, right? I have a six figure job, I got a great job, why would I bother investing, I can make more money at my job. So what do you say to all those people and really, how do you position investing in general or real estate investing specifically to the people that think they haven't really good as things stand?   Rich: Yeah, I mean, first of all, you know, as a coach, I'm going to help point out what is good first, you know, this is the way I coach, the gratefulness piece and, you know, it's like, well, you know, be stoked on that six figure job, or whatever it is and it's about creating freedom and so many people don't have that freedom and that's what the Henry's don't have. If they have a short runway, if they stopped if they lost their job, which we've seen happen, they don't have many months left of cash flow, to be able to live their lifestyle, or any type of lifestyle. So that's the biggest thing would be that, do you want to create freedom for yourself, and not have the stress of losing your job, or wanting to move to a different job, if you're not loving what you're doing, a lot of people stay trapped, struggling, just trapped in their jobs, because it's like, this is my income, this is the way this is what I need to make ends meet. So that's the biggest thing, it's really about having your money, make money, so you can create freedom in the future freedom of time and everything. I think that's the biggest one and then so then flipping on the other side, there's something too about America, in the world that we are preprogrammed.   When we think invest, we think stock market and you know, I have nothing against it and Kathy and I are and my wife and I are invested in the stock market, but our major focus and the big aha, back through that story is, you know, we were doing that we were contributing to our IRAs and, you know, doing everything we were supposed to do investing in the stock market. But when we learned about leverage the power of leverage and how you can like 5x your money, just through the power of leverage. I mean, that's a standout and that's one of the lessons the mentor goes over in the book. He, he has Ryan compared to say, say you have $200,000 to invest and you invest 200,000, and gold, you put 200,000 and you buy, you buy maybe 400,000 in the stock market on that, you just leverage it and then you invest that same amount into real estate and then he kind of plays it out over five years, and over 10 years, sorry. So he's like 10 years later, and he said, so how much would the gold be worth at the same appreciation that's gold has been at and they look at that outcome and he said, oh, now let's look at your stocks and he looks at that. It's like good, he's got a decent return. Another investment, you know, he's got home and he's like, almost tripled his money but then the real estate, he looks at it, and he's 5x his money and more and then he's like, and that doesn't include the cash flow. It doesn't appreciate all the depreciation write offs and the tax benefits. So it's kind of like an eye opener to be like, oh, wait a minute. Now I see the, you know that the angels sing about investing in real estate and all those amazing, amazing benefits.   Michael: Totally, totally. Yeah, that makes that makes complete sense and curious, rich to get your thoughts on when looking for a coach because I think that that's something that some people have trouble wrapping their head around, it's like, oh, I you know, I don't have a coach in life and so I would never be inclined to go get a coach or pay for coaching and so if people are inclined to do so if people are okay, accepting that, what are some things they should be looking for when selecting a coach, or a mentor or whatever, you'd have someone to help walk them through their journey?   Rich: Yeah and that's a great question. It's like, I'd actually like to start step back a little bit, because you said what if they want to coach I would even go as far as there's a lot of people that I meet who say, Why do I need a coach, you know, I can hold myself accountable. I, I know how to set goals. I know how to go after what I want and everything in so why would I… Yeah, like you said, Why would I even pay someone or do anything like that and it's, you know, it's that age old metaphor or an analogy of an Olympic athlete, right? Did they get to the Olympics without a coach? No, you need someone to point things out. So for me, I know the power of coaching has been incredibly amazing because I have a coach to basically hold up the mirror to ask me the questions that I'm not asking myself, to help me look at myself and be like, you know, asking those tough questions. How are you operating? Are you being your best self? Are you, where are you getting in your own way? What's that inner Gremlin in your head saying to you? What's your limiting beliefs and what are you going to do here, what and look at new perspectives, new ideas. So there's a power in that, that it's called, I'm certified in CO active coaching, which is two people, you know, when you come together, you come up with ideas that you neither would have thought about their own? So that's another powerful piece of coaching. So that's, that's the first part of my answer and then the second part is, when you're looking for a coach, I think it's really what you're looking for.   So are you looking for a mentor, which is I think, different than a coach, a mentor has kind of been there, done that, just like the mentor, and in the book I wrote, he's been there and done that. So he can say, if you just do what I did, you will be where I am, which is awesome, and very valuable and that's a mentor and I think some people are looking for training and consulting, where they sign up for a coaching program. But it's more about teaching to learn a specific skill and that's very valuable to so and then the third one would be looking for a coach who's more like that coactive approach where it's someone who I first shared, and what I've gotten from coaching is someone to ask the most powerful questions, someone who's intuitive, someone who can really help you shift your mindset and be your best self and operate at your best self. So that would be a another type of coach or a peer coach in my eyes and sometimes it comes together, you know, I'll say to my clients, do you mind if I throw on my consulting hat right now or my mentoring hat? So they know that I'm stepping out of that coat peer coaching role and be like, you know, I've invested in real estate for a while I can give you some advice here, I'm not going to have you, you know, go and search it and try to learn it elsewhere when I've got it right here, and I can share it with you. So I think that's it, it's like looking for what is it that you want? What are you looking for and that would be the first thing and when I was interviewing for a coach and looking for I've had several coaches over the past 25 years, when I interview a coach, I'm always coming from the place of like, what's the vibe? What's it feel like to be coached by this person?   Do they? Do they ask powerful questions? Are they really hearing me and are they into my vision? You know, I think the biggest thing would be connecting with that coach, and really, really noticing, like, is this coach, really seeing my vision? Do they really get me who I am and what I want what's going to help me be fulfilled in my life, and in my career, and it's just a sense thing. So you can get that sometimes you you're talking to a coach, it's like, oh, this guy's or gals just coaching for the money, you know, just looking for another client. Sometimes you talk to a coach, it's like, wow, this person is really like, wants to coach me on their ideal client and so you can sense that   Michael: Interesting and how should people be thinking about it for themselves? If maybe they're not sure if someone is just getting started out in this journey, they know they want to invest in real estate, that's the goal but they don't know how to approach it to the to coaching and mentoring a consultant. I mean, what are some questions that they could be asking or things they could be thinking about, as they're starting?   Rich: That process gets great, I mean, experience, I would ask for experience and you know, I think it's great, you can find you can definitely find a coach, you know, or whatever they call themselves. They might call themselves a mentor, but it's like asking those questions. and talking to that person, just you know. So here are some of my goals. I know that you invest in real estate, can you tell me about your real estate background? What's your investment, investment philosophy? What have you invested in and I would even ask the coach, you know, what's been your biggest challenge your biggest failure as a real estate investor, you know, get see how vulnerable and real they are and if they're willing to, you know, to share that, and what's been your biggest, you know, what's been your biggest win as a real estate investor and what's your greatest strength? So I would ask some of those questions of a coach and then also like, what's, where do you I mean, real estate investing so broad, right and so it's like, what do you specialize in? What do you know best? When it comes to real estate investing?   Michael: Yeah, I love that. You mentioned tell me your biggest failure, biggest flop. I had a mentor back in the day, and he said, I don't trust anybody without a limp. Yeah, because like the people that have only had successes don't know how to do save no right to ship when things go sideways, and they will go sideways.   Rich: They will, they will. Yeah, I know that people who got into real estate in 2010-2015, who are just, you know, knock it out of the park, and they think they're, you know, superheroes. Sometimes I'm like, oh, careful, careful   Michael: We are all superheroes in this, you know, the last decade.   Rich: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.   Michael: So Rich, talk to us a little bit about what you've seen. Some of your coaching students or mentees get right and what have they gotten wrong because you really we have the beauty of hindsight now…   Rich: When it comes to investing, specifically?   Michael: When it comes to investing specifically…   Rich: Yeah, wrong and it's the same mistakes that Kathy and I made too. And it's that you try to talk people out of it and it's like buying an overpriced property in a non-landlord friendly state that is maybe slightly negative cashflow, or just breakeven, and they're looking at and say, but look at how this is appreciating in five years, it's going to be worth this much and it's like, no, so honestly, that's the biggest mistake I can see and I can see it in single family all the way up to multifamily. You know, just speaking at these conferences and meeting with a lot of people are doing multifamily. They think they're superheroes. They're doing this short term, short term lending short term loans, and bridge loans and really dangerous stuff at this time in the market because it's what's worked in the past and they think that they just like, Well, yeah, it's like, I know, this is a I know, it's only a you know, 2% cap rate, but that's okay because, yeah, just a one in three years… Yeah, exactly, so there's something there's something about, there's something about that. Yeah, it's just it's fundamentals, I think that's what it is, is comes down to investing fundamentals and that's what we preach at our company. It's how we help our investors, it's just really coming back to the fundamentals. Make sure you're doing it right.   Michael: Yeah, that makes sense and what about the other side of that coin for the folks that you've really just seen knock it out of the park? What are they doing and you can't say the fundamentals, you have to pick a different answer go?   Rich: That's great. I love that. Agreed, yeah, what value is that? Really, it's the people who, what I've seen, it's the people who take the long term game plan to the boring investors, the ones who are not trying to do this rapid growth, and trying to 10x their portfolio or 20, exit, or whatever it is. So it's keeping that long term perspective and just, you know, making sure that you can control the properties through any type of downturn and so the lessons learned that that, you know, being going through the whole recession, the Great Recession, and the whole mortgage meltdown, and all that big lessons came from that and so that it's the people who take out long term, continuously reinvesting to so it's like, you start this small, small portfolio, whether it's passive or active, and then you just start expanding and expanding and expanding it and I would say, it's the people who focus on the overall cash flow, not just I mean, brink weaving into appreciation, but looking at it, like five years from now, this is what my portfolio will most likely be doing based on everything, even if there's a recession, or whatever and then looking out 10 years and looking at it 15 years.   So it's that big picture and then reinvesting. The opposite of that would be someone who's I have some friends who were only flipping, so very transactional, and they had to find the properties either flip it and that's where their income was coming through into constantly flipping it and they adjusted the wise ones and the smart ones adjusted and switch to the bur stead strategy and so they started to find these properties, fix them up, but then they would hold them and rent them out and now they're the ones that have amassed a good amount of wealth, whereas the other people who are flipping are still in the transaction game.   Michael: Yeah. Ah, that makes sense, that makes sense. Okay. We've had a pretty good debate on the show over episodes about something called an alligator, which I don't know if you know Michael Zuber at all he's an author of one rental at a time. He's a good friend of the podcast, but in his definition alligators any property, that's negative cashflow, you have to feed it every month to keep continue owning it. So as you're talking about big picture, are you okay? If you say for instance, take out a cash out refinance a property to make that property a go negative, but to buy property B and now your global cumulative cash flow is greater than that a property a alone.   Rich: I'm in the camp of no, don't, do not no, no negative cashflow and negative cash flow and I'll be completely honest and transparent that the house at Kathy and I were in in Malibu before this, we bought it, we fix it up, we bought it for $747,000 in Malibu, which is rare, hard to find, it's like unheard of. Yeah, it was like it was a one bedroom, one bath built in 1927 and we had to completely gutted it and rehab and we put about 300,000 into it and then we didn't get permits. So we got busted in that process and now there's still a lien on title from LA county building department and so we can't sell that place and we can't even get a refi until we get those liens off title and get it all permanent everything which is a, that's a whole different stories…   Michael: Trying to get us to do an entire podcast series…     Rich: Coastal Commission and all that stuff. So oh my gosh, so we have a tenant in there and it's slightly cash negative cash flow. So that's like 150 to 200 a month negative cash flow.   So being completely honest, we do have a negative cash flow, it drives me crazy and that house has gone up probably $400,000 over the last couple of years in value. So we could look at it that way. But we can beyond that everything that we hold is positive cash flow, even if it's just like $100 a month positive. That's fine and if we're going to do a cash out refi we make sure that it's appreciated enough where we can do that cash out refi and not have the loan payment, PTI go over what we're gonna get for rental income.   Michael: Yeah, makes sense. Well, I appreciate you sharing the misstep and the vulnerability here on the show but it wasn't intentional, that was just a series of consequences. That hadn't be negative. You wouldn't you would intentionally do that.   Rich: Yeah, we did bring it on ourselves and but yeah, wasn't intentional. We didn't want to get caught.   Michael: I've played that game before, too. It's a risky one.   Rich: It is. Yeah, so you're always looking out the window and yeah…   Michael: Who is coming in, roday gonna be the day get caught o maybe tomorrow?   Rich: Exactly. When we were almost done. We were building the final deck in the back and all of a sudden, this building inspector shows I'm investigating you because one of your neighbors called…   Michael: I was gonna say but it's probably one of your neighbors.   Rich: Yeah, because it would make the cut and concrete and it was so loud or for the whole week. I think it just drove this neighbor crazy and so it is what it is.   Michael: As soon as a quick aside one of the other hosts on the show with me, Tom he, one of his neighbors called on him he was adding an offer a small prefab office in the backyard of his property. neighbor called he gets in trouble. Same thing didn't pull permits. So now he's going through that whole rigmarole. But the funny part is the neighbor that called Tom found out that their fence is on Tom's property, it's on the wrong side of the property. He's like, thanks for calling and alerting me to that little fact.   Michael: Unbelievable.   Rich: So he's, he's playing that game. How do I how do I want to you know, play my next hand?   Rich: The revenge game…   Michael: That's it, that's it, best served cold on ice. Okay, Rich. Let's wrap up here. I'm curious to get your thoughts. We are in this very unique time in our economy in our market in this country and I'm just curious to kind of get your thoughts on what are you doing, personally as an investor and what are you doing in your business and what are you telling your students to do, as well?   Rich: Absolutely, yeah. I have the benefit of being married to Kathy Fettke, who has been around for a while she's on the on the market podcast on Bigger Pockets and so she's constantly doing her market updates every year, she does predictions and has done that for the last 15 years and then at the every quarter, she doesn't investor update and at the end of the year, she puts herself on the line says okay, here's what I predicted back in January. Let's see how accurate I am and yeah, and she's been really good. She's like almost 95% on her predictions, which is awesome. So I just listened to her. You know, she's always interviewing experts and she's connected with like John Chang from Marcus and Millichap and so many just, you know, experts, as I said, with Kiyosaki and all that. So what she's saying I'll just speak, you know, because I get to hear through her office door when she's doing all her interviews and everything she think He said interest rates are not going to go up that much more, maybe even dip a tiny bit for mortgages, and then maybe level off.   But even though the Feds gonna keep raising the rate, the lender and great mortgage rates can't kind of withstand that going up too much. So she thinks mortgage rates are going to hold around where they are and then there's such a glut in such a need for properties and not enough inventory. It's like a whole different world than 2008-2009. So yeah, I think we're, it's estimates are between three and 5 million homes shy right now, for housing units. So inventory still low and also, there's that whole thing where people are locked into these amazing interest rates, so they don't want to sell. So they just, it doesn't make sense to sell something and when you got a 3% mortgage or lower and go into a higher mortgage, so the real estate is gonna hold strong is what she's predicting, it's even going to increase a little bit rents are even going to increase a little bit surprisingly, even with, with the economy and inflation, rents are still gonna go up a little bit, that's her prediction and then a recession will hit well, most likely, sometime around late 2023, early 2024 but it will be a mild one, just kind of more of a correction that that's needed.   Michael: Okay. Okay and does either her or you think that there will be any kind of pullback in demand as folks go back into the office or are we going to be seeing remote work kind of indefinitely, which I think was a big driver of that single family rental demand?   Rich: Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah and the cool thing is like, we have teams that are like the boots on the ground. So there's different 15 different property teams in our company that find properties and so and we just did a mastermind with them in Tampa, Florida and we spent two days and we really talked about all this exact same stuff. So it's, it's something around not like a big hit on it. There still will be some availability, but not much different than if you look at today's current market right now is not going to be a lot different than that over the next year and a half.   Michael: So for instance, we don't expect there to be much pullback in terms of demand. Dude, because we're expecting people to continue remote working basically…   Rich: There's definitely a return to the office. There's there are definitely companies that are saying no, it's time to come back now that we want to look over your shoulder, we want to hold you accountable and all that stuff. It's so funny, because it's like the surfing lineups are getting a little bit lighter thinning. So funny. Go Oh, it's like why are so many people surfing? Oh, they're supposed to be orange. They think they're working. Their bosses think they're at work right now. Yeah. So I'm seeing a pullback there. So that's my gauge.   Michael: So funny.   Rich: Yeah, but not as much. There's definitely, with so many people how they've learned to use Zoom and GoTo Meeting and being remote and all that stuff. It's we're in a new world, there's no doubt about it. So I think there's going to be a slight pullback on buyers and transactions and all that. As far as the rate, but it's still not going to it's not going to drop to like dismal levels.   Michael: Okay, sweet. Well, we will definitely have to stay in touch and see how you do how you and your wife do on those percentages. Rich, this has been so much fun, man. Thank you again, if people want to learn more about you want to learn more about real wealth, where can they do that?   Rich: For the book? Like I said, it's on Amazon or if people want to learn more, before they buy it, just go to https://realwealth.com/the-wise-investor-book/  and then our website is just simple, real wealth: https://realwealth.com/   Michael: Perfect. Alright, thank you again and I'm sure we'll be chatting soon.   Rich: All right, man. Thank you, it was fun.   Michael: All right, everyone a big thank you to Rich for coming on. Super, super insightful. I know I learned a ton as a coach myself in what to look for in a coach and mentor going forward as well. So as always, thank you so much for listening, and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

The Remote Real Estate Investor
How much is too much real estate in your portfolio?

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2022 16:16


A common refrain in the investment world is, diversify your portfolio. But many real estate investors have a massive majority of their net worth in property. In this episode, Michael shares his thoughts on portfolio diversification and why he is so heavily focused on rental property. --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Pierre: Hey everyone, welcome to the Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Pierre Carrillo and today I am joined by…   Michael: Michael Albaum   Pierre: and today we are going to talk about portfolio diversification, so let's just jump right in. Hey, Michael.   Michael: How's it going Pierre?   Pierre: So Michael, one of the basic pieces of investment advice that I hear everywhere is diversification, diversification, diversify, don't be too consolidated. Because if any one piece of the market goes down, you're going to be left exposed somewhere. I remember you saying in a previous episode, that you're about 80-85% in real estate, and that made me think, wow, that's heavily consolidated. How do you find, how do you find comfort in being so consolidated in one asset class?   Michael: Yeah, it's a really good question, Pierre and I think, for me, my strategy has changed over the 10 plus years that I've been investing and so for me, I was very focused on single family when I first got started and I think a lot of people do kind of find their niche inside of single family investing and it's funny because there's this, there's kind of two camps. There's one that says, diversify, diversify, diversify and then another one says, get rich in your niche and niche down and pick one thing to do and do it really well and if you can do it really well, you don't really need diversification. Diversification is for people that maybe aren't able to niche down or pick one thing or particular that they're passionate about, or really good at. So for me, I was always thinking about single families. I wanted to purchase a bunch of them, I wanted to own a bunch and I thought that was great and at the end of the day, and we've talked about it on prior episodes, the like I think what people are always scared about is their value decreasing, given some event or over time and that's when people talk about, like the S&P 500 index funds, you have a bunch of different companies.   And so if one goes out of business, you're not only holding that stock and so that is usually because the value can evaporate and unless the stock is paying some kind of dividend, or it's paying some kind of yeah, I guess that's what stocks dividends, the value of the stock is really in the value and hopefully it goes up over time. With rental real estate, we've got kind of a two headed play here. One is like a yield play a cashflow play, that pays us every single month and every single year and then the other is the appreciation, which is congruent, or synonymous with the stock value going up over time and so again, I'm really less concerned with the value of the property over time, because given a long enough time horizon, I'm comfortable, that thing is going up into the right. But even in the event of a downturn where the value is decreased, I've got yearlong leases and so the rent that I'm going to be collecting is likely going to be unaffected and unchanged. So for that reason, I was really comfortable getting very involved in the single family asset class. The other thing to think about is, I think real estate is this big, all-encompassing umbrella, if you will, it catches a lot of things, and a lot of different events like sub asset classes, for those you watching. I'm doing air quotes, so there's single family investing, there's multifamily investing, there's triple net lease investing, there's industrial, there's flipping, there's all these other things that you can be doing under the real estate umbrella, that I would argue are diversifying you within the asset class itself and so if you'll say, well, people talked a lot about during when COVID first hit, oh, apartments are doomed. Everyone's moving to single family, they want more space. Well, a lot of people thought a lot of things about during COVID when the pandemic first hit, and I don't think that was necessarily true. It was maybe in a little bit of San Francisco and New York and some of these major, major, major metros, but most of our listeners and most of our beginning investors aren't investing in those cities to begin with and so A) I don't think we saw that happen B) we definitely didn't see values fall through the floor, they kind of went the other way. But you can be diversified within the asset class. So if you own multifamily, you own single family, maybe you did see some folks leave your multifamily but maybe you saw your single family values increase. So I think that there's a lot of different ways to play this and then last but not least, I would say if you're in the short term space, you've been killing it for last two years and so again, that's a kind of third way to diversify with in the real estate asset class itself.   Pierre: So with for people just starting out and if they're just you know, you save up a big chunk of money and you because there's a high barrier to entry to get into real estate. How should like is does that diversification just happen over time or is there some sort of comfort you can find in that initial first down payment that you're putting up? It's like, chopping an arm off just to get started?   Michael: Yeah, well, I think for those people who are just getting started, one of the reasons that they may have been attracted initially into real estate is because it is diverse and different from the other things that they're doing. It's not the stock market, it's not a it's not an investor, a retirement portfolio, which is often invest in the stock market. It's not in bonds, so it is different and without getting into like the correlation of the real estate market versus the stock market and talking about, I think it's beta, or maybe it's alpha talking about the differences in the correlations, it's different than what they're currently doing and I think that in and of itself means that you are diversifying and if that's a part of your investment thesis, that diversification is important, this can be a great place to come do that. So I think with regard to your question about saving so much for the down payment, or kind of chopping off an arm and putting a big chunk of your potential overall net worth into that first property, I think people need to think long and hard about that, I think they need to understand what the risks are, what the benefits are and if those are both tolerable, I think the conclusion that I came to and that a lot of other people have come to for themselves is that real estate's a fairly safe place to park money, because of what I mentioned earlier, if it's rented and the value goes down, it doesn't really affect us and it's an unrealized gain or loss, just like in the stock market and so you'll say, oh, I made a bunch of money, the stock market today, well, not unless you bought or sold. So unless you're actually doing a transaction, the value is kind of meaningless. It's always fun to talk about at parties or get together with your friends. Oh, that's probably my net worth whatever like, but doesn't mean anything. It's not tangible and realized until you do something with it and so if you are planning on doing this for the long term, and for the long haul, parking money in real estate, for my experience has been a really great thing for me over time.   Pierre: Okay, so I know you're not, we're not giving investment advice at all here. But from the tone of it, real estate is a safe place to park your money that implies to me that you are like, you're not super worried about a major market correction affecting your values or affecting rent prices to the point where it brings you into the red. You are you feeling good moving forward into the next year?   Michael: Yeah, I'm feeling really good and here's why. Like, I was just listening to a book, an audio book, as part of the Roofstock Academy, we do a book club, and this quarter, we're reading first 2 million by Dan sheets, and he's gonna be joining us for a Q&A session with all of our members who read the book. And so I'm reading this book, and he's talking about the 4% rule and for anyone that might not be familiar, the 4% rule basically says, once you've hit a $1 amount inside of an investment portfolio, and a stock portfolio, you can very safely and confidently withdraw 4% of the value every year, because the hope is that you're essentially living off the interest, you're essentially living off the gains that that portfolio is throwing off, and the principle is not going to be reduced. Well, that's all fine well and good when the markets going up. But when the market goes down, and you're continuing to draw on this account, you could see that dwindle very quickly, and possibly to a point that's unrecoverable and so that again, is the value of the stock is going up or the stocks are going up in value, the portfolio is going up, you're drawing down a certain percentage. For real estate oftentimes, we're not relying on the principal value of the property to do this stuff with, right we can, there are tons of people that I know that only live off the cash flow that the real estate portfolios are generating, they don't care what the value is, it can go up, it can go down, it can go sideways, it doesn't matter because the cash flow the property generates is independent of the value. Your tenants aren't saying, oh, well, the property is valued at x. So I'm only going to pay you why and rent doesn't work like that, which is the nice thing and so I'm much more comfortable and confident in the historic performance, the really strong historic performance of real estate, again, for the rental market, independent of what values are doing and so if I'm someone that's planning to live off my cash flow, I get a great deal of my living income from cash flow. I'm not worried about the principal balance versus in the stock market. When it goes up. It's great when it goes down. I mean, that can that can take a long time to recover from. So yeah, I'm very comfortable going into this the upcoming year 2022 and beyond. That's like a Buzz Lightyear saying to infinity and beyond.   Pierre: That's good to hear, that makes a lot of sense. I guess there's other ways you can find that diversification beyond just between single family and multifamily or even commercial. I know you're investing in vacation rentals outside of the country. I mean, you're completely separate from the US economy. So and then we've spoken on the podcast before with Peter Badger doing the investing in agricultural land and, and internationally as well. So yeah, I guess there's a lot of different ways that you can achieve that diversity with or diversification within your portfolio just using real estate. Are there ways that someone might be exposing themselves to learn how to say this, but like being under diversified in real estate? What are some things that people need to look out for?   Michael: I mean, I guess in theory, you could be if you were invested in New Orleans, when Katrina hit and didn't have really great insurance policies, that's probably an area where you could easily be overexposed. It's a really good question and one that I haven't really thought about because I come from the insurance world and so I'm make darn sure that I'm, I'm not taking on too much because aggregate exposure in the insurance world, an insurance company will look at all of the insurance that they have in a particular area and say, okay, well, if an earthquake happens, we're going to have claims on all of these buildings, that's going to be a ton to pay out. So that's how they're evaluating the risk. I do something similar, and say, okay, well, if something really bad happens, I've got the insurance. But how long? Is it going to take these properties to get rebuilt? And what does that look like going forward? So I think you absolutely could, but I think it's, it's going to be a factor related to other things, not purely the fact that you are investing in own properties all in the same geographic location, are all inside the same asset class and as we talked about regularly on the podcast, real estate is so hyperlocal and so someone could argue, oh, you've got 10 homes in Louisiana, and 10 homes in North Carolina and 10 homes in California and so you're all in single families you ever exposed?   Well, I would argue that that might not be the case, I don't think we can look at that. That surface level data point and say, yes, someone's overexposed, I would say, let's look and understand, okay, what kind of natural catastrophes are in an area? Are they all on the same street? Do they have good insurance policies? What does that look like? What does their occupancy look like? So it's tough to say, without doing a little bit of a deeper dive, that just because someone owns X amount of properties, that represents Y percentage of their net worth, they are over or underexposed and it also comes down to risk tolerance, you can have two people that own very similar portfolios. One is can't sleep at night, because they're worried about a hailstorm taking out all the roofs, the other could not think twice about it, because they got good insurance, or whatever the case is for that person. So it becomes very personal and that's why one of the reasons I love real estate is because there's no right or wrong, there's only right or wrong for you as an individual.   Pierre: Yeah nd some other thing is it's working out in the past, it's just making sure you have multiple strategies available for you with every property that you have. So if you're buying a short term rental, you know, see if it's going to work, maybe you won't make as much money. But could it work as a long term rental? That's another way just to kind of build diversity within your single property.   Michael: Totally And you're seeing a lot of people do that. Now as they're pivoting. They're realizing, hey, my single family has long term makes way more sense as a short term rental, awesome, don't have to do a whole lot to the property to pivot that way.   Pierre: So that that'll make sense And thanks for all of that. Speaking about the other remainder of your portfolio, how do you assess where you're going to put your money outside of real estate?   Michael. That's a good question; That's going into index funds. Just diversification, I have to think about it, I have to worry about it. I just set it and forget it type of thing. We just had a guest on the podcast couple weeks ago, he was talking about picking stocks, and how index fund investing is kind of silly, but go pick stocks and win big. I've done okay, that in the past, but I think it's for me, it's more of a gamble and I real estate for me, because I did a lot of value add investing was definitely a little bit of a gamble. And so I'm very happy now I was in growth mode for a lot of years and now I'm very happy with just a kind of modest return from the stock market and so if it does, great, awesome, if it doesn't, that's okay, too. I'm in it for the long haul and to use that up into the right analogy again, I know given the time horizon that I'm anticipating for holding the stocks and adding to the portfolio. It's going to be going up into the right…   Pierre: Have you messed it all with crypto yet?   Michael: Yeah, it's funny. My wife and I have been playing around with crypto for the last couple years and she works in the tech space as well do in for an education company and we were she came home and he like Michael I did an interview with someone and we're talking about this thing called the theory I'm like we should check it out. So we did some research and ended up buying some a couple years ago and we put it on a I forgot to call like a cold a cold wallet like a USB thumb drive. Well I called wallet yeah and then like stuck it in the bank safe deposit box and never thought twice about it and then like last May everyone was talking about crypto and so I just looked at the values and I was like, Holy crap. I think we've made a lot of fun ready and so we did some more research and played on some of their Kryptos. But it's all like Vegas casino money, to be honest, it's not. It's not something that I understand first and foremost and that's what a lot of financial experts will tell you is don't invest in anything you don't understand unless you're prepared to lose it all and so that's totally where we're at. Like, it's rolling the dice if it does great, awesome. If not, well, you know, it was it was exciting while we were in it.   Pierre: Oh, well, that's all good to hear, man and I think that answers my question about diversification. So I think that's all I have.   Michael: Awesome. Well, great questions Pierre. Thanks a lot, man. Appreciate you having me on.   Pierre: Me having you on. Alright, alright. Let's get out of here.   Alright, everyone that is our episode for today. Thanks so much for joining us. Remember to subscribe to our podcast that helps us bring you more content like this every day and we hope to catch you on the very next one. Happy investing.   Michael: Happy investing.

The Remote Real Estate Investor
How we'd invest $50K, as a beginner and as an experienced investor

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2022 21:30


Investing $50,000 in real estate can go a long way toward creating a diversified rental property portfolio that generates strong cash flow, provided that you do it right. Today we are asking each other the question how we would invest this amount of cash. In this episode, Tom, Emil and Michael share how they would invest $50,000 in real estate if they were just starting out, and if they know what they know now. --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Emil: Hey, everyone, welcome back for another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Emil Shour and today I'm joined by…   Tom: Tom Schneider   Michael: and Michael Albaum.   Emil: And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about how each of us would invest $50,000 in real estate, and we're gonna frame it as what we would do with that 50k when we were first starting out, versus how we would approach it now, so let's hop into this episode.   Well, I can't ask what's on your guys's mind? Because we just went through that so, huh… Hmm. You know, I used to have this boss that every every meeting every week, he would come in and just ask some random question to avoid the like, so how's everyone doing? That was like, it's a good way to kind of start a meeting, get like really random answers from people.   Tom: You got an example of one?   Emil: He would honestly as a really weird, he's like a weird dude. But like funny, weird. Yeah, probably not suitable for this show. The ones I remember.   Michael: There was a my, my wife loves David Sedaris. And he does a masterclass and he talks about comedy. And one of the questions he loves asking people was, so when was the last time you touched a monkey? He asked him on this and they were like, oh my gosh, like, can you smell it on me, I was working with him earlier at the zoo today? And he was like, no way and it led to him like being able to go play with the monkeys at the zoo. Like and that's why you should always ask random questions.   Emil: He had asked like 400 people, and they all I never spoke to him again, but that one person…   Michael: The one was a big one.   Emil: Then he finally got to meet a monkey at the zoo.   Michael: Yeah…   Tom: Bad news man, getting a baby monkey and then growing up a lot of sad stories about …like ripping arms off. Anyways, sorry…   Michael: That's a… go hard left fast…   Tom: Yeah.   Emil: All right with that we're gonna hop in and talk about real estate. So the topic today is how do you invest 50k? I think this will be interesting. If Michael ever gets it together here.   Michael: Oh man…   Emil: How would you invest 50k If you know what you know, now, but you're just starting out. So take yourself back to you have your current mind, you're going back to when you first started. So how would you invest 50k? And then we'll talk about you're at where you're at currently, you're 50 grand, you want to invest in real estate? What do you guys? What are we all doing? So who wants to kick off? Going back to the past with 50k?   Tom: So, Tom's gonna go first. I would… So me with real estate investing, I really enjoy real estate investing, but I also really enjoy the kind of passive nature of it, more probably more than Michael and Emil, I think they're like, way more active. So I think this is going to be a good diverse range of responses to this question. So what I would probably do so I'd say there's there's two options, right For me, as I also really like single family off of multifamily, just a little bit less to do plus less turns plus XYZ. What I, I would see this as two options, I can either go to, to pick buy two properties in more kind of class C markets, not not as in like, negative, but like smaller markets, right? Talking about like, maybe Birmingham or buy or like Memphis?     Emil: We'll call it Tier 3, it's classy…   Tom: Sure, sure. Sure. Sure. So the my options would be to that or to buy one property in like a Class B area, you know, maybe a, you know, Atlanta, Raleigh, you know, Dallas, one of those guys and where I am right now, if I had 50k, I'm still trying to deploy as much capital out there. I would get debt for sure. I would, I would max out my debt on it. You know, I … we know well, being conscious of not getting over my tips, making sure that my income could support my debt coverage. But I would probably, I'd probably got two properties in one of those smaller markets. But you know, I might have a old fishing pole in the water on some of those larger markets. If something were to come up, I'd cast a wider net, you know, it's a busier acquisition time. So that's why we deployed by SFR, I would look at those smaller markets max, loan to value most of it… That is what I would do, went a little bit long didn't it… Ehmm, yeah. Done…   Michael: Love it. Would you buy… Would you buy both in the same market? Do you think it would use spread them out? Peanut butter spread, as they say…   Tom: I would probably buy them in the same market. Again, like so important to that to develop a thesis when investing in me is a little bit less overhead. So just using a single property manager, you know, doing that work and finding the right property manager, maybe having them help me out on the acquisition side, as far as evaluating neighborhoods and whatnot. So yes, it's a market. Good question, Michael.   Michael: Love it, love it, love it.   Emil: So, Michael, what would you do?   Michael: I think I'm taking that 50,000 and like Tom gonna go get some debt. But I am probably going to go buy a multifamily building, something a little bit bigger that I could, you know, really, really scale with. And it's probably going to be a little more turnkey, because having done the whole multifamily value, add thing, it can often be a lot more expensive than first anticipated. So something that's, you know, relatively easy, stable. That's why you may go to but in close second, what I'm also going to be considering is going and using a 15%, down DSCR loan and going to go purchase a short term rental, which would probably be a single family out in one of those vacation markets that are out there. But I think it can be a really, really, really great use of cash to generate quick income to then go to buy additional properties.     Emil: Michael, for anyone who doesn't know, what is a stable multifamily property, what does that look like?   Michael: Yeah, it's something that has, it's really good question. First off, it's something that has probably already been rehabbed, either extensively or lightly, doesn't have a whole lot of deferred maintenance, rent is probably going to be pretty close to at market rent. So I'm not going to feel the need to, to get new tenants in place when their leases are expiring, because they're already up at market rent. Just something that has been taken care of, or well maintained. Doesn't need a whole lot of CapEx.   Tom: Short term rentals are interesting. How do you find your overhead as an owner relative to your multifamily single family versus long term versus short term rental? Do you find it pretty similar? I would imagine that there's obviously range like there's variants with each of them, but just general ality generally speaking…   Michael: Yeah, it's a big range and it so depends on like my older vintage multifamily, it's gonna be a little bit even less than some of the expense ratio on that just because that has a lot more maintenance, regular, recurring maintenance type issues. On newer single families, comparing across the board to long term versus short term, short term is definitely more expensive from an expense ratio standpoint. But the income generated is still stronger. And so from a cash on cash return, it's it's still performing quite quite well.   Tom: I bought this as a metric, number of times you as an owner, you have to like make a decision or get involved.   Michael: Oh, see, short term versus long term?   Tom: Yeah, yeah, I would think I mean, I would assume short term rental, like there's a little bit more overhead as an owner. Is that wrong?   Michael: Yeah, I don't think that that's, I would say that there is more on the front end. So like we were involved in the decorations and decision making process around what amenities to include, but from a day to day…   Tom: … FF&E and OS&E those are some acronyms, Michael…     Michael: What's a OS&E?   Tom: Oh, OS&E is operating supplies in equipment, and FF&E is furniture, fixtures and equipment.   Michael: Ahhh!   Tom: No big deal, just drop an acronym…   Emil: A unit count into, what's going on here?   Michael: Yeh, sounds like an accounting term.   Tom: I know about luxury man.   Michael: You're just steeped in luxury. But no, I would say other than that. It's pretty much about as hands off as as long term if not more. So. I've really I've made very few decisions, I've been involved in very few of the conversations, we're looking at converting the garage into additional space so that of course, there's a lot more involvement in but that would be the same as if I was doing some kind of rehab work on a long term rental.   Tom: I heard a great story a description of short term rentals as comparing them to fire trucks and that they're constantly getting turned and washed like a fire truck has been around but oh, it gets it gets a fresh wash every time it goes out. So like while you might think it's a you know, getting beat up a lot it perhaps it is but it's it's getting a lot of Washington. It's like a fire truck. I don't know. I like that.   Michael: Yeah, I think I mean, I think so and it's getting eyes in it every turn. So the festering kind of long term deferred maintenance stuff tends to not be again, for my experience as big of an issue because there's people constantly putting eyes on stuff. And if there's an issue you'll hear about it immediately. Like these tenants are going to tell you because they're paying good money to be in these places. Hey, this is an issue you need to fix it.   Emil: Are you is your short term rental being professionally managed, do you have a property manager?   Michael: Yes, yeah, I'm a full service property manager, I definitely pay for it. But I'm not. I'm not at the point where I can set, you know, neither myself or my wife or I are at the point where we have enough time to be able to learn how to do that remotely for this particular property. And you know, if anyone listening is interested in learning more about short term rentals, we did a podcast episode with Avery Carl, which was a phenomenal episode, in my opinion, where she talks all about the short term rental market, and short term rentals in general and things you need to be aware of, if you're going to get involved in this space.   Tom: Did you pencil… Emil needs to give his answer, but just really last question I have on that… Did you pencil it as a longer term rental as well, just to like, see what…   Michael: I did. And it doesn't work. And so I had to always take in the opinion that it has to work as both because if something changes, I don't want to be stuck holding the bag. And after extra chatting with Avery about the short term rental market, this is out in the Smokies. She was like yeah, but the thing of it is, is the regulations aren't going to change out there. Like it is such a through and through short term vacation rental market, that she is not concerned with it being the next Santa Monica or Santa Monica, city regulators come in and say I can't do Airbnb, because it's always been short term rentals. So that's given me a lot more comfort to say, okay, I'm okay, kind of taking that leap of having it only makes sense as a vacation rental?   Emil: Well, I had one final question. I asked Michael about the third party property manager because I, what I really want to know is how does your time commitment with a third, like you have property management and on a long term and a short term? How does your monthly time commitment in terms of speaking with your property manager being involved? Like how, how much more time is it with the short term compared to long term, if any?   Michael: You know, I have probably spent less time with the short term manager than I have with long term management. I was so impressed by this company, they've been awesome and they're just like really good at what they do. And I think that universally speaking, that's kind of what I would expect in the long term world as well, I have my that one of the best property managers I have is up in Alaska, I hear from him, like once a quarter, unless we're just calling to check, you know, checkup and chew the fact sort of thing. So if a property manager is good at their job, you really shouldn't hear from them, in order for you to make decisions, they could update you and tell you what's going on and this and that. But from a decision making standpoint, if I have to hear from you and talk to you regularly, like it's probably not going very well. Right Emil how would you spend in those 50 G's?       Emil: For me, if I'm just starting out, and I want to invest in real estate, I'm, I like single family as a first starting point. And we can debate this later on a showdown. I think single family is a good way to get started, I think having one tenant, one unit to worry about just a lot less hectic. And so I'd start with a single family, I would want to do a tier two city, somewhere where the climate isn't so severe, right? Like I have properties in Indianapolis and every winter, I'm like, man, our pipes gonna freeze and explode. You know, you hear all those stories. Usually, if you have a tenant who's there, like they're running the water, and that doesn't happen. But you know, if you have a turn in the winner, always think that could happen. So I choose something with a little bit less harsh climate, just because it's going to keep everything solid for a little bit longer. And I'd probably just use it on one property to get something a little bit better, ewe just talked about on a different episode, six things we wouldn't do, again, six mistakes and for me it was buying a really cheap property on the… in the beginning, I get something a little bit nicer, less headache, you know, newer build, that's just going to be an easy learning process for me, because the first one isn't going to be the make or break. It's really you're just like learning how to deal with real estate how to deal with the property manager all this stuff. So having it be something that's going to be better long term is what I would prioritize.   Michael: Are you okay, accepting less cash flow?   Emil: I wasn't in the beginning and on the other end of it now, yes, you should like it's not going to be a huge difference. You think it will be and you know, excel math will tell you different but it's a different story. I think when you get into it.   Michael: How much cash flow, how small of a cash flow are you willing to accept and still consider it cashflow positive?   Emil: For me like even like if you're being conservative, right, like not going oh, best case scenario, right? You're ending up with like at least $50 of cash flow a month right? I think that's a good place to be at least obviously, I…   Tom: Got to beat inflation, got to beat inflation.   Michael: Beat it back with a stick…   Emil: We don't, you know, we're just talking about cash flow and again, these this isn't going to be a make or break for you. You're trying to learn and you're trying to grow. You also have equity building right in a better property that's going to be more dollar like appreciation. 10% appreciation on something that's $250,000 Verse $100,000, you're gonna make more than that equity anyway, right? It's appreciating, it's a higher appreciation.   Michael: So you're sticking to one, one property… One more expensive property?   Emil: Yes, yeah.   Michael: Alright.   Emil: Not even just expensive to be expensive just better quote like a turnkey, nicely done property that I'm not going to have a ton of headache right out the gate.   Michael: Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.   Tom: It's been a few seconds on zero scape, just installed some fake turf on my backyard. It's killer man.   Michael: Is it good?   Tom: Yeah, yeah. And then like if leaves come on it you get the power washer. And just like my my own little zen…   Michael: What about dog puppies?   Tom: That's a thing. But you know, that's where the power washer. And also that's where gates like preventing the dog to go out there. Come in…   Emil: Anyway, anyways, you could also have a dog like mine who we have we have turf in the backyard too. It's like turf in concrete. And he is afraid of it doesn't like walking on turf. So he makes us take him out in the front yard where there's real grass to go. So that's fun.   Tom: He is natural… Michael: Some… double apply.   Emil: He's a purist. He's got a good taste.   Tom: Good for him.   Michael: So Tom, are you saving some of that 50,000, so you can install zero scaping in this investment property?   Tom: Yeah, probably. I mean, the right warranties are in place with the Zero Escape. You're like basically making money when you install it, so…   Michael: Are you, are you working on zero escape installation side hustle?   Tom: I am yeah, I got a, I got a, I got some, I got some hints.   Michael: You need a guy, I got a guy…   Emil: Probably not that awesome on a rental property. Like the ROI on that is, is not great.   Tom: Nooo, problem.   Michael: Depends on who is paying this utilities though…   Emil: Yeah…   Michael: If you include these utilities in your bill…   Emil: It's your tenant.   Tom: Oh…There could be markets Emil, before you jump the gun. There could be markets with it makes a ton of sense, Las Vegas, Arizona…   Emil: I prefer talking generalities, we're not getting into nuance on this on this podcast, sorry…   Michael: I thought you only spoken absolutes.   Emil: That's it, that's it…   Michael: Now you're speaking in generalities. Man pick one Emil.   Tom: Yeah.   Emil: Ehmm, absolute is what I met. It's not... Moving on. Alright, what do we do with $50,000 now? If $50,000 is now, in your investing career, what are you guys doing? You're not a beginner, you're at your stage now, so what's next?   Tom: I am making the transition to getting some multifamily, you know, I don't know, I don't actually know short term, Michael's got me hyped up on some learn a lot more about short term, I don't know. I'm all over the place right now. This is what I'm gonna do, this is what I am gonna do actually, I'm going to set up a coaching session with Michael and we're going to go through some options and get to the root of it. I swear to God, that's like the real answer, right.   Emil: That is actually a very solid strategy. Alright, Michael 50,000, I feel like I know where you're, where you're putting money, but if 50,000, where's it going?   Michael: Yeah. Now in today's world, I'm probably splitting that. Truth be told I'm probably do you like for sure a short term rental 50% down DSCR loan, and then I'll probably wait half or two thirds and then I'm taking the other half and I'll probably park it in a syndication to be perfectly honest and just kind of enjoy the passivity that syndications provide. It's, we've been doing a lot of podcasts recently and had a lot of passive investment experts on talking about benefits, pros cons of passive investing, and I'm like, huh at this stage of my career, it's definitely sounds interesting. My back's already, you know, a little tired from from caring so much. So I'm ready to slow down a little bit and just kind of enjoy the fruits of the labor.   Emil: Nice, yeah. I'm sagging into what I'd do, I'm right there with you. So I like that I have nowhere near the amount of units like you, right that I own directly, I have six units. I think that's perfect for me and where I'm at right now, I would put $50,000 honestly, either in a REIT or yeah, in a in a private deal or something like that. Something where I'm going to be completely passive. Just given we've got two little kids, we got the six units again, that we own directly and that takes off takes up enough time and you know, business I started a year ago that's taking up a lot of time as well and attention. So I'd be looking for something passive to pocket.   Michael: I love the fact that Emil, you mentioned that you have like little kids and so you're kind of at this stage in your life where the active hands on direct investment isn't a great fit for you. But that could easily change and so you go park your money and one of these indications. Hopefully it doubles or better in a couple years' time and then you get it back and you get to decide okay, well what I want to do next I want to continue the passive route now maybe the kids a little bit older, you have more time on your hands to do something else. So I love it. I think it's, it's such a good point that there's like seasonality to this whole investing thing.   Emil: Yeah, it's not like, I'm done direct investing. It's, I'm done direct investing right now. Like, we have what we have, we're good, we're not getting rid of those and it's time for a different strategy. But you know, life changes, maybe you have a windfall, whatever, and you're like, now I'm bored. And I want to go do something more challenging and I'm gonna go do some, some value add stuff myself, maybe even like, in a market closer to me, or what did you know there are just so many different ways you can take this and it's not like those strategies you start with is going to be the strategy you end with.   Michael: Mike drop Emil out.   Emil: Don't listen to me, I don't know what I'm talking about.   Michael: That's great, man. I love it, I love it… Should we get out of here?   Emil: Yeah, let's do it.   So thanks, everybody, appreciate you tuning in for another episode, hope you got some value out of this one. And as always, please leave us a review or subscribe if you're watching on YouTube. We love seeing that number go up, it boosts your ego and it keeps us coming back every week. So we'll catch you all in the next one. Happy investing.   Michael: Happy investing.  

Mental Obsession Discussion
Everett & Michael II

Mental Obsession Discussion

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 24, 2022 113:20


Some topics reviewed: Reactive nature of obsessive thoughts.  What is happening is happening.  Maturity is not based on age.  Benders go in circles.  Ego is what we think of our “self”. Functional literacy: reading our body language.  Change, fixed, still - unmoveable. Stories are used to excuse our "self".  Service to others. Community effort.  Flexibility, adjusting, responding.  Business, goals, and vision.  Childhood presumptions as adult-erated conclusions.  Responsibility.  Relating, relationships.  Reactivity, cutting people off.  Emotional sobriety.  Honest, speaking as things are.  Facing things vs. confrontation. Reversal of order: disorder. Human mythology and culture.  Depression, persistent insistence.  We are doing what we see in others.  Listening helps us see.  Questions to thread our third of three conversations: Everett:  How do I stay in the zone?  Michael:How can I be of maximum service?   

michael how michael ii
Level Design Lobby
Level Design Lobby - Michael How #107

Level Design Lobby

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2021 41:37


A true pleasure to have Senior MP Level Designer, former Lead Level Designer the incredible Michael How. He joins us all away from the land down under to talk about his experience in the industry and advice for level designers of all levels.  Please Support: http://bit.ly/33xpKbG ------------------------------------------  Game Texutres ------------------------------------------ Link: https://gametextures.com/ Discount Code: Level99 ------------------------------------------  Let's Design Books --------------------------------------- Ebook - https://bit.ly/39BakJD Physical Books - https://bit.ly/3mfOsbS ----------------------------------------- Contact Mike ----------------------------------------- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MrHowDesigns Website: http://www.mrhow.co.uk/  ------------------------------------------- Contact Me --------------------------------------------- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaxPears​ Website: https://www.maxpears.com/​ Email: leveldesignlobby@gmail.com ----------------------------------------------

Sales & Marketing Talk Show
#81 The best sales cadence for outbound sales with Michael Hanson

Sales & Marketing Talk Show

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 18, 2021 37:31


In this Sales & Marketing Talk Show, we discuss Outbound Sales Cadence with Michael Hanson. Michael will be answering these questions: -How did he come up with 30 touches sales cadence? -Why do you need 30 touches in your sales cadence? That's quite much! -What happens on the first day of the sales cadences? -How many days you should wait after every day and what happens next? -2 days later…. -2 days later…. -2 days later…. -3 days later…. -How big part of prospect answer at some point of this cadence? -What to do if the answer is not interesting? -Last guest April Dunford's question to Michael: How to make sure that when you do outreach that you do it for real potential clients? (not only someone who wants to have a meeting) -Michael's question to the next guest Udi Ledergor, CMO at Gong

Small Business Banter
Laura Racky, business founder and commercial lawyer at LL Gold, talks starting and building successful businesses

Small Business Banter

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2021 27:51


@lauraracky is a #commerciallawyer in her own firm @LLGold. But her being her knows that's not really enough. She likes to have lots of things going. Her portfolio of interests includes;#cofounder @AllFounders - a business which is more focused on #leadershiptraining and #businessstrategy but has expanded into #podcasting #tickertv#founder @LGlowBeauty - because she just loves all things beauty and skincaremultiple board and advisory roles (past & current) in #nfps and #communityorganisations including @channel31 @hibgrouphug #mazzeifoundationFor Laura these #newbusinesses are a kind of hobby and an outstanding source of constant learning which feeds back into her core role as #commerciallawyer and  #businessowner. She #loveslearning, #newchallenges and #newbusiness. In our discussion we cover;the #businesschallenges thrown up by #covid19#takingstock how #businessowners are adapting and reinventingthe boring but important things to do in the #first100days of a new business a love of learning new things and being challenged becoming a better #businessadviserhow she chooses to do what she does and time management learning that not everything is urgent or important #givingbackgetting involved with #nfps #ecommercewww.kerrcapital.com.auA full transcript is below.Michael Kerr: Hi, it's Michael Kerr here, presenting Small Business Banter. A healthy micro and small business sector means a successful economy and a more vibrant society. Small Business Banter is about helping regional business owners better prepare for current challenges but also for the next stage of business success. I'm Michael Kerr, founder of Kerr Capital, advisors to business owners.Each week, I interview a fellow small business owner or an expert and they share their stories, their lived experiences, the wins and the losses, and their best advice to help you, the listener, get the most you can from your own business. Small Business Banter is brought to you from the studios of 104.7 Gippsland FM and is heard across Australia on the Community Radio Network. And thanks also to Kerr Capital supporters of the show.Okay, so welcome to another edition of Small Business Banter radio. Laura Racky from LL Gold. Laura is in, chatting to us today. Laura's got a really diverse background, and what we're going to focus on today is her experiences as a commercial lawyer but also, as a founder and a business operator, how she manages to fit all that in, and some of the tips and advice she would give to prospective business owners.So Laura, a principal at LL Gold, founder of LGlow Beauty, also a director of All Founders, a host on All Founders Show, you can tell us about that in a minute, Laura. And look, you've got a host of other advisory or board roles that span sort of tech companies, small new businesses, as well as, you had a strong involvement with Channel 31. So firstly, welcome in, Laura.Laura Racky: Thanks, Michael. Great to be here.Michael: Yes. It's really great to have you in. Do you want to just expand a little bit on the sort of major things that you're involved with and why you do that, firstly?Laura: Absolutely. So I suppose my sort of number one career baby is my law firm, LL Gold. And she's nearly 5 years old now. That's probably, I suppose, where my main bread and butter comes from. But me being me, that's not really enough. I like to have lots of things going on. So we've also recently started up the All Founders business. So that's more focused on leadership training and strategy. This year, we kicked off LGlow Beauty. I just love all things beauty and skincare, so I thought why not give it a go. So that's been really fun, getting into e-commerce.Michael: Classic lawyer stuff.Laura: And then, yeah, I'm very lucky and grateful to be working with some excellent not-for-profits at the moment, Big Group Hug and the Mazzei Foundation. So lots of things going on keeps me interested, I guess.Micahel: For sure. Let's start with how you choose what to do and how you manage your time with that extensive portfolio of things.Laura: Yes. I suppose when you do run your own business as your main line of work, so the law firm, that does give me some flexibility in terms of where I spend my time. And I always joke about when you run your own business, you choose which 20 hours a day to work. So really, I've got a funny little timetable.I actually don't start and sit down at the desk until about 10:30. The majority of the working day is on the law firm, and then it's really the evenings that the extracurricular sort of interests and board roles or advisory roles get looking. So it's a bit of a mixed bag, but it just means that my days are very diverse and there are lots of jumping around, which for some reason, just works for my brain.Michael: Yeah. So why get involved in this range of things? Is that your role or purpose to be fully and fully again occupied? Is it because opportunities come your way? Or is it because you just see yourself driven to achieve? I'm really interested in the underpinning motivation for you.Laura: It's funny you ask that because I think many people during, well, this COVID time, it's been the first time in my life I've actually taken stock and ask some of those questions. It's just always been this internal driver for me to load up and be completely sort of overwhelmed, I suppose. But I think the more that I step back and look at it, I really like learning new things. I like being challenged.And as much as being a commercial lawyer throws up new challenges every day because I don't know everything and all of my clients have all different types of businesses, I think that doing this just gives me a great opportunity to work with all different types of people in all different types of capacities. And every day, something different comes up that I have an aha moment or I can learn something from. And it's actually very interesting and rewarding.And obviously, on the not-for-profit side of things, in my view, when you're a professional and you get to a certain stage in your career, it's really important to find ways to give back to the community. And I've got special skills, so that seems to be the most appropriate way to give back.Michael: Yeah. And some people want to give back and others. I think about it and probably, maybe, don't see the benefit of it because it is giving back. But does all that experience make you a better commercial lawyer in the end?Laura: Absolutely. I mean, when you're sitting on not-for-profit boards or advisory boards, especially as a professional consultant, all of a sudden, you're actually involved in a business from that director-level where you can have a real oversight on all of the working parts rather than when you're an advisor, people come to you often with a very sort of small problem or issue and that might be all that you'll see about their business.Whereas, when you get to work as an advisor or a director on a not-for-profit, you see everything. You're involved in operations, partnerships, employment, leasing, the full gamut. And it actually, I think, makes you a much better advisor because you're actually, all of a sudden, exposed to the wide range of things that a not-for-profit or a business face every day rather than this little pocket of problems, I suppose.Michael: Yeah. Yeah, I think as a specialist advisor, often, you can be busy, but the clients already framed their problem. And it's like if I knew this or that, I could have helped you more broadly. So that's kind of what you're saying. You see those same business challenges from a different perspective and you can bring up other advice or other solutions.Laura: Exactly.Michael: Yeah. And look, I do a lot of work with SME owners and a lot busy doing the day-to-day stuff. And it's kind of hard to have the conversation that you need to take time out of the business. And you can learn away from the business and bring things back. But I understand why people just sometimes say, "I'm too busy." But the roles you have with not-for-profits and other organizations, as I say, can be really rich in learning. How do you go from the law to beauty? Like this is in e-commerce and social media and all that goes with that business.Laura: I will admit, it has been a real personal challenge for me. So in my legal career, I have often worked in insolvency, restructuring, and litigation. That sort of work is very, very urgent [corsstalk] and heavy and considered, I think, important.Michael: Heavy.Laura: And so I have this general expectation because my clients are very responsive and they moved quickly and I am the same, that I felt that in this new endeavor, that anything that I wanted to complete or get done or buy would move in the same way and be as easy to navigate. Boy. I know this sounds crazy, but really simple things like ordering stickers for packaging, for someone who's just used to things just going through in a very linear fashion and it being really quick and easy, it's just like, you might send an email to a prospective supplier, and you might get a response like 6 days later. And to someone like me, who's used to things just getting done, it just [inaudible].Michael: How hard is it?Laura: Yes. But again, it's made me realize not everything is urgent or important, and different types of things have different ways that people work in them. So I think just from a personal perspective on patience and navigating a different industry and world, that's been really challenging and interesting. But yeah, just, I think e-commerce, obviously, it's not going away, it's only going to grow. And I feel that being an advisor in this day and age and not really getting into this world and understanding how it works would be a miss. I'll be missing out to try and do it myself.So a lot of learning. We're still growing, changing. I'm still trying to work out what the brand's voice is, what we're about, our mission, all of these things. But I'm now at the point where I say, "You know what, you ran headlong into this. You didn't know what you were doing. You're making it up as you're going along. You don't have to. This is not a Sprint. It can be a marathon." So I really realized I don't have to be turning over a million dollars. Let's just actually use this as this tool taught for learning. So it just so happens it coincides with something I really enjoy, the beauty and skincare industry. And so I'm trying to treat it as something fun.And actually, you talked about business owners feeling like they don't have time. To me, I think you can view all these extra things, if you love business, if you love having autonomy and doing things that interest you, you can actually start seeing all of these things as fun. I know that sounds really lame, maybe, to a lot of people, but I think there's a lot of us who actually get a lot of pleasure out of all this learning and interest. And it so happens that our hobbies and our fun are running businesses and learning things.Michael: Yeah, you're not playing golf.Laura: Yeah.Michael: Not there's anything wrong with those things, but you've got a different interest.Laura: Yeah.Michael: Yeah.Laura: So I stay tuned, LGlow Beauty. I'm going to take over the world, but just not straight away. And that's okay.Michael: I have wondered whether there was any reference to LL Cool J in that.Laura: I actually can't even remember where. I mean, L, my name is Laura, but I don't even know where, when I came up with LL Gold, came from. I didn't want it to be my name. I didn't want the firm to be my name, but yeah, no.Michael: It's a pretty contemporary brand. It's great. But it suits with the energy and the interest you bring to it. With your clients, just to come back to some of the stuff you're dealing with us today, I'm keen to understand what you're seeing your business clients, what are the big challenges they've got at the moment.Laura: It's been a bit cyclical. There was, obviously, March onwards for the first few months, a lot of issues with leases. And they were the clients who literally were shutting their doors, work-from-home wasn't a possibility. So we're talking about hospitality, entertainment. So that was sort of a huge focus at that time, a lot of negotiating with landlords, also employment issues. But now, as we're sort of, I don't know, coming out of it or learning to live with this new normal, yes, there are still leasing issues, but a lot of people are trying to get out of leases, moving to new premises, change the way they work.And also, I think this has been an opportunity for a lot of businesses to take stock and look at the way they interact with their clients, what their employment agreements say. When things are good, we just put our contracts in a drawer and we hope to never look at them. But I think over this last 12 months, this has been the first time maybe a lot of businesses have had to look at employment agreements, have had to look at their leases or their employments with their customers or their clients.Michael: And even, by the sounds of it, their core business model.Laura: Yes.Michael: Why we're in business? How do we do it differently? Can we do it without a lease on a property?Laura: Exactly, exactly. So there are lots of strategic questions. And part of that is flushing out, "Well, where do we sit in our contractual landscape? What leeway do we actually have to make these changes?" I mean, if you're stuck in a 5-year lease, it's pretty hard to get out of it. So these sorts of questions, I think, have been interesting. But then, more from a strategical leadership perspective, a lot of clients have are facing heaps of issues with their employees.And I think this is not new, no one's surprised about this, but people's expectations have changed, people's wants and desires have changed. Things they thought were important 12 Months ago, they don't think are important anymore. Getting people back into the office is tricky. So it's a weird time, a really weird time.Michael: Yeah, it sure is. I want to continue that, but on today's episode of Small Business Banter, we're talking with Laura Rocky from LL Gold. Laura, yeah, this complete rethink, some owners might see that as an opportunity, and maybe not right now but later on. They've kind of been able to completely remodel or being forced to remodel the way they do business. Are you seeing, with your clients, an outflow of people? Getting to the point where they go, "The lease is too challenging. I'm going to reinvent. I'm going to do e-commerce."Laura: Look, a lot of clients who are coming towards the end of their leases and now looking at different spaces, I think co-working spaces, I think, had a very, very difficult time over COVID, but I think they'll find that there'll be a resurgence because a lot of businesses are going to look for more nimble and agile spaces for their staff. I think that physical spaces are still going to be really important. We are human beings and it doesn't matter how comfy it is to work in your UGG boots, we like to be around one another sometimes and to have that choice. But look, a lot of things have changed.And actually, a little pattern that I have noticed in the last couple of months with clients is there is a lot of discussions that clients are having with potential partners or potential sales of their business. There's a lot of movement, a lot of exploratory movement because I don't think people know what's going to happen in the next little while, but there is a lot of, I wouldn't say M&A activity, but just lots of discussions about what if we move into this space or what if we join forces with this partner. And a lot of these discussions are happening because I think, for the first time, like I said, people are facing a shift and the revenue isn't just flowing in without thought anymore.Michael: Yeah.Laura: A lot of businesses have had to stop and think about how they make money.Michael: Yeah, yeah. Look, you said you need to pull out those contracts, employment contracts, lease agreements, others. But underpinning that is just, "How am I going to continue to do business?" And so on that front, alliances and joint ventures and I think you do work with bringing in employees to businesses as well so it's diversifying and collaborating. It's all those kind of nice words, but it's maybe forcing a complete rethink of how we're going to survive. But not just survive, prosper but by maybe getting closer to other businesses and bringing in key employees.Laura: Yes. Yeah, I think when things are good, it's easy not to navel-gaze. But when things start getting tricky, yeah, we've got to be creative and inventive. And that's why this time is actually very, very interesting.Michael: Yeah. Yeah, and look, at the hub of all of that is personal relationships, whether it's with suppliers, partners, customers, employees. And the value of those personal relationships, even in a business context, is so important. You got to put time into them. And entering into business with someone, I mean, you and I have talked about this in the past, you got to have an exit plan from all those sorts of things.Laura: Yeah.Michael: You've got to think through the good and the bad, unfortunately, because sometimes, they don't work.Laura: Absolutely. And I talk about this a lot with clients, especially when we're starting new businesses or entering into new organizations where we've got a group of shareholders. It's always very nice at the start. And everyone's all really excited and everyone puts on their best behavior. And when everyone's making money, everybody gets along great and we never have to look at a shareholder agreement. But when things turn or people's life circumstances change, this is the stuff, this is when the rubber hits the road. So if people have not been thinking about these things early on, it can cause a bit of drama later.Michael: It sure can, yeah. So you launched All Founders.Laura: Yes.Michael: So this is kind of like a further progression of your portfolio, but also a logical extension of running your own business and experiencing just those day-to-day operational things around stickers. So is that the impetus for...?Laura: Well, All Founders came early last year, so this was before COVID and before LGlow Beauty, everything.Michael: Oh, okay.Laura: So Christian Cunningham and I are at the head of All Founders. And where it came from is, I run a legal business, he runs a recruiting M&A business. But what we both realized is that over our careers, we actually had learned so much from the people we work with and from advising that we needed a new brand to offer those types of services. It's very hard to pick up the phone and say to your lawyer, "Can you give me some leadership training?" I just think intellectually, people want to see it in a different bundle. And obviously, the same for him. From a recruitment and acquisition specialist, no one's expecting strategy and leadership training from him.So we bought that all together under the All Founders brand. We set up the All Founders Show, a podcast that then ended up a TV show on Ticker. And that's been really interesting and fun to go and work with clients in a totally different way than as a lawyer or a recruiter because I think, for me, when I walk into the room as a lawyer, people do bristle and they respond differently and they get a bit nervous. And it's good to just sort of come in and say "Yes, I'm that but today, we're going to-"Michael: Switch hats.Laura: Although I do get wheeled out often by Christian to give the governance training, but anyway, that's for another day.Michael: Yeah, yeah.Laura: It's very important. So that's been really fun, to actually work with clients in a different way, to talk about their succession planning, their short and long-term strategy, building up managers. And I think, again, when we talk from the COVID perspective, there's going to be a huge gap in our managers and our leaders who are not being managed and led through COVID because we're all remote.Michael: Right. You see a really big hole getting bigger.Laura: Absolutely. And if you're not around your leader often to have those really quick chats to run things by them, I mean, you're not picking up your phone every 5 minutes to make that call to your manager to ask the question. I remember, even just as a young lawyer, always wanting to sit in the office or the spot outside the partners office because I loved hearing them on the phone. I loved hearing them in meetings with other partners because you learn so much just by listening. And we are losing this. So I think there is this big gap where a lot of these leaders are just going to need a little bit of outside mentorship to get them through, to get their skills up. I think they're a bit at sea at the moment.Michael: Yeah. Look, and it's probably the same as it's always been for those small business owners who have always done it solo.Laura: Yes.Michael: I've always been their own counsel. They've always struggled to find somebody that is a trusted advisor. So yeah, I think it's kind of the same thing, but it's obviously removed from employees in a massive way in the last 12 to 18 months. And it goes to where we started, which is developing broader experience outside of whatever it is you do day-to-day. You sought out a partner to learn. And I mean, there are opportunities everywhere you look. I think there's an explosion of clubs and online networking business things, so the resources are out there.But we've only got a little bit of time left, Laura. There are two things I want to cover. One is there's a lot of energy with businesses recreating or starting afresh. So in the first hundred days, what are the three or four things you're thinking about reinventing your business or starting? What are the three or four things you absolutely must address?Laura: Yes. Look, the really boring thing, I think, is always structure. It always shocks me how many small business owners have no understanding, I guess, of how they exist in the legal space.Michael: So this is in the sense of having a company versus a trust versus a partnership?Laura: Yeah.Michael: Yeah, okay. Yeah.Laura: And what if it's really boring and it is very expensive, but if you're going to do it, I think you need to do it right.Michael: Yup.Laura: Because if you don't get that right, then the next thing, which is contracts with your customers and your suppliers, you're not going to get that right. So if you don't know who you are as a business from a structural perspective, you can't enter into contracts properly. So those two things go quite hand in hand. And then obviously, we've got things like your insurance and your work cover and your employment agreements.Michael: It's very easy as I'm excited, which is going to work and we're going to get on with it, but don't fall for the trap.Laura: Exactly.Michael: Yeah.Laura: I think lots of small business owners get super excited. And I get it, I've done it too, about logos and branding and websites and Instagram. But at the heart of all of that, you still need to have a functional structure in a business because here's hoping you're going to go gangbusters. And rewinding and fixing those structural issues later is very, very difficult.Michael: Hey, Laura Racky, that's fantastic, really enjoyed the discussion with you. Thanks so much for sharing everything. I just wanted to close out, you had an involvement with Channel 31. We're on the Community Radio Network so there's some pretty good news. Just before the end of June, a renewal for 4 years?Laura: Yeah. So I think it's 3.Michael: Three?Laura: Yes.Michael: Yeah.Laura: So really fantastic. I mean, the last couple of renewals have only been for a year, which is not a lot of time.Michael: Yes.Laura: I think the 3 years is a real recognition that one, the spectrum is not going anywhere so we may as well put it to good use.Michael: Yeah.Laura: And two, that these organizations need that time to transition properly. So I'm really thrilled. I think it's wonderful.Michael: Yeah, it's a great result. Hey, Laura Racky from LL Gold, thank you very much for your time today.Laura: Thanks, Michael.Michael: So that is all for today's episode of Small Business Banter. I continue to be inspired, bringing you small business experts and other small business owners and hearing their stories.If you want to listen to any past episode, jump onto your podcast platform of choice and search Small Business Banter. There, you will find a diverse and fascinating collection of small business owners and experts openly discussing and sharing their experiences.For any of the links, resources, or information we've talked about on the show today or to contact me, please head over to smallbusinessbanter.com or you can find us on Facebook and Instagram. And it would be great to have you tuned in the same time next week for another episode of Small Business Banter.[END]

Going Long Podcast with Billy Keels
How to Clearly Define your ‘Return on Impact' with R.E.I. - Suzy Sevier & Michael Barnhart

Going Long Podcast with Billy Keels

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2021 47:41


Want to avoid mistakes in Long Distance Investing?  Download your FREE document at billykeels.com/7mistakestoavoid    Going Long Podcast Episode 134: How to Clearly Define your ‘Return on Impact' with R.E.I. In the conversation with today's guests, Suzy Sevier & Michael Barnhart, you'll learn the following:   [00:31 - 03:18] Suzy & Michael's profiles, in Billy's guest introduction. [03:18 - 14:00] The backstory and decisions made that led Suzy & Michael to this point in their journeys.  [14:00 - 18:28] How Suzy & Michael came up with the alternative meaning for R.O.I, being Return on Impact. [18:28 - 23:57] Why they wanted to invest in Real Assets beyond their backyard in long distance tangible assets rather than in their home market location. [23:57 - 32:01] How Suzy & Michael had the confidence to get started with all the networking and getting the ball rolling with Multi Family investing.  [32:01  - 34:44] All about the genesis of the community Suzy & Michael have been creating and why they continue to put so much energy into it.  [34:44  - 38:52] The general plan for Suzy & Michael over the next 18 months.   Here's what Suzy & Michael shared with us during today's conversation:   Where in the world Suzy & Michael are based currently: Detroit, Michigan. The most positive thing to happen in the past 24 hours: They are clear to close on a 100 door unit on Friday! Favourite European City: Suzy - Cascais, Portugal --- Michael - Canary Islands, Spain. A mistake that Suzy & Michael would like you to learn from so that you don't have to pay full price: Michael: Focus on the process, and get it done. -- Suzy: Failures can feel painful, but know that your greatest success will be coming right up behind them. Book Recommendations: Suzy: The Book of Joy, by the 14th Dalai Lama. -- Michael: How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.   Be sure to reach out and connect with Suzy Sevier & Michael Barnhart by using the info below: Website: https://adventurousrei.com/info  Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6a2b5QSuwVNM_zcsoIRe3w  Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-adventures-of-a-real-estate-investor/id1568758392      Start taking action TODAY so that you can gain more Education and Control over your financial life.   To see the Video Version of today's conversation just CLICK HERE.   Do you want to have more control and avoid the mistakes that I made getting started in long distance investing?  Then you can DOWNLOAD the 7 Mistakes to Avoid in Long Distance Investing Guide by clicking HERE.   Be sure to connect with Billy!  He's made it easy for you to do…Just go to any of these sites:   Website: www.billykeels.com Youtube: billykeels Facebook: Billy Keels Fan Page Instagram: @billykeels Twitter: @billykeels LinkedIn: Billy Keels

Two Guys One Topic
Topic Expert Interview - Michelin Stars - Michael O'Hare

Two Guys One Topic

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 11, 2021 31:19


We are super excited to welcome to this week's interview episode...Someone you might have seen on Masterchef, Great British Menu or even Saturday Kitchen, he is the owner of the Leeds restaurant "The Man Behind the Curtain" and perhaps more importantly for us the owner of his very own Michelin Star....Its our pleasure to welcome to the pod...Michael O'HareHear us discuss with Michael: How he felt when he got his Michelin StarIf he knows when inspectors are visitingHow the star affected the restaurantIf the clientele changedIf Stars or friend's reviews mean moreStriving for a 2nd or 3rd star? Our research and reading can only take us so far - so from time to time we will interview an expert to ask them questions and hear their real life experience on a topic.Once you have listened we would love to hear your comments or feedback.Contact us @TwoGuysOneTopic on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Top Traders Unplugged
SI138: The 'Holy Trinity' of Security Selection ft. Rob Carver

Top Traders Unplugged

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2021 73:21


We're joined today by Rob Carver to discuss the process of selecting single stocks for a Trend Following system, Rob's holy trinity of security selection, the JP Morgan-backed fund making huge bets, via options, on the market remaining quiet, the knock-on effects from funds who make large, risky bets, the sweet-spot for average holding periods in a Trend Following system, ‘caveman-style' Trend Following versus scaling in and out of positions, how to hedge against inflation, how Trend Following historically has performed really well in rising interest-rate environments, and thoughts on Tesla's recent earnings, a lot of which were from government subsidies and selling bitcoin. In this episode, we discuss: Which stocks to select for a profitable Trend Following system Rob's 'Holy Trinity' for selecting securities The ripple effects of large funds who make large and risky bets The most profitable holding periods in Trend Following systems 'Caveman-style' Trend Following How to hedge against inflation Trend Following's success in rising interest-rate environments Tesla's recent earnings Thanks to Matt for leaving us a voicemail. If you would like to leave us a voicemail to play on the show, you can do so https://www.speakpipe.com/ttuvoicemail (here). Follow Niels on https://twitter.com/toptraderslive (Twitter), https://www.linkedin.com/in/nielskaastruplarsen (LinkedIn), https://www.youtube.com/user/toptraderslive (YouTube) or via the https://www.toptradersunplugged.com/ (TTU website). Follow Rob on https://my.captivate.fm/@InvestingIdiocy (Twitter). IT's TRUE

Top Traders Unplugged
138 Systematic Investor Series ft Rob Carver – May 3rd, 2021

Top Traders Unplugged

Play Episode Listen Later May 3, 2021 73:21


We’re joined today by Rob Carver to discuss the process of selecting single stocks for a Trend Following system, Rob’s holy trinity of security selection, the JP Morgan-backed fund making huge bets, via options,  on the market remaining quiet, the knock-on effects from funds who make large, risky bets, the sweet-spot for average holding periods in a Trend Following system, ‘caveman-style’ Trend Following versus scaling in and out of positions, how to hedge against inflation, how Trend Following historically has performed really well in rising interest-rate environments, and thoughts on Tesla’s recent earnings, a lot of which were from government subsidies and selling bitcoin. Thanks to Matt for leaving us a voicemail. If you would like to leave us a voicemail to play on the show, you can do so here. Check out our Global Macro series here. Learn more about the Trend Barometer here. IT's TRUE

Accidental Tech Podcast
424: Ethernet Squid

Accidental Tech Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2021 118:29


Pre-show: Read-only Tweetbot WatchConnectivity applicationContext userInfo messages Follow-up: [More] Tesla wheels of shame Belvedere, CA via Alistair Logie AirPods Max warranty repairs (via Harrison Krebs) WWDC 2021 Announced NSRunningApplication Radar Numbers 48190148 25521354 22088473 18980463 21253274 18890642 New Siri Default Voices Sample Recording Another Sample Recording Ubiquiti Breach An aside about cryptocurrency CDO Bitcoin summary But how does Bitcoin actually work? Air gap eero pfSense Their recent “whoopsies” John’s Networking Situation Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon AirPort Extreme USW Flex Mini Recurrent laryngeal nerve - Wikipedia Recurrent laryngeal nerve - YouTube Four Nines #askatp Should one use a non-administrator user account? (via Michael) How do I mash together 400 video clips into one file? (via Duncan Wilcock) ffmpeg Casey’s primer on ffmpeg In short: Create a file that refers to all 400 file names. Call it, say, files.txt Each line of that file reads file 1.mp4, file 2.mp4, etc. One file per line. Maybe something like this? ffmpeg -f concat -i files.txt -vf scale=4096:2160 three-hour-movie.mp4 How does Overcast scrape iTunes? (via Brandon Wees) SOAP Post-show: Bell follow-up Sponsored by: Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order. Hello Fresh: America’s #1 meal kit. Use code atp12 for 12 free meals. Linode: Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. New accounts get a $100 credit. Become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!

iACast
iACast 156 - Go Big Or Go HomePod Mini

iACast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2021 40:44


Show Description On this episode, Michael, Taylor, and Jason discuss Apple's discontinuation of the original HomePod, and iMac Pro. News Apple discontinues the original HomePod and iMac Pro. For more info, see the links in the show description. Evidence that supports the eminent a-rival of Apple's AirTags was Found in the Find My app in the iOS 14.5 beta. Hims has launched the BrailleSense 6. Google released the Android 12 technical preview. Ad iAccessibility app development services Picks Jason: TalkBack version 9.1. Taylor: GeneratePress Michael: The Expeditionary Force Book Series Providing Feedback We love hearing from you, so feel free to send an email to feedback@iaccessibility.net. You can follow us on Facebook, and Twitter. You can also find us on Reddit, and all around the web. Also, don't forget to check out our YouTube page, and for all things iACast, check out our iACast page. If you'd like to help support us, you can do so via our PayPal and Patreon pages. If you wish to interact with us during our podcasts live then please do join us on our Slack channel. Show Transcription MICHAEL: Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of the IA cast. All right, with me today, I have the usual group. We have Taylor Arndt, TAYLOR: Hello, everyone, MICHAEL: and Jason Earls. JASON: Hello, everybody. MICHAEL: All right, we have a great episode for you today. And you know, we've been gone for a few weeks. We had a kind of a crazy storm And then we wanted to get back on a regular schedule. So, we're back with a new episode to talk about all the interesting news that's happened recently and some rumors and news and a bunch of different things that have happened. So, let's jump right into it. Our main topic for today is the first news item, and that's the HomePod being discontinued. And I have very mixed opinions on this. JASON: I do too. I kind of understand why Apple discontinued the HomePod. Also, they discontinued the HomePod! It's okay, HomePod buddy, I still love you! As I pat my HomePod. MICHAEL: Didn't we have a hashtag for a while, pet the HomePod? JASON: I think we did. TAYLOR: Hilarious. JASON: I was just trying not to pat the screen because I didn't want music to happen, but that would have actually been really funny. MICHAEL: I think I have a picture of headphones sitting on a HomePod. JASON: Oh, yeah! The Andrea Cans! MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah. JASON: But yeah, on one hand, I understand why they did it because it was at launch a what, $350 Smart speaker that couldn't do terribly much more than play music. I mean yes, it sounded good, But you know, it's not what people were looking for in their smart speakers. Especially considering the likes of the Echo devices, the Google Home Hubs or Homes at the time. And you know, the HomePod's been around for like 4 years. So, in one respect, I kind of understand it. And you know, the HomePod Mini does have some features that the big HomePod doesn't have regarding the U1 chip and everything. But at the same time, the HomePod does sound so good! And as good as the Mini is and as great sales figures as the Mini is because of its price point and everything, you can't argue that it just does not sound as good as the big HomePod. TAYLOR: Right. But I think if we're thinking about it, the majority of consumers, they may not be in depth with audio and they may not understand that the HomePod sounds the way it is and that they want to pay for that. Because a lot of them just want to listen to music, and they want it to be portable. And so, that's where I think it's coming down to. Like, I understand why they they discontinued it, but yeah, it's kind of sad. I mean personally, I don't have a big HomePod, but that's because in a small apartment, I just don't have a lot of room. JASON: Right. And, you know, they did say that they are still going to push out software updates for the big HomePods and support the Apple Care which is good because I just got Apple Care last year. TAYLOR: Oh, that would stink otherwise. JASON: Right? But like, I really want them to come out with a bigger HomePod for 199. That's what I'm hoping for, even though they publicly said to I think it was like iMore or whatever that they were in fact focusing their efforts on HomePod Mini. Because let's think about it like this, the big HomePod — you know, Apple slash the price to 299, right? So, for $200. You could get two HomePod mini for less money than one bigger HomePod. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to have the bigger, basier sound of the HomePod, but at least you would get stereo audio and stuff. MICHAEL: Well, let's leave this part for the end because we're already kind of diving in. JASON: I know right? I like, I got thoughts I'm sorry. MICHAEL: But the other bit of news is the iMac Pro completely was discontinued and they're only selling them while supplies last JASON:That I'm not sad about. MICHAEL: In a way, I am. I think it was a great product, but I think we're about to see something new come from Apple. And as usual, we will be doing a live stream of that event. At least that's the plan. We'll be doing a live stream of the Apple event when it happens later this month. Because we do know for certain, right, that there is an apple event? JASON: I don't think we do know for certain. I just think speculations hide that there may be one, at least last I checked. But March 23 is the rumored date for the Apple event. I also haven't really looked at the news today. So things may have changed. But last I knew it was a hypothetical thing at this point. I mean, a highly likely thing at this point. MICHAEL: And I think it's because they're discontinuing these devices and the fact that we have so much information in the code about our next topic, and that's potential AirTags coming soon. Because there's mention of them in the find my app. TAYLOR: Yes, there is. MICHAEL: On the beta TAYLOR: Which is awesome because I've saw YouTube videos. Obviously, I don't have the beta myself, but I've seen YouTube videos that have mentioned it. Obviously, when you're on to prepare for the podcast just kind of looking at all the news. And but yeah, definitely pretty cool. And hopefully, hopefully they work. I mean, Tile's nice, but it'd be nice to have something built in and integrated for finding stuff. JASON: Right, and I guess Apple's opening up the FindMy protocol so that companies like Tile could take advantage of it as well. And it's nice to see that they are opening up more of their frameworks and things. MICHAEL: Well, and I think that's because there's been so much blame for antitrust and things between them and Google and things like that, that they're trying to make sure that they stay open — JASON: ahead of that, Yeah. MICHAEL: Because Google's had a lot of problems with that because they're in everything. The last bit of news that we have is, and I won't make any jokes, Jason, I won't do it, I won't do it. Those will be left for off the podcast, the BrailleSense 6. And I only make this joke because if you want to learn more, head to hims-inc.com/bs.6 . And I'm not kidding. Take all the jokes from that you can. JASON: Exactly. MICHAEL: Basically, we have the BrailleSense 6, and it was announced this week at CSUN. From what I've been able to tell, it was one of the biggest announcements because there weren't a lot of announcements this week. And the BrailleSense 6 dropped the Polaris naming. And it's Android 10, 120 Gigs of hard drive space, 80211AC wireless, a battery that while under load will drain 21% in an hour and a half if doing the max amount of work. That's the only battery statistic we can get. It has SD card slot, it has two USBA ports, a two USBC ports, a headphone jack, supports microphone, The, what is that called, Jason? JASON: I think it's TRRS, actually, I believe is the technical standard which is basically what this microphone that I'm using is, which is, think the older headphone jacks on the iPhones or the the headphone jack on the Mac. So it's that single microphone combo jack. MICHAEL: And it has all that, it has new software installed. And the person doing the presentation was using Zoom on the BrailleSense. So that's pretty promising. The only concerns I have are if it's going to get Android 11 and up, and how well the software is going to work because the Polaris had a lot of issues with deleting documents and things like that. JASON: Yeah, the BrailleSense Polaris is a very interesting device. I think it also actually Michael, in addition to the headphone jack, I think they said it also has a stereo line in Port as well. So you could connect music things to it, you know, binaural microphones really would work I would imagine to it. MICHAEL: Nice! JASON: Did you mention that it has 6 Gigs of RAM? MICHAEL: No, I did not. TAYLOR: Nope, you didn't JASON: So yeah, it's got six Gigs of RAM, an 8 core CPU. I don't remember if they announced the clock speeds of it, but — MICHAEL: It didn't. JASON: So, it really does seem like a very interesting device and — MICHAEL: And it's gonna cost 5799, come out in June. TAYLOR: Yeah. Wow. That's a lot of money. JASON: So we do know, the battery will be user replaceable though because they talked about that at the CSUN announcement I think MICHAEL: they do offer financing and trade ins for your older devices, so those are options to get you a lot closer in price to those devices. So JASON: Yeah, it's a very interesting device. I do worry what the battery life is really going to be like, TAYLOR: Right, and also if it can — like some note takers have a problem where they fall behind mainstream. And so that's the other concern too, is that like, you buy the $6,000 device almost. Well, it's already running two versions behind of Android almost at this point. 12 is beta. So that's the other thing too. These notetakers I mean, they're great for what they are, but you know, it's a specialized thing, and they're not always up to date. JASON: Like I said to you guys, I think off the show, if I were to get a note taker, it would probably be the BrailleSense. You know, the BrailleSense 6. It's so weird that they don't have a name for it now. TAYLOR: I know. MICHAEL: Alright, you know, and we could have a whole episode on notetakers, but I think we would want to have somebody on that can talk more about Braille and mainstream versus notetaker because I think that would be a very cool discussion. So TAYLOR: Yes. JASON: Yeah, I do too. Because I mean, I've used the BrailleSense in the past, but the BrailleSense I used was, I think, even before the U2. So, it was definitely not any of the Android based BrailleSense devices. So MICHAEL: Another thing that's happened, the last news topic I really could think about, is Android 12 is in technical preview. We really haven't talked about that. And I hear it brings a whole lot of user interface changes, but not a lot of — you're not going to be able to notice it very much with Talkback. JASON: Yeah, that's true. I have been playing a little bit with the beta. After a couple false starts, I eventually got it on my Pixel. I accidentally installed the version of Android, that AOSP version, so it didn't actually have a screen reader which is why I wasn't getting speech. TAYLOR: Oh, no. How did you fix that? JASON: I pre flashed it — MICHAEL: Very carefully. JASON: I was — TAYLOR: Yeah, very carefully. JASON: Yeah, very carefully. So yeah, I reflashed it, because you can actually go to the Google developer site, and you can actually use their online flash tool, and it will basically do all the work for you MICHAEL: Online? That's cool! JASON: It downloads the image to the device, you have to enable some things like OAM Unlock, and whatnot, it'll download the image to the device, and it will tell you when it's safe to unplug your phone at which point it should be booting into the beta of Android. MICHAEL: That's fancy. JASON: I know. MICHAEL: And talk about the security implications there. I mean, it's Google, and they have all the security keys and all that. But could you imagine if somebody were to spoof that, and be able to put a knot legit version of Android from a website? JASON: Yeah, I know. I did actually think about that. And then I stopped thinking about it. TAYLOR: That might have been a good idea. JASON: But like I said, I do have Android 12 installed. I don't notice too much of a difference. Although honestly, my Pixels not my primary driver, my primary driver's my iPhone. So what I can say though, is that 12 does seem to be relatively stable. And along with the introduction of Talkback 9.1 which is not specific to Android 12, I do think that the Android experience is going to improve a bit which is nice and awesome to see. MICHAEL: Yeah. So, it's really cool that, you know, we have the ability to flash these devices remotely. I think it's really neat. But we'll have more information about what's in the beta for Android 12 in a future episode, but I think it's really cool that we have the ability to do that, and to try these things before they come out, you know, iOS, Android, Windows through the Windows Insider program, and things like that. JASON: I think the one thing that was kind of annoying to me though is — and maybe it's just I did it in a way that made this happen. But it ended up forcing me to reset my phone to flash the version of Android 12 on to it. And of course, when I had the version without talkback, I didn't mind resetting my phone. And I think if you downgrade back to Android 11, I believe it will make you reset as well. They do tell you that. So MICHAEL: you know, I love how my watch made a noise even though I have — typically if I mute my phone, my watch will mute with it, but not this time. JASON: Oh, interesting. MICHAEL: Yeah, usually it mirrors but not this time, that's interesting. All right, so for our ad part of the show today, I want to talk to you guys about app development services that's offered by iAccessibility. iAccessibility offers app development services for iOS and Android at $50 an hour where we will build your app from the ground up based on your website or however, whatever app you're trying to build. And the app will be accessible and usable by all users. Unless it's a game that you really need specific use cases. We'll still try to make it as accessible as possible, though. So,, we've built apps like VO Starter, we've built apps like Pocket Braille, Blind Bargains, ACB Link, And that's just a few of the different apps on a lot of platforms that have been created. So $50 an hour minimum of $1,000 and you can have your app in the iOS and Google Play app stores. So you can go to iaccessibility.net to learn more, and we will be promoting that more on the website. So, people look out and we'll have more information. So thanks for listening to the iACast. And now on to our main topic for today. And we've already talked a little bit about that, and it's Apple discontinuing products like the HomePod. And you guys, I — this is — I feel like this is the most products that Apple's discontinued at one time. And you know, Microsoft has done it. I mean, they discontinued a whole store line. Google, Google is the project killer, they are known for that. Do you guys think Apple's kind of jumping on board that train, JASON: I think in a way they are. I really think what they're trying to do is they're trying to streamline their product line, and you know, not have so many variations of things around. Especially in the case of the iMac Pro. I keep wanting to call it the MacBook Pro. That is a different product. But the iMac Pro because they really want us all to move over to Apple silicon, which, you know, I'm personally fine with. So I really think that's part of it. And, you know, as far as the HomePod, I like to think that they have something new planned to replace this beautiful, soft, lovely mesh, big HomePod that I'm totally like rubbing a finger against right now because it just, it's fun! MICHAEL: Hashtag pet the HomePod. JASON: Exactly. But you know, I really hope that they do have something to replace the bigger HomePod with at some point soon. Because, yeah. TAYLOR: Yeah. So the thing with that is that, I think, like I said, a lot of these companies are doing that right now. They're just trying to streamline. And you know, Google has been doing it for years. Microsoft kills things. But Apple, like I said, this is really a first. They don't really do this all that often. And so, either one of two things, they either have a lot more products coming and they need to get rid of stuff, or they're just trying to streamline because a COVID and everything, obviously, but we've been in COVID for over a year now. So who knows. You know, they're just trying to get things streamline. Or if they are trying to add new products, but they need to get rid of some first. MICHAEL: And it might be — it might just be that they don't plan to update. Oh, well, actually, you know what? I think the Home Pod runs on the processor that the iPhone seven runs on. Isn't it, Jason? JASON: The big HomePod? Yeah, it's the A8. MICHAEL: Oh, wow. And I think that's the next on the chopping block this year, guys. TAYLOR: iPhone seven, you think next? JASON: I think well, the seven has the A9, right? MICHAEL: I don't remember — JASON: No, wait a minute. No, I think the A8 is from the iPhone 6. Actually. MICHAEL: But I remember the 6S is the last version — iOS runs on the 6S. And so I bet the iPhone seven will be the final version that 15 will run on. JASON: Oh, that's possible. I mean, at the same time, they did actually change the foundation according to some tech sites. They did change the foundation of what HomePod OS was. So for a while it was based on a foundation of iOS. And then I don't remember when this happened. But supposedly they ended up changing the foundation from iOS to TV OS so that it wouldn't have as much code and things in in the OS that isn't really needed and used by the HomePod. So I was kind of not expecting to see the cancellation of the big HomePod for another year or two yet. I was a bit surprised. But maybe — I mean, I was going to say maybe this has something to do too, with the silicon chip shortage. But that would probably be more to do with the Mac, I would think maybe then the homePod. MICHAEL: Well, it's interesting because I'm wondering if they're going to rename the HomePod Mini eventually to something else. Or if we're going to have the HomePod Pro, come out and then put a new device in later on in the HomePod category JASON: Right, or the HomePod Max. TAYLOR: Right, or the HomePod Pro Max. JASON: I don't think they'll do Pro — well, I lie, 12 Pro. — MICHAEL: If you think about it, on the Mac, we don't have a MacBook, we have the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro. We don't have a Mac Book or the Mac. TAYLOR: Oh, right. MICHAEL: So that might be kind of the landscape we're looking at for HomePod for a while. JASON: Maybe. MICHAEL: Because if you notice the mac book that came out like 2015-2016– JASON: 2015-2016, I think 2016, yeah. MICHAEL: It was short lived as well. So you know we have the air and the pro that are still around but the flagship name was was discontinued quick on that line too. So that's kind of interesting to think about. JASON: Yeah, it really is. And I think the one thing that's keeping me from being complete and utter 100% distraught that the big HomePod is being discontinued is just the fact that the — and I think I said this before, that Apple did say that they are still going to issue software updates for the big home pods for the time being, and supported still through Apple Care. MICHAEL: I'm wondering if you put two HomePod minis in a room, if you get the same quality sound as one big HomePod, JASON: I think you would get the same overall quality sound, because the HomePod Mini does seem like it sounds very similar to the big HomePod just without that deep low bass that the big ones can hit. MICHAEL: Yeah. And I don't know, it's to the point where when we look at these devices, it's hard to it's, and you know, maybe I'm just, my train of thought just keeps going all over the place. But the more I think about things, maybe this is a way for tech companies to dispel rumors and leaks by just saying, we're going to discontinue this, we're going to change this. And so it kind of throws people off to know what the next step is going to be. JASON: Yeah, maybe. I think though, in the case of the iMac pro being discontinued, we all know, it's most likely going to be because we're going to be seeing an apple silicon based iMac. Now whether we see that on March 23, which I personally don't think we'll see. I will say that on the show. And I'll be very happy to be wrong. But I don't think we're going to see that on the 23rd. MICHAEL: I think we will, I think that's going to be the focus is iMacs this year. JASON: I don't know, I think we might see things about AirTags and iPad pros and stuff, but we'll see. If I'm wrong. I'll be happy. Michael: See, maybe we need to come up with the accessibility pool. Because what I think we're gonna see and take your bets people. TAYLOR: Okay, MICHAEL: I think we're gonna see iMacs, colored iMacs, I don't think we're gonna see iPads just yet. But that's just me. Now, in saying that, iPads have come out in March before. So it's not out of the norm. But IMAX used to be used for education as well. And so if they bring out the colored iMacs like they had for education in the past and kind of marketed towards that, I could definitely see that being a march thing. And plus, iPad Pro has typically has an 18 month life cycle. It's only been 11 months since iPads have come out. So in other words, this is Michael trying to say please let my iPad be relevant in April. TAYLOR: Well, I have to agree with Jason on this one, Michael. Because, like I said, with all the evidence and stuff, I think it's gonna be AirTags and stuff. But again, if I'm wrong, I'll be more than happy to admit it. But I really think I have to agree with Jason, Michael. MICHAEL: And who knows, we may see all these things. I doubt it but TAYLOR: That'd crazy. JASON: no, you know what's really gonna happen. Apple's not actually going to have a product event on the 23rd, they're going to just announced their new products quietly on their site. And then we'll all be wrong. MICHAEL: And it could happen, it could happen. JASON: I do think though regardless, as sad as I am to see the big HomePod be discontinued, and like I said, me personally, I'm not terribly upset about the iMac pros cancellation and we're excited because, you know, that just tells me to watch out for the iMac. Not that I'm going to get one but it's still always fun to see what they're going to come out with. I still enjoy my HomePod. You know, I still plan on using it until something happens. Like, if nothing else using it until Apple decides they're not going to update it anymore. Whenever that may be, so. MICHAEL: Well, and that shows me that them discontinuing these things that just, especially on the iMac side it means that they have something new coming around the corner and they may decide that the pro line of iMac just isn't needed anymore because of what the A1 and A1x will do for these devices. I mean — JASON: You mean the M1? MICHAEL: Yeah, the M1. JASON: It's a processor, Michael it's not steak sauce. TAYLOR & MICHAEL: Right. MICHAEL: That needs to be the name of an episode sometime. Our previous episode title we came up with it is going to be it. JASON: Yeah, but that would be hilarious. 156 It's a processor not steak sauce. MICHAEL: All right. And you know, I wonder if that's why they started with a4S. JASON: I don't know. MICHAEL: Because Could you imagine Apple naming, now introducing our first processor line, the A1. JASON: and then Could you imagine the hilarity in covering the lawsuits, if that would even happen. That'd be funny. MICHAEL: Anyway, would that'd be a coprocessor for for Intel the A1 because it has to go along with it to make it better? TAYLOR: I don't know, would it be? That's your call. MICHAEL: I mean, if we're comparing Intel to steak there would be A1 processor from Apple to JASON: They'll call it, I don't know, I was gonna say steak Lake, but that just sounds weird. Dinner Lake, MICHAEL: Dinner lake. All right, out there. There you go Intel. When you come out with that chip that everybody wants just say time for dinner. Like, JASON: Exactly. MICHAEL: Anyway, I think this is the most jokes we've told in a podcast. And I really think that the M1X will really be like, there's no pro version of that, there's no way to up the process or on that. So there's, on the Intel iMacs, you can get i5, I7, I9, and you have the better display on the Pro, which they can still do the better display. But if the display is already going to be amazing in these new iMacs with the new chips, then they don't have a need to do that. So, there may not need to be an iMac pro because the new iMac will just be able to boast that it's pro already with the built in Apple silicon. JASON: And that was kind of my thinking, when I first read about the cancellation of the iMac Pro, I was actually thinking as you were talking and I don't really think Apple's gonna do this, if they came out with instead of the M1x. Or the M1 2, having the M1 Pro, but I really don't think they would do that, considering they already have products in their pro line that have the M1 and that would confuse people. MICHAEL: Right. But, you know, I just think that they're going to, I think that they — now that we're looking at coming slowly out of COVID, they're going to be looking for the best way to sell their products. And if you could just say, look at the shiny new products we have in our stores aren't aren't these amazing, people are going to want them and especially if they start doing these colors, like they've shown on concept art and things like that, that that are rumored, that's just going to be amazing. JASON: I mean, look at how popular the new Macs have been already, you know, because working from home and they've got that long battery life and the slightly upgraded camera because of the ISP MICHAEL: And you know, I'm doing all this on an M1 Mac, the recording and Zoom, and all that. And I keep telling people it's the better of the two machines. I mean, this is still a terrible camera, but I'm looking at my face on here. And it looks a lot better than my other Mac did, by far. So Apple has really gone a long way with what they're doing. All right, do you guys have any final comments we want to give before we wrap up today? JASON: Steak! MICHAEL: Yes. TAYLOR: Oh my God! JASON: No, I'm kidding. But you know, it's very interesting to see these product cancellations. I keep flitting between I'm sad, especially for the HomePod. And it's because there's going to be something new, like, a lot of me is just like, This has to because there's something new. So it's going to be very interesting to see what actually ends up happening. MICHAEL: Well, you know, the interesting thing, I want to point this out. The interesting thing about the home pod Mini is you don't need to plug those into the wall. JASON: Right. MICHAEL: And that's really interesting. I mean, you could build a USBC — you could buy a USBC hub, plug it into the wall and have five home pod minis hooked up to that thing — TAYLOR: In a power strip. Yeah. MICHAEL: Well, not even a power strip, just a USBC hub. TAYLOR: Oh, wow. Oh, yeah because it doesn't even plug in to the wall. Wow, I'm not thinking JASON: Or a battery pack. MICHAEL: Yeah, you could hook it up to a battery pack. And so that makes it almost more usable than the echo. TAYLOR: Yes, Yes! MICHAEL: And so I think that's why Apple really wants to focus on that because they're like, there's so much possibility here. TAYLOR: I wouldn't blame them. MICHAEL: I mean, it sounds better than any echo. I'm sure. I don't know, I haven't heard one yet. But JASON: Review say they do. MICHAEL: So, you know you put a few in a room. You're gonna get good audio. The only thing that you can't do is use the standard stereo speaker — or TV speakers. JASON: You can, they just won't — I just don't think they'll do Dolby Atmos and stuff that the big HomePods do. MICHAEL: How would you do — oh, well, Apple TV speakers, but how would you use the standard TV speakers? JASON: Oh, okay. Yeah, I misheard. I thought you said Apple TV. Yeah, you can't use Well, you can't even use a big HomePod as a standard TV speaker. So that's not MICHAEL: It's not new. Could you imagine if they came out with the HomePod sub where you had 2 of the apple speakers of the homepod minis as your regular speakers? Now, that's a possibility. JASON: That's actually funny that you mentioned that because I was talking to somebody pre show about that. And what they had said is, Apple comes out with this sub and then gives it 2 USB C ports so that you can plug two HomePods directly into the wall or something. I don't know if that is what they're going to do. But that would certainly be interesting. It'll definitely help with the idea of, I want to have stereo speakers, but I need two outlets if they decided to go that route. So who knows? MICHAEL: Yeah, I'm really excited to see what they do. I mean, if they bring out a HomePod sub, I will press that Buy button immediately. I'm not kidding that if they did that, you know, I would buy a home pod sub. And it kind of makes sense, guys, I think that's actually probably what they're going to do. Because it would make money for them. If you had to buy two HomePod Minis and A HomePod sub. Let's price the sub at $200. They're making $50 more off of you then if you bought one HomePod. Now, granted, they're not going to make 600 or $700 if you had to buy two regular HomePods. But, who's gonna do that anyway? TAYLOR: Right. JASON: Yeah, that's true. I think though, the only downside to this is, as it stands right now, if you were looking to buy HomePods, new, that would do Dolby Atmos, you can't, because that was a feature specific to the bigger HomePods. And I don't know if it's because the eight is more powerful than the S5 or whatever CPU the minis have inside, I think it's the S5 or if it's just that the Mini. , I mean, the big HomePod has more microphones, and it's not limited to the chip. But as of right now, you can't buy new home pods directly from Apple. If you want to do Dolby Atmos. MICHAEL: actually you can for right now during the time of this recording, but. JASON: I didn't even see a link in the store for the HomePod when I last looked. MICHAEL: So I just looked, and they're still in the Apple Store app for 299. You can pick either one. JASON: Oh, they have the Space Gray ones back? MICHAEL: Yeah, they're showing both of them, at least when I looked it showed a picture showing both of them. JASON: Oh, that's interesting, because I knew for a while that they only had the white ones around. And it's very interesting then that I couldn't get to them. Because on the Apple Store, on Apple's website, if you wanted to see the HomePods, the only way it was able to find them is by going under the Apple Music link. And they talked about the HomePods and the AirPods and the AirPods Max. The only HomePod they listed was the HomePod Mini. Whereas the big HomePod used to be there. So that's interesting that they still show up in the Apple Store — MICHAEL: Yep, they are in the Aplle Store app. Yeah. JASON: And of course you can buy them from other retailers. It's not just Apple that sells the HomePods but MICHAEL: And since they're discontinued, I would wait so you can get them from Best Buy or somewhere else where they will be much cheaper. TAYLOR: Yep. JASON: Just keep in mind, if you're going to go that route, that we don't know how long Apple is going to support the big HomePods with software updates, even — All we know is that they are still going to support them. MICHAEL: Alright, well, that's gonna do it for our show today. Jason, to end us off for today, where can people find you online? And what's your pick? JASON: So my pick is, funnily enough, not an Apple product, but rather a Google product. MICHAEL: Ah, just wait. It'll be discontinued at some point. TAYLOR: Probably Well, next week. JASON: Specifically, my pick is talkback version 9.1. And I pick it because it enhances talkback by allowing you to use multi finger gestures. Finally, it has a Braille keyboard. Although, the Braille keyboards been there since 8.4 I think it was? But I really find I like the multi finger gestures. I like the new unified talkback menu. And it's just, I just love this version of talkback compared to the older ones, because I can disable the angular gestures and the proximity sensor silencing speech. I can turn that off now because you can now tap with two fingers to pause speech. MICHAEL: Oh, that's fantastic. JASON: And the magic tap gesture for iOS users is there. And so it's really nice. You know, they don't have the rotor as such. I mean, you can't rotate two fingers on the screen or whatever, but they definitely do have an easy way to navigate, granularity and stuff now and it's all customized Pretty much. So talkback 9.1 it's pretty nice. So that is my pick. As far as where people can find me, you can find me producing content for iAccessibility, you can email me at Jason@iaccessibility.net. And you can also follow me on twitter at jde 1. I know that I have been giving my Facebook out in past episodes, I have decided that I will no longer give that out. I no longer have the app installed. So yeah, those are the ways you can follow me, find me email emailing me and following me on on Twitter. And if you catch me in clubhouse, then feel free to say hi, MICHAEL: All right, Taylor, what's your pick for the week? And where can people find you online? TAYLOR: Okay, so my pick is a little technical. So I'm going to explain it. I pick generate press. And for those who don't know, Generatepress is a WordPress theme. And a WordPress theme is basically a thing that will help enhance the visuals of your site. So it basically helps make your site look the way it looks. In a short version. I mean, like a short description. So what it will do is it is really awesome, because you can customize every part of your site. And the cool part is that it's fully accessible. There are two versions free and premium. The free theme is literally just you go download it from wordpress.org theme directory, and the paid one is a paid plugin. I believe it's 59 a year or what? I can't rember the lifetime of like 249 lifetime Michael? MICHAEL: I didn't see a life. Yeah, I think it's 250 lifetime TAYLOR: Okay, so I really love Generatepress thanks to Michael Babcock and dimasi Thomas for mentioning those to me in a Clubhouse room. Where you can find me online, I'm all over the web. Literally, I have a YouTube channel that I would like you guys to check out, Taylor's Tech Talks. And that also has a podcast now. So if you like hearing from me, you can hear from me and both of those places. I also am on Twitter and clubhouse you can email me at Taylor@iAccessibility.net. And follow me on Twitter, Taylor_arndt22. And I am also producing content for iAccessibility. MICHAEL: Alright, so my pick for this week is a book series I'm reading called Expeditionary Force. And the first book in this series is called Columbus Day. The author is, I believe his name is Craig allanson. And he he has written several books in this series. And it's an awesome, awesome book series, The sci fi series about aliens taking over Earth, and about how humanity kind of steals a ship and goes out in the galaxy to kind of protect Earth. So there's an AI That's hilarious. And I'm not going to give anything more away about the series. But check it out. Highly recommend it. I'm on the third book right now. And I've been reading it for about two weeks and each books about 15 hours on Audible. So that tells you how dedicated to this series I am. So highly recommend it. As for where you can find me. You can find me producing content for iAccessibility. You can email me at mikedoise@iAccessibility.net. I'm Mike, always on Twitter, and on Facebook, just search for Michael Doise. And you go to Michaeldoise.com from my website, and I have a YouTube channel that I'm trying to make time to work on. And you know, I have content everywhere. And yeah, just very excited to be on clubhouse. I'm there as well. So find me on clubhouse. Just search for Michael Doise, and we even now, here's an announcement. We have a club. We're all fancy and everything we have the iAccessibility network club. In fact, after this recording, we will be on clubhouse doing a after episode kind of a discussion to talk about these things. So come hang out with us on clubhouse as we talk about today's episode. So we hope that you have enjoyed this episode of the IiACast. And we'll be back in two weeks for another episode. And it's been awesome getting to talk about all these things with you guys, Jason and Taylor. Want to thank everybody that's been on the stream and everybody that will listen once the episode comes out. And we will be back next time for new episodes. So until then, take care and keep playing with new technology. JASON: This show has been brought to you by the IACast Network. We love hearing from you. Email us at feedback@iaccessibility.net. Got twitter? Follow us at iaccessibility1. Facebook, search for IAccessibility. Download our free apps for IOS and Android and keep up with all of our content at iaccessibility.net. If you'd like to donate to our show, hit the payPal button on our website, and get early access to our outtakes with a donation at patrion.com/iacast. Thanks for listening

Top Traders Unplugged
122 Systematic Investor Episode ft Robert Carver – January 10th, 2021

Top Traders Unplugged

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 10, 2021 81:40


We’re joined today by Rob Carver to discuss how quant managers compared to discretionary managers in 2020, Winton Capital’s underperformance and resulting loss of AUM, the pressure for successful Trend Following firms to expand into different investment styles, why March & December 2020 were generally the best for Trend Followers despite being so different, how a portfolio combining a few historically successful Trend Following firms has proven to be a very potent investment strategy, navigating negative interest rate environments, how to look at Sharpe Ratios effectively, and how to calculate the ‘Serenity Ratio’ of various strategies. If you would like to leave us a voicemail to play on the show, you can do so here. Check out our Global Macro series here. Learn more about the Trend Barometer here. IT's TRUE

Control The Room
Michael Wilkinson: What Distinguishes a A Great Facilitator

Control The Room

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2020 52:18


“Whoever said, do what you love, the money will come, they got that right. Lots of work, mind you, in between. As we like to say, your passions determine your purpose. But it's your decisions that determine your destiny.” - Michael Wilkinson I’m pleased to have Michael Wilkinson here with me today for Episode 9 of the Control the Room Podcast. Michael is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, the largest provider of professional facilitation in the country. Michael, who grew up in the projects as what his sister described as a “Sesame Street Gangster,” eventually found himself at a New England prep school through an opportunity found through his job as a paperboy. After turning down an acceptance to Harvard Business School, Michael abandoned his 10-year plan to become undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development to begin a “faith-walk” that ultimately ended in his founding Leadership Strategies. In today’s episode, Michael and I talk about his path to the International Association of Facilitators Hall of Fame, what makes a facilitator great, and the six P’s of preparing for a meeting. Listen in to find out how Michael identifies and trains facilitators with great potential and how to ask the right questions in meetings. Show Highlights [1:38] Michael’s childhood in the projects of D.C. [5:39] Michael’s path to facilitation [10:30] What makes a great facilitator [17:17] Human connection in a virtual environment [26:07] Generating engagement when facilitating virtually [28:58] The only 3 reasons people disagree [35:16] The Six P’s of preparing for a meeting [40:56] Kumbaya facilitators [42:45] Asking the right questions [50:03] Leadership Strategies’ resources for facilitators Links | Resources Michael on LinkedIn Leadership Strategies Website About the Guest Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, a leadership training and strategy consulting firm that specializes in group facilitation. He is also the author of books such as Secrets of Facilitation, Facilitating Strategy, and CLICK: The Virtual Meetings Book. In 2016, Michael was awarded a place in the International Association of Facilitators Hall of Fame. About Voltage Control Voltage Control is a facilitation agency that helps teams work better together with custom-designed meetings and workshops, both in-person and virtual. Our master facilitators offer trusted guidance and custom coaching to companies who want to transform ineffective meetings, reignite stalled projects, and cut through assumptions. Based in Austin, Voltage Control designs and leads public and private workshops that range from small meetings to large conference-style gatherings.  Share An Episode of Control The Room Apple Podcasts Spotify Android Stitcher Engage Control The Room Voltage Control on the Web Contact Voltage Control Intro: Welcome to the Control the Room Podcast, a series devoted to the exploration of meeting culture and uncovering cures for the common meeting. Some meetings have tight control, and others are loose. To control the room means achieving outcomes while striking a balance between imposing and removing structure, asserting and distributing power, leaning in and leaning out, all in the service of having a truly magical meeting. Douglas: Today I'm with Michael Wilkinson. Michael is the CEO and managing director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., a leadership training and strategy consulting firm specializing in group facilitation. Michael is the author of the bestselling The Secrets of Facilitation, and most recently, Click: The Virtual Meetings Book. Welcome to the show, Michael. Michael: It is my pleasure, Douglas, and thank you for introducing me to your audience. Douglas: Absolutely. It's a pleasure to have you. And I guess, speaking of the audience, I think they'd love to hear how you got started in this amazing work of facilitation. Michael: Well, as you know, because you've been there, and many who are facilitators know, there is no front door to facilitation. It's not like you can go to college and go, “I want a degree in facilitation.” Most people enter through the back door. The major entry ways, many come through H.R. Others come through the processing-quality side. Some come through the I.T., the consulting side; from the D&I, diversity-inclusion side. I was on the I.T. side. So I was one of those kids—in fact, if you back up my story a little bit, I'm a projects kid. I grew up in the projects of D.C.. So for those who know D.C., back in the day, Anacostia, the worst neighborhood in D.C., and I have to confess, at six, I was one of those bad kids, where we’re stealing from the local grocery store. Remember the corner grocery stores that used to exist? We would—and this is really bad—we would, at six years old, we were tying kids to trees and leaving them out all night. I mean, it was before gangs were gangs. My sister called this the Sesame Street Gangsters. It was just not good. And by the time I got to seven, we moved from what I call lower-lower class—the projects of D.C.—to lower-middle class, out in what’s today is Suitland, Maryland. And at that time, and people who believe that place doesn't matter, place absolutely matters. The kids in that neighborhood, they were building clubhouses. They had a chess club. And so me and my brothers, we started doing what they started doing. Even got a paper route, if you can remember the old paper boys, where you deliver papers. Had two paper routes, making money for my family. And the change, the big change, in life came when, at 14, the Post building, the Washington Post, sponsored interviews for private schools, and any of the carriers could come for an interview. I got interviewed, got accepted to a couple of the really big private schools in New England, started going to this New England prep school. My graduating class, 50 people, 50 people in the graduating class, including—and you won't know these names unless you were into that movement—but the Wares of Long Island, Paula Ware; General Patton's grandson, the Stacks of Greenwich is—do you remember all superlatives in the yearbook, “first to make a million”? Well, we had a superlative, “already has a million,” and there were two names. These are trust-fund kids. But I had gotten pulled into that environment. And as a senior, I did a study of grades and test scores. I was a psych major at the time. So a correlation in prep school of the—and I got the grades and test scores of my graduating class. Of course, the registrar stripped off the names, but he left them in alphabetical order, Douglas, so it was too hard to find Wilkinson. And to say my test scores were lower would be true, but an understatement. I was so much lower than the next lower person, I clearly took someone's place. Talk about affirmative action, they reached out and got me. They were looking for a black kid, and I was the only black kid in my graduating class. But I graduated fifth in the class, which means it wasn't really fair that I took someone's place. But it also wasn't fair that I hadn't had the preparation that all the other kids did. So once I got it, I just excelled. Went off to a New England prep school, and I came out. I was going to be undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development. I had a 10-year plan—even back then, Douglas, I was a planner—a 10-year plan to become undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development. I was going to go back to Harvard Business School. I’d gotten accepted. I’d asked for a two-year deferment. Decided I wanted to work for two years in D.C. so I could see how Washington worked and how the different agencies worked. And somewhere along the line, got the spiritual thing. So I'm a son of a minister, so I got really clear on getting directed from the Spirit, and had that what we call the bathroom experience, the second major shift in life. So they’re actually the third. The first, of course, was moving out of the projects. The second, getting the scholarship to go to New England boarding school. The third was hearing in the shower, from out of nowhere, “Michael, if your most important relationship is your relationship with Me, how is going to Harvard Business School going to help you do that?” There you go. There's 10-year plan down the drain, Douglas. So ended up, I quit my job, I told Harvard I wasn’t coming, and went on a six-month faith walk, where just—and things are great when you do a faith walk, Douglas, where these things are great 29 days out of the month. It's when that rent is due, that’s when things get really hairy. But it was one of the most important times of my life and learned some really important lessons. And the most important one, because I was asking, “Okay, God, you don't want me to do this 10-year plan. It was clearly my plan. Well, what do You want me to do? You want me to become a minister? You want me to go off on a mountain and contemplate my navel. Do You want me to stand on the corner and say, ‘Have you asked, talked about, thought about God today?’” And I got that direction, and a really important direction, that each of us is called to ministry. Ministry is service. That's what it's called for. Some people, it takes the form of the pulpit. For other people, it takes another form. Facilitation is my ministry. I ended up facilitating, 1985 is my first official facilitated session, in a session where we were doing requirements analysis, and it was going south. Vendor was presenting, just going all over the place. I was the youngest kid in the room. We have, you know, the consultants. I was with Ernst and Young, the youngest consultant on the team, but nobody was stepping up. So I just got up and said, “You know what, let’s structure this a little differently.” And so here with the client people, with our own consultants, and with this vendor, restructured the conversation and led it for that three hours going forward. Afterwards, someone said, “That was a great facilitated session.” Douglas, I was like, “What? What are you talking about? What's this thing called…” I had no idea. And then when they explained it to me, I said, “Oh, yeah. It's easy. Everybody is good at it.” And that's where I learned everybody was not good at this thing called facilitation that I had been gifted with some natural talents that made me instinctively good at it. And so I started doing it, started facilitating for my church, started facilitating for the nonprofit associations I was a part of. And then the fourth major shift in life came. This is the call that actually changed my trajectory again. Connie Bergeron—I remember. It was March 1991. She called and said, “Hey, we're looking for a facilitator. I've just been named head of Meeting Professionals International for the Atlanta chapter. I'm getting my officers together for a retreat. It's going to be on this particular weekend. Would you facilitate it for me?” I looked over my calendar, Douglas, and said, “Sure. I'd be glad to.” And, again, she said the words that changed my life, “And we’ll pay you.” Really? I mean, I was willing to do it for free because it’s fun. So she paid me. It was great. Two months later she called me back. Mentioned the pay word again. Three months later called me back. It was November of 1992, 1992, yes. I was, at that point, 18 months from becoming a partner at Ernst and Young. I turned to them, Douglas, and said, “I'm having way more fun on the weekends than I'm having during the week,” and left and started Leadership Strategies, the facilitation company. Do you like to say world headquarters, our second bedroom, which is great. Big plans, but just getting started. And it has been an amazing blessing. Today, we're the largest provider of professional facilitation across the country. We have 600 facilitators under contract. We have a core team of 27 facilitators. We've trained 28,000 people in facilitation skills; written six books on facilitation, the two you mentioned and four others. It is crazy. Here's this kid from the projects, and it's been just amazing blessing. Whoever said, do what you love, the money will come, they got that right. Lots of work, mind you, in between. As we like to say, your passions determine your purpose. But it's your decisions that determine your destiny. And so it was just a bunch of decisions that helped me along the way. And it's been just a tremendous blessing. Anyway, long story, but thought your listeners might enjoy understanding, how did I get here? because it's been a crazy, crazy ride. Douglas: Yeah. I mean, wow, impressive. And, you know, I think most facilitators can relate to this kind of moment of—well, kind of two moments that you described—the moment where you start to—these kind of natural talents start to click. You know, for me, it was always, I always found myself in meetings where people were disagreeing, but really they were saying the same thing but just in different ways, or they thought they were agreeing but they were saying different things. And I always had to interject and say, “Hold on for a second. I think you're saying this and you’re saying this,” and they're both nodding their heads. And then they stop for a second and realize that they were saying different things. And that happened enough and enough and enough that I realized that, man, that's something that I'm not seeing enough out of other people. And so I think that's something that's a hallmark of a facilitator, when you realize that in meetings, there's something about what you're observing or the way things are unfolding that really align with this ability to help move things forward in a natural and productive way. So I think— Michael: You really have touched on something that’s really important, and many facilitators may know it or not know it. When we were doing training early on, I was recognizing that there were people who were learning the techniques but missing some things that were going to make them a great facilitator, even though they knew all the same stuff that others knew or that we were training other people in. And I realized, and you put it well, that we talk about now seven key characteristics to look for. And people ask us, “Hey, we've purchased your training class. We're going to have a training for 16 people. How do I choose the 16 people in the class?” And we tell them, “Here's some target characteristics to look for.” We talk about seven, and we tell them, “Really it's three that's really important. And oh, by the way, the first two we can do nothing about.” So those three, just quickly, one is you got to like people, right? If you don’t like people, this is not something you should be doing, because people give you lots of reasons not to like them. So you really have to have a starting point, where you really like people. Two, you have to be able to process information quickly because there's so much coming and your mind has to be listening and processing at the same time and being able to differentiate, yeah, this is the same as that. This is different from this. This is…while you're listening, being able to process that. And if you can't process quickly, really, all you're going to be is a meeting manager. And great facilitators are way more than meeting managers because they're able to capture the spirit of a group; help engage them; and help guide them; can see down the road and around the corner, see the car or the truck that's coming that they're about to crash into, long before they're getting there, because they're processing while stuff is going on. So clearly, you have this skill, and then could recognize, a lot of people don’t, “Well done, sir. Applauding you. Well done.” Douglas: Well, yeah. You know, it's funny. I don't know how many times you've been speaking with someone that's maybe interested in learning facilitation or even a prospect or whatnot, and it turns out they're conflating facilitator and moderator. And I think that's maybe the big—and I think when you say meeting manager, it's all in that same bucket of, like, not facilitator. Michael: Yes. And it really, I mean, it really is because there are some people, people who are great speakers, think, “Okay, I'd be a good facilitator.” People who are great trainers, “Wow. I could be a good facilitator.” And we say, okay, let's separate this, because, as you know, facilitation has got convoluted with a bunch of stuff. So ATD, the Association for Talent Development, uses the name facilitator for trainers. And that's fine. Training facilitators, that's good. We can infer very much. But we are more group facilitators. In our business, it’s kind of interesting because what we find is in general, this isn’t completely true, but in general, our best trainers are extroverts. Our best group facilitators are introverts. One of my people who worked for us many years, she said something to me one day, and it's like, this capsulizes it well. She said, “You know, Michael, I like facilitating, but I really love training.” I said, “Okay, Leslie, I'll bite. Why do you really love training?” She said, “Well, when you're facilitating, you really have to listen to them.” And there you go. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You get where I get that? Really rings the bell of why introverts, who are, really, they value listening and processing a lot more than extroverts, who generally like expressing. And so if you generally like expressing, you may find that training is way more your passion than facilitating, where you're really listening, contemplating, and helping a group move in a direction and so on. Interesting, yes? Douglas: Yes. And, you know, I can find that really fascinating because usually we like to pair up someone who’s kind of a classical trainer— Michael: Yes. Douglas: —and has that air, that performance aspect with a facilitator in these training sessions, because then that person can put on the dog-and-pony show while the facilitator is making sure that learning's integrated, because if you're not listening and working with them, you don't know if it stuck. Michael: And so what's interesting, I’m going to take you a step further, and I'm really biased here, that I really think we figured out in our company or we'll wait to think about how to make training work, because we don't hire trainers to train people in facilitation. We hire facilitators to train people in facilitation because they understand and role model all the techniques. But then we teach them about how important it is, with one of our eight principles in our facilitation course, all has to do with energy and keeping the energy high because that's one of the hallmarks of our practice. So we have to be able to, we call it show time. As an introvert, I get my energy from within, and people often are surprised when they see me do my thing, and then at the end of it, it’s like I’m the thumb in the mouth. I need a blankie. It happened twice before I realized this was a bad idea, Douglas. Clients who, when I was about, I was going to facilitate a two-day training session. Let’s say it started on a Tuesday. The client said, “Hey. Why don’t you fly in Monday night, meet with the team, they’ll get to know you, and then we’ll get started Tuesday morning?” Douglas, I did that twice. I’d never do that again, never, ever, ever, because what happens is, because I'm a natural introvert, when they meet me Monday night, the side conversations. “This is our facilitator? Really?” because— Douglas: We got a meeting with this guy all day? Michael: —I’m quiet. I’m just, that’s who I am. But once I—I'm glad we meet with them Tuesday night, because after that, they've already seen me. And now they're asking me the questions, not looking for me to entertain them, because I'm not an extrovert. I’m an introvert. So very different. So it's what we do in order to make it work. Douglas: Well, and nowadays we're in the midst of a pandemic. So all the team dinners are a thing of the past. Michael: Well, actually, actually, think about it. It really is. We still need—the social engagement is central. And so we as facilitators have to recognize, how do we make that happen, even in a virtual environment? And so we do that. So we may have this session from eight to five, and then we have a virtual cocktail hour for everyone. We break for 30 minutes, everyone grabs their favorite drinks, and we have a virtual cocktail hour for 30 minutes, an hour, as we would if it was a real session. But it's an important piece, so we can't miss it. That's for sure. Douglas: Yeah. And the human connection is so, so critical. Michael: How are you all doing it in your business? How are you keeping the human connection going during this? Douglas: Man, you know, I think it's always been a part of the design. And I think as long as it's a focus as a guiding principle, when you're designing an agenda for a session, it'll find its way in. I think it's important to start there first, right? Michael: Oh, it always helps. Douglas: Yeah, yeah. And I love this notion of the cocktail hour. Everyone has demanding schedules in this virtual space, right? And so they might have kids to run off to— Michael: Absolutely. Douglas: —or they’ve slotted it in. And it's a lot different than, you know, having taken the effort to drive somewhere and like, “Okay, I’m here. Maybe I’ll just stick around for a little bit longer.” We always just make it clear that, okay, the plenary is done; we're going to be around a little bit longer because I know some people like to stick around. Because I like to refer to it as, you know whenever you're cleaning up the supplies, people stick around and ask you questions? Michael: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Douglas: In virtual, there are no supplies. You can just shut MURAL and Miro or whatever off, and we’re done. Michael: We’re done. Bye. Douglas: So I like to tell people, “All right. Well, now we're cleaning up, and we'll be around for a little bit longer. If you want to ask any questions, we'll be here. But don't feel like you have to stay if you have places to be.” Michael: That’s a great idea. Douglas, I’m writing that down. “Hey, we’re going to have a clean up or stick-around time for those who…” I like that. You’ll see a blog about that soon. I like that. Courtesy of Douglas. Douglas: I love the cocktail-hour notion, too. It's like, I'm just making sure we reserve that time for people. In fact, it was BBC released a report, and the headline was quite hilarious. It was like, “Research Finds That Most Meetings Are a Form of Therapy,” or “Most Meaningless Meetings Are a Form of Therapy.” And the point was, and you hear that and you're like, “Well, that seems kind of crazy,” but it's kind of interesting because it's like people gravitate toward having these meaningless meetings, these meetings that nothing comes out of them because they have this need to have connection. And so if you think about it, if we get really intentional about our connection during meetings and plan them in, then people don't have to plan these extraneous things that then waste time. Michael: Well done. Well done. And we think that the pandemic has changed a lot of things. Unfortunately, one thing it hasn't changed is poor meetings. In fact, they've gotten poorer in the sense that with this virtual thing that people actually think that, well, because it's a virtual meeting, it takes less preparation or because it's—and we are finding, just as in our training work, we've converted virtual sessions where maybe 5 percent, 4 percent of our business prior to the pandemic, now it’s 95 percent. And our facilitators are finding it’s way more work, whether it’s a virtual meeting or virtual training, way more work to prepare for it. Way more. And the key is, we call it the virtual details, that where before you would have, okay, let's say we have a process-improvement session. And so we're going to start with (a) introduction; then section (b) we're going to talk about how does that process work today? Let's say we're trying to fix the hiring process in the company; (c) we're going to talk about the problems and causes; (d) we're going to brainstorm potential solutions; (e) we're going to reformat the process; (f) we're going to put together implementation plan; and so on. Well, that's what we'd do if it was face to face. We'd go, okay, (b) here's what I'm going to do with the flip charts. I'm going to set them up. And we know instinctively to do that. Virtual, whole different world. We say with each of those agenda items, do what you normally would do. But you also have to figure out the virtual details. So (b) you know what, I'm going to do a poll; action (c) I'm going to use the whiteboard; action (d) I'll do annotations; (e) I'm going to use a breakout group with…and then we… So we teach a course now called the Zoom Plus. And what that is, is everyone is now using Zoom, and you know wow. All those people, Zoom meetings, they're not even using all the basic Zoom stuff. Annotation, whiteboard, breakout groups, and so on. So we show them. And we like to say, “We are going to play with the technique so that you do it. You’ll play with them. Then, we're going to take the camera and put it behind the facilitator so that you can see how the facilitator creates the polls, how the facilitator creates the breakout rooms, and then you're going to do it.” So that’s using the basic stuff. And then, Zoom Plus, the plus part of that is we then show them what our facilitators do. And these are 15 virtual-engagement strategies, things like rotating flip charts. How do you use—how do you have the groups rotate through? Last person standing, dump and clump, and all these other advanced engagement strategies, using them, doing them, and doing them virtually. All cool stuff. So we first tried to get them using the basics, which most people aren't using. And then we're showing them, here’s how you use the advanced strategies that will make your meetings absolutely stand out. And people, as we like to say, you know you've gotten there when you hear people go, wow, that was the best virtual meeting I ever attended. And unfortunately, as you can imagine, Douglas, it's easy to be the best, because most are so poor and boring. Douglas: The bar is so low. So low. Michael: It is. Exactly. You’ve had the experience. Douglas: So. Yeah. And, you know, I think there's so much—early on, folks were asking, “Oh, do we get a discount for virtual?” And I’m like, “Man, I’m thinking about charging a premium,” because it's not only the prep time, but, you know, having an assistant facilitator is so much more critical because someone has to manage the tech. Michael: Absolutely. And what we're finding is frequently—I would put it in the 20 percent time—the facilitator has an issue. So as an example, one of our rules is for client sessions, client sessions, you never underscore underscore. Use your microphone on the computer. You always call in over the phone. The reason is if something happens to one of the two, you still have the other. So for some reason, you lose Internet connection, you can still talk to them. Or some reason the audio goes out, you can convert to what's happening. So you actually want to have redundant backup. We often suggest that you have another computer connected. So you have two sessions going, one is the participant computer. So if something happens, you can transfer over quickly to make it seamless. So it's almost like you run out of flip-chart paper. You run out of flip-chart paper, you always have a spare right there. Well, how do you do that virtually? Douglas: Planning on the redundant systems, having the activity by activity, having what is the virtual equivalent of all of this? Have I taken the time to proof it and make sure it's good? I mean, that is a lot of extra work, and not to mention just the fatigue of these environments. And, you know, I recently spoke with someone. They were telling me that—I'm not sure where the research came from, so this is all anecdotal—but they were saying that any time we're typically working in a three foot kind of context, it's typically a fight or a mating scenario. Michael: Wow. Douglas: Because you don't get three feet in someone's face inside the meeting room. That would be awkward. But now we’re doing that with these computers and is very sometimes mostly charged, political, like, we're talking about some really intense stuff. And we go in, and we try to—one mistake we made early on was, let's have an eight-hour session virtually. And, you know, you can't do that virtually. Michael: Yeah, it’s much harder. Douglas: You have to do it much shorter. And so I think there's some training of setting expectations for clients, too— Michael: Absolutely. Douglas: —even ones we've worked with in the past. Michael: Yeah, yeah. And so I'm going to go a step further, because this will be—because you are correct that the virtual sessions, by their nature, the dynamic is very different. And I want to—everyone knows—not everyone knows—many are aware, and it comes out in our polls, when we ask people, what is the biggest challenge in virtual meetings? And we've asked this to thousands of people now through our webinars and so on. It always comes up with the same thing, and it's not even close. It's engagement, keeping people engaged, because people are multitasking, doing other things. And so as facilitators, that's got to be our number one focus. How do we keep people engaged? And here is something that we ask people to consider. We as a company, we do have, we have what we call the PDI Difference—Practical, Dynamic, Interactive. And the way we do that in face-to-face sessions is we ensure that if we're training people or having a facilitated session, there will be significant engagement every 20 to 30 minutes. Thirty minutes will not go by without significant engagement, and mostly 20 minutes. So somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. Douglas, when you go virtual, cut that bad boy in half. You’ve got to have significant engagement every 10 to 15 minutes. So if you’re getting people together, if you are going 90 minutes between breaks, do the math. Even if you say, “Well, the beginning, there's obviously engagement. People are going.” And the end of that 90 minutes you have engagement, so that means you've got to have at least four others, at least four other engagements. And if all you know is the classic engagement question-answer, question-answer, man, that meetings will wear people out. That's why it's so important for people to have all these other engagement strategies—dump and clump, last man standing, rotating flip charts, all this other stuff, to help put in people's toolbox. And so really important for facilitators to recognize that it takes a lot more if it's virtual. And as you said, training our clients that, “Listen, you know, normally I would charge a day of prep for this, but it's virtual. And so therefore,…” Yeah. And making it clear it's extra. Douglas: Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about the Secrets of Facilitation. Michael: Oh, my favorite book. Yes. Douglas: You have over 60 secrets in that book. Michael: It is. And really good stuff, I think, personally. Douglas: Yeah. I'm a fan. I have it on the bookshelf behind me. And, you know, beyond the basics, things like preparing and managing for dysfunction, what do you think the biggest secret that most people don't know? Like, what's the one that you’re just like time and time again does no one just…? Michael: There are a couple that come to mind, but let me focus on this one. And I'm about to make a statement, Douglas, that when I say it in our training classes—I mentioned we trained over 20,000 people—there are always people who go, “No, that can't be right.” And by the end of the teaching, they go, “Yeah, that's really true.” Here is the statement: there are only three reasons people disagree. Huge secret. There are only three. Every disagreement in the entire freakin’ world, there are only three reasons people disagree. Only three. Now, that's the good news, and that's really good news. But here's the bad news, and it's really bad news. If you have a level-three disagreement and you try to solve it with level-one techniques, you're going to fail. Level-three disagreements can't be solved with level-one techniques. Likewise, you have a level-one disagreement, try to solve it with level-two techniques, you are going to fail. Can't happen. So we as facilitators have to understand the three reasons people disagree. Have to be able to diagnose which reason it is and have strategies for addressing each one. Now, while that's a teaser, I probably should take a minute to say what are those three reasons people disagree. So let's break it down really quickly. So you probably have figured out one, two, or three of them. You want to take any guesses, Douglas, or you want me to reveal? Your shot. Douglas: Why don't you—well, you do the reveal. You do the reveal. Michael: Okay, I’ll do the reveal. So number one, and it's most disagreements, level-one disagreements, and you actually implied it when you were talking about learning that you were a great facilitator. That is, people disagree because of information. One has information that the other doesn’t have, and they’re arguing, bumping heads, even though once they realize and the information is put on the table, they'll realize they weren’t in disagreement at all. Level-one disagreements always end the same way. “Oh, is that what you meant?” There you go. And as we like to say, when you hear those words, your job is done, because they really weren't in disagreement. In fact, the book Crucial Conversations highlights that, they give it a name, violent agreement. They really are in agreement, but they were arguing. They were just using different words or one had information that the other didn't have. So you saw level-one disagreements, pretty simple. We as facilitators have to understand the difference between advocacy and inquiry. If you ever watched two people arguing, it's like they're fighting back and forth. Statement, statement, statement, statement. Each person is trying to advocate for theirs. If one of them would just step back and just ask the question, “Well, why do you say that? What do you mean by that?” they’ll then would clarify, and you would hear those words, “Oh, is that what you meant?” There you go. Resolved. So we have to move people from advocacy mode to inquiry mode, and you do that yourself by asking questions. In a business environment, there are specific questions we train facilitators to ask, because most level-one disagreements or business are based on either cost, time, who’s involved, or how it’s going to happen. And so we get the questions. Level-two disagreements are different. If the level-one disagreements are about information—again, we find most disagreements are level one—level-two disagreements are about values or experiences, that they have different values or had had different experiences that prefer one alternative over the other. They understand each other perfectly. They just value different things. Well, you can solve a value disagreement simply by identifying and isolating the key values. What are the key values that each person has? And then creating solutions, brainstorming solutions, that combine those values. It's not a compromise activity. It is a creativity activity, where, as we teach it, you can come up with some pretty novel solutions once you isolate those key values. It just works. In fact, we get more letters about that technique than any others because it really does work when you understand what you're looking to do. Level-three disagreement is different. It's not about information. It's not about values or experiences. It's about personality, past history with one another, or some outside factor that has nothing to do with the disagreement. It's not about the disagreement. They basically don't like each other. Can you solve a level-one disagreement by asking questions about the issue? No, because it's not about the issue. Can you solve a level-three disagreement by asking about the values? It’s not—yeah, you solve level-three disagreements differently. Take it to a higher source. You're not going to solve it at this level. You've got to take it up the chain. And so we talk about strategies for doing that. But most facilitators, that secret of understanding there are only three reasons people disagree, and so when you're listening to a disagreement, we train people to say, “Hey, next time you're listening to a disagreement, just say under your breath, ‘level two. Yeah, level one. Yeah, level three,’ so that you can get used to diagnosing what type of disagreement it is so that you keep that mindset of, okay, here's the technique I want to use to adjust this disagreement. So it's cool stuff and really one of those fun secrets out of the 60. Douglas: Yeah. I love frameworks like that, that can—are very actionable and we can kind of lean on them in the moment pretty easily. Michael: Well, you know, I find that the best facilitators are process oriented, Douglas. And I'm just going to give your listeners a heads up. If you were to see the prep work that Douglas had sent out to my office around the thinking that they've already done around how to have a great podcast, it was like, oh, my gosh, this is like a cookbook. All I have to do is this part. They're doing all these other pieces. And some great process thinking, very much appreciate it, because it makes it easy. In the same way, if you can give facilitators a process to use that's been tested, proven, that they can modify and make theirs, it makes all the difference. And that's one of the things I think we're good at: giving people processes. Douglas: Absolutely. If you could change one thing about meetings in general, what would it be? Michael: Oh, my gosh. Wow. You're asking big questions here. If I could change one thing about meetings. Yeah, I guess—yeah, that would have to be it. Douglas, the biggest challenge I find, and we find over and over again with meetings that other people are leading, is preparation. So few people do the preparation necessary. And quite frankly, it's not a lot of work if, as you would say, there's a framework for it. And so I'll just give your listeners a framework. We call it the six Ps. And it doesn't matter whether you are running a meeting for yourself or running a meeting for someone else, ask the six Ps, because once you know the six Ps, you execute on that and you can be really prepared. One, and you know it all starts with purpose. Douglas: Yes. Thank you. Michael: Why are we having this meeting? Douglas: Yes. Michael: Why are we having this meeting? What's the real purpose of the meeting? And then we say, “Okay, now that we're clear…” And so I'll give an example just to make it real for your listeners. Someone may come to us. “Michael, Michael, I’d love to have a team-building session for my team.” First P, purpose. “Really? Help me understand what's really the purpose of the team-building session?” “Well, I need my team working together better because, you know, we kind of snipe at each other sometimes. So I really want us to have a strong, bonding experience so that we can walk out of that room, moving together, working together, feeling better about each other.” “That's helpful.” Second P, product. “So what is the product you want to come out of that meeting?” “Michael, what do you mean?” “Well, think about it this way, in terms of the three Hs. When this meeting’s over, what do you want your team to have in their hands that they can see?” “Well, Michael, it’d be great if we had a team vision.” “Cool. Anything else?” “Well, maybe some team norms.” “Okay. Anything else?” “Well, maybe if we could walk away with what's going to happen if someone violates the norm, so we have that kind of…” “Anything else?” “No, I think that's pretty good.” “All right. Well, thank you. Well, let me ask you this. What do you want them to have in their head when the session is over?” “Michael, what do you mean?” “Well, what do you want them to know that they didn't know before the meeting started?” “Well, maybe I want them to know, hey, what makes a team great? What are the qualities of a great team and know how we assess against that, and what are the things we need to work on to be a great team?” “Cool, cool, great. So what do you want them to have in their hearts when the session is over?” “Michael, you getting soft on me?” “No, no, no. What do you want them to believe that maybe they didn't believe before this session was held?” “Well, I want them to believe that if we do these things, we’ll be a great team. I want them to feel committed to making it happen.” “There you go. Great. Well, so you’ve talked about purpose and product. Let me ask you this. Tell me about the people who are going to be in the room. Who needs to be in the room that we create these products and achieve this purpose?” “Well, I want my whole team there.” “Anyone else?” “Well, you know, do you think, Michael, my E.A., should be there?” “Well, let me ask you, do you think your E.A. is part of the team, work with the team? Is your E.A. part of getting things to happen?” “So, yeah, that's great.” “Anyone else? There we go.” “All right. Well, we talked about purpose, product, participants. Let me ask you this. What are the probable issues that we need to address? What are the things that we absolutely need to talk about if these participants are going to create these products to achieve this purpose?” “Yeah. We've had a couple of things happen over the last few months that we really need to talk about.” “Well, let's talk about what those are. Anything else we need to talk about? Great.” “Well, now let's talk about process. What's the process you're thinking we might want to take the team through so that we address these issues so the participants create the product and the purpose? Great.” And notice, by the way, Douglas, process is fifth. Many people think, “I want to hold a meeting. What's the agenda?” Wrong answer. There’re four questions you have to answer first—purpose, product, participants, probable issues—before you get to process. Never start with agenda. And then the six P is place, meaning—and it's all the stuff around the place. And in these days, the place is virtual. So let's talk about all the things around the virtual platform that needs to be. So we say when you have those six questions answered, the six Ps of preparation, you're now ready to do the work to get well prepared for your session. So we think that's a great way to address and make meetings so much better. Just most people don't do the work. They don't think about the six Ps. Douglas: Yeah, you know, there’re so many meeting—you talked about the lack of preparation, and it’s like— Michael: Yeah. Douglas: And so there's this weird spectrum, because on one end, no one's doing anything. So they're just kind of walking in blind, and they just threw something on your calendar called a meeting, and they're not even—so there's a lexicon and taxonomy problem. Michael: Yes. Douglas: And so that's a whole other thing we could get into. But then on the other hand, when they do the planning, their agenda’s just a list of topics— Michael: Yes. Douglas: —and it’s not thoughtful, it’s not informed by— Michael: Absolutely. Douglas: —the purpose. We were just talking earlier today about the problem with icebreakers and warmups, in that— Michael: Oh, my gosh, yes. Douglas: —people just throw them on the agenda, without thinking about the purpose and why they’re there. And I love this. I have this saying that if you can’t ask your participants after doing something like that, “Why did we just do that?” and have it erupt into a pithy conversation, you need to ask yourself, “Why did we just do that?” Michael: Oh, well said, Douglas. Well said. In fact, our company, in general, when it comes to icebreakers, we hate them because most icebreakers are just stuff. And we say, “It's good to break the ice,” but you want to break the ice with an activity that furthers the purpose and product of the session. If you say, “Hey, you know what, we’d like to spend a few minutes talking about your favorite vacation spot,” that's a great icebreaker if the purpose of our session is to choose a vacation spot. If it's not, leave that icebreaker at home. “Hey, you know what, we'd like to hear about your most embarrassing moment.” That is a great icebreaker if this session is about dealing with embarrassing moments. If it's not, leave that icebreaker at home. Whatever you use as an icebreaker, it should further the session result, not be something, as you said, that’s unpurposeful and inserted into the meeting. Facilitators have a bad rap of, “Hey, we help people hold hands and sing Kumbaya.” Read that from an executive standpoint, “We're great at wasting people's time.” That's how executives view the classic Kumbaya facilitators. Our job is to make sure every moment we spend with executives is productive. It's used to get to a result that they are willing to invest in. If they're not willing to invest, we have just added non-value activity. So non-value added activity is not helpful in a facilitated session. Douglas: Well said, my friend. So I would love to leave our listeners with one last piece of advice. And so if you could ensure every facilitator in the world had one skill, what would it be? Michael: That's easy. That's really easy. When you think about facilitators, when we walk into a room, our most important job is to pull out the most important information that's going to help this group get where they're going. That's our responsibility. To do that, we don't have to be good at asking questions. We have to be great at asking questions. We have to be really excellent at using questions to pull out the information that's going to help the group. As I said in one of my early, early ad set we put together, the ad said, “Hidden inside of your company are answers to some of the most important issues facing your organization. Your people have the answers. We bring the questions.” And so we teach something called the secret of the starting question. If you’ve ever facilitated a session and you asked this really great question and got complete and utter silence, if that’s ever happened to you, what we teach is, more times than not, the reason you got silence is that you asked what we call the “type A” question instead of a “type B” question. Type A questions lead people to silence. Type B questions get people putting up their hands, jumping up and down, trying to get you to respond to them. Or you're old enough to remember Welcome Back, Kotter. We called it the Horshack effect. “Ooh, ooh, ooh, Mr. Kotter. Mr. Kotter, call on me.” And that's what we want to get. And so, how do you get that? Well, it’s all in how you ask the question. And we call it the secret of the starting question. Now, just to give an example. Let’s go back to my hiring process. If we're in a room and we got a bunch of people, we're trying to figure out how the hiring process works today, that's one of the first agenda items. As a facilitator, we go, “Okay, great. We're all together. We're ready to get to that first agenda item. Let's get started. How does the hiring process work today?” Crickets. “Come on, folks. You know how it works. How does it work today? What are the steps?” Crickets. “Come on, guys. You know the…” There you go. Instead, you would ask what we call a type B question, and it sounds like this. “You know, we're ready to get started with documenting the current hiring process. I'd love for you to think about the last time you hired someone. Think about all the steps you had to go through, all the people you had to talk with, the forms or whatever you had to fill out to get that person on board. What are the steps in the current hiring process?” We call that a type B question. How is it formed? They're three steps. It's pretty easy. It's pretty simple, just not easy. Its first step is you start with an image-building phrase. “Think about the last time…,” or “If you were about to...” or “Imagine…” It doesn’t start with “What…” Here comes a type B question. You're going very direct. Or “Why…” or “How…” or so on. It starts with an image-building phrase because you're trying to create an image, because when people can see their answers, they answer right away. Then, you expand the image with at least two other phrases. Then, you ask the direct question. “Think about the last time you hired someone. Think about all the steps you had to go through, all the people you had to talk with,” and so on. Because when people can see their answers, they raise their hand. When people can’t see their answers, if you ask, “What are the steps in the current hiring process?” they're going to go, “Hm, let me think.” What are they doing? They're trying to imagine their answers. Why? Because you didn’t ask a question that helped them do it. Facilitation means to make easy. We've got to get them visualizing their answers. So that's just one of the things. We teach nine different questioning techniques. And if we could do that for every facilitator in the world—in fact, your audience have probably heard of TED Talks. If they were to go to the TED site and type in “secret of the starting question,” they would see me giving a TEDx Talk to the International Association of Facilitators on the secret of the starting question. Douglas: I love it. So good. It's funny, once you were starting to talk about the secret to—or the one thing that facilitators should know, and you started talking about questions, I was going to ask you, what is one of your favorite questions? But then, before I even had the opportunity, you gave us a framework for asking questions. So I'm still going to throw this at you for extra credit. Is there a question…? In fact, you threw out one of my favorites already, and that is, what did you mean by that? I think that's such a disarming question, especially if someone says something that is maybe judgmental or offensive in some way, and maybe there was no intention behind it, and we want to just give them an opportunity to unravel that or explain it. Michael: And it helps them do it. And that’s a great one. And I think one of the things you find is why questions and how questions are often challenging for people. And so you want to be careful, as we say, you want to focus on the tone. And probably my favorite, it's simple, is, “Help me understand, why is that important? Help me understand, why is it important?” because your tone could be, “So why is that important?” That’s a wrong tone. No, thank you. Yeah. So tone as you ask that question, “Why is that important?” is one of my favorite questions. There have to be questions because it gets to, oh, new understanding, because I'm thinking, perhaps if you could see my thought bubble, “What does that have to do with anything we're talking about?” And so sort of just, “Hey, help me understand, why is that important?” Douglas: Also, “Help me understand,” I'm taking the blame for not understanding it, which is great. It reminds me, too—I've been listening to a lot of masterclass. And Chris Voss has a really great masterclass, and he's a master negotiator— Michael: Oh, excellent. Douglas: —and author of that book, Never Split the Difference. And one of his points around not using why, he never asks any why questions when he's negotiating with a hostage. And it's because, remember when you were a little kid and something you broke, something by accident, and your parents were like, “Why did you do that?” So it's just like, it brings you back to those moments. So we don't want to psychologically hijack anyone when we're asking these questions that we don't really have much intent behind. Michael: There you go. Really important stuff. Questions are a key for facilitators. Really getting down a question framework for yourself, really good stuff. Douglas: Absolutely. And I encourage people to check out the type B questions and all the other great stuff, the six Ps, et cetera. It's really awesome stuff. And so if they were going to dig deeper into this, how can they find you? How can they unravel the secrets more deeply? Michael: Well, please, our website, www.leadstrat—that’s short for Leadership Strategies—leadstrat.com, and any of the resource pages. You can also, in our store, we have all the books—The Secrets of Facilitation is probably the one we’ve talked about the most, as well as Click: The Virtual Meetings Book. Those two are ones that in this pandemic people will find most helpful. And again, do check out— Oh, our gift to the industry, we recognize that as part of our—we’re the largest facilitation company in the country, that what we do, we typically do three or four free webinars a month. Most recently, we've been doing them on the virtual side of things, running effective virtual meetings, making Zoom hum, those kinds of things, just, really, free webinars. Of course, we do it because we know that once people get a taste of what we do, they may want to learn more. We’ve been doing them for over a decade now, these webinars. But please check them out. And you know what most webinars, Douglas, are thinly veiled sales pitches. For us, we go, “Okay. Please give us 60 minutes. You're going to get 55 minutes of real content, stuff you can use tomorrow. Then, the last five minutes we’ll talk about for those who want to learn more.” So really hardcore, hit-it content. And so it's really great. They get 400 or 500 people on every webinar, and so it's really fun stuff. Douglas: Excellent. Well, I can't wait to check one out. And, you know, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show today. Michael: Oh, likewise, being with you. It’s just been a fun conversation. Douglas: Absolutely. Well, thanks again, and we’ll be talking to you soon. Michael: All right. You take care. Outro: Thanks for joining me for another episode of Control the Room. Don't forget to subscribe to receive updates when new episodes are released. If you want more, head over to our blog, where I post weekly articles and resources about working better together

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟
第964期:Life in Portugal

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2020 2:25


更多英语知识,请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Michael: So Ana, you're from Portugal. Can you tell me a little bit about your country?Ana: Yes, sure. Portugal is a really small country actually. It's right by Spain in Europe and we have really nice weather there. It's really sunny most of the year and really hot in summer. It can get really cold and really rainy in winter. But yeah, overall, it's a really nice country to live in.Michael: And I've heard you have nice beaches in Portugal.Ana: Yes, we do. I used to go to the beach everyday with my family in summer. It was really great. But the beaches can get really crowded. Lots of people, so you might want to be a bit careful when you choose where to go.Michael: All right, I see. And where do you live in Portugal?Ana: I live in a small village actually. You probably don't know it. It's called Palmela. But it's south of Lisbon and it's by the coast, so it's really nice. We get a nice view of the mountains and of the rivers. So I really enjoy living there. It's really quite. Not a lot of people. A lot of wine farms actually and really nice food. You should come and visit sometime.Michael: I like wine. And so you have good wine in Portugal. What sort of food do you eat in Portugal?Ana: Let's see. We get a lot of fish because we're by the sea. And so codfish is a traditional and sardines and mackerels.Michael: Oh, I like sardines.Ana: Yeah. It's really good. And we also have really good desserts. So for example, coffee cake, yogurt cake. We've got pastel de nata which is kind of an egg tart thing. So I really recommend you try that with our coffee when you go there.Michael: All right. And you speak Portuguese as your first language.Ana: Yes, I do. I speak Portuguese. It's not the same as Brazilian Portuguese but it's really close and we can understand each other. So that's really great.Michael: All right. And can you understand Spanish as well?Ana: Yeah. I can understand a little bit of Spanish but there are some differences between Portuguese and Spanish.Michael: How do you say hello in Portuguese?Ana: Oh, you can say, "Ola."Michael: Ola.Ana: Yeah, it's fun. You should learn some Portuguese.Michael: Oh, I'd love to.

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟
第964期:Life in Portugal

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2020 2:25


更多英语知识,请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Michael: So Ana, you're from Portugal. Can you tell me a little bit about your country?Ana: Yes, sure. Portugal is a really small country actually. It's right by Spain in Europe and we have really nice weather there. It's really sunny most of the year and really hot in summer. It can get really cold and really rainy in winter. But yeah, overall, it's a really nice country to live in.Michael: And I've heard you have nice beaches in Portugal.Ana: Yes, we do. I used to go to the beach everyday with my family in summer. It was really great. But the beaches can get really crowded. Lots of people, so you might want to be a bit careful when you choose where to go.Michael: All right, I see. And where do you live in Portugal?Ana: I live in a small village actually. You probably don't know it. It's called Palmela. But it's south of Lisbon and it's by the coast, so it's really nice. We get a nice view of the mountains and of the rivers. So I really enjoy living there. It's really quite. Not a lot of people. A lot of wine farms actually and really nice food. You should come and visit sometime.Michael: I like wine. And so you have good wine in Portugal. What sort of food do you eat in Portugal?Ana: Let's see. We get a lot of fish because we're by the sea. And so codfish is a traditional and sardines and mackerels.Michael: Oh, I like sardines.Ana: Yeah. It's really good. And we also have really good desserts. So for example, coffee cake, yogurt cake. We've got pastel de nata which is kind of an egg tart thing. So I really recommend you try that with our coffee when you go there.Michael: All right. And you speak Portuguese as your first language.Ana: Yes, I do. I speak Portuguese. It's not the same as Brazilian Portuguese but it's really close and we can understand each other. So that's really great.Michael: All right. And can you understand Spanish as well?Ana: Yeah. I can understand a little bit of Spanish but there are some differences between Portuguese and Spanish.Michael: How do you say hello in Portuguese?Ana: Oh, you can say, "Ola."Michael: Ola.Ana: Yeah, it's fun. You should learn some Portuguese.Michael: Oh, I'd love to.

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟
第964期:Life in Portugal

英语每日一听 | 每天少于5分钟

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2020 2:25


更多英语知识,请关注微信公众号: VOA英语每日一听 Michael: So Ana, you're from Portugal. Can you tell me a little bit about your country?Ana: Yes, sure. Portugal is a really small country actually. It's right by Spain in Europe and we have really nice weather there. It's really sunny most of the year and really hot in summer. It can get really cold and really rainy in winter. But yeah, overall, it's a really nice country to live in.Michael: And I've heard you have nice beaches in Portugal.Ana: Yes, we do. I used to go to the beach everyday with my family in summer. It was really great. But the beaches can get really crowded. Lots of people, so you might want to be a bit careful when you choose where to go.Michael: All right, I see. And where do you live in Portugal?Ana: I live in a small village actually. You probably don't know it. It's called Palmela. But it's south of Lisbon and it's by the coast, so it's really nice. We get a nice view of the mountains and of the rivers. So I really enjoy living there. It's really quite. Not a lot of people. A lot of wine farms actually and really nice food. You should come and visit sometime.Michael: I like wine. And so you have good wine in Portugal. What sort of food do you eat in Portugal?Ana: Let's see. We get a lot of fish because we're by the sea. And so codfish is a traditional and sardines and mackerels.Michael: Oh, I like sardines.Ana: Yeah. It's really good. And we also have really good desserts. So for example, coffee cake, yogurt cake. We've got pastel de nata which is kind of an egg tart thing. So I really recommend you try that with our coffee when you go there.Michael: All right. And you speak Portuguese as your first language.Ana: Yes, I do. I speak Portuguese. It's not the same as Brazilian Portuguese but it's really close and we can understand each other. So that's really great.Michael: All right. And can you understand Spanish as well?Ana: Yeah. I can understand a little bit of Spanish but there are some differences between Portuguese and Spanish.Michael: How do you say hello in Portuguese?Ana: Oh, you can say, "Ola."Michael: Ola.Ana: Yeah, it's fun. You should learn some Portuguese.Michael: Oh, I'd love to.

The Remote Real Estate Investor
Going From a Nightmare Scenario on Property #1 to Owning/Partnering on 100+ Units w/Tyler Jahnke

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 13, 2020 38:48


In this episode, Emil and Michael chat with Tyler Jahnke about how he persevered through a nightmare of a first deal to being a part of 100s of unit of real estate.   --- Transcript   Emil: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Emil Shour, and today I'm joined by my cohost,   Michael: Michael Albaum.   Emil: And we are interviewing Tyler Jahnke. Tyler has become a good friend of ours and is also one of the writers on the Roofstock blog. So you may be familiar with him on some of the content he's written there. And this was a really fun episode. We got to talk to Tyler about the story of his first rental property. He lives up in the Bay area and he talks about investing in the Midwest and some of the painful lessons he learned along the way of buying that first property and how he's grown to be a partner and owner of over a hundred units through syndication deals. All right, without further ado, let's hop into this episode.   Theme Song   Emil: Tyler. Welcome to the show, man. We're excited to have you.   Tyler: Thanks very much. I appreciate you reaching out and getting my attention and allowing me to hop on today and talk with you and Michael.   Michael: This is going to very much feel like every day on Twitter when we're always chatting about real estate investing stuff. Anyway, it's just on an audio format.   Tyler: A quick little plug for Twitter there, I guess, right? Like most of us I think, met on Twitter and that's been a great platform for both of us or all of us and engaging in and connecting with people so happy. We met there and happy to talk real estate as much as we want.   Emil: Yeah, it's funny. I've been on Twitter for years and I never realized there was this real estate investing and money, Twitter corner of Twitter. Like I always just used it for marketing and other stuff. And I was so stoked when I found this little community that's super engaged and loves talking and sharing best practices. So it's been fun, man.   Michael: It's funny. This is my first live Twitter interaction coming off Twitter. And I'm so glad to see Tyler and I were chatting before we started recording it. And his personality on Twitter matches his personality in real life, which is always great because sometimes you meet folks. It's like, wow, you're really well written. And I can't stand you as a person, not the case at all here, which is always nice.   Tyler: I'll be honest. I was a little worried thinking it just through like seeing you in person, it's like, how is he going to think I come across in reality versus someone who's behind a keyboard or a, you know, a mobile device typing 280 characters. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there that are completely different. And I was like, hopefully I come across similar, online as I do in person.   Michael: I think by the same thing, I don't want to catfish anybody.   Tyler: Yeah. Now I will mention the first thing I noticed about you and Michael was the longer hair. I'll say that.   Michael: For anyone who hasn't seen, the reason they have leveled, they let myself go with the head hair and facial hair department. I'm going out the quarantine cut on, call it.   Emil: Cool. So Tyler, before we hop into the good stuff what's going on in your world, what's new.   Tyler: Oh, that's I mean, that's a big question. So first things first I work full time still. I am not a full time real estate investor. That's something that I think some people maybe assume that I am. So I do work full time in a sales and business role out here in the Bay area, born and raised in Berkeley, California. My office is in as in San Francisco, clearly we're all working from home right now, but so, you know, a lot of my day is still consumed by that full time job. But my nights weekends are still very much real estate or whether that's analyzing deals, talking to partners, talking to investors and networking, engaging, and then doing a lot of content build out on my platform and then just, you know, talking real estate as much as I can on my nights and weekends. So that's kind of what my day looks like right now. It's, it's becoming somewhat repetitive, but I have enjoyed it. And I do try and get out on weekends and hike and see the outdoors a little bit.   Emil: Now that you've mentioned that you live in the Bay, my follow up question is how did you get into real estate investing? And why did you choose remote real estate investing? I think part of the, you answered with you live in the Bay area, but give us the back story.   Tyler: Yeah, I guess I'll tackle the question of how I got in first and then we'll go to why out of state. But so I started investing in 2016, so about three and a half years ago now I was working a good job that I enjoyed in an industry that I also enjoy and still enjoy. But I did see myself, you know, kind of the future Tyler down the line, probably having to work another 40 years and reaching that age of 65 and then maybe retiring. So I think in my late twenties, a little bit of self reflection and trying to figure out what I wanted to accomplish in life. And a lot of that had to do with time freedom, which I think a number of your listeners are probably also conscious of right now, if they're thinking about real estate. And so I had to try and figure out ways to bring an income outside of my W2 job and just try and accelerate my growth on the financial side.   So through business podcasts, through investing podcasts came along this topic and strategy of real estate, which is abundant and everywhere, but no one really thinks about it. I mean, when I say no one, the majority may not really think of it as an investing opportunity. And so, you know, I saw it as somewhat of a logical step and I guess, strategy just by the fact that you could bring in monthly recurring income through tenants, paying off your mortgage and insurance and taxes, and maybe even letting you cashflow a little bit. And then to answer your question on why out of state for me at the time, it was pretty obvious. I couldn't afford anything in the Bay area. And I also wanted that cashflow and it's very hard to cashflow property in Oakland when you're going to pay $750,000 for it. It's quite impossible. Now I'm not saying it's impossible, but there's definitely challenges there.   So, you know, jumping into, out of state investing made sense for me, it was definitely a little scary because you emotionally get attached to these investments. I think as a newbie and you're like, I want to see it in person. I want to touch the front door, but at the end of the day, it's not necessary. If you have the right team on the ground to help you out and really guide you along the way. And so long story short, why out of state, it was affordability and the cashflow potential.   Michael: So I want to know Tyler, how did you make that leap? Really, a lot of people call it a leap of faith jumping into this out-of-state market. Having never been there, maybe having never met your team on the ground, walk us through the mindset and the decision making that you went through to end up where you did.   Tyler: That's the important part is to make the actual leap. And I think I will admit early on, I was rather naive and I didn't have everything buttoned up from an education standpoint. I didn't really know how to properly run the numbers that actually worked for me. I'm not saying, you know, leap in uneducated. I think again, that helped me initially because I was naive in the challenges and maybe dangers of investing at a state. But now thinking back, you know, over the years, my advice to others that are in a position of, okay, I want to do this, but how do I take the next step? I think it can actually be seen as a quite simple process. If you are educated in a market that you want to invest in, if you know how to analyze property, and if you have, you know, the longterm vision of what real estate can do for you, I think that's enough confidence to make the next step.   If you know the market you want to invest in, you know how to analyze property, you have the vision, like it's just going to be a mental at that point. So I don't have the exact advice for people on how to make the next step, because it's completely mental. Once you get those three things down, a market analysis and a vision, once you have that, it's all mental. So it's just going to come down to the individual and some people do it. Some people don't and that's fine. It's just mindset and personality.   Michael: How did you find your first market? What did that look like?   Tyler: My very first property that I bought in closed in December of 2016, I went the turnkey route and I felt that the fact that I had a full time job and working 40 plus hours a week, I felt that the turnkey route would be the best option for me to at least dip my toe into real estate. I will say the turnkey route is not always the best method. If you don't understand the partners on the ground properly, like I found out later. So I went to Turkey about found the market in the Indianapolis area. So the Midwest, which had high cashflow potential good acquisition to price ratio and had some of the metrics of a cashflow market, like population growth, job growth with higher wages, diverse economy. This could be a whole separate topic. So I apologize if I'm jumping too far ahead on what to look for in a market.   Michael: This is great.   Tyler: But I'll say that I hooked up with a drinky company out in the Midwest thought I vetted them properly, picked up a property for $37,000 cash back in the day, which is like the cost of a somewhat nice car. But it actually, instead of depreciated quickly, it's actually an asset that would produce income. So yeah, first property turnkey out in Indianapolis.   Emil: I read your blog a bunch and I know you've talked about the experience of this first property and it's such a good one. And I'd love for you to share the story of, okay, you bought this property 37 [inaudible] on paper. It looks like it's going to cashflow nicely. I'll let you take the floor. Tell us about the story.   Tyler: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is the best and worst investment of my life. So best in a sense that it got me in the game, right? I'll keep preaching this, like getting the game, getting the game, getting the game, whether that's a good or bad investment on paper, it's kind of a start that snowball. So yeah, $37,000 cash worked with a turnkey company that I barely vetted. I hopped on the phone a couple of times they started sending me leads via email routinely.   Michael: Did you chat with any other turnkey companies or this was the one?   Tyler: You know, me, you know, I didn't talk to anyone else. So it was all, I put all my eggs in one basket and that's kind of also my personality too. I'm pretty quick to trust and that's a double edged sword, as we all know, I'm usually pretty optimistic and very trusting. So that's good and bad, good and bad. So anyways, I talked to this company, you know, I started getting leads. I started evaluating the properties and my simplistic formula of figuring out how to actually calculate cash flow back in the day. I remember, you know, the estimated rents at seven 50 a month for a property that costs $37,000 napkin math on that was basically okay. Let's give the property manager 10% and let's account for property taxes and insurance. But you know, in my eyes, seven 50 a month, taking away all those expenses, I could probably cash flow 300, three 25 a month. We'll call it, which I wouldn't even touch anyways. My plan wasn't to actually spend that cashflow. So I was like, okay, if I could get a few of these properties in the next five years, you know, now we're talking substantial numbers on the cashflow side.   So I acquired this property and then that's when I decided to fly out. So after I actually close on this property in December of 2016, I decided to fly out to Indianapolis in March of 17. I initially wasn't even going to do that, but my parents were like, Tyler, I think you might want to like meet the people you're working with and just see if that property exists. I was actually kind of reluctant, but now I kind of make it a routine to check on my markets annually. We'll call it pre COVID. So we closed on that property. It takes about two or three months to actually renovate. And it wasn't really a big rehab job. They refinished like the hardwood floors. They replaced a window. They did a little bit of painting.   Emil: The turn-key company is doing that for you?   Tyler: Correct, yes. So the turnkey company, I guess the term turn-key by definition means it should be easy. There are some good Turkey companies out there and there's bad ones. My advice is just to vet them properly, if you go that route. So it took a few months to really quote unquote renovate it. And there were some red flags that popped up initially. And those were some things that I've, you know, looking back I've learned from if red flags are popping up, that you're not happy with in terms of maybe lack of communication or miss deadlines and timelines, I kind of became ignorant or I guess I ignored them because I really wanted to just close on this property and become a real estate investor. And so I think emotion took over and in some points where I was like, you know, realistically, I should have questioned these red flags up front, but I didn't. Cause I was like, real estate is a thing I'm going to acquire 10 properties and become financially free.   So I was too focused on that end goal. Finally got that thing rented. We did have a tenant in there for about 11 months. They paid on time every month, seven 50 a month. I took out, you know, 10% for property management. I made sure I had some reserves for property taxes, insurance. And then I just kind of pocketed that cashflow fast forward to the, you know, as I mentioned that cashflow for 11 months, we'll fast forward to that 12th month. My buddy who's actually in the real estate space as well in the Indianapolis market. He randomly drove by my property just to check up on it. And it was like Tyler, there's a lockbox on the front door. And I'm like, what do you mean? There's a lock box in the front door? Like what, first of all, I was shocked and I trusted him, but I didn't know what that actually meant.   So that caused some alarms in my brain, I guess you could say. It was like at that moment I was like, is this real estate thing gonna actually work? Because that was my first real, real big hurdle. And I guess I had to think through from a business standpoint, what would the next step be? So I didn't mention anything to my turnkey provider. I actually kept that quiet to start with. I wanted to get some verification from others. So I then began the process of actually building another team on the ground out there, aside from the turnkey company I worked with. And that was kind of again, why I go back to like this being my best and worst investment. It forced me to overcome these challenges and build a new team on the ground.   Michael: So Tyler was this turnkey provider also managing the property for you?   Tyler: Yep. They did everything. They sourced the deal. They walked me through the closing process, set me up with insurance and insurance agent. They renovated it. They managed it from a property management standpoint.   Michael: One stop shop.   Tyler: A one stop shop, everything you could have in one box there. Okay. So anyways, I called a couple of property management companies had them drive out there, pay them a little bit money to help me out and just verify that it was in fact clearly that the lock box on the front door meant it was vacant. I don't know the whole story. Apparently the tenant had left without telling anyone and the property was vacant and I was never notified. And that was the last straw. So I fired the turnkey company, had another property manager, take it over. I know this story is kind of going on, on and on and on.   Michael: This is all great stuff.   Tyler: We're getting towards the end of that first property. So after having a new company take over management, after vetting a number of them, I really had to make sure that this next hire of a property management company would be right. So I was on the phone, every lunch at work and at night, just talking to people to try and figure out who the best property managers in Indianapolis were finally selected someone. They went out there, cleaned it up, took over management and they crafted a scope of work on what would be needed to get this thing rent ready. Cause my thought was okay, small little blip in the radar. Let's just get this thing cleaned up, get this thing rented again, get it back on the market and get a tenant in there and then start cash flowing again. And then I'll live my happy life. So they go in there, they craft the scope of work. First of all, I'll say the scope of work was probably a little more than I needed, but it was still a bill for $16,000. And I'm like, uh, wait, what? So, uh, so the property cost 37,000 up front. I need to put another 16 K into this thing to get this thing a rent ready. And I was like, there's no way I'm going to do that. Now along those, you know, the first 12 months of me owning that property too, I think I became a little bit more savvy. I actually, I learned a lot more after I had closed on real estate than I had. And so that's when I started really focusing more on the impact of location and obviously like the partners you work with. So my strategy in owning that first property had actually changed within those 12 months.   And I decided that buying in better neighborhoods with a little bit less risk and a different tenant profile would be the strategy I wanted to take. So ultimately I ended up selling that property. I did not put the 16 K into it. I did not think that that property would have a good longterm outlook. And I started buying in better neighborhoods. So long story short bought the property for 37,000, sold it for 41 a year later, took a year of cashflow minus closing expenses or closing costs. I probably netted, I think it was like 2% in a year. So I honestly call that a really big win on my part. I was like, if I could just break even on that first property, I think there's just so much knowledge and education and experience you get from that first property.   Emil: So why did you decide to keep going? This is, I feel like I've heard so many stories where people, something like this happens and they give up and they're like, ah, this real estate investing thing isn't for me or someone who's new has zero properties is hearing this and is like, I don't ever want to deal with this. Yeah. Why did you keep going?   Tyler: I'll give you a couple answers. Some you may want to hear some of you may not. The first answer you may not want to hear is I already had a second property under contract. So by default I had to keep going.   Michael: That's great.   Tyler: But so I was actually really confident after that first property, given all those circumstances and those challenges, I was like, I know what I did wrong. Like I bought in a bad neighborhood. I hired the wrong people. I just followed, you know, my napkin math. And I touched on this earlier. Like I became better at analyzing properties. So the deals would be better. And then again, like just buying in a better neighborhood with a different tenant class profile, that to me was important. I wanted someone who could afford rent and not be challenged by if their car broke down, that they have to decide between the car repair or rent.   I wanted, I guess, a little bit more security. So that's why I started buying in better neighborhoods. But I felt like, you know, after that first property round to the second property, I had learned so much in that first one, I could do it better and I could just get better every time. And so that was, it actually built confidence. And so, yeah, I went through some short term struggles and I think a lot of people will go through that short term struggle period. But if you really think that real estate is something that's going to be part of your life for 40 years, and it's a longterm strategy that one year of education and challenges will just amplify our growth, you know, as you move forward,   Emil: I love that.   Michael: Such a good story Tyler. I've got a couple of questions for you. And then 11 month period, when you were collecting rent and cashflow, did you think that you were a fricking genius that you had just got a dialed?   Tyler: Yeah.   Michael: Me too.   Tyler: Oh, I was smiling. Every check that came in, the first check that came in, I was traveling with my buddies in Vietnam and I remember waking up one morning and I'm on vacation. Right. I'm on vacation Vietnam. And I got a paycheck. I got a check that came in at like one in the morning and I was like, this is unbelievable. I need to keep buying these as soon as just rapidly. And so, yeah. And it's funny because I started off my journey in the content space by just posting on bigger pockets and I kind of posted my life experience and I love going back online and be like, Hey guys, just want to give you an update. I got my payment, my check came in and I'm good. So yeah, it was definitely all smiles for a solid 11 months until, you know.   Michael: Until it wasn't until it wasn't.   Tyler: And so that's what got me back to reality.   Michael: The learning process that you're talking about and the education process that you're talking about, it seems like that'll happen in month 12. Like that was a massive ramp up for you because for 11 months things were good. So you thought you had done everything right?   Tyler: My education prior to closing was not the greatest, but I really started ramping up the education process after I started closing. So that was, I got addicted to podcasts. I got addicted to bigger pockets. I got addicted to just consuming, consuming, consuming content in the real estate space. And that's why I had my second property already under contract. By the time, you know, all these challenges popped up. So I guess I would say I really started continuing that education process, you know, after I closed and I still do today, even though, you know, I've kind of grown in, in the investing space, but it's podcasts, it's books, it's websites, and it's talking to people like you guys.   Michael: I think that's such a big takeaway for everybody listening is, Hey, after you've accomplished the goal of purchasing that property, whether it's your first fifth, 10th, or whatever, don't stop being educated. Don't stop getting educated because I think too many folks sit on their laurels and think, well, great. I did it. I know how to do it now. Yeah. Well you did that deal. Maybe the next one's going to be slightly different. And so there are things you can learn in the interim that are gonna help make that next subsequent deal even better for you. So I love that.   Emil: I feel dumber now than when I first started. When I first started six months in same thing, I'm laughing, I'm getting checks. I'll just do this 10 times and I'm going to be rolling in dough. And then like reality hits and you learn more and then you're like, wow, I know nothing. The more you learn…   Michael: I think it's because we all started so similarly right? Buy one single family house, your purview is no one can see my hands, but they're very narrow right there. It's a very small scope. And then as we grow and expand and learn and educate ourselves, we realize there's this entire investing world out there that is comprised of so many different things. And we know so little about it. So I think that's a great point. And the old that just further goes to illustrate don't stop getting educated. Can't stop. Won't stop. Right.   Emil: Rockefeller records.   Michael: That's right. That's right. So I'm curious now, Tyler, you, you did that deal a couple of years ago, you know, what are you doing today? Where did you go from there?   Tyler: Yeah. So it's been a journey and I don't want to come across as any type of expert. I'll say that, you know, looking back at my timeline, I've been investing for three and a half years now. So started in my late twenties now in my early thirties, I think there's still a long, long, long ways to go. But I will say within that timeline of three and a half years, my strategies have definitely changed. And so, you know, after that first I learned about, you know, the importance of location and really building that team on the ground. So I bought a second property and other single family house I'm in a better neighborhood with a better team.   I then kind of tiptoed into we'll call it the journey of scaling, scaling up. And so I bought a duplex that was like huge for me. So I went from like a couple single families to a duplex that was me scaling up. I think from my standpoint, my strategy now has changed because like you mentioned earlier, Michael, the education process, there's some things I do now in the real estate space that I was not even aware of, you know, a few years ago. And so I tiptoed around and investing passively in larger multifamily complexes. That's how I started off in the multifamily space was literally, you know, I come in as almost like a silent partner, we'll call it limited partner, they'd say invest in my cash in these larger deals for some equity. And then through that process, learn more about the larger multifamily value of ad space.   And that's where I am now focusing on the value add, but multifamily space, the GP role in these larger apartment complexes. But my portfolio is kind of two prominent we'll call it. We had the cash flowing properties in the Midwest and then the work that my partners and I do in Phoenix on the value of ad side. And like I said, in three and a half years, I've learned so much. And like you said, a meal too, like it's such a massive world out there in real estate. There's so many different techniques and strategies that you can go down into some rabbit holes, but yeah, it's a combination of cash line properties and Midwest plus some value add deals with partners in the, in the, in the Southwest region.   Michael: For those of our listeners who don't know what is that LP GP thing called and what are those roles?   Tyler: The term is syndication, which has good and bad, I think connotations or I guess definitions, but it's really just, it's a partnership between two groups. The general partnership group is generally a group of individuals that are tasked with acquisition of a property lending up financing, building out the business plan, building up the strategy, managing the actual renovation and reposition, and then really making all the decisions on whether to refinance or exit or whatnot. The LP limited partner side is a bunch of investors that come into these deals with some capital and with the intention of really not being involved in the day to day, it's a passive investment. It's like any business that needs, that requires funding and you have the team that's managing everything and then the, like I keep saying this, the silent partners that come in with capital to help fund the project, that's the basic structure of what a syndication is, but it's almost like any type of startup even, or any type of business that needs capital to close. And then you execute a business plan and hopefully pay off, you know, yourself as well as your investors primarily   Emil: I know you're a part of a couple of different indications, your general partner in some where you're more active and your limited partner in some others. Right?   Tyler: Correct.   Emil: How did you decide to get into that? And which one did you start out with? I'm curious.   Tyler: I started out on the LP side after I bought my first two houses and then the duplex, I wanted to experience life, not as a landlord to put it bluntly. There's always going to be some stresses as being a landlord. You know, you're going to have the email from your property manager saying a pipe has burst and we need some money or there's a hole in the roof and we need some money. That's just part of being a landlord. And so I was like, well, you know, at that point in my life too, I was really trying to value my time to one of the biggest things I try and follow right now is kind of, there's a quote out there that says, like start with the end in mind. And I envisioned my life, you know, 40 years down the line where I am selfishly bringing in income without really much active work.   That's kind of what my ideal life looks like right now from a freedom standpoint. And so I was like, let's just try out what this passive investing really is. And I know passive is always going to be a loose term, but I felt that if I could hop into a deal passively and try and learn the business plan and a strategy of what value add is, and then tap into the power of multifamily, which is extremely powerful. We're pretty much doing what people call. Like, I call it the big BRRRR. We're finding a undervalued property, repositioning it through innovation and then bumping rents up that leads to additional cashflow plus increasing the value of the property. So I liked that strategy. So I wanted to kind of hop in there, learn from those people passively and then eventually get into those deals more on the active side events.   Michael: So in syndications, I've only done them locally, kind of with friends and family, never on a big scale, but when you were an LP on your first deal, and you mentioned several times that you learned from the GPS, were they happy to answer your questions as an LP? I mean, how did you go about learning this business as a quote unquote silent partner.   Tyler: It's not like a relationship where you automatically become, you know, the mentee and they take you under your wing. Really what I was just trying to figure out was to slowly get into the game. And that was to begin to just review what a, an offering memorandum looks like, what do these business strategies look like? What do the cost of renovation look like? What are the loan terms like? That was the very first step for me. And as an LP, you get to do that because you're reviewing all of the terms and strategies.   So that was a very, very, very first step of me in education. Now, to your point, Michael, there's no way that these GPS are like, yeah, I'll take, I mean, maybe there's some out there, but I wasn't gonna email them and call in and be like, Hey, can you just tell me exactly what to do and how to do it? They're not going to say yes to that. They have much more important things to do. So really it was just being exposed to the industry and the business plans. That was the very first step. Luckily, you know, after that, the second deal. So the first deal I did was in Louisville as an LP, second deal was in Phoenix, which is now with partners that I work with. So through networking, through connections, through some mutual friends, I was able to kind of position myself in a way where yes, I was an LP, but the GPs actually knew who I was.   And so that led to further opportunity down the line. I'm really just through connection and through building relationships. But yeah. So I think to answer your question, Michael, how do you learn as an LP? There's some you can pick up just by being exposed to the industry, but again, you're not going to have someone take you under your wing most likely   Michael: And hold your hand and say, this is..   Tyler: Exactly.   Michael: Okay. Yeah. Cool. Man, So, you know, I am also a multifamily value add guy. I've always done things on my own for the most part. What is it that you look for in these undervalued deals that are right for syndication? If you had to pick two or three things that like, yep, this is going to make a screaming deal. What are they?   Tyler: The first thing I will say is I am no master of acquisition. That's not my role, but luckily I have partners on the ground that are, you know, educated and know the market much better than I do. But really what you're looking for is, as you mentioned, is undervalued property. And that in the multifamily space can be something that maybe it's mismanaged. Maybe they have a lack of capital to make any renovations. So, you know, the properties that we're acquiring generally are occupied pretty well in our market, which is Phoenix, but they're outdated. And because of that, rents are lower than what they could command. So that's one area where value add is really, you can take advantage of is just an old dilapidated property that maybe mismanaged, maybe you're not even collecting rent properly. There's just so many different areas in where you can find that value add. So to answer your question, I mean, what we're looking for is a specific type of asset that is in need of a cash infusion because the amenities are not the greatest and can definitely attract a better tenant with a higher rent.   Now we're also kind of in areas and neighborhoods where there's actually a lot of class A stuff going up. And so we're, we're buying things that we think we can reposition to be just under class A, to kind of create a little bit of a subclass. So similar amenities, you know, the grant granite countertops, the under Mount sinks, new cabinets, washer, dryer in unit, the dog park, that, all that stuff, right. So we're building a property that's right under class a but more affordable. So we're kind of creating that subclass and that's, I think another way that we're protecting ourselves and being able to draw in that tenant and be able to bring in that rent that we've backed. So yeah. Undervalued property and then creating that subclass is what we do.   Michael: Love it. I do the exact same thing, just on a much smaller scale. That's great.   Tyler: Yeah.   Emil: So you've been on both sides, you acquire properties yourself, you've been part of syndications. Do you have a preference of which one you like, or do you kind of mix and match in both in you kind of see that happening in the future?   Tyler: Yeah. I see myself mixing and matching. Like I mentioned, I have kind of two prong attack of the cashflow, the immediate cashflow in the Midwest right now. And that portfolio is small and I still have some time to keep building that thing up. I, you know, I still am attracted to the immediate cash flow of those properties in the Midwest because the bigger deals are great, but they're a little bit more of a longterm play for me. If anyone is familiar with how this structure works, you know, you, as an LP, you get paid out quarterly as a GP. You know, the big pallet kind of comes at the end when you exit. So that side of my portfolio is more of a longterm play. And when I say longterm, we're talking five to seven years, which really isn't super long term. But I think having a combination of both is really a nice way to diversify having that cashflow from the Midwest or wherever your market is in individual properties that I own personally mixed with the passive income on a syndication and then a big pile. Hopefully once those properties are sold and you exit. So I think ideally I continue to keep attacking those two prongs, keep building those portfolios side-by-side and parallel.   Michael: So Tyler, something we talk a lot about in the restock Academy is about risk adjusted returns and that, you know, in the more risky areas we should anticipate and expect and really demand a higher return and the less risky areas say for investment, we could expect a lower return where you willing to give up a little on the cashflow or on the return side of things, making that transition over to a better neighborhood or a more expensive neighborhood.   Tyler: A hundred percent. Yeah. I don't think I had the specific data on what that would actually look like.   Michael: Sure.   Tyler: But to me, even just from an emotional standpoint, I was like, I'd rather have an investment in a neighborhood with better schools, less crime, you know, community amenities, a grocery store. Like I felt that I was a hundred percent willing to take less cash flow for a better neighborhood, but also on the flip side, generally in a better neighborhood, you might have better appreciation as well.  So it's almost like right to me. Yes. I wanted to get out of that CD class neighborhood, get into that B class, we'll call it on my personal portfolio. I'm already seeing a much better appreciation numbers on that side of things. And it just, there's a lot more comfort in, in, in knowing that you have a property in a, that's not in a war zone, it's not crime ridden. You know, it, it's a good suburban neighborhood with consistent cashflow and, and most importantly, a tenant that's going to pay on time. That to me was a lot more important than the amazing numbers on paper in that war zone. That would cause me more headaches.   Michael: Yeah. You bring up such a great point that, you know, on paper and mathematically and physically, sometimes those properties in the war zone pencil out really well and might even perform really well. But there's the mental health side of this business too. And, and I think that's so important so often gets overlooked of, yeah, I can make a killing over here, but I'm gonna make myself crazy and not sleep at night. And so we often say that there shouldn't be emotion when it comes to investing, but there is sometimes is. And that, you know, based on how it makes us how the investment makes us feel from an owner and operational standpoint, I think does need to get factored into the calculation   Tyler: A hundred percent. Yeah. I'm all on board with buying, you know, it's not the A-class stuff that, not the D class stuff somewhere in that middle, you know, BC area. That to me is the most safe investment, at least in my opinion.   Emil: Right. You see a lot of people, you know, they'll, they'll flash the similar situation, right. 35, 40 K home it's renting for basically the 2% rule. Right. So it will be running for seven to 800 and it's just like, it looks so good on paper, but there's all these other risk factors that you have to adjust for. And you have to have the appetite for like, dealing with messes more often than something in a better class neighborhood. So always important to consider that   Tyler: Nice little segue to there on like just evaluating cap rates too. Like people will flash, Oh, I got, I got a 12 cap, right? It's like that's numbers. But like, if you look at it from a perspective of risk versus reward, that's probably going to be a more risky investment than a six or seven cap, you know? So it's been interesting to kind of learn that through the years to that high return on paper, doesn't always mean a high return in real life.   Michael: Well, and also what's your time worth. If you've got to go spend 20 hours a week dealing with a 12 cap property, or you can spend two hours a month dealing with a six or seven cat property, you have the opportunity now to go buy more, you know, go buy two or three of those six caps and make us the same or even better returns. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's such a valid point.   Emil: So we've been ending a lot of these episodes. We used to quick fire questions. We've been transitioning into…   Tyler: Slow fire?   Emil: Think about this for five minutes before you answer. No, it was just a random question that we just kind of riff on.   Tyler: I'm all about that, man.   Emil: I know you travel a bunch. Where's the first place you're going to travel to once all the restrictions are done and like, we can start moving around again.   Tyler: I actually had a flight booked to Paris that I got super cheap and my buddy and I were going to go out there and explore the Dolomites in Northern Italy that is still in the back of our heads. And if, and when travel restrictions kind of open up, I think that's where we might go as the Dolomites in Northern Italy.   Michael: I was just there in January Tyler. And it's unbelievable.   Tyler: Yeah.   Michael: Unbelievable. You can go in the winter. I don't know if you're planning on going in winter or summer, but the ski, like the snow sports, they're the snowboarding skiing, snowshoeing is unbelievable.   Tyler: The plan was to go this summer actually, but just seeing photos of it is like, we were inspired to just find a way to get there. So that would be the first destination.   Emil: I'm looking at pictures now. Cause I had never even heard of it. And it is…   Tyler: I hadn't heard of it till recently as well, but yeah, the Dolomites.   Michael: They get, I think the most sun out of anywhere in Europe, in winter, they have the most like sunny Bluebird days and yeah, just don't have enough good things to say about it. Emil, where are you going to go?   Emil: Well, now that I have a kid makes traveling, you have to think a little bit more. You're like, Hmm, where can we go? That's kid friendly and things like that. Probably a surf trip. I'm thinking Costa Rica, Costa Rica is like one of the more family friendly areas that has really good surf. That's not too far from Southern California. So probably Costa Rica, friends. And I have been talking about doing a trip down there for a while.   Michael: Right on.   Pierre: Michael can we get your synopsis of Costa Rica since you live there as well too?   Tyler: We now have a travel podcast guys!   Emil: Hey this is The Remote Real Estate Investor.   Michael: Bait and switch everybody. Yeah that Costa Rica is awesome, man. It's a super, like you said, I know it's a super easy, but you've been there before, right?   Emil: Yeah, I went there like seven years ago with a buddy. Yeah. Different type of trip.   Michael: The surf is so killer. Yeah. You were also Nicaragua. We talked about that to you, right?   Emil: Yup. Nicaragua's surf is amazing.   Tyler: You've also mentioned Bali to me, Emil as well.   Emil: I sound really cool right now. Cause have you guys been there. I've been there, but yeah, Bali, I need to go back to Bali. It is like surf paradise and there's so many good waves and I will probably watch a video on YouTube three times a week of incredible waves there. And I'm just like drooling. But anyway…   Michael: Drooling at waves.   Emil: That's right. That's right. What about you, Michael? Where are you headed?   Michael: I think I have to go back to Portugal. I'm purchasing some investment property out there and sort of do some paperwork type stuff we need to get back out there.   Emil: No big deal. Just buying a property in another country.   Tyler: Are you going the Airbnb route on that.   Michael: Yeah. So it's the Airbnb it's like professionally managed, but actually we're applying for what's called the golden visa so we can get our permanent residency status and ultimately citizenship out there as well to be able to live and work and travel in the EU without needing…   Tyler: Awesome stuff.   Michael: Yeah. So we're pretty pumped on that.   Tyler: My buddies living in Portugal right now and he's just been working abroad for the last year. He did, he actually did Costa Rica for a while and then just flew to Portugal. And he's, he's actually writing a book right now about working from, uh, working abroad.   Michael: That's awesome.   Tyler: I'll connect you guys with him.   Michael: That would be great. That's something that I did last year too, is a lot of fun. I've actually been to Costa Rica, Latin American then all over Europe. Portugal also has amazing surf, has amazing, awesome waves. Pierre, where are you headed, man?   Pierre: I was thinking to go to Mexico, but I'm out of maple syrup. So I might have to go up to Canada.   Michael: Get up to Canada.   Pierre: Yeah.   Emil: Can't live without that maple syrup.   Pierre: No man.   Michael: It's a lifeblood.   Pierre: It really is.   Tyler: I mean, you even have a piece of bark on your wall back there, it's like yeah.   Emil: It's probably a good spot for us to end this one. Tell her before we let you go. Where is a good place that people can get in touch with you? Maybe ask you some questions.   Tyler: My website is jump in real estate.com. You can find my contact info. They're always happy to hop on a phone call or even just exchange emails with anyone really, really enjoy chatting with people like yourselves. And I'm sure your listeners as well. So I just love talking to real estate.   Michael: Awesome. And Tyler if someone wanted to be an LP and one of your syndications is your website the best place for them to get in touch with you regarding that type of stuff as well?   Tyler: Yeah, I would say that's probably the main route I'd want people to kind of route to me is the website. So jumpinrealestate.com. There's an ask Tyler tab. You can just find my contact info there and, or follow me on Twitter at jumpinRE very active on that, which I talked to Emil and Michael pretty much daily on.   Emil: Yes, follow Tyler on Twitter. Very good follow. Awesome man. Thanks again so much. Really appreciate you coming on.   Tyler: Thanks.   Michael: This was so awesome.   Tyler: Definitely. Thank you both.   Emil: All right, so that's our episode. Thanks again, everyone for tuning in. Before you go and make sure you subscribe to the podcast, you get an update every time we release a new episode and let us know what you think of the show. We're always looking for feedback, leave us a review. Let us know you think what you want to see more of maybe what you want to see less of and we'll catch you in next week's episode. Happy investing!  

The Remote Real Estate Investor
Should You Put Your Properties Into an LLC? We Asked a Real Estate Lawyer…

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 7, 2020 46:09


In this episode, Michael and Emil speak with real estate lawyer Kellie Chrisman about the pros and cons of LLCs and Legal entities in regards to protecting your investments.    --- Transcript Michael: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of remote real estate investor. I'm Mike Albaum and as always, I'm joined by..   Emil: The good ol' Emil Shour   Michael: And today we've got a very special guest in Kellie Chrisman, who is actually a real estate attorney. So today we're going to dive deep into all things LLC and trust related. And Kelly is going to answer a ton of our questions. And for those of you who can't make it through the episode, cause it does get a little bit long, make sure to listen to the end of the episode where she gives her contact information in case you have any real estate specific questions for Kellie. So let's go ahead and jump right in to it.   Michael: Kellie. Thank you so much for taking the time for joining us today. We really appreciate it.   Kellie: Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me guys.   Michael: Absolutely. So I was hoping you could give our listeners a little bit of background on you, you know, where do you come from? What kind of law do you practice and we'll start with there.   Kellie: All right. Sounds good. So I'm originally from Northern California, Chico and I have been practicing in California for seven years college at UCLA and couldn't leave LA and we stayed down there with Loyola Law school lived in Santa Monica, practice down there, my first, probably four or five years, and then moved back to Sacramento to be closer to family and go all over California and practice all sorts of exciting law that no one usually likes to talk about unless I get real estate people, or unfortunately somebody's going through a hard situation. So I do trust the States business planning and then estate planning as well. And they all kind of intermingle and go together. And it's interesting.   Michael: It's very interesting. And in full disclosure, Kellie and I have done quite a bit of work together in the real estate arena and the trust arena. And now I think Emil has now as well, right?   Emil: Yes. From your referral. So thank you.   Michael: Another convert to team Kellie.   Kellie: That's right. But I can't confirm unless you guys can confirm. Attorney client privileges.   Michael: Awesome. Well, Kellie, I was hoping we could jump into kind of the meat and potatoes of what we want to talk about today and start with some definitions to give folks, because I think so often in the real estate realm/arena, people throw around terms without really defining what they are. So for those of our listeners that have no idea, I would love to just run through some definitions of maybe sole proprietorship, LLCs, S Corps, C Corp and trusts. Can you break down for everybody? What those are?   Kellie: For me, I am a visual learner, which doesn't work necessarily here, but I can at least try and break it down. And I always have to give the disclaimer, I'm not getting legal advice, getting general recommendation based on things that I know. And we can always talk more detailed than I can get legal advice. I see those as two different things. So a trust is, is in its own category from the sole proprietorship partnership, LLCs, Corporations S Corp C Corp, cause they're really accomplishing two different things. So on the most basic level, the trust is something that's going to plan for worst case scenario. So something bad happens, who's in charge where everything is going and what you want that. Then we get onto the other side, the entity side, every other kind of thing we've mentioned. And that's the type of business or entity protection liability protection. So sole proprietorship is if you are going to own a rental property and you don't do anything, you are automatically. So if there's nothing you want to do, you can of course draft stuff and make it more.   But on its most basic level can do nothing. That's what, no, if you do nothing with someone else, then you are a partnership. You can automatically be a partnership. If you do nothing, or you can spend a lot of money to draft beautiful documents and be a general partnership. They're taxed at the individual level, LLC is a limited liability company. And a corporation is both of those. Together are something you file with a secretary of state, whatever state you live in and they give you liability protection so they can have one member. It can be just you, it can be you and a sibling or you want a friend or it can be in corporations and Apple has countless shareholders. So it can go from there, LLCs, the incorporations provide that protection. And then within a corporation you can be two different texts, escort, which is a closely held corporation or a C Corp, which is what we're most commonly used to. So like an Apple or a year, it can be somebody small.   Michael: So if I'm hearing you right, if I just bought the property and do nothing, I take title in my personal name. I'm a sole proprietor. Yep. Okay, cool.   Kellie: And if you do nothing with a friend, then you're a partnership.   Michael: Got it. Okay.   Emil: Yeah. I was going to ask. Okay. So I think for people listening, what are you potentially opening yourself up to? If you're a sole proprietorship owning real estate, what are the risks?   Kellie: Okay.   Michael: How deep do we want to go down that dark dark?   Kellie: Don't ask the lawyer that question. So I don't like to scare people, but I always like to be realistic and everybody has their own comfort level. If you are a sole proprietorship, you are leaving everything on the line. So to put it in real estate terms, you, if it's a commercial property, somebody walks into your tenants property and they slip and fall on the curb. You are technically responsible in certain situations, most situations for keeping that curve maintained and safe. So if you get sued, everything you own is on the line, your home, all your other property, your retirement, your income, and it can follow you. So you can get a judgment that you might not have a lot now, but in a little while. Well, so the risk, if you have nothing, that's huge is everything. However, how common that? It's not so, but not so uncommon. I mean, it can be something as simple. If you have a rental property, I had clients that their tenant had a party to make people on the balcony and somebody moved on the ledge. And once we went over and got hurt, whether they're reliable or not, they're included in the lawsuit. So there can be a lot of expense just to prove you're not liable.   Michael: Versus going the LLC or corporation routes. Now that's a very different scenario that we're looking at.   Kellie: Yeah. So then we're looking at the only thing on the line is what's owned in that corporation or LLC. So you cap your liability and we'll talk, I'm sure a little bit about how that happened and how to maintain that. But if I don't have something in place, everything you own is on the line. If you do have a corporation or an LLC, then just whatever is held in that corporation of the LLC. And so a lot of times you'll see corporations or LLC get sued and then they go bankrupt because they're not going to put more assets into that and they'll have to be other risks. If you just have to go back to the most question, if you just have a sole proprietorship or partnership, you know, if you don't get along with with your partner, if you die, what happens to it? If something tax wise, there's a lot of stuff you can do within this corporation, that instruction. So it gets very strategic and fun if I can say that.   Michael: Yeah. So it just sounds like you have, from a very high level inside an entity structure, as opposed to a sole proprietorship, more options and more liability protection than if you're just a sole proprietorship, is that accurate or fair to say?   Kellie: Yeah, I think that's fair to say. There's a lot more that you can do and there's a level of comfort that comes with it.   Michael: Sure. Okay. And so I get the question all the time of Michael, do I need an LLC to invest in real estate? And I think in the real estate community, there's this very hotly debated topic of pro LLC. No, LLC. So it sounds like we touched on, you know, what the pros are of having an LLC. Are there any pros to just being a sole proprietorship that you really lose out on if you have an LLC?   Kellie: Yeah. So, and it's funny cause I I'm preaching all of this and, and I just went through it as an attorney. You know, whether I want to become an LLC, a limited liability corporation or whether I want to stay the sole proprietor. And when I talk with my accountant, who is usually my they're usually the person that I work with clients tax wise, there can be consequences. So if you do create an LLC, obviously the first thing is that there's a cost associated with it, just filing it with the state. The state has asked me, um, to create it. Usually you're, you're going to need to either pay somebody to do it, or you're going to buy a package online to do it. And there's some things that come within each state that you have to do. So in California, for example, you have to then start paying payroll taxes. So rather than in a sole proprietorship where I just pull my stake and then I get taxed at my own level, I now have a couple of additional tax requirements, but at a point it becomes worth. So that's where I always recommend working with a CPA or a tax professional.   Michael: Okay, great.   Emil Like let's say I buy a property in Florida. I decided to put an LLC, you can set up the LLC in Florida, but California will still require you pay like the franchise tax fee. Like you're an LLC, here right?   Kellie: The problem is, the government writes the law, um, and they always find a way to get their fingers on a little bit of something. So if you have a corporation or an entity in another state and you live in California and you're essentially running it out of California, which is, I own a rental property that I rent, but I received my rent and my California bank account, you have to register as a foreign entity and you pay a small fee to do that. But that's one of the costs of doing the upside of that liability protection.   Emil: Totally   Michael: Wait. So did I, maybe I misunderstood that. So if I own property in Ohio, but I live in California and I registered my, I created my LLC in Ohio and registered it as a foreign entity in California. Should I be paying the $800 annual California franchise tax fee?   Kellie: You do what it is for a foreign corporation, whatever they require for that.   Michael: I got, I got to take a closer look at that. Cause if I've been overpaying, I got to talk to somebody that's ridiculous.   Kellie: That's why I say, talk to your tax professional. Michael: Right, right. Right. All right. Cool. Well, I will definitely have to look into that then, but so for, in California, I mean, there's really no way to get around telling California that we have even a foreign entity in California if we're living here, right?   Kellie: Yeah. They're going to figure it out because the second you file your income taxes, you're going to have that income from the corporation. And they're going to say, Hey, right. So it's a small price. You take my lawyer hat off. And $800 is not a small price for me, but I put my lawyer hat back on and I say, this is $800 is a small price to pay. But when you're looking at the amount of money that you're investing in, what you're building and hoping to gain from creating an entity in front of investing in multiple properties, it's really a drop, hopefully, in the bucket in the grand scheme of things.   Michael: Sure. And kind of getting back to that original two camps, right? The pro LLC, the new LLC. I think the biggest argument that the no LLC camp makes is that, Hey, I can get the same type of asset protection of liability protection with high liability insurance limits and then get an umbrella on top of that. What are your thoughts around that?   Kellie: Yes, super common. It just… This is such a lawyer answer. It just depends. So I worked with a medium sized firm here in Sacramento and that's what the partner is. He would tell clients, you know, why spend $800 a year when I can buy you a hell of an umbrella policy? And I agree with that in some situations, and I don't agree with it and others. So there's no the person that, you know, maybe they bought their first house and they're going to keep it and buy their next house. Never going to be a longterm investor. That makes sense. You know, if it's a single family home that you're renting, that's a good amount of insurance. But if somebody slips and falls in that house, I mean, slip and falls was one of many things that can happen. It's just common place. Example. You're hoping, and you're, you're gambling that you bought enough insurance to cover that lawsuit and your lawyer fees.   Because if you didn't, then now everything was on the line. Now that dream home you bought is on the line for this rental home that you have. A lot of times it works in, comes down to, and I'll probably touch on this throughout. It's how risk averse, how well you're going to sleep at night. Wonder, I always use the example of my husband. And so I I'm a little bit of a gambler. We had one property. I don't know if I put it in an LLC. I probably would seeing, having seen other things that I had done and worked on my husband is extremely risky because he's an engineering he would, before we bought the property, he would have an LLC set up. He would make sure everything was like perfect and Excel and everything. And it would be, everything would be in separate LLC, which I'm sure we'll talk about too. So it depends.   Michael: Yeah. I love that answer. Cause I think so many people approach it with a one size fits all, but it sounds like you can't look at it through that lens.   Kellie: No. And every situation is different. Every set of facts, if it's commercial property and they're going to be multiple people on this property every day, if there's going to be any kind of manufacturing, any kind of longterm structure to me, that's a no brainer. I would advise my clients to immediately do it and have an entity in place. But it just depends if there's an accident.   Emil: Yeah. So one of the questions we wanted to ask you is how do you handle insurance if you're using an LLC, does it differ if you're a sole proprietor versus LLC, do insurance companies look at those differently?   Kellie: So you talked to your insurance agent and each insurance company is going to handle them differently. A lot of times you will insure the LLC itself or the entity LLC, or corporation, and then insure yourself separately. So you can, I mean, if you're extremely risk averse and we send it, my husband would probably have insurance on the LLC and then we'd have an umbrella personally, over ourselves as owners of the LLC as well. So you're, you're double protected, but each insurance company saying that a little differently.   Emil: So you don't insure the property, you insure the LLC. So if I acquire more..   Kellie: So you would insure the property, but the property is going to be owned by the LLC itself. So if you're insuring you can insure business and then you can insure the property, but you're likely going to do both. And if you have a mortgage on the property, they're likely going to require that you meet the minimum requirements, ensuring that properties.   Emil: Right. Got it.   Michael: So let's just take an example. I've got two properties, both in the same city, both currently insured with the same insurance carrier and I move one of those properties into an LLC. Can I use that same policy, so to speak, that'll cover both properties or do I need now a separate insurance policy for the LLC property and then a separate insurance policy for my, the one I own my personal name.   Kellie: Yeah. So I'm going to punt to your insurance agent, i'ts going to depend on what they want to do. So, and it's interesting because this area of law is something that's rapidly developing and becoming more common. I think that a lot of smaller investors are becoming more sophisticated. And so now they're looking into these LLC avenues and now lenders and insurance agents are catching up. So I've had clients who, that's not a problem. They're able to do that and just list the entity as a second finer or additional party. And then some insurance companies will say no way, you're not touching separate policies now. So it's just gonna depend on your insurance agent.   Micheal: Okay. Something that I know we've talked about in the past, Kelly is commingling funds and we'll kind of get there in a minute, but I want to talk about maybe commingling insurance. So if the insurance company is okay with it, right, they're happy to write both my LLC property and my property owned in my personal name on the same policy. Can someone look at that and say, Hey, look, he's insuring these two things on the same policy just cause the insurance company is okay with it. Does that mean it's, I'm safe from a legal perspective.   Kellie: That is one that I have not encountered before. I believe you would be okay. Simply because you are, you're listing them separately as separate entities. I mean, if you want it to be perfectly safe, have no, you know, gray line. I wouldn't have them completely separate because obviously that's the easiest way to never have it come up in court. There's even an insurance policy that's owned, but I don't, we're looking at the commingling is whether we it's, what's called pierce the corporate veil. And I don't think that the insurance policy would do that on its own. You would have to also be doing additional things. So if that's the only thing you're, you're doing that it shares an insurance policy. I don't think it would be a problem. I don't think that would be enough for the court to look at you and say, Hey, he's treating this corporation or this entity as if it's his own personal bank account as if it doesn't really exist. However, if you're also buying all of your groceries out of the bank account and paying your, your home mortgage and buying all of your diapers, that's going to be like completely different analysis. From the court's perspective.   Michael: I thought I told you, I haven't worn diapers in years.   Kellie: I didn't know. You know, it's this whole quarantine thing.   Michael: This is kind of a nice segue into bank accounts.   Emil: Okay. So if I'm using an entity structure like an LLC, do I need a separate bank account for that?   Kellie: Yes, it's very quickly. So the biggest thing that you want to do, and then the purpose of the corporation is going to call corporation LLC interchangeably. Unless we're talking about structure, purpose of the entity is to protect you. And we have to create the corporate veil. We have to create the entity and maintain it as if it is a real thing, because it is. So one of the things, the most basic thing to do to do that is to create a bank account, which is very easy to do. They usually want what you filed with the secretary of state. And what's called an EIN number, employer identification number, which is it's very easy to obtain, or your attorney can do it. You can really do it. It's a little dicey. One of those things that might be worth having your tax professional or attorney do and the bank will create it.   That shows that you are intending to treat them separately. You are intending to honor the law and keep things separate. So it's the first line of defense that I just show that you have created the entity. It also makes me, so you set up your entity, you create your bank account and now, you know, what's coming in and the most basic level, you put all your income for the business, they're all your rent checks. And then you pull all of your premiums for insurance or whatever you need out. And then you can pull your hat when the time comes. So, I mean, I told her the first thing that I recommend the clients do and I recommend they do it.   Michael: I often get the question, you know, how do I pull money out of this LLC account? Cause I'm the LLC owner. I'm ultimately the owner, but I'm setting up this corporation a structure to limit the liability exposure. So once I received the rent, all the expenses get paid out of that account. Can then I just move that money from the account into my personal bank account.   Kellie: Mhhmm. So by putting it in the business bank account, first, you're creating a record. You're saying, Hey, this money, this check that I cash was right. And here's where I put it in. And here's where I pulled it out. And this is my thing. So if you are non-graded record keeping and your accountant is not going to, it's going to make it easier for them to do their job for you to pay your taxes. And it also from a legal perspective, shows that you are, you know, you're, you've created an entity in your needs, so you have honored it. You've used it. You've put it in there. You've pulled out the money to yourself. You're not using that business account as nerd ATM or debit card.   Michael: Okay. So if I wanted to take $50 from my business to go buy groceries, instead of going to use my business debit card at the grocery store, I should simply move the $50 out of my business account into my personal account and then pay for it with my personal debit card.   Kellie: Yeah. Or put it on your personal credit card and then use the business account down the road. So you pay yourself and then you can pay that off. Okay. Now, if we had a CPA on or an accountant, they'd be saying, well, what are you buying? You know, are you buying, you know, the business expense can now, can we have them leave? I mean, that's my dream. CPA is trying to figure out how exactly they can make it work with business expense. But the point is that you are not intermingling your day to day life with your business life. You're keeping them separate.   Michael: Got it. You touched on it a little bit ago and I just want to circle back to it. So let's say somebody is interested now in setting up an LLC, what do they do? Who do they call? I mean, they can obviously call you, we'll give everyone your contact information at the end of this, but what are the steps involved with setting up an LLC?   Kellie: Yeah. So this is an ongoing debate. And I love talking about this because in the most common thing I hear is why can't I just go out and buy this package that I found online for $95, that's going to do it all for me. Why would I pay you? And it's as simple as you just need to file the required documents with the state that you want to create your entity. That's what you have to do on the most basic level that creates your entity. And then from there, you need to build off. So depending on whether you have an LLC or corporation, there are certain documents that need to go into place. So when you file either your articles of incorporation or articles of organization, so organization is the LLC corporation is corporation with the secretary of state. From there, you're going to need that EIN number to help you set up the bank account.   You're going to need the documentation to support and show that you created. So just like we create the business account and we don't intermingle funds where we're showing we've created it by having that business account. We're also showing we've created the entity by having the paperwork that supports it and actually creates it in place. It's fairly common that I have clients come in and all they've done is file. Well, I created it and I'm paying my yearly fee and that's all I have. And when I asked them, you know, who's in charge, if you die or what happens if you and your partner disagree or who, you know, who's the treasurer, who's this, then people go, I don't know. I didn't do that. In that time I bought packaged. I didn't thought paperwork, or I just signed it. I bought that, but I didn't read it.   I don't understand it. Yeah. They have the skeleton in place, but not the details. So I mean, ideally what you're setting up when you, when you do it, you're filing and you're setting up the background paperwork and getting all of the documents. You need to have a successful business going forward. If you do it right at the beginning, you build on it and you have, and you're confident in this round foundation. So if you're going to invest the money to do it at all and the best, the annual fees, then why not just do it a little bit more into it. Right. So that you don't ever have [inaudible].   Michael: Yeah and if we did have an accountant on the show, they would tell us that that's a startup expense. So keep track of it.   Emil: I think we need a follow up with an accountant and Kellie!   Kellie: Love that.   Emil: Imagine the nuggets we're going to get out of that one.   Michael: Oh, the fireworks will be flying.   Kellie: I'm sure. Just agreeing with each other. I'm sure.   Michael: Right, right, right.   Emil: I actually want to run through my personal scenario. I think there's some stuff we can pull out for listeners. So when you and I started working together, I had almost all of my properties in my personal name. And I got married a couple of years ago, had a daughter and realized everything sitting in my name there's issues with that. Right. There's… if something happens to me, obviously that doesn't happen. But something happens to me. There's something called probate that I wanted to avoid. Can you really quickly just touch on what probate is?   Kellie: Yeah, so it's the thing people don't like to talk about.   Emil: I'll explain where I'm going with this after.   Kellie: Super important, because I mean, so probate in its most simple form is a court monitored administration of an estate, of somebody's assets. Once they die, it is not the state taking a percentage of what you want. That's the most common thing I hear probate is a nightmare for a host of reasons, mostly being that it's lengthy, it's public, so everything you all is public and open to really looking at it. And in some situations, if you have nothing in place, it goes according to law. So it's going to your kid. Right. And who's getting it in the meantime. You know, if your kid is, you know, one or two, like I know I have, you know, who's watching it for her and do I want my 18 year old getting access to everything that I own at 18 years old? No. So probate is a little bit, but a fun nightmare.   Emil: Yeah. And I had a family member deal with it and which is why the alarm sounded off for me personally. And so that's why I decided to put these properties in a trust again, moving them out of just my name, avoiding any headaches. If anything happened to me, you touched on what an LLC is just real quickly again, what is the advantage of the trust?   Kellie: Yeah. So the trust is going to say where everything goes when you die and it avoids probate. So they work together a trust and an LLC. They're not a trust is not going to give you liability protection. I wish it could. I could save my clients so much money. I can trust you liability protection, but a basic revokable trust does not. And really for anybody young, that's all I'm recommending because you don't want to buy property you can't sell. The trust is going to allow you to say, if something happens to me, here's where I want it to go. I want it to go to my daughter. When she reaches the age of 25. If she goes to college, I want everything paid for, you know, she needs a car.   She can have a camry she doesn't need a Ferrari -- because her dad likes cars. And you know, she graduates from college. She can have 10% or it's a little incentive if I'm not there to help her. But if you don't have kids, it can become even more important. You know, where do you want it to go? You want parents to have it. Do you want your siblings to have it? Do you want your girlfriend to have it? Do you want a charity to get half? You can be super creative. And then from, I think a more important level, if you are in an accident and you're in a coma, who's maintaining everything that you have. And so we want to make sure someone's collecting the right on your property. So once paying your insurance premiums so that you're in a coma, and if you have the worst year ever with 2020, you never know you're in a coma and your property catches on fire. We want to make sure that your transplants are paid and everything is contained. So when you wake up, your life is the same.   Emil: Awesome. Yeah.   Michael: And are there any financial benefits to not going through probate?   Kellie: Yeah. So probate, the fees are set by law. So especially here in California, a percentage of your estate goes to your attorney and a percentage of your States into the person that's running it. So it's an executor administrator. They get it generally is about two to 3% of your estate goes to your administrator. And two to 3% goes to their attorney, being an attorney that practices this all the time. I don't handle a probate that I don't pick up. The probate code. There is always something weird. There's never, and it's kind of a running joke about people that do this area of law. I don't think it's boring and it's, it's shocking how not boring and bizarre. And it's so it's hard to go through without an attorney. So I've worked for firms that they get great deals on wills because a will is perfect.   The trust is not people go, wow, you paid $300 for a will. Or I paid 3000 for a trust. That's ridiculous. I'm getting a will. And the reason attorneys are doing that is because down the road, they're going to be making a lot more money off of you, probating your will. Then they're going to now, if you set up your trust and do it right the first time, not a little attorney, we of, we joke in our, in our industry kind of about, you know, people oftentimes will go do it themselves. And I always tell clients, great, go do it yourself. And then let's have a free consultation. I'll read through what you put together and I'll tell you, honestly, you know, I'm not going to charge somebody money if I don't need you. That's not why I'm in this area of law. But a lot of times people will do it themselves. Think they've done it and they don't execute it. Right. They put something in there. They don't intend. So we hear their properties going where they don't want it to, or it's not valid at all. And the attorneys then making more money than they would have the probate, because now we're fixing what you did wrong through whatever software was cheaper around, seemed like it was cheaper, I should say.   Michael: So. I mean, we just kind of glided over that fact, but I want to circle back to it. If I have a will in place that does not help me avoid probate, I might be able to dictate where things go and to whom and when, but I still got to go through probate. Well, my, whoever is around has to go through probate. If I've got a trust, I can also dictate where things go to whom and when. And I can avoid paying that two to 3% fee   Kellie: In the probate. It's attorney's fees and administrator executor fees. So probate is if I have nothing in place, then it's probated and it goes disposition or where it's going. My state, it goes according to law and the law assumes your kids are going to get it as soon as their legal is in 32. And if I don't have to, it goes to my parents. And if I don't have my parents, because my is, and news is full. That's how you hear these people that didn't long loss, fifth cousins or whatever.   Emil: I remember when we were going through the process of doing this with you. And I'm like, after this person, I just don't know who else at this point   Kellie: We always, so in that case, what we always do and you'll see in any well drafted will, it will always say, and if everybody's gone to their heirs at law, because if I'm going to keep making, like, I call it like the worst car accident. So if you tell me, okay, I want it to go to my wife and my daughter. And then I go, okay, well, great. You know what? If they're dead and you say, okay, well then I want it to go to my brother and sister. And I go, okay, great. What if they're dead too? And it doesn't matter how many people you tell me I'm going to kill them. Everybody loves talking to lawyers and everyone loves talking about death. So people love talking to me.   Because I, I try to joke with clients and make it light. Cause it's a hard topic. A lot of times, you know, if there's a, everybody that you can name, I'm going to stick them on an airplane or some terrible accident. Cause these things happen. Right. And not super uncommon. I like to use the example of, do you ever go to dinner and do you drive in the same car? And if the answer is yes, then you need a second person or you need to be okay with it going, you know, if I'm off. So if you have nothing in place, the law has something is simple. And if you put together a will, so in a little can be as simple as you can write out, depending on your state, you can write out before you get on the airplane and you sign and date where you want things to go, or you can pay $10,000 to the best attorney in the world and have a 50 page will. And it's still going perfect in that case to go back to my example of, well, I want my daughter to get it at 25 or if she graduates from college, 10% early, she can do that in a little. I can do that through probate, but I have to wait through that year and a half long process.   I'm paying about three to 6% depending if the administrator has an attorney of my estate and what am I gaining? You know, I could've put that same energy and that money into a trust fund given more than my daughter down the road. So it makes total sense. The trust is that I think a gift to the family.   Emil: I agree. Yeah. That's why I decided to do that. And I know Michael, you've done the same. So my next, and probably the last question on this one is, okay, so right now I have all my properties in a trust. Let's say I go out at some point and I start buying properties in an LLC. Do you move the LLC into the trust? How do you get those properties into the trust as well?   Kellie: Yeah. So your, your LLC is going to own the property. And then your trust is going to own the LLC, or you can assign your LLC interests into the task. So in that case, it would take effect. If something happened to you down the road, we're pulling it in to the trust itself. So we're avoiding probate by doing it that way. So if I could draw it out, I would have the trust at the top. Well, really you're at the top. And then I'd have a line down. Then we bought a bubble with your trust, uh, the, a mill trust. And then we've got a line down to a bubble with the mill LLC. And now it shows ownership who has control of what? So it doesn't go the other way. So the LLC doesn't have control over the trust and the trust doesn't have control over you.   You have control over everything. And so for each complete protection, really for you and your family, you have the LLC to protect you. Somebody sees you, they can't go past that first bubble, unless you are buying your diapers every single day out of your LLC, you're breaching the corporate veil. So it stops at the LLC level. And then if something happens and you pass away, then we've got everything in place to protect your family. So you're covering both sides and I joke with clients, but this is the scary truth is that none of us get out alive and in a trust, in a will or nothing or probate, we're all headed in that direction. There's, you know, in this crazy world, everything that's going on, the one thing we all have in common and people don't like to talk about it, people don't like to acknowledge it, but accidents happen and aging happens. And so it's something that if you put it together right now, you can build on it for a lifetime and never have the expense.   Emil: Yep.   Michael: Awesome. I just wanna ask a clarifying question. When a meal says that he owns the trust, owns his property. What's the name on the title? Is it a meals trust or is it Emil as a person?   Kellie: When, and your trust owns the property? So when I bought my house, I had Ellie Chrisman. I was married. So Kellie Chrisman and married woman as joint tenants with the husband. Now, when we put our trust together, which as any good attorney does, I want you to talk with me before I close and to put together, I then transferred. Once we closed into Kellie Chrisman as trustee of the Chrisman family trust, those are the goals of the words that place it into the trust. So when you want something to be owned by the trust, when there's a title document to it, what we do to accomplish that is that you own it. You, the individual as trustee of your trust.   Michael: Okay? Yeah. So if I already own five rental properties and I want to see in my own personal name, and I want to now put them into a trust, we're going to have to change the title of those five properties.   Kellie: Yep. That could be a whole podcast in itself is if I want to try and do this on my own, where am I most likely to mess up? Titling is number one. So you created a trust or you kind of attorney create it for you. That's half the battle. Now we need to fund it. So now we need to make sure your title to your properties and anything that can be retitled is federal correct. So we're transferring it from you as an individual to us trustee and the deed has to be done correctly. It has to be recorded and usually that's included. And so a lot of times you'll see, Oh, this trust is a hundred dollars and this attorney's 1500, this attorney's 5,000. What's the difference. And it's what they're including for you within the trust package. So the funding should, in my opinion, always be included in done for you. I mean, that's the last thing you want to do is spend the time to go through all of this legal stuff and then have a ton of homework to do, including a legally complex thing like titling.   Michael: Okay. So Kelly. So just so I understand. So if I've got those five properties in an LLC and I want assign, you know, put all those into the trust as well, I don't have to change the title on those five properties. I can simply assign the interest of the LLC to the trust. Is that right?   Kellie: Yeah. You don't want to change the title. So if you move it out of the LLC, the issue then becomes that. Now you don't have that protection. It's no longer owned by the LLC. So you want the trust to own the LLC. And whether you do that by assigning it, or, I mean, so I always have a good veteran best, right? So good is listed as an asset. It's find your schedule of assets of your trust. Better is you assign the LLC to the trust itself. And that is the workable solution for most of my clients. Best is within the LLC paperwork itself, the setup of the entity, you have the trust. So you as trustee of your family, trust, owning the LLC interest itself, and that will get the LLC and therefore, anything else you own. So those five properties into your trust,   Michael: Man, we could go on with this stuff for like probably days, but we're getting along. And the two that I want to be very conscientious of your time. I think the last question that I want to ask, and then I'll give them a chance to ask is, you know, where do you see new investors getting into trouble legally?   Kellie: Yeah. So saving the penny. And I hate to say that that seems like such a lawyer answer to, Oh, hire me, but it's not just that. I mean, obviously that's ultimately how I make my money, but, but the reason I did this area of law is that I feel like the law gets in people's way so often. And it prevents somebody that has a great idea or a great investment portfolio from protecting themselves correctly. And then people either say, I'm just not going to worry about it. I'm just going to jump over this hurdle of law. I don't have time to deal with it or they try and do it themselves and it makes it worse or they skimp on what ends up being the most important thing and putting everything else on the line. So if you're setting up a investment strategy and you're going to buy hopefully hundreds of thousands of dollars in property and be making significant income, why not invest in an attorney's time?   And it doesn't have to be a lot of attorneys will offer a free consultation and the right attorney is going to work with you to make it affordable. And it's the best investment, the best foundation you can do. And I think the thing that saves people the most money over time, you will end up spending more fixing it, but then you will just doing it, right. I mean, UCLA Bruin. And I like to quote John Wooden as we all do. And then he said, if you don't have time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to do it over? And that's something that I always try to put into my own personal, my personal life and my practice. But I think a good attorney is going to work with you. They're going to make sure that you're comfortable. They're going to make sure that you're not surprised. And that's the goal is to make sure that you're empowered to do what you can do, what you can do, right. And then hire when you need to.   Michael: Awesome love that.   Emil: I don't know if it's a question, more of a clarification. I know we didn't get to one thing I think people should think about as they're considering personal LLC, all those things. If you're going out to get financing, it's a little bit different with an LLC. Most of the 30 year fixed rate, Fannie Freddie government backed mortgages. Those aren't available. If you take the property in an LLC, C I'll usually have to go to a different type of lender, commercial lender, different type of product, but just something else I think is important to consider as you're evaluating all this and navigating it.   Kellie: I found with clients that I've worked with in the past. So having an attorney that's read through your stuff, or, you know, if I have a client that I'm helping, I can work with the lender, my dad's a small business lender. So I kind of heard that my whole life in my ear. And so I will work with lenders to do whatever we need to do. And sometimes it's, you know, you're going to take the property in the mortgage in your own name, and we're going to let the lender know, Hey, we're transferring it into an LLC. And they're going to give us a letter that that's okay, or they're going to tell us their procedure, or they might want something else from me. So they might just say, Hey Kellie, can you give us, you know, a letter on your letterhead with your signature that says, you know, they have an entity, here's all the information. It's kind of their way to be past liability to me. But also sometimes it's ridiculous as it is just having the, the Esquire, the attorney at law, after my name, I can write the things you need to do and note that it more weight, but it's just that extra team player in your pocket so that you have all the tools that you need [inaudible]   Michael: Yeah. Great. Awesome. So Kellie, this has been so awesome. Thank you. So, so, so much if people have additional questions, want to form a trust, need help with an LLC, how legal type questions what's the best way.   Kellie: So email's always great. Or, you know, check out my website Avvo is a nationwide attorney referral website. It's kind of like a Yelp for attorneys, how exciting!  But taylorchrismanlaw.com. Um, and then my email is just my name. I tried to make it easy. Kellie, K E L L I E @ taylorchrismanlaw.com . And I always liked to have a conversation. I always tell clients, don't be afraid that I'm going to charge you. I'll tell you before I charge you. I never want to surprise clients with a bill. That's my worst case scenario.   Emil: Yeah. I can attest to that   Kellie: I'll talk to you about the weather. Kellie. How much are we paying you for this? And maybe it's because I'm a little selfish and I like to know my clients, but you know, always happy to have a conversation and then no, somebody doesn't go with me or they go with legal zoom or they do it. I'm always happy to look at what they've got. And I mean, to me, the biggest compliment is down the road. If they refer me to somebody else, you know, that's huge. And so whatever I can do to help, I'm more than happy to be there. And I'll tell you if I charge you and if I don't do it, I'm going to send you to somebody. I'm not just going to say, Oh, sorry, good luck. I'm going to try and find you that person that can help you wherever you are.   Michael: Great. And can you just spell your last name? So everybody ensures they have the proper spelling   Kellie: It's like a Chris and a man stuck together. So it's C H R I S M A N.   Michael: Kellie. Thank you so much for sharing your contact information. You're a California attorney. We've got listeners all over the country and I think a lot of international as well. Can those folks reach out to you if they don't live in California for help with their legal type stuff?   Kellie: Yeah. So my restriction is, you know, I know California law the best, and if I'm ever uncomfortable, I'm going to send you or refer you to somebody in your own state. But I regularly handle stuff for clients that either live in California and are investing in property, out of state for clients that live out of state or investing in property in another state. And then I'm helping them through the legal process. So I can draft deeds, you know, all over the country in a trust. You're just going to pick California law. And in this area of law, it's not really that dissimilar from state to state. And so it's something I can help people with and have a conversation. And if it's ever something I can't do it's I refer you out and I'll let you know that I can handle whatever it may be.   Michael: Fantastic. And before we let you go, what is your favorite kind of pizza?   Kellie: So pepperoni, jalapeno. And now I want pizza.   Michael: I've never heard of that combo, but I like it.   Kellie: Aye. That's what Adam and I used to order   Michael: Pepperoni and jalapeno. I've got a quick follow up for the group. A question for the group. How do we feel about pineapple on the pizza?   Kellie: No, that's a strong no.   Emil: So a little bit of a long winded answer. I used to work at my first job in high school was Domino's. I worked at Domino's   Michael: Awesome.   Emil: Both making pizza and delivering. So I have tried every single type of pizza. You could imagine, like triple Decker, pizza and Kelly. You just reminded me how good pepperoni jalapeno is. I haven't had that since I, I worked at Domino's in high school and it's incredible. I'm gonna have to get that next time. I order some pizza. I do not like pineapple anymore. I think I got pineapples out at Domino's back in. That might happen.   Michael: I'm a strong pineapple advocate. I just like the sweet and the salty together. Pierre, what's your take pineapple on pizza, yea or nea?   Pierre: I'm just not into pizza.   Michael: I don't like pineapple and I don't like pizza.   Emil: Pierre's too shredded for, for pizza.   Pierre: No it's one of those things where I never crave it, but I'll enjoy it when it's there, but I will always make a choice over pizza if it's me choosing, but I don't see what the big rage against pineapple is either though. I'm…   Michael: Kellie's face is make a barf.   Kellie: It's not supposed to be hot. It's just not.   Pierre: But barbecued pineapple is pretty darn good. I got to say, got to say, but I agree jalapenos on everything. I eat a jalapeno a day. Every single day. I have a fresh one,   Michael: Keeps the doctor away.   Pierre: I don't know. Yeah. I mean probably.   Michael: Awesome. Kellie, thank you so much for coming on and we will have to have you back at some point down the road because there is just so much good meat here to dig into. Emil any final thoughts before we let Kellie out of here?   Emil: No, thank you so much, Kellie. I know you've always been very helpful for me with all the legal questions I send you. So thank you on a personal level. And thanks for coming on the podcast.   Kellie: I can always tell when I'm in the right area. Cause I'm exciting.   Michael: Awesome. Well, Kellie, I'm sure we'll be chatting soon, but until then have yourself a great one stay safe. Alright.   Kellie: Thanks guys.   Michael: Well, everyone, that was our episode. A massive, massive, massive thank you to Kellie. As we mentioned, the sheer number of time we could go on for hours, days, maybe even years about this stuff. I think that's why law school is so long, but we would absolutely love to have Kellie back another episode. Hopefully everybody got a little bit of value out of this and realize just how complicated things can get and how quickly. So I've always touted it. I think Emil would agree. Go get legal advice, go get tax professional advice. Don't try to do this stuff yourself. Just like you're taking your car to the mechanic. They're professionals. Let the professionals handle it. Feel free, if you'd like the episode, to give us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts, go ahead and subscribe. If you want to get automatic downloads on the episodes that come out twice a week. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next one. Happy investing.   Emil: Happy investing.  

The Remote Real Estate Investor
Help! People Think I'm Crazy for Investing in Real Estate… What Should I Tell Them?

The Remote Real Estate Investor

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2020 39:23


In this episode, Micheal, Tom and Emil take on some common worries that friends and family have when you tell them that you are considering taking up remote real estate investing and provide solid arguments for reasoned responses.  --- Transcript   Michael: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of their motor real estate investor. I'm Michael album, and today as usual, I'm joined by Tom Schneider and Emil Shour. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about kind of an interesting topic. Do those around you, not support your remote real estate investing dreams. We're going to be giving everyone today some tips, tricks, and fodder about how to speak intelligently about remote real estate investing. So let's jump into it.   Theme Song   Michael: Alright guys, before we get into this episode, I just wanted to check in with you all, how are you guys doing? There's some new quarantine issues that just came out from the governor and wanted to check in how you guys are doing.   Emil: Welp. Can't go surfing this weekend because LA beaches are locked down.   Michael: Oh no!   Emil: So that's unfortunate, but I got out there this morning in anticipation of not being able to,   Michael: How was it ?   Emil: It was crowded a little bit slow, but it was fun. You know? It's good. Anytime you start the day out on the water.   Michael: Yeah, absolutely.   Tom: Is a bad day on the surf. Better than a good day, not on the surf guys.   Michael: Yes!   Emil: Of course. Michael would say yes, because he's the eternal optimist, I would say. Yes. There's times. I get really frustrated. Sometimes I get out of the water and I'm like, damn it. And I'm just like huffing and puffing on my way to my car and just like, but yes, in hindsight, it's always like, at least I got out on the water and did something fun   Michael: Without being too cliche. I think every time I get into the water, I'm able to think about stuff and I go in with problems and come up with solutions. Even if it's not a great day, it's way more fun. If it is a great day, given the choice between the two, I would absolutely choose better day, but I don't think I've ever had a bad day out in the water   Emil: Hashtag no bad days.   Michael: That's right.   Tom: What I've been doing lately is our community pool… I live in this neighborhood that used to be part of an HOA and there are still some of the HOA amenities, but now it's just like people have the option to join. And I joined cause it's like a really cool feature, but they have really, they need a monitor at the pool just to make sure that people are not bringing in guests and they limit the number of people and a bunch of other County related restrictions. But anyways, so I've been doing that and I've been working from down there. There's really good wifi. I'm out in the sunshine. I've been having some of my meetings with my background, with Emil, Michael and Pierre, where there's like, you know, a pool in the background and every, you know, couple of hours instead of going on a walk, I'll do a Cannonball and a that's the latest little update. And it's been a really, I don't know, I think there's something about being outside and being creative and that feeds into that. So that's been my, my new thing work from pool.   Michael: I'm curious to know what the HOA, you know, if they just everyone mutinied like, no more HOA!   Tom: Right. I think it fell apart. I think in like the seventies or eighties, I gotta, I gotta get to the bottom of it, but uh, yeah, really just random, big pool. Um, I don't know. Yeah. It's cool.   Michael: Killer. That's awesome.   Emil: How about you, Michael? What's new in your world?   Michael: Um, not a whole lot. I've been staying up quarantining at the in-laws and just kind of hanging out in here. It's been hot as ever like the surface of the sun. They lived just outside Sacramento, so it gets really, really hot up here, but we've been playing a lot of tennis, which has been really nice, cause there's nobody on the tennis courts. Cause it's so hot. And I think people drive by and like what a bunch of schmucks, like who's playing tennis, it's a hundred degrees outside. So it's, it's been a lot of fun to just get out and sweat and be outside.   Emil: Nice man.   Tom: Pierre with so many hobbies. I'd love to hear. I think you might mentioned getting in some woodworking again.   Pierre: Yeah. Yeah. I moved into a new place in Alameda and needed some furniture to fit my record collection in this little nook that we have. So I built like a little mid century modern table with some cubbies, for my records and a rack to hang my guitars.   Tom: That's a fantastic quarantine hobby and practical!   Emil: I give up, Pierre's just the coolest out of all of us. Let's just,   Michael: Oh, it's not even, yeah, it's not even close.   Pierre: Now. I got the edge though. I want to build all my furniture. We were looking at buying some online but now it's not seeming as attractive.   Michael: You can build a better.   Tom: I love it.   Emil: Awesome. And for anyone who's new to the show, wondering who that voice was. That is our producer Pierre.     Michael: All right, guys. So I want to break down some of the very common aversions to remote real estate investing and then talk through some of the counterpoints to each of those. I think any real estate investor at some point in their investing career has likely come up against some aversion or caught some flack. So I want to talk about the first one that I think might be one of the most common ones. And that is how could I possibly ever invest in real estate remotely? I don't know anybody in inter X market here. Tom, do you want to take a shot at this one? And then, you know how you would respond to someone who's throwing this at you?   Tom: Yeah, totally. And what a relevant first topic for the remote real estate investor. So I think a common misconception about real estate investing is that it, you are a lone wolf in and out doing on your own. And that is so far from the truth, especially, uh, as a remote investor. So what I would say for this is you should invest as a lot of time in building your team just because you are not in the region, you're specifically your local property manager. That's really going to be a key key point of being able to do this remotely. So a way to, you know, go about that is have a very thorough vetting process of identifying, sourcing and vetting your local property manager. And one of the great things that Roofstock does is when we open a market, what we'll do is we'll find from word of mouth and looking it up online, the top 20 local property managers. And from there we'll do phone interviews. And from there, we'll cut more down to where we have about five of them. And then we'll go into the office and visit them, get their standard operating procedures, get their, a copy of their lease that they use, get all of these different and then say, okay, yup. These are good guys that we would recommend. Now me as an investor, if there's a company that's doing that, that's great. That gives me a head start, but I will still take the time to vet them myself. One of the aspects we have within Roofstock Academy is some pretty thorough interview templates for talking to property managers and identifying good ones. But to combat that is you have a really thorough process of building your team local there on the ground. So, you know, once you have identified that property manager that is going to be your remote eyes and ears is really not that different than doing any kind of local investing. Once you have that trusting partner   Michael: And Tom breaking down that big rock into an even smaller bite sized rock, how do you go about finding these people? If you're not investing through Roofstock and they are not doing it for you, what's the actionable step that people can go take to go meet or start talking to these folks.   Tom: I always put an extra points on referral from people that I trust and know. So I'd say if you can get referrals that way from either lenders or other investors, you know, that's a great place to start, but you should expect what you inspect. So you need to go in and expect it in, inspect it to now that is a mouthful.   Michael: That's a tough one to say.   Tom: Yeah, yeah. We use that saying a bunch of our, the last company that I worked at, but the gist is if you don't do the work to verify, you should expect that it's not going to be that awesome. So you need to put in a little bit of the work of talking to these partners. So I digress a little, I guess let's see. I'm going back to your question. What was your question?   Michael: It was how can someone go find these people?   Tom: How can they find people? So, okay. References number one, number two, don't shy away from looking on the internet of just searching the city of who are the major property managers. And you know, this, isn't making the decision on who you're picking. This is just building that initial list to widdle down with conversations on the phone and potentially in house visits to make sure that it's all buttoned up and such. But I'd say again, your greatest resource would be getting referrals. Bigger pockets, I think on their forums have some references of some potential local property managers, but I would definitely expect what you inspect. So make a point of doing that. Like work.   Emil: One of the thing, I want to point out with this one, cause I remember getting this one a lot. When I first started investing, you know, people would be like, you're going to invest where across the country, like that's insane. What if something happens to the property? What if it gets vandalized? What if this and that? And the thing is, is those things happen, whether you're local or you're investing remotely, right? It's not like if you live 15 minutes away from the property, things aren't going to happen. Things are still going to come up no matter where you invest again, it's just making sure you have a partner. And that's why we keep talking about this property manager. Who's invested, who cares and who is a good member of your team. That's one of the big things we're going to be talking about is, you know, you hear a lot of real estate investors say you have to build a team. This is a team thing, especially if you're investing remotely. So that's the big thing is things will still happen. It's just a matter of getting the right partners to help you handle all these things.   Michael: You guys nailed it. I have nothing to add. The one thing I would add is that it really forces you, which I see it as a pro. Some people might see it as a con, but it forces you to get really good at time management. Because then they'll just like you said, stuff's going to happen. Whether it's next door or whether it's across the country. So if it's across the country, you've got to rely on people to take care of that. You've got to have set the systems up and placed on, like you were saying, to be able to have that dealt with without you needing to become involved. So if it's next door, you're going to be tempted to go fix it yourself or go deal with it yourself. But if it's across country, you physically can't. So being really good at time management and task delegation is I see it as a big pro.   Tom: I guess one last thing I'll say is, you know, ideally the home that you own and you're renting out is close to you, but there are so many benefits to investing remotely. Like you have access to so many more properties, so many different types of returns, such different like economies, like that makes it a little bit of barrier to entry is doing that extra homework of finding that great partner. So for me, being able to access these cash, flowing properties all over the US that extra work of finding the good property manager and then vetting them and building that relationship is worth it.   Michael: Yeah. And to that point, I mean, what's the alternative here, not investing or not investing remotely. And if you're in a really expensive market, you might not ever be able to break through. So if it's invest remotely and learn a bunch of stuff or not, I'd say you can't afford to not learn how to do some of this stuff.   Tom: Word.   Michael: Okay. So let's move on to the next one. Uh, so many times I hear people say this, I know someone who tried to investing in real estate and they would take these midnight calls, fixed toilets. I don't want to do that. Why would you ever want to do that? Emil, you wanna run with this one?   Emil: Yes. So this is another common one, right? So people say, okay, I get why you want to invest remotely, but are you going to handle fixes? What if someone calls you? And again, this goes back to what we were just talking about. It's this is why you hire third party, property manager, again, building the team, right? I would say the property manager is one of the most important pieces of your team. And the thing here is I don't know how to fix most problems, right? I would call a handyman or whatever anyway. Right? So the property manager is just, they're just your barrier. They're taking in those calls and they're finding a local specialist. Again, you're not going to be good at everything in your business. What you want to do is hire the professionals who are in the property. Management is the best that operating your property.  I would probably do a much worse job and I'd spend way more time than a property manager who does this for a living. So the rebuttal to that question is while I'm going to hire a third party property manager, who's an expert in the area. Who's going to manage it for me. And in return, they take a certain percentage of my rent each month. The other thing is the important thing here is this frees up a lot of your time, right? If you're constantly dealing with your operational stuff, you're not going to be thinking about how can I grow this? How can I scale it? A lot of us who are doing this, we have full time jobs, right? Like instead of fixing things on the weekend, I could be thinking about how can I start a side gig, earn more money or whatever. So I can go buy more properties, which I would argue is more important than handling the day to day stuff.   Michael: It's so interesting. I think people in the day to day world in life can really wrap their head around hiring professionals to do things, right. Nobody says, I'm not going to go buy a car because I don't know how to fix it. No, we all take it to the mechanic. I think it's the same thing with real estate and with investing where people are. So whatever reason can't get their head around that you might not have to do that, that kind of stuff. There are professionals that will take care of it for you.   Tom: Right. It's such a great point. I, I love that, your, uh, isms, Michael isms. I think we'll say, I think in talking to a lot of people who are interested in investing in real estate locally, they're like, yeah, then I can go and I can run out and paint the house when, or do these things that happened. It's like, no, you don't have to do that. And you know, we were talking about these costs that you incur with either repairs or maintenance or paying your property manager, but those are good costs to pay. And also at the end of the day, it's going to help you on your tax basis. It, you know, there's just so many tailwinds in doing this.   Emil: One last thing I want to add here is you can always later down the road, maybe you're ready to retire, right? Maybe you have X amount of properties. You have enough cashflow coming in. You want to retire. Maybe at that point, you feel confident enough where you do want to self manage. If you go back to episode five that we did with Chris Bennett, he talks about how he self his properties from thousands of miles away. I personally probably won't get to that point. I'd rather let somebody else deal with it. But it's always one of those things where I think you can even just observe your property manager for years, learn how they kind of run everything. And then if you want to down the road, you can switch back or switch to self managing. If that's interesting to you.   Michael: Funny, I think the longer I invest, the less I want new self-manage. I realize how much goes into like yeah, no way.   Emil: Yeah, same. I had somebody who I was talking about. Who's looking to buy a property on Roofstock and they were asking me the same thing. It's like, should I self man? He's like, I'm actually thinking about self managing first, just to like, get an idea of how all these things work and then handing it over a property manager. And I was like, if anything, I would do the complete reverse for all the reasons I just mentioned. Like, dude, you're brand new. Don't don't do it. It's going to be a nightmare. And you're never going to want to invest in another property again. Promise   Tom: That's the Emil Shour guarantee.   Michael: Awesome. Okay. So the next one I want to touch on is something I'm sure we've all heard a lot about, and it's that real estate is such a risky investment. Look at what happened in 2008. And so I'll take this one. If you guys don't mind, you know, my response is you're spot on don't invest. No, just kidding. I would say, you know, 2008 was the direct result of poor lending practices and those have definitely since changed. And so I don't anticipate seeing a financial disaster as a direct result of poor lending practices again. Don't misinterpret that as me having a crystal ball, that's just my personal opinion and be very may well see a financial disaster from other, but the poor lending practices seems to have gotten cinched up pretty tight. So I would actually argue that real estate is often a safer investment than the stock or the bond market.  And I think so often people say, okay, real estate is risky, but these other things aren't, there is also people that say real estate is risky, put your money in the bank. And to that, there's all kinds of counter arguments and counterpoints that are all based in fact about inflation and how you actually lose money. If it's just sitting in the bank, if you're not earning at least the inflation return, but so in looking at growth, the comparison to simply stocks, bonds, and real estate. So with real estate, there's just such a higher degree of control. The tax benefits and potential returns are typically going to be better than your average year in the stock market. I think it's pretty well accepted that stock market returns average between six to 8% in any given year real estate, you can do significantly better with that from a pure cash on cash return perspective that doesn't even account for the tax benefits associated with it, as well as the appreciation and loan pay-down equity that you're essentially buying into your property. So I personally I'm drinking the Koolaid. I think there are tons and tons and tons of facts and figures that you can throw at someone that's saying, Oh, it's such a risky investment. My guess is that they probably haven't invested in real estate. And if they have, they aren't looking to do the same type of thing you're doing remote investing with a property manager. So I just want to make sure that everyone's comparing apples to apples. Whenever they're hit with something like this, you really want to understand what's being talked about.   Tom: That's great and a good overview of like all the benefits of why, at least in our opinion, like the benefits outweigh the rewards. And what I love about drinking the Koolaid is there's so many different flavors of the Koolaid. So I kind of switch off on which one I'm most excited about. So the tax advantages is great. The immediate cashflow is great. The appreciation is incredible, but the Koolaid I've been sipping a little bit more of is the loan pay-down aspect. And it's just crazy. You can borrow like a hundred thousand dollars and someone else will pay it off for you. Like, I don't know, like wording it that way is really kind of mind boggling of how incredible investing is. So even if you're not cash flowing, say your cashflow is zero, but you still have a loan on the property. And you're not paying that loan. The person who was renting the property has paint alone. It's like obscene right property after you get a free property. So anyways, just kind of in your, going through your ran, I was just thinking of what is currently spinning through my mind a little bit heavier on like, wow, it's unbelievable. How much of an opportunity is. So anyways,   Michael: I thought you were gonna say that you're really excited about sour green, Apple Kool-Aid flavor.   Tom: That might be the loan pay-down is the sour green Apple.   Emil: Oh man. Kool-Aid when you're a kid and   Michael: The best, the best. How do you guys feel about Hawaiian punch?   Tom: I think American tastes have gotten a little bit less sweeter. At least I could rant on this for a little bit, but I'll finish it. There's been a shift in American culture kind of going to more subtle. Like if you look at like Hintwater LaCroix, if you compare like the drinks that are consumed today, versus the drinks that were consumed like 10 years ago, it's like hummingbird water back then. So I think I have a feeling if you had some Hawaiian punch, like you would be like, what the heck is, this is this like, meant for like a hive of, of hummingbirds, like anyways,   Michael: And it's that bright red too!   Tom: But the great thing about Koolaid is you don't have to put all the powder in. You can make it culturally adjustable by just putting a little bit of it in and boom, welcome to 2020, just 10% of it and have it. All right, go ahead.   Emil: I don't know how I can follow that up with something serious, but just to finish this section, I remember we had this blog post on the Roofstock blog talking about how did single family rental returns compared to stocks and bonds. And the Roofstock team did a little study. It was from 1992 to 2017. So a 25 year period. And if we found that single family rental returns were nearly identical to stock returns and the outperformed bonds with far less volatility. So that was one other thing I wanted to highlight here as well. Plus all the other benefits, like we talk about like tax advantages and all that, which I don't think was factored into this study.   Tom: I'm almost sure it wasn't.   Michael: Yeah, that makes sense. Because everyone's going to have a different tax basis.   Emil: Yeah. This was just looking at returns.   Michael: Okay, cool. So one of the last ones I want to touch on which we can all kind of tag team, but I kind of want to give it to Tom to give him a runway to rant. But so many people I've heard say owning real estate makes you a greedy landlord getting rich off the backs of other people. Tom, what would you say to all those people?   Tom: I think that people need safe housing, people need housing, and this is just kind of part of the wheel of providing that. So like I think above all, and we've talked about this before an earlier episode, like at the end of the day, it's about like habitable safe places for people to live. And I think as an owner, that's like a key part of the responsibility, so sure. Their incomes earned. It's like a little business that you own with every single one of the houses. But at the end of the day, like at this, we're talking about people's where they live and being able to provide that is valuable.   Emil: I think anyone who kind of believes this, I think you should a hundred percent become an owner because then you'll have a better idea of both sides of the coin. Right. You'll have owned, you'll have rented, I've rented, I've owned. I think having been in that spot right where you're a renter and you know, you've dealt with a landlord. I think it makes you more empathetic to your tenants. Like I want to provide a safe habitable unit, like Tom mentioned for those reasons. Like, if you're, if you're a good person, you care about other people, it's not like you're going to become an owner and all of a sudden just be like terrible person not providing for them. So I actually just, if you believe that, I think you should become an owner and just have experienced on both sides personally.   Pierre: As a renter, I have to say that it's way better to have a cool landlord.   Michael: Yeah. It's way better renting experience to have a cool landlord. Someone that's a real person as opposed to just a machine.   Tom: Yeah. And I don't, it has to be so black and white at that. Like you're only trying to maximize your return at every single look. I think there's a lot of places where that makes sense, but there's this humanity aspect. So one of my tenants, you know, started just recently had some issues around payment on like an employment and stuff. And you know, I talked to the, reached out to the property manager and said, Hey, you know, is this, is this something, you know, that has to do with the virus or they cause I'm very open to helping them out. Like if we need to make some adjustments or some concessions, you know, as an owner in real estate, you don't have to put on the monopoly outfit and just, you know, drill people into the ground, like, like half a conscious, like this is a good business to build wealth, but it's multidimensional, right? Because you're owning a place where somebody's living at. I think that's a really important aspect to have some humanity as an investor. So it's not, you have to go down this one path, right. You can do business consciously.   Michael: Yeah. And to anybody out there that thinks this or anybody out there that you know, is, is catching this type of comment from other people, I'd say, look, you need to understand what actually goes into real estate investing and real estate investors pay tons of money every single year to local school districts in the form of property taxes. So I'm not sure how that makes them greedy, but I would also follow that up with asking them how much money they contribute every year to their local school districts and see what they say. So there's so much money that gets poured into the local economy via real estate investors. And that comes in the form of real estate taxes, property management fees, paying local vendors for goods and services. So, so many investors spend a ton of money on these properties and local neighborhoods that actually are making them more attractive and welcoming, which can often lead to safer communities. So it's so easy for someone to just see one side of the coin and say, Oh, you you're collecting rents. You're making money off this person. Well, yeah, but also there's the other side where I'm contributing to society, paying taxes and making the schools better. So if you want me to stop doing that, that's a different conversation, but you really have to understand both sides of that coin to have an intelligible conversation about it.   Emil: Bravo, sir, drop the mic, please.   Michael: Mic drop it and walk away from that person. And just kind of in this same vein, I would also encourage anyone who comes up against any kind of resistance to really try to have a discussion with that other person about why they feel the way that they do. And try to understand why what they're talking about may or may not be applicable to your personal situation. Because I think real estate investing is this huge, huge topic. On the podcast, we talk about the remote real estate investing, which is one kind of niche of that, but there's so many other different topics and variances on real estate investing. So a lot of people here real estate investments like, ah, they're evil, they're the worst people in the world. Well, okay. Yeah. There might be some that are evil. It might be some of the worst people in the world, but you don't know me necessarily. And so let's try to understand what you're talking about and what I'm talking about. Cause so often they're not all the same thing.   Emil: I like that well said.   Michael: So just curious. I mean, have you guys ever run into any type of these comments? Have you gotten any flack for, you know, doing something that's maybe perceived as different from what your peers or others were doing? Emil: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've mentioned on other episodes. My dad is a real estate investor here locally in Los Angeles and he thinks, you know, I'm kind of crazy. It's still, uh, when I was first starting, especially like what you're gonna buy property, where again, and it's common for people to feel that way because traditionally, everyone felt like, you know, my dad's whole thing is like, if I can't see it, touch it, feel it, there is no way. And that's fine. I think for some people, it just doesn't work mentally as just a blocker. But like Michael said, I think it's about being open to different things. And again, if the option is, do nothing or invest somewhere else to me, I'm not going to let that stop me personally.   Tom: Yeah. I think so many people have preconceived notion of what it means to be a real estate investors. And they have this idea of them running out with a hammer and taking the call and it's like, no, it's different than that. It's way more passive. It is way more team-driven, which has kind of been a theme of this episode. So throw away or assumptions on what it looks like and, and come to Roofstock Academy. No, but throw away your assumptions on what it looks like and look at some of these different strategies that we're talking about. If you're looking to do it in a more passive way and not throwing so much of your time of trying to make it work. The other comment that I've heard from some friends is, and this goes again, I think the greedy landlord piece is, you know, someone teasing, I was talking about real estate investment, like, Oh yeah. Always money and being a slum-lord. I'm like, you know, get outta here. Like I think, as I said, like there's a wellbeing aspect and like having these safe habitable places and working with your property manager to make sure that's part of your brand at the properties that you have, you know, it's, it's not about cutting corners and like maximizing every dollar. There's so much more to that.   Michael: Yeah. I totally agree.   Tom: And several of my friends have now invested, so I, uh, won the day. So go ahead.   Emil: And that was the point I was just about to make is I think when you network with other remote real estate investors and you realize there is an ecosystem of us doing it, it makes you feel a lot more confident. So if you don't know anyone else who's doing it, I highly recommend getting in touch with somebody network with them, talk, join groups, join, whatever. Just say, like build that network. I think it's, it's invaluable to have people around you who are doing things similar to you.   Michael: Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I first started investing, like you both, I caught so much of that flak of you're going where to invest, you know, why, what, that's stupid, you're there. You're crazy. And I'm like, yeah, well it makes sense to me. So, and now most of those friends I haven't since invested to, Oh, they see what's going on here. But yeah, so much of it too was I felt like this lone wolf, I didn't know there was a community out there. I didn't know the other people doing this. I just heard, yeah. People invest in real estate, but I didn't happen to know very many of them to ask them, you know, am I crazy? Is this insane? But now I realize no I'm laughing all the way to the bank. All right guys, any final thoughts on this stuff?   Pierre: I have a question in this vein of remote versus local investing. When would it make more investment sense to invest in your local market as opposed to remotely, if you live in an expensive area?   Michael: Super good question. I'll let you guys take it first.   Tom: I'll take the first stab at it. So excellent question Pierre of, when does it make sense to invest locally versus is remote. And I think it all has to start at what is your investment thesis? Like? What is your end game map? If I live in an area where I don't necessarily need the cashflow right now, and I'm pretty bullish on appreciation, I live in Northern California where properties are a little more expensive. Maybe it does make sense to invest in a property out here locally. If I'm looking for a property where there's a little bit more of a blend of appreciation and a bit more immediate cashflow, then maybe it would make sense to invest remotely. And to kind of get us to rephrase a little bit is, you know, what kind of returns are you looking for? Like if I had to make this analogous and that's right to like the stock market, like, am I investing in a growth company or am I investing in a new startup, but am I setting a value investing? Like what kind of strategy? And I think that will answer the question on where you're doing your investing at.   Emil: The only other thing I would add there is I think comes down to your comfort level. If you just can't for whatever reason, get yourself to invest remotely. I don't think you should just not invest. I think if you can invest locally, go for it, right. If you just can't get over the remote factor and you know, like you could be making better returns elsewhere. The thing is, is there's people investing locally doing insanely well and there's people investing remotely doing insanely well, I don't think this is a, you have to go local. You have to go remote. I think it's just by your comfort level, how much money you have to invest, you know, just your strategy and that your thesis, like Tom mentioned   Tom: Price point, great point. And also the volume of homes available. I mean, you're limited just in your own backyard of how many homes are for sale. Go ahead, Michael. I see you.   Michael: Yeah. I see you too buddy.   Tom: The light in me sees the light in you!   Pierre: Namaste!   Tom: Namaste   Michael: You know, from avatar, we need to hook up our ponytails.   Tom: Yeah. I'm touching the microphone.   Michael: So the last, I think those are both really great points. The last thing I want to add too it, is what the goal is and what are you trying to accomplish? But one thing I don't think that it has mentioned is the idea of house hacking, which is kind of this concept of you buy a house bigger than you need or a place bigger than you need and you live in it and rent out the other room. So you're kind of getting the best of both worlds and a kind of hybrid approach with, I have a place to live now and I'm making some rental income alongside with that. And so if you do that well enough, you could absolutely see similar returns to a traditional investment property at distance, but get the benefit of living in a house locally. And so what I think is really important to look at as the true opportunity cost and true total cost, because if you're investing somewhere else and continuing to rent while there's a cost associated with that, versus if you buy a house hack locally and are living in it, well, there's a different cost associated with that, but you're not paying rent anymore. So look at the whole picture. And I think just like Tom mentioned, you know, look define what your goal is. So I think I ha how's hacking is a really, really great way to get started in real estate investing and kind of get two birds with one stone and then just like Emil said, what the price point is and what your, you know, you're only going to qualify for X amount of dollars in a loan if you're going that route. And so that's going to be a limiting factor as well.   Pierre: What about buying from a family member would buying from a parent, make it more interesting in the way of tax benefits or anything like that?   Tom: I mean, a huge way to get ahead in real estate is any kind of discount to valuation. So like if there's any kind of sweetheart deal with that, I mean, you don't want to take advantage of your parents, but like if they're like open to giving you a little bit of a discount, like, man, that could be an immediate, huge head start because you already have like a little bit of equity in the house where some of the tools that we talked about pulling out equity, like cash out refi or HELOCS or all of that stuff like that can give you an advantage there in just the question of like, let's say you're paying fair market value. It really depends on if that house fits your investment thesis. So looking at the type of returns that you would get, then if it fits that then great. That makes sense. I'd say just kind of like specific to your question around family members. Like if you're able to get a little bit of, maybe it's not sweat equity, it's love equity. That's a huge step up.   Michael: One other thing too, that I've seen here that works really well. Especially if the house is owned free and clear is your family can finance it for you basically be the bank and you pay them a monthly payment as opposed to getting a mortgage. You can just get, you know, you guys decide what the terms are amongst yourselves. And it's so much easier. The one thing that I definitely would encourage people to look out for and I harp on this literally every day in the Academy is property taxes and especially if it's in California, because I asked my attorney once I was like, what if I just sell this house to my wife for a dollar? Because my property tax base is X, what my property tax has dropped to a dollar. And she's like, yeah, no, that's not how it works. If it's, if it's priced way under market, they're going to assess it at the fair market value and tax you on the fair market value. So even if you're getting a discount on the purchase price, that's great. You just want to be aware of what the taxes are going to look like after the fact. And especially with a lot of these family properties, they've been in the family for so long, they were purchased at such a low tax rate. So being aware of the tax rate and what that's going to jump to is really important for sure. It's going to move in California, but you just want to be aware of it. If you're in another state doing this type of deal, just be, you know, find out what that tax rate looks like. But great questions, man.   Tom: I got one more for this. So in the theme of this episode of your friends being able to speak intelligently, when you're, when people try to talk you out of investing in real estate, why aren't you just buying somebody else's property? Isn't there like a reason they're selling it? Why, why, why, why   Michael: Is it trash?   Tom: Isn't it trash if somebody's selling it, it must be a bad deal or something wrong with it. Michael, would you like to lead this one?   Michael: Yeah, it's a super great point and a really great question. I think I hear all the time in the Academy. I mean, it's just goes back to one. Man's trash is another man's treasure, but also you're probably not buying trash. I mean, people sell for any number of reasons. So we'd never know a motivation unless we ask. And so often sellers are selling out of desperation, whether that's, you know, divorce or they need cash for something. So it could be a really great property, could be really great deal. They're just selling it because they need the cash. They could also be selling because they got a nonperforming assets to be performing. And now it's really great. And so we talk about that a lot is adding value. You buy a crummy property, you fix it up. And now it's a really nice property. I mean, that's what turnkey is. Someone is selling a perfectly functioning and performing asset. And so giving people an opportunity to buy it means that they get to make some profit in the middle. So I definitely definitely disagree with that wholeheartedly. I think that people need to understand that there are so many reasons why someone could be selling a property.   Emil: No, the only other one I would add is what we call a tired landlord. So someone who just been doing this for 30, 40 years, they're done right. They've maybe they've been managing it this whole time by themselves. And they're like, I'm just, I've made my money. My market has appreciated. I'm going to do well on the sell. I just want to get out of the business. So they're tired and they just want to move on. That's another one.   Michael: I love how you said that. They're just, they're just exhausted.   Emil: Just, just tired man. I could,   Pierre: Did you have your dad in mind when you're commenting on this?   Emil: My dad is such a, such a tired landlord. He's an exhausted landlord. He is. He is just like, pardon me. Thinks he loves complaining about being a landlord though. It's just like in him that he likes to compete. It gives him a discussion topic.   Tom: Yeah. My comments would be on this is concerns around, you know, why is the sellers have a process and the way that you evaluate the homes that is consistent. So once the property goes through the ringer where you're looking at, you know, condition value, tenant, if they're, it is occupied, all that stuff, you can really make the assessment. If it's a good or a bad deal. And don't overthink seller motivations, just like Michael said, there's going to be any number of reasons within Roofstock there's all kinds of different types of sellers. There are individuals, there are bigger institutions, there are funds and sometimes the funds just expire or sometimes they move, you know, the geographic concentration, they might move to a different market. So I wouldn't overthink it and just do your homework and follow the right steps and doing your evaluation of the property.   Michael: Okay. So now I've got a question for you guys kind of a fun one. And just so all of our listeners know, I didn't tell a meal pier and Tom, what the question was before we started recording this. So they are totally going to be blindsided by this. And it's a, it's a pretty traditional question. It's one that, you know, I think is asked pretty regularly of people, but I put a little bit of a spin kind of unique twist to it. So the question is you're stranded on a desert Island. There's the very typical question that I want to know the answer to of what two items would you sum into your location to help you escape to survive? But also I want to know where's the most ideal setting for said deserted Island,   Emil: Bali, a surf board, because the waves are going to be amazing deserted Island. I'm just, I don't even know if I'd want to leave. Honestly. I'm not trying to get out of there if I'm just stranded in Bali, no one around amazing waves.   Tom: Do you guys watch naked and afraid?   Michael: Yeah. It's so good.   Tom: What would your survivor score be?   Michael: Oh, I would start it probably a six and end at a 7/8. Oh, underdog performing. Sorry. I interrupted. Go ahead.   Emil: Alright, so I'd want to surf board item two…   Tom: Are we picking locations or picking what we're bringing with us? What's the situation?   Michael: Both! Emil: A laptop that has a never ending battery and access to internet.   Michael: No dude, we're not playing this “imagine if the best invention” game.   Emil: You did, you did not give me any rules, constraints. It's up to my imagination. Creativity.   Michael: All right. That's reasonable. And the first thing I would do is use said computer magical computer to get a ticket for my wife and daughter to come join me at the Island.   Tom: So, if you're going down, you're dragging them with you.   Emil: That's right. Tom, what would you, what would you bring and where would you be?   Tom: I think I'd be on the oldest Island of the Hawaiian islands. I'd be in Kauai just because it's, you know, lots of fish around there. I would bring some Kool-Aid from 2000 just cause I know it's diluted. I could just use a little bit. That's going to last me a very long time to match my 20, 20 taste buds. It would last a very long time and yeah, I think I would somehow finagle my wife and son to come join me too with that magic computer that I would borrow from Emil. So there we go. I got Kool-Aid and magic computer.   Michael: All right, Pierre, where are you stranded and what would you bring?   Pierre: Hmm, maybe somewhere in the Mediterranean, like Malta and I would bring a guitar and a hatchet.   Michael: Nice see. Pierre's the real survivor here.   Tom: Which guitar?   Pierre: I'd bring my acoustic. Probably my Taylor. Yeah, my guitar and a hatchet. Cause I forget what the saying is exactly, but it's with a pocket knife, you can survive, but with a hatchet you can live like a king. a nice I'd built some stuff for sure.   Michael: Nice.   Tom: You're already practicing. You're hurting right now. We go to peers does desert Maltin paradise and he's mid century. Nice couches beds built. Starts a popup shop.   Tom: You're turn Michael.   Michael: I would probably go to be in Bermuda because I hear some crazy stuff happens there. I'd be very curious to see what's going on. My two items would probably be a satellite phone so I could order all kinds of great stuff. And if I say anything other than hatchet, I'm looked like a chump. I think I should also bring a hatchet.   Tom: Your survival skill just went down. Your Pierre's survivors went down because you had advanced tools.   Michael: I could have brought a chop saw.   Tom: Yeah. You just went to a 5.5.   Michael: Oh, it's such a ridiculous show. Naked and Afraid. But it's so interesting to see what people bring I'm waiting for the day with two people bring the same thing. Like they both bring a lighter and like, Oh crap. Like we didn't talk about this beforehand.   Michael: Well, that was our show. Everybody. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to give us a rating or review wherever it is. You listen to your podcasts, subscribe as well. And we look forward to seeing you on the next one.   Tom: Happy investing.   Emil: Happy investing.  

She’s A Talker
Michael Smith: Room Tone

She’s A Talker

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2020 25:06


BONUS EPISODE In this bonus live episode, artist Michael Smith talks about how to get creative with bad teaching evaluations. Season 3 coming soon! ABOUT THE GUEST Michael Smith’s recent solo exhibitions and performances include Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Yale Union, Portland, Oregon; Tate Modern, London; and Greene Naftali, New York; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. His work is in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin; Inhotim Institute, Brumadinho; LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; Mumok, Vienna; Museion, Bolzano; Paley Center for Media, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.  Producer: Devon Guinn  Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue  Mixer: Andrew Litton  Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver  Theme Song: Jeff Hiller  Website: Itai Almor Media: Justine Lee Interns: Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Nick Rymer, Sue Simon, Maddy Sinnock TRANSCRIPTION NEIL GOLDBERG: Hello, I'm Neil Goldberg, and this is She's A Talker. We recently finished our second season, and we'll be launching Season Three very soon. In the meantime, we thought as a bonus we'd share a live episode that was recorded with artist Mike Smith way back in the good old days of February, 2020. The event happened at the New York headquarters of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Skowhegan's primary program is an intensive summer residency up in Maine for sixty-five emerging visual artists from all over the world. And in 2015, I had the good fortune of being faculty there, and it was actually there that I took the first steps for what would become this podcast. I was inspired by all the experimentation happening, and I decided to play around with this collection of thoughts I'd jotted down on index cards for the past twenty years as the basis for some sort of performance work. So here we are. My guest, Mike Smith, was also faculty at Skowhegan a couple of years before me and has been a favorite artist of mine for years. He's recently shown work at the Tate Modern in London, and his work is also in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Walker Center, the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, and many other places. Here it goes. NEIL: Hi everybody. Thank you so much for coming. So, the premise of the podcast is I typically start with some recent cards, uh, before I bring on a guest. And I thought, uh, this is a recent one: seeing an unflushed toilet at an art school. Now, um, I teach at Yale and, uh, I try to like use the bathroom as far away from where I teach as possible. And I also like to try and mix it up a little bit. So, you know, every now and then I'll go into the basement. Other times I'll go to the second floor. Uh, keep them guessing. And there was a while, very recently at Yale, where every time I walked into a bathroom stall, there was an unflushed toilet full of shit. And I started to think like, okay, is this like a student's like art project? Um, but then beyond that, I really was cognizant of the impact it had on the crits I did later in the day, which is like, I found myself sort of evaluating everything I was seeing in relationship to the impact that seeing a unflushed toilet unexpectedly will have on you. Because think about it, that moment where you're kind of like, you open the stall door and there is the unflushed toilet. That is, I think, what we're all going for as artists. Um. Anyhow.  With all that in mind, I am so happy to have, as my guest, Michael Smith, who I have been a fan of for a very long time. I have actually had the experience, Michael, of going to your shows, and I will say that its impact on me was not unlike that of an unflushed toilet encountered by surprise. So, please welcome Michael Smith. NEIL: Hi, Michael, how are you?  MICHAEL SMITH: I'm okay. I guess I, I don't know if I should be flattered or - what I'm following in terms of the conversation or - NEIL: when in doubt, be flattered.  MICHAEL: Yeah. I have so much to say. I don't know if we'll be able to get to another card.  NEIL: I know, right? Well, what's your elevator pitch for yourself when you? When you encounter someone who doesn't know what it is you do, how do you succinctly describe what it is? MICHAEL: Well, it's usually layered. I usually, I mean, if it's a total stranger, I'll say I'm an artist. And then they say, "Oh, are you a painter?" And I say, no. And then sometimes I'll just cut to the chase and say I'm a performance artist. And then it doesn't go any further.  NEIL: Do you feel like that's accurate though? I mean, that doesn't feel to me like it encompasses the breadth of what you uh, do. MICHAEL: Well, when I first started performing or thinking about performing, I would tell people I was a comic. Because it was, I dunno, it was a little more interesting at parties or whatever. And also performance artist wasn't really part of the vocabulary then. Usually I'd say I'm a comic, and then they'd look at me and they said, "You haven't said anything funny." So, it was like, well, I didn't say I was funny, you know? So.  NEIL: Um, are your parents alive?  MICHAEL: No.  NEIL: When, when they were alive, what would they say that you did?  MICHAEL: My mother probably would say, Michael is Michael. And Michael -  NEIL: That is a full-time job, isn't it?  MICHAEL: Michael had such a sweet voice when he was a child. And my father said, I don't know what the hell he does, you know, he didn't know what it, yeah.  NEIL: Right. I didn't know you were Jewish until quite recently. You're like one of those stealth Jews, you know, Smith. Okay.  MICHAEL: I asked my father once what it was before Smith, and he, he said, Sutton.  NEIL: Sutton? That's like a wall that's been painted multiple times, like, okay, and what was it before Sutton? That's where it gets into like Schmulowitz or whatever. MICHAEL: That got too deep.  NEIL: Yeah, exactly.  MICHAEL: It was, yeah. It's opaque.   NEIL: And what's something on you - today, what's something you've found yourself thinking about? MICHAEL: Well, you know that card you first - NEIL: Oh yeah.  MICHAEL: That card you first brought up. I actually, I've been in my studio for, since '99. And I actually cleaned the toilet in the public bathroom for the, the building because it was just getting a little gross, so I thought I'd clean it.  NEIL: You just took that on yourself?  MICHAEL: I took it on.  NEIL: Wow.  MICHAEL: Yeah. I should also say that when I first came to New York, I was a professional cleaner.  NEIL: Really?  MICHAEL: Yeah. I was very good.  NEIL: I bet.  MICHAEL: Mike the Wipe. I was originally I, I was, I originally was going to be a house - well, I was going to, I advertised in the New York Times, "Mr. Smith will cook and clean." And no one wanted me to cook, you know, just wanted me to clean. NEIL: So many follow-up questions, Mike. Um, shall we move on to the cards? You don't have a choice at this point. We're all in. Uh, this card says: There are no friendly reminders. You know, like, I feel like, is there anything more passive aggressive than someone's like, just a friendly reminder.  MICHAEL: That's like, if they, if they preface what they're going to say with that, yeah. That would be horrible.  NEIL: But they do all the time.  MICHAEL: Really?  NEIL: Yeah. Or in an email - friendly reminder. How many, I mean, haven't you? I've probably gotten a friendly reminder in the last week.  MICHAEL: I guess FYI is not a friendly reminder, huh?  NEIL: No, FYI can be pretty passive aggressive too, but I use it a lot  MICHAEL: BTW?  NEIL: That's fine. Yeah. I dunno.  MICHAEL: So, I have a feeling I probably do it, but I'm not aware of it.  NEIL: Of a friendly reminder?  MICHAEL: Yeah.  NEIL: Hmm. So you're not bothered by it? MICHAEL: Probably, yeah.  NEIL: Probably not bothered by it?  MICHAEL: Probably bothered by it. Yeah, I am. I get bothered by people easily. And I had something really good to say, but I've, I've already forgotten it.  NEIL: I'm excited for the rest of this conversation, Mike. This is, um.  MICHAEL: I'm still thinking about that dirty toilet.  NEIL: We could go back to that anytime you want. NEIL: Uh, this card says: Things that are lost but you know will turn up. Talk to me.  MICHAEL: Well, I, I was with a friend the other day, and, um, I, I said, Oh, I don't, I don't recognize that person. I said, I'm not good with faces. And then she mentioned the name and I said, no, I'm, I don't recognize the name. I'm not good with names. And she said. Mike, what else is there besides faces and names? So anyways, I just wait until it comes, you know, it just till, the name comes, I just wait and wait. And in the morning, I figure, after looking at all those places for the keys or whatever, I'll eventually find it. And then I'll look in the unlikely places and I find it. NEIL: What are the unlikely places in your life for keys?  MICHAEL: You know where I've been to keeping them lately? On my front door. So I go outside and they're always there now, so yeah. That's where I seem to keep them.  NEIL: That is really, why don't we all just keep them there?  MICHAEL: Right. I trust my neighbors, evidently.   NEIL: We just very recently got a knock on the door from our neighbor Arlene. A shout out to Arlene if you're listening, and I know you're not, but, um, bless Arlene who very aggressively knocked on our door. She kind of is like policing the hall in a very loving way, but authoritative. And I left the keys in the door. And um, you could tell Arlene lived for this moment. The keys, they're in the door! You know, it's like, and uh, and then of course I have to like reciprocate with like, um, thank you so much. Oh God. Wow. How did we do that? Thank you, Arlene.  MICHAEL: I have - the person that polices our place, uh, has a Trump hat.  NEIL: Oh no. I don't know if I could deal with that.  MICHAEL: He is taking over the recycling, which is great, but he's got it under lock and key, literally under lock and key. So you go downstairs to get rid of your bottles and stuff. And it takes a lot longer. So then everybody just leaves it down there.  NEIL: Every now and then, forgive me, is there like a, an immigrant child in there as well?  MICHAEL: Oh, there's not an immigrant child, but there is something I think it, I realized it bothers him, that people pick through the garbage and it's mostly like, you know...  NEIL: The people who shouldn't be here. From the shithole countries. MICHAEL: Yeah. So I thought about that later and then I just didn't want to think about it anymore cause I was getting all upset.  NEIL: Um, have you had a political conversation with him or?  MICHAEL: I don't go there. Yeah, he's on, he's a little unstable and he asked, one time he asked me if I wanted to take something outside.  NEIL: Oh, he asked you if you want to, I thought, take something outside like garbage. MICHAEL: Right.  NEIL: But no, he wanted to take a discussion outside.  MICHAEL: Yeah.  NEIL: Wow. I'm gay enough that I have never had that conversation, you know? Uh, or if it is, it's like, it's nasty and it's happened a long time ago and it wasn't a fight. Um, wow. Okay. I'm glad that worked out okay. Uh, this card says: Read my - MICHAEL: Can I be, can I, I had a hard time reading that, kind of, reading them.  NEIL: Yeah. Well.  MICHAEL: Your penmanship is like...  NEIL: Well, I always say if my, if my handwriting were a font, it would be called Suicide Note, so I'm...  MICHAEL: Not judging. I just said I had a hard time, you know, deciphering it at times.  NEIL: Yeah. Read my course evaluations at my funeral. That's what that says.  MICHAEL: Oh, well, I was thinking that when, when I do pass, I would like to get ahead of the thing and have people send out a, uh, an announcement saying, if you happen to be in the neighborhood, you know, come to my show, I'll be like, you know -  NEIL: I'll be here for eternity. MICHAEL: Um, class evaluations. Yeah. I love my class evaluations and I save them and I, I find them very funny. One, I actually made a poster and it was, uh, it was, "I'm not sure if I agree with the way Professor Smith teaches this class. He called my work crap and he called us idiots. This is a waste of my time and money." I was very happy with that.  NEIL: And you made that into a poster?  MICHAEL: I made it into a poster.  NEIL: Do you, do you have any other ones that come to mind? I bet you get great course evaluations.  MICHAEL: Some are good. But like I, I forget them, you know, um, I get them, I still get them handwritten. You're supposed to, a lot of people just go online, but I always, I always hand them out and, and I, I have to leave the room and I always say to them, before, "My livelihood and my future is dependent on how you judge me. And I'm so sorry, I meant to bring the donuts. We'll get to that." NEIL: Huh? See, I try to be real coy about it. Like, you know, they make me do this and, you know, try and like keep it open to, um, other than positive feedback. But obviously it's a desperate wish for approval. MICHAEL: Yeah. I, I always tell them I care deeply for them too, when I'm, yeah. You know, I care deeply for all of you.  NEIL: See, you can,  MICHAEL: One thing - I, one of my students who I happen to, like, he-  NEIL: Happen to like. Whatever.  MICHAEL: He came up to me and he said, you know, Mike, even when we're watching videos in the dark, we always know what you're thinking. We can always read you.  NEIL: Wow. That's a scary thought.  MICHAEL: It is. Cause I'm, I have no filter with, you know, I, I just, it, it comes out, I just sort of convey it with my face.  NEIL: See, I find you, because there is a kind of like genial neutrality, you know, like the, the idea of like quote unquote resting bitch face. You have kind of like resting, mm, bemused face. Um, I find it actually kind of opaque. I wish I knew what you were thinking.  MICHAEL: You know what? A lot of times nothing. I get the feeling I'm not answering the, I'm not answering these cards very, uh.  NEIL: Do you need me to take care of you a little bit right now in terms of - I think you're doing a phenomenal job. You know, this is a fucked up, um, project, by the way, because everyone, like I, I once was doing an iteration of it and this kind of high powered curator said to me, did I do okay, or did I do it right? And I wanted to say like, you did, there's no way of not doing this right, but let's talk about why you've never put me in a show. But that's a different story. The faces of spectators at art world performances. The dutifulness and absence of pleasure. We've all seen this like documentation of a performance at an art event and you see like the spectators, like-  MICHAEL: I often say to my, uh, um, to myself and sometimes my students, where's the joy? Looking for the joy. You're talking about pleasure. I'm looking for the - all the time, I'm wondering about that.  NEIL: Where's the joy? Yeah. I'm stealing the hell out of that for any teaching I do. And also, that would be my teaching evaluation for like 95% of the art I see. I mean, it can be art about, um, Auschwitz and you can still appropriately ask the question, where's the joy? Don't you think? Provocative question.  MICHAEL: Um. NEIL: What was the question?  MICHAEL: No, no, no. I thought I'd get some room tone. You know, we start with the toilet and then we put, where's the joy with Auschwitz. You know, this is- NEIL: This is like a balanced meal or something. I'll take the toilet, joy, and Auschwitz. Well, we'll have to talk about what constitutes dessert within that.  NEIL: Uh, okay. Let's try this: The brutality of a memorial service having a duration. MICHAEL: All right. Are you, a duration, like a time limit or like, um, it doesn't end?  NEIL: You answer it however you want.  MICHAEL: Well, I, I, I think brevity can be good, you know, um, and I don't think I need to go to a durational memorial. I may have misunderstood the question or, not the question, the card. I have been in position where I've, I've helped organize them in a, you know, like emceed them. So you get a little nervous, you know, so you want to keep it like, it becomes like a fucking variety show. NEIL: Exactly. That is so true. Memorial services are a variety show.  MICHAEL: I don't know if that's appropriate. You know?  NEIL: What should it be instead?  MICHAEL: Well, it can, I guess it, it should be kind of free-flowing and with me at the helm, it's not going to be free-flowing. NEIL: Because you keep it, you keep it moving? MICHAEL: I try to, yeah.  NEIL: That's a lot of responsibility. I've never, I, I've done, I, I seem to be the person who you will call to do the slide show for your loved one's memorial. I've done a number of them.  MICHAEL: That's a lot of work.  NEIL: It is. And you can't complain about it. Uh, you know.  MICHAEL: And also you have to be in touch with people to get that material.  NEIL: That I - that I have subcontracted and, you know, but even so, it's a lot of work. And you do not want to fuck that one up. Um. But see, for me, I love the idea of durational, like for those of our listeners who don't know, there's a terminology within the art world of durational art, and to me that is like the height of decadence. Like we have such a surplus of time, you know, that we're going to make art from that surplus or something. You know what I mean?  MICHAEL: I have a, getting back to my students, I have a, um, a three-hand rule.  NEIL: Oh, let's hear it.  MICHAEL: Um, well, if some of the, when I'm covering some work like early seventies, you know, and you kind of get the idea after like five minutes and it goes on. If, if one person, three people raised their hand, we'd go onto the next video.  NEIL: I am learning so much today.  MICHAEL: But I don't think you can do that in memorial service. I don't think that'll, I don't think that'll work, no. NEIL: Oh, that's funny.  MICHAEL: How surprised would they be if you, you mentioned that in the beginning of the memorial? NEIL: Yeah, listen, not to create pressure, but it's kind of like the Apollo where you get the hook. MICHAEL: How am I doing, how am I doing? Yeah. Right.  NEIL: Okay. A bad X you would take over a good Y. So, for me, perpetually, my example is I would take a bad episode of RuPaul's Drag Race over a good Godard movie. So, what's a bad X you would take over a good Y?  MICHAEL: Well, I'm of the school that something bad can have lots of charm. There's something redeeming about it. Where there's something is overly so good, like a certain kind of Broadway kind of, um...  NEIL: Careful.  MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, you understand a certain kind of large delivery or something. A certain styling, a certain song-styling. Um, oh, I'm going to lose the whole audience on this reference. NEIL: Go for it. You have me.  MICHAEL: Okay. The, the, the Bobby Short commercial singing Charlie. I would, I will always cringe at that one. And then I would much rather take a bad public access, uh, commercial than that.  NEIL: There's a fragrance that's here to stay and they call it Charlie. NEIL: Um, so Mike, uh, what is it that keeps you going? MICHAEL: Uh. Hm. I don't know what's keeping me going right now. Um, that's a big one. Um, I, you know, when I was lot younger and doing my work, I, you know, and reinventing the wheel, you know, reinventing the wheel and stuff, I was very excited. But I don't, I wonder what, what keeps me going? No one knows. No one knows. Looking for the joy.  NEIL: On that note, thank you to all of you for being here. Thank you, Mike, for coming to this live taping. Thank you to everyone at Skowhegan. Sarah, Katie, Kris, Carrie, Paige, everyone else. Um, now, this series is made possible with generous support - thank you Jesus - for Still Point Fund. Oh, Siri, something set Siri off. That's, that's my husband, Jeff. Um, oh, sorry. I know, you know, it's interesting. One of the cards I have is every time I stub my toe, I look for someone to blame. And it's often Jeff. And, um, so. Uh, the calls are coming from inside the house. The house being my subjectivity. Let's do that again cause this is important. This series is made possible with generous support from Still Point Fund. Devon Guinn is our producer. Molly Donahue and Aaron Dalton are our consulting producers. Justine Lee handles social media. Our interns are Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho, and Rachel Wang. Our card-flip beats come from Josh Graver. And my husband, Jeff, sings the theme song you're about to hear. And he's going to perform it live. He's a professional. JEFF HILLER: She's a talker with Neil Goldberg. She's A Talker at Skowhegan. She's A Talker, it's better than it sounds. NEIL: Thank you, everybody. Thanks everyone for listening to this bonus episode. Keep your eyes open for She's A Talker, Season Three, coming soon. And in the meantime, be well.

Behind Massive Screens - A Game Development Podcast
Designing Levels for Video Games: The Fika Sessions [Episode 2]

Behind Massive Screens - A Game Development Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2020 37:44


In this episode of the Fika Sessions, we meet Michael How, Lead Level Designer at Massive Entertainment, to find out more about how levels for video games are made. How do you start putting a level together? How do you make them fun and meaningful? And how do you work with the other game development teams to bring it to life? And perhaps most importantly - what pastry did Michael bring for the fika?

The Scott Alan Turner Show | FINANCIAL ROCK STAR
Make A List and Check It Twice

The Scott Alan Turner Show | FINANCIAL ROCK STAR

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2019 40:11


Last minute Christmas ideas to keep from going into debt. - How much you should spend on an engagement ring. - Never pay for a mattress again. - How much do I need in my emergency fund if one of us is unable to work (Alejandra, San Antonio) - I'm unable to pay bills after a work injury (Michael) - How can I get ahead if I didn't finish college (Tina) - What do people do to celebrate being debt free (Queenie) Mentioned on the show:  

Million Dollar Producer Show
010: Dramatically increase your target premium using Premium Financing - Michael Moore

Million Dollar Producer Show

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 11, 2019 24:19


In this episode we interviewed Michael Moore, Owner of CDP Insurance Services.Episode Sponsor:More Clients More Fun is a lead generation and content marketing agency, focused on helping financial advisors, life insurance producers, and elite CPAs land high-value clients using LinkedIn. Key Facts We Discussed- Michael started out in a small brokerage firm at the beginning of his career- He eventually became the West Coast Sales Vice President of Wintrust before starting his own business- Michael has worked in the life insurance business for 23 years and the premium finance business for 15 yearsKey Questions We Asked- Who are the ideal clients for premium finance?- What are the problems that premium finance can solve?- What is Michael’s role in the premium finance interaction and transaction?- How is premium finance beneficial for the client, the agent, and Michael?- How should agents go about finding these ultra-high net worth clients?- What advice does Michael have for agents?Key Tools- CDP Insurance provides educational materials and Michael is always available to as a resource to their clients- Start with a center of influence such as a CPA or attorney- Know what you are talking about- Don’t try to elephant hunt, but rather keep premium finance in your back pocket if the right client comes alongYou can connect with Michael at:https://www.cdpinsurance.com/(949) 923-7260The Million Dollar Producer Show™ with Paul G. McManus interviews highly successful financial advisors, thought leaders and organizations in the life insurance industry.This podcast is here to help answer the key question: “What are the insider secrets to stand out in a noisy marketplace and consistently attract and convert high value clients?” To get answers each week, subscribe to the Million Dollar Producer Show.Paul G. McManus is the CEO and Co-Founder of More Clients More Fun, which helps financial advisors, life insurance producers, and CPAs land high-value clients using LinkedIn.Connect with Paul G. McManus at:LinkedIn WebsiteSupport the show (https://www.milliondollarproducershow.com)

Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
148: Ask David: What's in your new book? What's a nervous breakdown? How fast is fast? And more!

Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 8, 2019 34:43


How would you overcome the fear of aging? Can you use TEAM for sports psychology? Describe your typical day, David-- do you ever get down or anxious? Hi Listeners: Thanks for your many and awesome questions. I love to answer them! And there will be more to come in future podcasts. Your questions are GREAT!  Vipul: Tell us about your new book, Feeling Great. How will it be different from Feeling Good? And can people with schizoaffective disorder be helped? (story with Stirling Moorey) Guy: What’s a nervous breakdown? Rob: How would you treat a field goal kicker who’s afraid of missing the winning field goal? Would you use positive visualizations? Michael: How would you treat someone with the fear of aging? I turn 60 in a few months, and have been experiencing anxiety around not be able to do some of the things I love as I age. Hidem: How fast is fast? I notice your frequent use of the term "High Speed Recovery" (and even Warp Speed) when describing the benefits of TEAM CBT. How rapidly does the average patient recover? Brittany: I had an idea that I think would benefit a lot of us. I’d like you to do a podcast on a week or a day in your life. The ups & downs of your moods, triggers, etc., & most importantly how you deal with them. Do you write out your own Negative Thoughts a Daily Mood Log? Thank you for all of your great questions, comments, and testimonials! Rhonda and I really appreciate that!   David and Rhonda PS Here's a great question we did not get to today. We'll do it in a future Ask David, as it's really important.  Rubens: What can you do when you can’t identify your negative thoughts? I get anxious, but don’t seem to have any negative thoughts. Is it really true that our feelings always result from negative thoughts?  

The Beginner Photography Podcast
BPP 150: Michael Sasser - Being a Male Boudoir Photographer

The Beginner Photography Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2019 62:50


Todays guest is Michael Sasser. Southern Californias premier boudoir photographer. As you might have guessed he is also a male. Today I'm excited to talk about how he built an incredibly strong boudoir brand while facing the challenged of being a male in a predominantly female industry!   In This Episode You'll Learn: When Michael got started in photography Some challenges Michael faced learning photography Why Michael got into boudoir What is the goal of a successful boudoir shoot The challenges Michael faces being a male photographer shooting boudoir Some of the terminology Michael How to make images that are tasteful and dont get weird and trashy 2-3 actionable posing tips new photographers can create How to capture women of all sizes beautifully and how to make them comfortable Premium Members Also Learn: Where to shoot and weather or not you need a studio space How Michael booked his first boudoir shoot and how it went What most clients buy from Michael Resources: Southern California Boudoir Photographer Michael Sasser’s Website Follow Michael Sasser’s on Youtube for Boudoir Photography Tips and Education Michael Sasser on Instagram

Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
140: Ask David--Hypochondria, Abuse Survivors, Healthy Euphoria, Mania, ADHD, LSD and more!

Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2019 40:50


Do I have ADHD? Is it a real disorder?  Hi podcast fans, Today we've got some terrific questions that you have submitted. General Questions Jose and Bri both asked: How would you treat hypochondria? Christian: How would you treat an abuse survivor? I’ve heard that talk therapy is inadequate for healing trauma! Ted: Is there such a thing as healthy euphoria? Hillary: Would you do a podcast covering the treatment of mania? Jim: I think I have ADHD, but some doctors claim it’s not a true diagnosis. What do you think? Dan: What your thoughts are on LSD in the treatment of depression and anxiety? I could not get to all of your excellent questions in the time provided. The next time we do Ask David with general questions, we will include these: Guy: What’s a nervous breakdown? Rob: How would you treat a field goal kicker who’s afraid of missing the winning field goal? Would you use positive visualizations? Michael: How would you treat someone with the fear of aging? I turn 60 in a few months! Hidem: How fast is fast? You seem to get super-fast recoveries from your patients most of the time. How about other therapists? How rapidly does the average patient recover>  Rubens: What you can do when you're upset but can't identify any negtaive thoughts? Next week, our Ask David will focus on questions about relationship conflicts and problems. Rhonda and I have lots of other cool programs planned in upcoming weeks. Thanks for tuning in today, and over the past months. We will hit one million downloads in a week or two (this is April, 2019). Rhonda, Fabrice, and I deeply appreciate your support! David and Rhonda

Psychedelics Today
Dr. Michael Sapiro - How Meditation, Mindfulness and the Psychedelic Experience Relate

Psychedelics Today

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2019 69:31


Download In this episode, Joe holds conversation with Dr. Michael Sapiro, Clinical Psychologist out of Boise, Idaho. They cover topics surrounding how meditation and mindfulness intersect with psychedelia as well as psychic ability, altered states and integration. 3 Key Points: Meditation and psychedelics have a lot of overlap such as ego dissolution and unity. Dr. Sapiro believes that meditation and mindfulness bring personal awakening in order to create collective transformation. Both meditation and psychedelics are the most beneficial when they are integrated into our waking life and when we use our experiences to help others and our planet. Support the show Patreon Leave us a review on iTunes Share us with your friends – favorite podcast, etc Join our Facebook group - Psychedelics Today group – Find the others and create community. Navigating Psychedelics Show Notes About Dr. Michael Sapiro Attended John F Kennedy University where he received his PsyD He focused on meditation research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences He is from Chicago, IL He spent time in Thailand for the Peace Corps A lot of his experience was from his time in the Bay Area There is more data coming out about awareness based meditative states and psychedelic states and how they relate subjectively to each other Dr. Sapiro’s Practice Transformational Psychology, Integration based He integrates the Buddhist Dharma, Western Psychology, Non-dual meditation and philosophy, and Noetic Sciences into his practice Michael sees 20-28 patients a week Kashmir Shaivism It's a dissolving type of experience, Its a non-dualistic style of tradition The non-dual tradition helps one just be “whole and unbroken” and focus on the present and now He does the human work in the Buddhism Dharma style, and the spiritual work with the restful piece of being in the now, the focus being integration Vision His vision has been on enhancing personal awakening in order to create collective transformation He wants to help communities and states and nations to transform via individual awakening He has worked with law enforcement agents, military vets, community members, a variety of people at different levels all the way from grounding to stability to thriving He always ends each Sangha with saying 'take this work and apply it to your neighbors' A Sangha is a buddhist community of monks/individuals in support of each other “People have such a deep connection to nature when you come out of the psychedelic experience. You start taking care of the environment differently than before went you went in.” - Michael “We now have data on greater environmental concern and stewardship after the psychedelic experience.” - Joe People who are consciously interacting with things outside of themselves have a greater care for those things. “If I am hurting the world I am hurting myself.” - Michael “Hopefully one of the bigger things that come out of the psychedelic movement are greater levels of environmentalism and global stewardship” - Joe The psychedelic movement helps us see systems that are made up are a part of our tangible reality and our responsibility to take care of the people in the systems We can use psychedelics and meditation, and integration from these experiences, to see how we can operate in these systems and help people find resources in these systems Dr. Sapiro’s Work He teaches as Esalen Institute leading workshops One of his colleagues has reached over 200,000 people with their work since 2011 His goal isn't to be the lead, but the support of leaders, especially women because he feels the need for a balance and the need for more female leaders Michael says he loves surrounding himself around ‘world-changers’ and loves doing anything to be around them and learn from them Boise, Idaho Michael says its surprisingly conscious state Its very community oriented There are 6-7 Buddhist Sanghas, groups of dedicated folks to their practice There is a lot of nature and nature is Dharma, it is the teacher Psychic Ability and Altered States It's very normal for humans to have psychic experiences All of us have access to these states, we just have to tap into them Michael encourages people to accept and cultivate these experiences It may be better to accept these experiences than to deny them There is a difference between energetic flow and psychosis Crazy Wise is a documentary that touches on spiritual emergence issues The Overlap of Psychedelic States and Meditation The Institute of Noetic Sciences had a program called The Future of Meditation Research They found in the research that they were only looking at reducing anxiety and depression, the clinical applications But they found that more than half of the people experienced psychic phenomenon, mystical experiences, terrifying experiences, the things that overlap/correlate with psychedelic experiences Both meditative and psychedelic experiences point to ego dissolution and unity at the same time Ego and anxiety both have wisdom in them, we don't want to lose them completely, but learn how to balance them and use them wisely “We need to be mindful of how we integrate what we learn in the psychedelic/meditative state into our waking life” - Michael “How can meditation and psychedelics lend themselves to being the best version of ourselves while committing to others well being? That is what I am most passionate about.” - Michael David Trellen and Willoughby Britton - Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness “If we are choosing to be more compassionate to our fellow humans and the earth, let’s not tough it out, let's help each other.” - Joe “Let’s do the work that it takes to heal it.” - Michael Be open, be curious. What might meditation be able to bring to personal awakening in order to create collective transformation? Links website About Dr. Michael Sapiro Michael Sapiro, PsyD, is a psychologist, meditation teacher, and former Buddhist monk. He lives and works on the frontier of spirituality, social justice, science, and psychology. He earned his Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from John F. Kennedy University and holds a Master’s in English Studies. He is a consultant with the Institute of Noetic Sciences and is on faculty at Esalen Institute. Michael is the founder of Maitri House Yoga and was trained for 20 years in both traditional Yoga philosophy and lifestyle, and Buddhist meditation. In his treatment he integrates Western psychological interventions with meditation and awareness practices. He finds the greatest healing comes from living a life of presence, vulnerability, and awareness. At Sage he will fully integrate Yoga philosophy and life-style within the treatment.

My JavaScript Story
MJS 079: Michael Garrigan

My JavaScript Story

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2018 33:31


Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Michael Garrigan This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with http://michaelgarrigan.com who is one of the podcast’s listeners. He is changing careers midway and has had many exciting careers in the past, such as being a professional chef, carpenter, repairman, and so on. Listen to today’s episode to hear Michael’s unique experience with programming and JavaScript. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:18 – Chuck: I started this show but interviewing guests and then opened up to listeners. Michael scheduled an interview and here we go! I find that his experience will be different than mine than others. We will be getting guests on here, but wanted this to be a well-rounded view within the community. 2:25 – Michael’s background! His experience is a mid-career change. To see the things that are intimidating and exciting. 3:16 – How did you get into programming? 3:23 – Michael: How do people talk to machines? What are the different computer languages out there? What do people prefer to use? The C programming language, I saw as the “grandfather” program. That’s the first thing I looked at. Then I was like, “what is going on?” I got a copy of the original K&R book and worked through that. 4:58 – Chuck: I did the C language in college. The Java that I was learning then was less complicated. How did you end up with JavaScript then? 5:26 – Guest: It was easy and you can just open up a console and it works. You want to see things happen visually when you program is great. It’s a great entry point. We started building things in React and how fun that is. I enjoy JavaScript in general. 6:11 – Chuck: What is your career transition? 6:18 – Guest: I have always been a craftsman and building things. I had a portion time I was a professional chef, which is the cold side like sausages and meats and cheeses, etc. I used to do a lot of ice carvings, too. Stopped that and opened a small business and repaired antique furniture for people. Wicker restoration. It was super cool because it was 100+ years old. To see what people did very well was enjoyable. Every few years I wanted to see how something worked, and that’s how I got into it. That was the gateway to something that was scary to something that made programs. 8:24 – Chuck: I was working in IT and wrote a system that managed updates across multiple servers. There is some automation I can do here, and it grew to something else. What made you switch? Were you were looking for something more lucrative? 9:01 – Michael: Main motivation I appreciate the logic behind it. I always build physical items. To build items that are non-physical is kind of different. Using logic to essentially put out a giant instruction sheet is fun. 9:52 – Chuck: At what point do you say I want to do a boot camp? 10:04 – Michael: I might to this as a career. Hobby level and going to work is definitely different. I could see myself getting up every day and going to meetings and talking about these topics and different issues. Coding day to day. 10:51 – Chuck: Who did you talk to who got you started? 10:57 – Guest: Things I read online and friends. They said get the basics behind programming. Languages come and go. Be able to learn quickly and learn the basics. 12:13 – Chuck: In NY city? It’s pricy to live there. 12:33 – Guest: Cost of living is much greater. 12:42 – Chuck: What was it like to go to a boot camp? 12:50 – Guest answers question. 14:30 – Advertisement – Get a Coder Job 15:11 – Chuck: What different projects have you worked on? 15:19 – Guest talks about his many different projects. Like senses.gov. 18:11 – Michael: Working on getting a job. I put together a portfolio and just graduated this past week. 19:38 – Charles: Anything that has been a huge challenge for you? 19:47 – Not really just one. I’ve done big projects in the past. Seeing that I can do them and sheer amount of work that I have put in. Not really too concerned. Only concern is that mid-30s any bias that is out there. I don’t think that will really affect me. 20:25 – Chuck: Yeah, it’s rally not age-bias. 20:55 – Michael: “Making your bones” is an expression in culinary school. That means that you put in the hours in the beginning to become a professional at it. So I have had transitioned several times and each time I had to make my bones and put in the time, so I am not looking forward to that for me right now, but... 21:43 – Chuck: Anything else? 21:51 – Guest: Meetups. 22:40 – Chuck: I have been putting time into making this book. 22:53 – Guest puts in his last comments. 24:00 – Chuck: Thinking about what I want DevChat TV to be. I have been thinking and writing the mission statement for DevChat TV. 25:14 – Chuck: It’s a big deal to get out of debt. My wife and I will be at the end of the year. 25:37 – Guest: Discipline not to spend money, and peer pressure. 25:48 – Picks! 25:57 – Advertisement for Digital Ocean! Links: Book Dave Ramsey: Introducing Our Brand-New Book! Hack Reactor JavaScript Meetup Michaelgarrigan.com – website Sponsors: Code Badge Digital Ocean Cache Fly Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles TNT – The Last Ship Board game – Pandemic Legacy Kickstarter – Code Badges Michael Garrigan Brad’s YouTube channel - ½ million subscribers Michaelgarrigan.com – website

Devchat.tv Master Feed
MJS 079: Michael Garrigan

Devchat.tv Master Feed

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2018 33:31


Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Michael Garrigan This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with http://michaelgarrigan.com who is one of the podcast’s listeners. He is changing careers midway and has had many exciting careers in the past, such as being a professional chef, carpenter, repairman, and so on. Listen to today’s episode to hear Michael’s unique experience with programming and JavaScript. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:18 – Chuck: I started this show but interviewing guests and then opened up to listeners. Michael scheduled an interview and here we go! I find that his experience will be different than mine than others. We will be getting guests on here, but wanted this to be a well-rounded view within the community. 2:25 – Michael’s background! His experience is a mid-career change. To see the things that are intimidating and exciting. 3:16 – How did you get into programming? 3:23 – Michael: How do people talk to machines? What are the different computer languages out there? What do people prefer to use? The C programming language, I saw as the “grandfather” program. That’s the first thing I looked at. Then I was like, “what is going on?” I got a copy of the original K&R book and worked through that. 4:58 – Chuck: I did the C language in college. The Java that I was learning then was less complicated. How did you end up with JavaScript then? 5:26 – Guest: It was easy and you can just open up a console and it works. You want to see things happen visually when you program is great. It’s a great entry point. We started building things in React and how fun that is. I enjoy JavaScript in general. 6:11 – Chuck: What is your career transition? 6:18 – Guest: I have always been a craftsman and building things. I had a portion time I was a professional chef, which is the cold side like sausages and meats and cheeses, etc. I used to do a lot of ice carvings, too. Stopped that and opened a small business and repaired antique furniture for people. Wicker restoration. It was super cool because it was 100+ years old. To see what people did very well was enjoyable. Every few years I wanted to see how something worked, and that’s how I got into it. That was the gateway to something that was scary to something that made programs. 8:24 – Chuck: I was working in IT and wrote a system that managed updates across multiple servers. There is some automation I can do here, and it grew to something else. What made you switch? Were you were looking for something more lucrative? 9:01 – Michael: Main motivation I appreciate the logic behind it. I always build physical items. To build items that are non-physical is kind of different. Using logic to essentially put out a giant instruction sheet is fun. 9:52 – Chuck: At what point do you say I want to do a boot camp? 10:04 – Michael: I might to this as a career. Hobby level and going to work is definitely different. I could see myself getting up every day and going to meetings and talking about these topics and different issues. Coding day to day. 10:51 – Chuck: Who did you talk to who got you started? 10:57 – Guest: Things I read online and friends. They said get the basics behind programming. Languages come and go. Be able to learn quickly and learn the basics. 12:13 – Chuck: In NY city? It’s pricy to live there. 12:33 – Guest: Cost of living is much greater. 12:42 – Chuck: What was it like to go to a boot camp? 12:50 – Guest answers question. 14:30 – Advertisement – Get a Coder Job 15:11 – Chuck: What different projects have you worked on? 15:19 – Guest talks about his many different projects. Like senses.gov. 18:11 – Michael: Working on getting a job. I put together a portfolio and just graduated this past week. 19:38 – Charles: Anything that has been a huge challenge for you? 19:47 – Not really just one. I’ve done big projects in the past. Seeing that I can do them and sheer amount of work that I have put in. Not really too concerned. Only concern is that mid-30s any bias that is out there. I don’t think that will really affect me. 20:25 – Chuck: Yeah, it’s rally not age-bias. 20:55 – Michael: “Making your bones” is an expression in culinary school. That means that you put in the hours in the beginning to become a professional at it. So I have had transitioned several times and each time I had to make my bones and put in the time, so I am not looking forward to that for me right now, but... 21:43 – Chuck: Anything else? 21:51 – Guest: Meetups. 22:40 – Chuck: I have been putting time into making this book. 22:53 – Guest puts in his last comments. 24:00 – Chuck: Thinking about what I want DevChat TV to be. I have been thinking and writing the mission statement for DevChat TV. 25:14 – Chuck: It’s a big deal to get out of debt. My wife and I will be at the end of the year. 25:37 – Guest: Discipline not to spend money, and peer pressure. 25:48 – Picks! 25:57 – Advertisement for Digital Ocean! Links: Book Dave Ramsey: Introducing Our Brand-New Book! Hack Reactor JavaScript Meetup Michaelgarrigan.com – website Sponsors: Code Badge Digital Ocean Cache Fly Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles TNT – The Last Ship Board game – Pandemic Legacy Kickstarter – Code Badges Michael Garrigan Brad’s YouTube channel - ½ million subscribers Michaelgarrigan.com – website

All JavaScript Podcasts by Devchat.tv
MJS 079: Michael Garrigan

All JavaScript Podcasts by Devchat.tv

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2018 33:31


Panel: Charles Max Wood Guest: Michael Garrigan This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with http://michaelgarrigan.com who is one of the podcast’s listeners. He is changing careers midway and has had many exciting careers in the past, such as being a professional chef, carpenter, repairman, and so on. Listen to today’s episode to hear Michael’s unique experience with programming and JavaScript. In particular, we dive pretty deep on: 1:18 – Chuck: I started this show but interviewing guests and then opened up to listeners. Michael scheduled an interview and here we go! I find that his experience will be different than mine than others. We will be getting guests on here, but wanted this to be a well-rounded view within the community. 2:25 – Michael’s background! His experience is a mid-career change. To see the things that are intimidating and exciting. 3:16 – How did you get into programming? 3:23 – Michael: How do people talk to machines? What are the different computer languages out there? What do people prefer to use? The C programming language, I saw as the “grandfather” program. That’s the first thing I looked at. Then I was like, “what is going on?” I got a copy of the original K&R book and worked through that. 4:58 – Chuck: I did the C language in college. The Java that I was learning then was less complicated. How did you end up with JavaScript then? 5:26 – Guest: It was easy and you can just open up a console and it works. You want to see things happen visually when you program is great. It’s a great entry point. We started building things in React and how fun that is. I enjoy JavaScript in general. 6:11 – Chuck: What is your career transition? 6:18 – Guest: I have always been a craftsman and building things. I had a portion time I was a professional chef, which is the cold side like sausages and meats and cheeses, etc. I used to do a lot of ice carvings, too. Stopped that and opened a small business and repaired antique furniture for people. Wicker restoration. It was super cool because it was 100+ years old. To see what people did very well was enjoyable. Every few years I wanted to see how something worked, and that’s how I got into it. That was the gateway to something that was scary to something that made programs. 8:24 – Chuck: I was working in IT and wrote a system that managed updates across multiple servers. There is some automation I can do here, and it grew to something else. What made you switch? Were you were looking for something more lucrative? 9:01 – Michael: Main motivation I appreciate the logic behind it. I always build physical items. To build items that are non-physical is kind of different. Using logic to essentially put out a giant instruction sheet is fun. 9:52 – Chuck: At what point do you say I want to do a boot camp? 10:04 – Michael: I might to this as a career. Hobby level and going to work is definitely different. I could see myself getting up every day and going to meetings and talking about these topics and different issues. Coding day to day. 10:51 – Chuck: Who did you talk to who got you started? 10:57 – Guest: Things I read online and friends. They said get the basics behind programming. Languages come and go. Be able to learn quickly and learn the basics. 12:13 – Chuck: In NY city? It’s pricy to live there. 12:33 – Guest: Cost of living is much greater. 12:42 – Chuck: What was it like to go to a boot camp? 12:50 – Guest answers question. 14:30 – Advertisement – Get a Coder Job 15:11 – Chuck: What different projects have you worked on? 15:19 – Guest talks about his many different projects. Like senses.gov. 18:11 – Michael: Working on getting a job. I put together a portfolio and just graduated this past week. 19:38 – Charles: Anything that has been a huge challenge for you? 19:47 – Not really just one. I’ve done big projects in the past. Seeing that I can do them and sheer amount of work that I have put in. Not really too concerned. Only concern is that mid-30s any bias that is out there. I don’t think that will really affect me. 20:25 – Chuck: Yeah, it’s rally not age-bias. 20:55 – Michael: “Making your bones” is an expression in culinary school. That means that you put in the hours in the beginning to become a professional at it. So I have had transitioned several times and each time I had to make my bones and put in the time, so I am not looking forward to that for me right now, but... 21:43 – Chuck: Anything else? 21:51 – Guest: Meetups. 22:40 – Chuck: I have been putting time into making this book. 22:53 – Guest puts in his last comments. 24:00 – Chuck: Thinking about what I want DevChat TV to be. I have been thinking and writing the mission statement for DevChat TV. 25:14 – Chuck: It’s a big deal to get out of debt. My wife and I will be at the end of the year. 25:37 – Guest: Discipline not to spend money, and peer pressure. 25:48 – Picks! 25:57 – Advertisement for Digital Ocean! Links: Book Dave Ramsey: Introducing Our Brand-New Book! Hack Reactor JavaScript Meetup Michaelgarrigan.com – website Sponsors: Code Badge Digital Ocean Cache Fly Get A Coder Job Picks: Charles TNT – The Last Ship Board game – Pandemic Legacy Kickstarter – Code Badges Michael Garrigan Brad’s YouTube channel - ½ million subscribers Michaelgarrigan.com – website

School Of Laughs
THE FUNNY BUSINESS AGENCY [EP. 142]

School Of Laughs

Play Episode Listen Later May 2, 2017 46:46


Today I talk with Jamison Yoder of the Funny Business Agency in Grand Rapids, MI. Funny Business Agency books comedians in clubs, at colleges and for corporate events. They also coordinate and book all the comedians for the annual LaughFest comedy festival created by Gilda's Club in Grand Rapids, MI every March. Thanks to this week's Patreon Sponsor Sandi Joy Chadwick  and the Clean Comedy Challenge! Jamison gives us countless nuggets and endless insights into the booking agency world. We cover a lot of ground, including: How many calls and emails a day an agency receives Working for his father and with his brothers Eric and Michael How far out they book comics in the clubs they support Dr. Grins Comedy Club in the "B.O.B." The myriad of changes that came due to the digital age The evolution of Laugh Fest  The Clean Comedy Showcase at Laughfest The process for getting booked at the festival How to get "on the radar" of a booking agency Why a comic's recommendation can be a vital key in your progress Why you might not be your best salesperson How you can eliminate steps and make it easier for the agency to find you How to utilize your local scene as a launching point Why being professional is as important as being funny The #1 thing you need in your promo kit Why a website is more important than a Facebook page Showing that you are working on the web site Tips on making a great corporate video Why focusing on your client is more important than you think The value of relationships How you can lose an agent and much, much (a whole lot) more. This podcast is a production of the Rik Roberts School of Laughs. www.SchoolOfLaughs.com      CLUB 52 IS THE ONLY WEEKLY PROGRAM DESIGNED 100% FOR COMEDIANS! "Club 52" is a 52 week, email based stand-up program. It will include a weekly challenge designed to help you become a better comedian. This year long program will feature an email every Friday from me. I will ask you to take a serious look at some of your business practices, writing processes, performance techniques, branding, marketing and a whole lot more. The program starts the week you join and continues for 52 weeks as long as you are still supporting the podcast through Patreon at the $7 a month level. Questions? Email me (Rik) at SchoolOfLaughs@gmail.com. Or call 1-888-895-8549. Or, if you are ready, head on over to www.Patreon.com/SchoolOfLaughs to get started.

The Comic Source Podcast
The Comic Source Podcast Episode 189 Comic Art Restoration with Michael Kelleher

The Comic Source Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 15, 2017 54:38


The Comic Source Podcast Episode 189 Art Restoration with Michael Kelleher Introduction of Michael How did you discover comics? What were some of your favorite titles as a kid? Finding a career in art restoration Restoral Process What is the … Continued The post The Comic Source Podcast Episode 189 Comic Art Restoration with Michael Kelleher appeared first on The Comic Source Blog.

comic art michael how art restoration michael kelleher
Inspire Nation Show with Michael Sandler
HOW TO SLEEP BETTER & FEEL MORE RESTED! CJ Liu | Inspirational | Spiritual | Fitness | Running | Health | Self-Help | Inspire

Inspire Nation Show with Michael Sandler

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2016 61:57


If you've ever struggled with sleep, getting enough sleep, falling asleep, or the incredible desire to sleep, anytime of the day, then do we have the slumbery show for you. Today we'll talk about all things sleep, how to get more of it, how to get higher quality sleep, and habits you want to include to help you wake up more refreshed and ready to go in the mornings. That plus we'll talk about lake towns, the power of peaceful beaches, synching with the art, and one very good reason you might run like hell, if you're in the Adirondacks. Self-Improvement and Self-Help Topics Include: What it means to have a career that you love How difficult it is to do sales when it's not you're calling What do you do when something is not quite in alignment for yourself? Why we want balloons and flowers in the study Why it's important to shake things up and get out of our comfort zones Joe Dispenza – why you want to get out of the ordinary into the extra-ordinary What it means to die before you die Why it's important to experience difference stuff How balancing our lives can help us sleep better Why you want to get your circadian rhythm in sync – and how to do so What you need to do to calm down the ‘monkey mind'. How to move your foreground thoughts to the background Why it's so important to building a sleep routine What's the importance of a sleep-nest, and what in the world is one? How to shut down the mind before you go to bed What's the importance of talking to your unconscious mind before you sleep (hypnotic suggestion) How to use a mantra or hypnotic plant to feel rested and refreshed How Anthony William, Medical Medium has helped both Jessica and Michael How to turn down the volume on your stress How to shut down to recover your mind What is pixel-time, and why it's so important to step away from the screen What's the importance of a fitness tracker – and taking 10,000 steps a chair What's a wobble chair? What's the benefit of a stand-up desk and a treadmill desk Why Stephen Sashen, Dr. Michael Greger and Ben Greenfield (Ben Greenfield Fitness) all have treadmill disks How mindfulness can help you sleep What's the power of meditation and mindfulness for sleep What's the meditation benefit of knowing your mind is running amuck CJ Liu & Michael Sandler Share Sleep Strategies for Better Rest & Less Fatigue | Inspiration | Motivation | Meditation | Mindfulness | Career | Spiritual | Spirituality | Fitness | Motivational | Self-Improvement | Health | Self-Help | Inspire For More Information Visit: www.InspireNationShow.com

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20 VC 073: Life Inside Accel Partners with Michael Treskow @ Accel

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2015 23:59


Michael Treskow is a VC @ Accel Partners, one of the world's most successful venture firms having funded the likes of Facebook, Dropbox, Spotify, Etsy and many more.  At Accel, Michael is responsible for the firm’s investments in SpaceApe, a mobile games developer, and GoCardless, an online direct debt provider. Michael was also instrumental in Accel's investments and ongoing work with Funding Circle, Packlink, Qubit, Semmle, Trufa and WorldRemit. Prior to Accel, Michael focused on early-stage investments in technology companies at Warburg Pincus in San Francisco, invested in publicly traded technology companies at Highside Capital, and helped advise technology companies as part of Morgan Stanley's investment banking team in New York. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Michael made his way into the VC industry? Do you think it is very important for VCs to have entrepreneurial experience? 2.) How does Michael compare the investing environments between London and SF? What was his biggest takeaway from Warburg Pincus in SF? 3.) Accel is stage agnostic, why is that? What size market attracts Michael? How can Michael tell whether founders have the ability to exploit the market? 4.) What Michael believes are his key value adds? Have these changed over time? 5.) We often hear startups being described as ‘uber for’, ‘tinder for’. Do VCs like this simplification of business? How else would Michael suggest a complex concept can be broken down into something easily digestible? 6.) Does Michael still believe there is room for improvement in the consumerisation of enterprise software? Does Emergence Capital's pivot signal a turning tide? Items Mentioned In Todays Episode:  Michael's Fave Book: The Innovator's Dilemma, Crossing The Chasm Michael Productivity Tools: Wunderlist Michael's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Dan Primack, Term Sheet Michael' Most Recent Investment: CartoDB As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Michael on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito night, you can follow him on Instagram here!