Podcast appearances and mentions of michael okay

‍Having trouble hiring and retaining GREAT hygienists?In this episode, we're exploring how to redefine your approach to attracting and retaining valuable team members like dental hygienists. I'm here today with Kari Carter-Cherelus, who shares transformative advice for creating more welcoming and inclusive work environments. By advocating for flexible work schedules, Kari sheds light on how dental offices can better accommodate the diverse needs of their staff, particularly women navigating caregiving responsibilities. From job sharing to customized shifts, our conversation delves into practical solutions that satisfy both employee and employer needs.Kari brings a wealth of insights drawn from her interactions in various professional online communities, where she observes the power of communication and fairness in fostering productive workplaces. She emphasizes the importance of respecting cultural diversity and personal commitments, encouraging dental practices to embrace policies that are not only beneficial but also compassionate.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The impact of flexible work schedules on staff retention.Practical examples of successful job-sharing arrangements.The role of open communication in creating a fair workplace.Strategies for respecting cultural diversity and personal commitments.How to cultivate an inclusive and supportive office environment.Unlock strategies for a happier, more cohesive dental office workforce by tuning in today!‍‍You can reach out to Kari Carter-Cherelus here:Website: Bit.ly/burnoutdentalhygienistEmail: cherelussmiles@gmail.comLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kari-carter-cherelus-rdh-da-65094b49Instagram: instagram.com/kmc.smilesFacebook: facebook.com/kari.cartercherelus‍Other Mentions and Links:‍TV/Characters:Michael ScottThe Office‍If 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 Carrie, so talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Kari: I'm going to say that if offices can be more flexible with their team members, then they probably will be able to attract more and retain more team members. A lot of dentists complain about not being able to find a dental hygienist.Where, statistically speaking, most hygienists are women, even though it is a diverse field, so there are different genders in the field as well. However, that's just the fact of the matter, and most women are caregivers, they may have children they have to take care of, or someone in the house that they have to take care of.So if they can actually make that schedule more flexible, instead of just being straight eight to five or eight to whatever it is, or whatever that time is, and actually maybe job share, then they actually will probably be able to fill that position that they've been trying to fill for a year or two.Michael: Job share. You mean like sharing the position? Kari: Basically. Yeah. for example, I'm a mom. My child is three. I have to drop them off to preschool and pick them up within a certain period of time, or I would have to pay for aftercare before here. And so there's many people in the same positions and they would dream of having a schedule from eight to three where somebody else would like to have a schedule where maybe they could work.12 to five Or seven. So you would be able to have someone who could fill that initial bulk of time that you need. And then if you're trying to accommodate patients by having the office open to a later period of time, then they may be someone who is actually looking for that schedule.Michael: Hmm. Okay. Gotcha. So can you share examples of flexible work arrangements that have resonated most with team members you've worked with or your team members? Kari: Online, I have a Facebook group of about almost 10, 000 people, but I'm in a lot of Facebook groups, and a lot of hygienists would love to have that schedule from like 8 to 2 or 8 to 3, whereas other people need more hours, and so they would like to have a longer period of time I've worked All different types of schedules.And so maybe I've worked full time five days, six days a week sometimes, or I've only worked three days a week. And then there's been times where I had worked from eight o'clock to five. And times when I worked from 11 to seven, sometimes that was broken up throughout the week, and sometimes that was consistent. So when you have different changes in your life, such as being a Becoming a mom or some are widows or different things, then they may need some variations. So not having that cookie cutter schedule, of course, a dental office is a business and they need those hours filled and patients need to be seen. However, just finding something that works. For everyone really has helped a number of hygienists that I've spoken with and dentists have been happy that at least they have someone filling their Chairs, and they're not just having to continue to have temps or to not have patients being seen They're not turning away patients because they have no one to see them.Michael: Got you. sounds awesome would a practice owner or someone be hesitant to do this? Kari: Probably because they just want someone to feel that time. So they just, you would have to be open minded and sometimes in dentistry, not all dental professionals are open minded. They want a certain person to fulfill that job, or sometimes it's a certain look, or a certain gender, and so you would have to actually be open minded to be willing to have a schedule that isn't the normal schedule, and then also we're open Sometimes they're afraid of other employees being upset. Recently I had someone upset in my Facebook group because they had kids and they had to negotiate that schedule. So they felt that the hygienist who had negotiated that schedule, who got off at two 30 to go pick up her kids was a slacker and lazy, so they may not do it because they may feel like other team members may feel jealous.So why does this person get to get off? I have family too. I have kids too. So they're. Jealousy or just treating everyone the same, but in that sense, then you don't have someone who's filling that chair. Now, some practice owners have seen that if they don't do this, then that loyal employee who's been there for a long time is going to leave.They're going to find other employment or they're just going to choose the temp. So it really behooves the office to come up with different ways to make everyone happy, which is pretty, pretty important. Difficult to make everyone happy, you know, that's very hard to do, but to think of different ways to be able to attract and retain team members, because that is hard.People constantly complaining about the dental shortage. instead of just complaining about it. And complaining about maybe having to pay more in wages or not being able to find someone or name calling, actually coming up with different solutions that are going to help the office out as well as the team member and showing that you care that you actually would work with someone allows them to be more loyal to the practice because they see that the office bent over backwards to really help them to maybe have that flexible schedule for whatever the reason is that they've had it.Michael: Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. What happened in your Facebook group too, because I feel like if that starts happening, you start noticing disunity, right? Like, Oh man, the one person's like angry at another person. Is it just because of this reason?Or was there an underlying solution there? Did y'all guys really not like each other this whole time? Kind of A thing, right? Kari: I mean, The whole post got deleted because so many people were like do you just not like the person because of the schedule or are they actually slacking?Like, What is the actual things? Because some people said that's my exact schedule. That's the schedule I have. My doctor bent over backwards. I do a lot of remote work now. And all the different things that I do. So I temp because of having my child, you know, it's very hard to find that schedule.It's very difficult to find it. When I do look online like, what will happen if everything falls apart and I need to get a clinical job? The jobs, they want you to work four or five days a week from eight to seven. So how am I going to raise my child? And that's one reason there is a dental shortage among hygienists because of that offset of the work life balance.Many people feel that they are not actually paying attention. playing an active participant in their child's life or in their own life. So they're wanting to have more balance. So somewhere we got lost in the profession. Quite honestly, I've been in a dental profession for 25 years. One of the reasons I chose it is because it was built to me as a great job for moms.So if everyone wanted to have a kid, then, it was flexible. I can maybe work three days a week and somewhere, maybe because of the insurance industry, I don't know. We kind of lost sight of that and that we are trying to cater to patients so much that we're not really allowing the team to get what they need out of life as well.Michael: that's Something we've been seeing a lot too, but I feel like whenever we talk to a lot of practice owners, hygienists, things like that, right? And dads too. Dads too, but like moms specifically there's a lot of that. Have you heard of mom guilt? Kari: Come on, don't mansplain it. I just gave a course on mommy bird out from mommy dentist and business.Yes, mom guilt is thing, You they have a special thing for my son Friday at his school, he didn't go to school the other day, but I saw the volunteer thing, and they only had three volunteer slots, and it was already filled, and I was like, I would have wanted to go to that, I wish I had, So yeah, we deal with a lot of guilt and a lot of moms who are dentists or hygienists or assistants or whatever, they're missing out on key things with their kids lives.So key events that the office is saying they can't go to, or one dentist she wrote in a Facebook group when I was doing some like research she wrote that she missed the kid's first day of school. And so she asked the kid, how was your first day of kindergarten? And then you're like, Oh, I told dad already, ask him.Michael: no, yeah, you miss out those key moments. You're absolutely right. So then you have to have a team that also wants to support that as well. Not just for the practice owner, but for like the hygienist for even assistant for everybody. Right. Like Understand Hey man, that's, She has to go see her child or something has to happen right, with the child.So how do you train them to be like leaders, to truly support an inclusive and flexible work environment? Kari: It's gonna have to be really having that flexibility. Open communication and then making sure that everyone is on board. So having a positive office environment, does have to be fair, so if other people aren't able to leave or they can't have that schedule, then what are you doing for them?So if they don't have kids, it's not fair that they never get to leave early sometimes too. So how are you allowing them to leave or allowing them to take PTO and things? So that's what's important, making sure that you're there for everyone. Because when I didn't have a trial, sometimes I face like discrimination in a way at the office.Because maybe I didn't get to see a patient that was as productive and I'm, if I'm being paid base and on bonus structure, I was told well, you have a husband, he's got a good job. It's like, what does that have to do with anything? Or I'm a single mom. So it has to be fair because that coin can go both ways.So you have to be able to understand how someone can feel that it's unfair that someone gets to leave every day. But at the same time, do they ever get to leave or can they come in later? How are you accommodating everyone in the office, which although difficult to do, with good communication and making sure that the team, feels that they are part of the practice.They all want the practice to do well. They're invested in the practice almost like an ownership, then they're going to be more inclined to support one another. Michael: Okay. I like that. So then how do you make sure, I guess your diversity and flexibility policies. Are truly felt by the team and not just formalities.Kari: That takes time. So it may be having someone like a coach or consultant come in and make sure that you're actually implementing those different policies, because I'm sure we've all worked in places that said that, Everyone has that little federal guideline that they're supposed to acknowledge as far as we don't discriminate against race or religion or everything like that.But I've been on plenty of interviews where it's not said, but you know, oh, that is actually discrimination going on. So for that to actually not happen or for it to be a diverse environment, then they have to make sure that they're recognizing all the team members. So Think about the holidays.So not just recognizing one particular religion's holidays, recognizing that other team members may celebrate different holidays. If the office has someone, let's say, who's Muslim and they're, dealing with Ramadan, then are you respecting that and what takes place during that time or Jewish or Christian, whatever.So making sure that you're respecting everyone in their Particular beliefs making sure that you're giving people grace just constantly learning about it. One thing that the office could do is to take continuing education courses together, and that way it's not just put all on one person and everyone's not.Awkward and everything, ideally outside of the office, probably, unless you have someone who's training that to come in, you don't want it to be like the office situation with Michael Scott and how it like goes, I love that show, but how it goes contrary to the whole thing. It's like, this is worst uh, example.So actually making sure that everyone feels supported and included. I know even yesterday. I saw on a Facebook post about is it okay for people to take the day off or a mental day and everything? And so sometimes people need to take a mental day. Sometimes what may be affecting one person isn't affecting the other person. Or you may not understand what's going on. you know, there was a lot yesterday since it was the day after election. So just seeing that there are so many different, Thought processes. So recognizing that obviously not everyone may feel like you feel. Just giving everyone grace and being kind is important.So fostering that team is important. Sometimes having team building exercises can definitely help. Going places as a team conferences are the best, making sure that the office is supporting the team. If they're mandatory going somewhere, they should be paid so that you don't have people who are resenting this mandatory.Event is important as well. Michael: Interesting. Okay. Yeah. When you were mentioning the example of different, make sure you acknowledge it. I thought of the office to media was like, Oh yeah. And Michael Scott. So that brings me to one of my last questions besides like the holidays and stuff like that, how do you celebrate different cultures while making everyone feel equally important?Kari: I guess bringing it up, but not bringing it up. I don't know if it's done regularly, then it's not going to be cringe. Because we know it can be cringe around like certain months it's Black History Month. It's like, uh, you know, so why aren't we just doing it all the time?So why are we just celebrating everybody all the time instead of waiting to a particular month and week and it's like, okay, we got that checked off and everything. We got Asian American month checked off. So it's like, stop just checking boxes and actually just living it. So regularly doing it.And One cliche way is to do potlucks, but I don't necessarily like potlucks, honestly, because see on Instagram and TikTok, not everyone has the same standards. So one way is to maybe go to different restaurants. Yeah, you know, they're, the Board of Health has to come in and everything like that.But at least talking about the differences the food and exploring talking about differences and how ones grew up is a way that can be helpful. I think talking about different culture, I've learned from, different colleagues and, talking about different languages, talking about different places that we visited.So just actually being open to having different conversations where we can talk about things that aren't going to be controversial, but just respecting one another, because when we do that, then we can see things from other's side of the coin or different opinion or perspective. Michael: Awesome. 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? Kari: Social media is really the easiest thing. So they can follow me on Instagram. KMC dot smiles. My name, Carrie Carter Shirelles is on LinkedIn, Facebook, all those different platforms. And then my email is shirellessmiles at gmail. com. And my link is Bitly Burnout Dental Hygienist. Michael: Nice. Okay. So that's going to be in the show notes below. And Kyrie, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Kari: Thank you for having me.

‍What happens when patients don't pay their bill? In today's episode, I'm diving into a revealing conversation with Andy Grover Cleveland, the expert behind Collection Agency Ninja. Forget everything you've heard about the conventional timelines for involving collection agencies. Andy advocates for a proactive approach, suggesting engagement as early as 60 to 90 days post-EOB. This strategy not only streamlines financial operations but also nurtures patient relationships through clear communication.Andy reveals the secrets to choosing reputable collection agencies that enhance, rather than hinder, patient rapport. You'll learn why early intervention is a game-changer in maintaining your practice's financial health without compromising on patient satisfaction. From identifying common pitfalls in the collections process to crafting effective patient communication strategies, this episode equips practice owners with pivotal insights for balancing financial well-being and patient care.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why early intervention with collection agencies can benefit your practice.The importance of notifying patients about balances promptly.How to choose the right collection agency for positive patient interactions.Best practices for encouraging patient payments gracefully.Common mistakes dental practices make in collections.Strategies to balance financial health with patient relationships.Listen now to master the art of patient payment collections in your practice!‍‍You can reach out to Andy Grover Cleveland here:Website: collectionagencyninja.com‍If 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 Andy, so talk to us, what's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Andy: I'm going to give something that probably goes against everything that everyone has ever heard in the dental business. I Believe you should use a collection agency at 60 to 90 days. After the EOB, which is probably very unpopular, but it's really crucial in the business of dentistry.Michael: Interesting. there specific communication strategies that we should implement at 30 or 45 days mark or to avoid escalating to the 60 days? Andy: Yeah, great question. Of course you want to notify. You don't want this to be blind. you do want to notify them that they owe the balance.And even before that, you want to try to collect it at time of service so that you never create the problem. However, you know, you have a real world and you have the perfect world. And sometimes those planets are just not aligned. So if someone does not pay that full balance, After that service is provided, you definitely want to notify that patient at least a couple of times that they owe, letting them know to please pay, but about 60 or 90 days, that's when the tide turns, Michael.That's when people decide, Hey, I'm either going to take care of this obligation or I'm not. So that's the ideal time to use it. Now, if you had interviewed me five years ago, Or 10 years ago, I wouldn't be as staunch on this opinion. It's kind of like merchant services. I don't know if you've seen this trend where now merchant services fees are being passed on to the patient.Have you been keeping up with that? Michael: Yeah, I've seen that. Andy: Okay. So if you asked me five years ago, I would say that's the worst idea. It's cheesy. Don't do it. It totally devalues your practice, but guess what? Every time I order tacos, every time I go to the doctor's office, every time I go to the car dealership, and now every time I go to the dentist, it's passed on. So we're in that kind of spot where it was unpopular, but now everybody's doing it. So why shouldn't the dentist? Michael: Okay. Interesting. So then three steps points or takeaways that you have to streamline this or make it easier, smoother. What would be number one then? Andy: one of the first takeaways is by implementing some type of collection agency strategy that's going to reach out.Number one, it doesn't make you the bad guy anymore. When you think about it, do you want to be known for chasing people for money or do you want to be known for treating patients with clinical excellence? So it's nice to have a scapegoat that you can blame for reaching out for the balance because it's strictly a financial driven practice.So I guess the number one is, it's much more convenient to blame your billing company. Then is for people to complain about someone in your office reaching out too frequently. I think we can both agree the optics aren't that great. Michael: Yeah. I think that's where I guess the patient relationship can get iffy, right?how do you do that then Andy? How do you balance maintaining patient relationships with the need to use a collection agency? Andy: there's no one right answer, but at the end of the day, if you hire someone to help you with the financial part of the practice, you can basically, just stay out of it.So if you're clinically driven, to help patients. That's your focus. Let someone else basically deal with the headache. Now, another part of how that works is it will motivate a certain part of your patient base to come back to be a patient of record. So a lot of times when dentists are doing these procedures, patients will say anything to get out of pain.So once you make that pain go away, it's sometimes could be a little too convenient to not pay. So by having a company reach out, you can actually help motivate that person to communicate with the practice and pay. And ultimately, You want that patient to be a valuable member of your clientele. So you have a divide where you can motivate people who generally value the service you're providing and keep them as a good patient of record. Also, if people choose not to pay the bill, they probably don't value the services that you rendered anyway. And arguably they're going to go somewhere else. So that kind of helps push them in another direction to maybe go down to the practice down the road and not pay them rather than come back for more service and not pay you.Michael: Does that make sense? yeah. So then I guess break it down for me. How does it motivate the patient versus sometimes like, stress them out or irritate him or anything like that? Andy: So it's pretty simple, Michael. If you, you got two phone calls today, once from someone, you owed money to.And it's just their office calling you, Hey, Michael, please pay. And then you get another phone call, Michael, from a collection agency. Again, same thing, you know, you owe the bill, but the collection agency is calling. Who are you going to pay first? Michael: one's a friend and the other one's the collection agency. Andy: They're both the same. you owe two parties. You have no preference one or the other, but one is that business calling you for money, the other one is a collection agency calling the question is, who are you more inclined to pay first? Michael: Oh, I don't know. That's a good question.What are the, data show?Andy: Generally speaking, people are going to pay the collection agency first. Middle class America wants to protect their credit. Michael: So Andy: generally speaking, people are going to pay the agency first. They're going to give it more importance because there's nothing negative that happens if they choose not to pay that original vendor, they'll get another statement or call next month and they'll address it Michael: Interesting. Okay. I like that. So then can you walk us through the process of selecting a reputable collection agency? Like What key factors Should we consider? Andy: Yeah. I mean, You really want to, interview multiple agencies. I would say the number one most important thing that you can do, assuming that people are being ethical, providing good service and being cost effective, which most are is having an agency that works directly with. Your practice management software. So we're in, a digital age and the collections business as a whole has done a very poor job on getting involved with technology. So I would definitely steer any dentist to work with the company that works with the technology. Well, You might ask, why is that important?There's numerous reasons. That's important. Number one. You're going to ensure safe and secure and rapid exchange of information. So accounts will be sent by their team by pointing and clicking, not manually updating a web form. The second thing it's going to do is it's going to tell who's paid. So in the collections business, Michael, and it's obvious you haven't been in collections from some of your responses, which is great.We don't want that for anybody. But sometimes the patient will actually pay as a result of that collection company contacting them. So with companies that work within the software, they should be notified when that happens. So let's paint a picture. Let's just say you're working with a collection company manually. Okay. You've sent patient ABC over for collection and the collection company has been calling them and they will call them incessantly to motivate that person. And let's just say that person paid the bill. Well Guess what? If your front office doesn't contact that agency by logging into the website, calling them, emailing, however that feedback loop is. That agency is going to continue to call that person for money. And it's going to further damage that relationship when they did the right thing and paid. So you want to have like an automatic feedback loop so that if someone does pay, it's automatically reported to the agency. So the agency doesn't cause any further harm. Those are probably the two top biggest reasons. There's many more. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So collection agency is just essential to have in this process, So number two, what would that look like? Bullet point number two. Andy: Yeah, so that was identify and motivate your ideal patients coming back into the practice as opposed to people that are just dentist shopping So we want to motivate people to pay and also be a patient of record. So when you turn people over to collection Granted, they're not happy about it, but it will motivate people that value that relationship with you to communicate and pay the bill. It will also motivate some people to leave the practice because they had no intention of paying to begin with. Michael: Okay. Got you. Got you. Now, how do you measure any of the success of a collection agency? What benchmarks or KPIs do you track? As a practice owner. Andy: So any agency that has technology to support you is going to give you metrics on how you can judge their efficacy. I will share with you as weird as this is, it's not all about the money. I specialize in working with independently owned dental offices. So it's a little more holistic and how they judge you. I would say that most independently owned practices, it's not about the money. That's more of a group practice thought process.Yes, money's important, but not the most important thing. Independent dentists, they don't compete. With corporate offices on cost, right? They can't, the economies of scale are not there. The flip side is also true. corporates can't compete with independent dentists on culture, right? They have turnover, you're getting new associates every six months. It's just a constant churn. So they don't really compete with one another, but at the end of the day, I think most dentists, will gauge the efficacy of their collection company, not only on the money recovered. And of course it has to be cost effective, but even more importantly than that, does it generate negative reviews?Does it motivate people to accept treatment? Does it allow their staff to focus on other things that are more important? So there's an opportunity cost To chasing your own accounts receivable. So it's much more multifaceted than just dollars in dollars out. Most dentists will hire a collection company basically to make their office run better.Michael: Have you seen that a lot, Andy, where some are hesitant to, bring on or call or ask about, money more for the review. Like, Oh man, I'm going to get negative. Andy: Yeah, of course. But in my experience, if you continue to chase your own money, you're much more likely to generate a negative review for yourself.If you hire somebody else to do it for you, they can give a negative review on that collection agency. Michael: Yeah. Andy: And certainly they could tie it back to you, but you can always, claim indifference, right? Hey that's what our billing department's for you know, you need to deal with them and it absolves you from some of that responsibility. Michael: Interesting. Okay. So then what are the financial risks and rewards of sending accounts to collections at 60 days versus waiting longer or not using collections at all? Andy: Great question. So you have this kind of traditional paradigm with collection agencies working with dental offices and that one is a very traditional approach where the office will work the account for months and months and months and years and years and years. And then they turn it over to collections, and then that company's working on a percentage basis. That's the way it's always been, but that is just not an effective way of running a modern or contemporary dental office. Sometimes you cause more harm than good there because if you wait that long, the accounts aren't collectible anyway. Right. If you wait a year or two, they're basically uncollectible. So I'd recommend just writing the accounts off if you're going to do that. The advantage to turning it over at 60 to 90 days is that's a very fresh account. It's still top of mind for that consumer and from a statistical perspective, it's much more collectible than something if you wait a year or two down the road to go after.So it's more about being proactive with that balance. The other thing you also have to measure in here, Michael. is a lot of times these practices are already getting hit with the PPO fee and basically reducing their billable amount. So they're already losing 30 or 40%. And then if you let that patient balance go unpaid. You're losing the rest. So in this environment, it's just too competitive to run a business like that anymore. You have to be responsible with not only the insurance portion, whether you're in network, out of network fee for service, but you also have to address that patient portion. It's crucial because again, you're taking such a big write off a hit in the beginning. It's really not cost effective for you to take another hit later down the road. You're essentially giving it away. Michael: Interesting. So then what common mistakes do practices make that you've seen when sending accounts to collections and how can they avoid these pitfalls? Andy: one of the things that clouds all of our judgment is emotion.So a lot of times, People get upset, and listen, if someone owes me money, I get upset about my own business, right? It hurts, but people still have that mammalian part of their brain that wants revenge, or maybe the patient was really rude last time they came in. So you have this, Emotional part of being owed money that clouds our judgment.that's a big mistake I see some practices, they just want revenge. That's usually where bad things start to happen when you think along those lines. So as a practice owner matures and goes through practice ownership, there's developmental stages where right in the beginning, it really hurts. Then you can start to kind of objectively step back and look at things more objectively. But at the end of the day, recommend the practice owners look at this from a very non emotional, like a CPA would, right? If you're producing a million dollars in revenue annually, and you have less than 1 percent of the people that owe you money, not pay you, write it off.You're collecting 99%. No one gets a hundred percent. I don't care how cool it is to say in the Facebook groups, nobody gets a hundred percent. There are times where it makes sense to write things off rather than pursue it. Especially if those services are disputed or you're dealing with a really difficult person, a lot of times it's just not worth it and you just have to let it go.Michael: Interesting. I love that. Thank you so much, Andy. 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?Andy: Probably the best way to do it is going to my website. collection, agency, ninja. com spelled just like it sounds. Michael: Awesome. Collection, agency, ninja. com. that's going to be in the show notes below. So if anyone's interested, want to pick Andy's brain a little bit more and so forth, definitely reach out to him there and Andy.Thank you so much for being with us on this Monday morning episode. Appreciate you having me. Thank you very much and keep up the great work. I'm honored to be here.Andy: Thank you.

‍How can you transform problem-solving into an art in your practice?In this Monday Morning Episode, we welcome Dr. Pauline Le, who provides a fresh perspective on common dental practice challenges. Dr. Le reveals how universal these challenges are and how essential it is for businesses to identify and candidly discuss them. With a focus on collaborative environments, she delves into the power of professional groups and demystifies the often-tricky realm of team dynamics.Dr. Le breaks down the renowned three-step problem-solving process from the book "Traction," offering listeners a foolproof approach to untangling business issues. By fostering an environment where discussing issues is not only encouraged but expected, businesses can distinguish between personal and professional problems and maintain focus on solutions. With actionable tips on nurturing a transparent culture and keeping an up-to-date issues list, Pauline's advice is invaluable for practice owners seeking to empower their teams and effectively address persistent hurdles.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Strategies for tackling common business issues in dental practices.The significance of open discussions in resolving workplace challenges.Benefits of joining professional groups and improving team dynamics.How to implement the three-step "Traction" process for problem-solving.Techniques for creating a safe environment for issue discussions.Understanding personal versus company issues in a business setting.Importance of maintaining a consistent issues list for effective meetings.Tune in now to uncover transformative strategies for overcoming dental practice challenges with Dr. Pauline Le!‍‍Sponsors:‍‍Oryx: All-In-One Cloud-Based Dental Software Created by Dentists for Dentists. Patient engagement, clinical, and practice management software that helps your dental practice grow without compromise. Click or copy and paste the link here for a special offer! https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/oryx/‍You can reach out to Dr. Pauline Le here:Website: ledentalspa.comInstagram: instagram.com/drpaulineleOther Mentions and Links:‍Books:Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business‍Software:ClickUp‍If 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, Pauline, so talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Pauline: I would say that we all have issues. Michael: Interesting. Can you expand on that a little bit more? What do you mean? Pauline: In any business, we all have the same exact issues and the sooner you will admit that you have issues and identify them, we can discuss them and we can solve them.That's Michael: Okay, so then many practice owners feel they have challenges that are one of a kind, right? at what point did you realize that the issues you were facing were not unique to your practice? And then how did this change your approach to solving those issues?Pauline: When I started joining different groups of other dentists, other practice owners, and a lot of the Facebook groups are really helpful. I just started seeing a trend where people were posting the same questions, the same issues, the same problems and grateful for this community, right? But what I was finding was some of these groups can become where people are just coming in to vent and they weren't necessarily actually solving the problem.issues. So that's when I started noticing that, okay, it's the same recurrent problems. And I grew up where my parents owned businesses. And although different businesses than mine I started seeing things parallel, people have the same complaints, whether it be about patients. People, your team or procedures, right?So processes people always end up having the same types of issues in whatever business they have. So I just started seeing things parallel. Michael: Interesting. So then in these groups specifically, what were some of the things where you feel like. Man, you're just venting like this is a common thread where people just vent and vent and vent Pauline: I think the most common one lately has been what they can't find hygienists.They can't find quote unquote good people good employees It's the same vent. It's the same complaint that all business owners want to fall victim to Michael: Let's just talk about that, fixing that specific problem that everybody's complaining about. I can't find a hygienist or a team member.Pauline: in the general idea of issues, first off, I think it's a mindset thing. We need to own that. We all have issues. Every single one of our businesses will have issues and we should actually welcome them and we should foster a culture where your team can openly talk about issues, right?It's not a safe environment to bring things up, then you're just going to have an ongoing nagging to do list or unresolved issues. And that's just going to slow down the growth of your business. So the sooner you can build this. Culture, and it starts with your leadership team of having open, honest conversations about issues.The sooner you can actually solve them and save energy, save time. So when it comes to issues, there are three main steps that we take here at Laudanusvall, and we learned it from the book Traction. So first step is you want to identify the issue. And really every single business. There's really three main types of issues.it's either going to be a true problem that actually needs to be solved, it can be information that needs to be communicated or agreed upon by the team or an idea and opportunity that needs feedback, brainstorming or insight, right?And once you actually identify the issue, then you can move on to the next step where you discuss it. This is where you're probably going to spend the most time in your meetings is discussing the actual issue. And then when you are discussing, you'll find that sometimes you go off on tangents and then sometimes other issues.arise from these discussions. So it is really important to foster a culture where you can talk about issues, but you can also say, tangent alert, or can we put a pin in that? Or can we just list it on our issues list and then get back to it, right? So it's not gearing you away from discussing that one issue that was first brought up.And then, You would go into solving the issue. So this is the main point, why we should be having an issues list, right? Because we need to solve things and keep things moving. And what I find in these dentist groups and, you know, being around my other colleagues, is sometimes they don't actually want to solve things. Pauline: And sometimes people just want to vent or feel like okay, there's other people like me going through this, which, there is importance in that. But at the same time, we need to be leaders and we need to solve issues and keep things moving for the rest of our team and the rest of our practice.And you'll notice as you start solving issues, you don't want to make the mistake by solving just the very top issue down. You need to prioritize issues. So you'll notice that as you start solving the bigger issues that hold higher priority, your other issues below it start diminishing, start disappearing.Because really, you're already solving it when you solve the bigger issue and all these other things start being like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense now. Okay, that already got resolved because we talked about this bigger issue. So I think regarding the hygiene problem that a lot of practices are having.identifying the actual issue, right? My issue might be different because I'm a fee for service office, might be very different than an office that is PPO or an office that's HMO. Even though the chief complaint would be we can't find a hygienist, Identifying the actual issue is going to be so different in each of our practices, So my practice we are a fee for service office, you know, we ask a lot from our team members because we deliver a very, patient centered type of care. We data collect, we scan, we are very thorough and comprehensive. So that's not for every hygienist out there, and so that goes into being very clear with your vision and your expectations and your hiring process is going to be a lot longer, than.most practices, I would say. So like I said, actually identifying the issue and then discussing it and then how you're going to solve it is going to be so different between the three different types of practices, even though the chief complaint is the same. Michael: interesting. Okay. So then if we rewind a little bit, you said you want to foster an environment where it's safe to discuss about issues.How do you know you're in an unsafe environment? Pauline: Based off feedback, right? So a lot of leadership. Isn't true leadership. I would say some practices. I think some business owners already know how they want to answer without even involving, I guess, their leadership team and discussing the actual issue. when people bring up ideas or they bring up An issue, like how you respond to it, is so important. If you shut down your team member or, you know, you're blaming it on them no one's going to want to keep coming to you with an issue then, because that's just how you're going to react.Versus We all make honest mistakes here and communication is the biggest of it all in order for us all align and be on the same page right where one person might be only looking at it from one viewpoint and another person might be looking at from a different viewpoint like oh my gosh I didn't even see that what you saw thing.by discussing it you're actually able to then solve it and that's really important. An open communication a safe environment talk about things versus oh you didn't do this. This wasn't done Versus the understanding the why maybe this happened or that happened And that's why the issue was there in the first place Michael: I like that.So let me paint you a scenario like we talked about hygiene, right? you ever had issues with like team members, Like a team member. All the time. Every single business. Yeah. So like let's just say team member A has an issue with team member D and you're listening. You're like, talk to me about team member D then team member A, right. and you're listening and stuff like that, but they continue to bring you with issues that team member D is I guess creating happening or whatever. Do you start prioritizing team member A saying like, Hey, We need to sit down all three of us and discuss and then team member D is like, I didn't even know there was something wrong.I'm sorry. I didn't know I was rubbing you the wrong way. And then, you know, when you confront it, it's like nothing's wrong. But then two days later, it's like something's wrong again. How do you handle that? Pauline: the first example you gave where team member A is. listing all these issues they're having with team member B, right?And then you're asking do we put us all three together to resolve these issues? I think You're making it now a personal problem versus every week we have department meetings and every team member is to bring An issue to the meeting and we have in our click up.a list. It's our quote unquote issues list and it may not necessarily be an issue. Like I said, it may just be an announcement. It may just be a discussion that we want to have that we were trying to resolve. If you don't. So comfortable bringing it to that meeting where it could be discussed whether it's operations meeting, sales meeting, admin meeting, then it doesn't really sound like it's a company issue then, right?And sometimes it may be very well a personal issue. Then that goes on to, okay, are we spending our resources and our company time resolving this when we're all adults here? Could they have resolved this on their own? Or is this actually a true company issue? If it's a true company issue, now what department does that lie under and what department is tackling that issue then?Michael: That makes a lot of sense. So then if it's a personal issue though, Isn't that just as much as a red flag? Cause it's like, Hey, there's no unity in the team. What the heck? how do you handle that? Pauline: So that now goes into like the people portion of your business, right? Like I said earlier, there's going to be like.Your patients, your people, and then like your processes, So now you're now going into the people portion, which is your team members, your employees. So that goes back to having the right people. So what does that mean? We use the people analyzer here and including me, the business owner, you should have your employees also rate you and analyze you as well.So they have to align with our core values. You have to define the metric that you want to analyze people on for that. We only have three core values, so you have to have all of them, not just two out of three or one out of three. So it has to be a plus or minus there. And we need pluses there.And then it goes from core values. It's either you get it, you want it, or you have the capacity to do it. And that's just now analyzing the person. Okay. Right In that position, and that will then start resolving a lot of that. And then you're able to remove that personal aspect out of it. So like when we have leaders, who are onboarding and training, and I see them getting frustrated with team member B, I asked them to start dissecting down.Is it any of the core values that they're having issues with? Or is it? They get the assignment, They get the job, they get the expectations, but do they want it? Some people don't want it, right? Going back to hygienist position in my practice, we scan every single patient here. Not every hygienist wants to do that, and that's okay, but we need to know that when we're hiring, right?And then do they have the capacity to do it? Okay, if I'm asking them to take x rays, scan, 2D photos, Am I giving them enough time in their appointment slot to do that, So that just now allows you to start dissecting all the different compartments of it versus just taking on this, Oh, this person doesn't want to do their job, or they're not, doing a great job.Then they start taking things personally, or she's giving me an attitude when I'm asking her to do this, right? It's okay. Well, Maybe they didn't get it. Did we lay out clear expectations? Of needing a scan on every single patient. Did we lay out clear expectations that I expect an updated scan every year?Was that on us? Did we clearly convey that? Did we communicate that? Okay, if they get it we communicate all that. So that part is checked off. Now, do they want it? And that was where, Okay. We identified the issue here the hygienist did not want to do that. So then it comes down that it's not oh, she's giving me attitude when I asked her to scan that becomes personal, right?Michael: Makes a lot of sense So then one of the last questions I want to ask you is when you guys are discussing the issue And you mentioned that lot of times we go on tangents, right? And you're like, Hey, tangent alert. Does that make the issue list grow? Is it an ever ending?Pauline: So there has to be a time limit for sure. So our meetings every week are only an hour. we start with a segue personal best business best five minutes. And then patient employee had headline five minutes and then rocks review five minutes. And then our issues list. the bulk of your meeting is going to be that issues list. And like you said, when you start going off tangents, it keeps growing, but you're not just like adding to your issues list and expecting to tackle it, that meeting. So throughout the week, for instance, let's say suction is down in room four.We're not just like. panicking and, alerting the rest of the team this is the issue. If it's something that needs to get resolved, but it can wait until the weekly meeting, put it on the issues list. And we know that it's going to be spoken about during our weekly meeting.So that issues list is constantly growing but it's also constantly getting resolved. And when we onboard people, we also have them like, Hey, go through our issues list that we've solved in the past, because the questions that you're having probably have already been asked and we've already discussed it and we've solved it.So go through and read all that because the same issues you're having, we once had as well. Michael: Awesome. Pauline. 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? Pauline: My Instagram, Dr.Pauline Le. Michael: All right. That's going to be in the show notes below. And Pauline, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Pauline: You're so welcome. Happy Monday.

‍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.

‍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.

‍Can a dental practice function on a NO-hygienist model? In this Monday Morning Episode, I sit down with Dr. Ron Schefdore, a trailblazing dentist who dared to challenge the conventional hygienist-dependent model and hasn't looked back since. He bravely shares his transformative journey, detailing the hurdles and victories of running a practice without hygienists. By prioritizing time with patients and refining diagnostic capabilities, Dr. Schefdore not only enhanced patient care but unveiled significant financial benefits. He offers a candid look into the operational dynamics of his practice, demonstrating how a focus on customer relationships can complement financial growth in the dental industry.Further into the conversation, Dr. Schefdore delves into practical strategies for managing the shift, particularly in scenarios involving the exit of hygienists. His methodical approach includes a gradual dropping of insurances to attract and maintain loyal and high-quality patients, while emphasizing the pivotal role of training and teamwork. Ron passionately challenges the traditional mindsets that dominate dental practices and invites you to do the same!What You'll Learn in This Episode:The compelling advantages of a no-hygienist dental practice model.Steps to overcoming operational challenges without hygienists.Financial benefits of spending more time on patient diagnostics.How to navigate network transitions for retaining top-tier patients.The critical role of training and teamwork in a restructured practice.Strategies to shift the mindset of traditional dental practices.Tune in now to explore the no-hygienist model with Dr. Ron Schefdore!‍‍Sponsors:‍CareStack: Modern, Secure, Cloud-Based Dental Software for Growing Your Practice! With state-of-the-art features including Online Appointments, Integrated Payments, Text Reminders and more. Click the link here for a special offer: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/carestack/‍You can reach out to Dr. Ron Schefdore here:Website: https://www.pharmaden.net/Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dentalcoachingsystems/‍Mentions and Links: ‍Education:Loma Linda University‍If 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 Ron. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Ron: Don't worry about not finding a hygienist or having hygienist issues because I did a no hygienist model very successfully for decades. And I teach that to dentists now and how to do the same thing.Michael: Interesting. Okay. So if you can a little bit expand on, how did you first transition to the no hygienist model and what were the biggest operational challenges you faced? Ron: The first 17 years in practice, we built three practices. I owned the three buildings. Staff of 36 associates out of network financially.It was fantastic. It was like every dentist's dream, right? And what I realized after that long of managing people that that is not my forte drove me nuts somebody offered me some stupid money and I took it And thank God because it gave me an opportunity to grow up now being a dentist and say, you know, what do I really want to do?Why am I here? What excites me? And for me, it was spending more patient time, which a lot of doctors want to do. So I says, if I want to spend more doctor time, and I really want to help people with their perio, get them cure basically of perio, get them to look better, the things that excited me and the work I wanted to do, that means that I can't be chair hopping.Forget the chair hopping. I don't know a dentist that likes it. I mean, There is some weirdos that like it, but who the hell wants to keep jumping from chair to chair? This never excited me, never interested me. And not getting paid, they're all joining these cut rate insurances.Why you went to all the schools, spent all this money and you're an expert. Why are you doing that? I never bought into that and I had, a bunch of money. So I didn't really need to worry about the money when I opened up the second practice of a new hygienist model. we figured it out and very quickly in today's dollars, we got up to doing a million dollars and bringing home ham and I did that for a couple of.and I had six weeks vacation, sometimes a little bit more, took a month off. A lot of times, it was the best of all worlds. And so once I retired the second time, five years ago from clinical dentistry, I started getting on Facebook and just telling dentists, Hey, you guys could still have it all.It works out really good. You're having so many hygienist issues. You don't need those anymore. Hygienists are valuable. However, they're getting theirselves. Out of the market, they're pricing themselves out of the market. They have quite an attitude. So many of them think they're doctors and it's like, no, you're an employee.You might be a colleague, but you're still an employee. So let's not cross that line, it's just a weird dynamic. Now, I've met hygienists that are awesome. I'd hire them in a second. That's 5 or 10 percent of them that I've met. And this is a real problem with most dentists that I've talked to.Don't do a hygienist model. Get out of network or minimize the PPOs. Keep just the best ones. You only need 400 active patients. For this. That's it. If we all only had 400 active patients, there's plenty of patients to go around. All these dentists are fighting over. I need 1, 000. I need 2, 000. I need 3, 000 patients.That's crazy. No, you don't. You know, just, Just stop the nonsense already. So that's my advice. Michael: Okay. Okay. So then when you apply this or what systems or workflows did you have to adjust to maintain or improve your patient care without a hygienist? Ron: One column, see one patient at a time, minimize the amount of re cares that you do, and it's assisted hygiene.No, it would be stupid for a doctor to do hygiene all day long. Get that out of your brain. Oh, I'd rather do something else where I make more money. I could prove to you, any dentist can make six to seven hundred dollars an hour doing a re care visit. I've done this on dozens of practices.How many doctors are making 700 an hour without even breaking a sweat? I mean, That is about the easiest appointment you could do. Why not have some appointments during the day that are easy on us both emotionally and physically? There's nothing wrong with that. So, you know, 800 an hour and you get a 50 percent overhead, that's a million a year and bringing home 450, 000 pace.Why do we need a hygienist? Most dentists, if they made a half a million dollars a year take home, they would be very, very happy with that. I did that for decades, took six weeks off, and it was, dentistry's still hard, but you know, I only had three cross trained staff. So when you're doing hygiene, you minimize the amount of re care that you do, and you use a great cross trained assistant with you.That's all you need to do, and you fit those half hour appointments, it's half hour doctor time, half hour assistant time on the recare, that time that you spend with them is so much more fun, and it's relaxing in between all the hard work that we have to do, look, I don't have any physical problems, it didn't burn me out, it was so much easier than what dentists are doing.Please do this, please look at this. Michael: Gotcha. Yeah. if we are already, we have a hygienist our new patients are coming in, we're pretty bustling office, right? And then right now our hygienist left. We're listening to this episode and we're thinking, man I, I want to do this, but we just have too many patients at this time.would you recommend in that situation? Ron: That's when you strategically over 18 months get out of network and half the patients will fall off, which is fantastic because the ones that stay will stay pay and refer because they like your service, but you got to change the mentality of a PPO doctor to an out of network doctor.It's a big change and you need some coaching on it. If it's not me, get a successful other network doctor to talk to you on how to treat, how to present treatment to patients, how to make the appointments in your schedule. It's. It's way different than a PPO. You can't expect a network patients to get the care that they receive in a PPO setting.It's much different. So you gotta learn that. Michael: Okay, interesting. So then, how have the dentists you've taught responded to the model? Like What are the most common difficulties or misconceptions they have when transitioning? Ron: Number one, oh, it's going to cost me money to do a recare visit because I could make so much more money by going and doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.And that's their belief. And I say, well, why are you making half the income that I am? And I'm seeing half the patients. I had to change their belief system. And it's the common belief with dentistry that they miss. The biggest reason they missed that is because. Where do we make our money in dentistry?Every dentist misses this. It's the diagnosing. The PPO doctor spends two minutes diagnosing. Why would you do that when I could spend 30 with the patient? If I spent 30 minutes with the patient and you spend two, who's going to diagnose more work? Who's going to get more acceptance? Who's going to do bigger cases?Me, all day long. the thing that makes dentists the most income and the most fun is the diagnosing and helping the patient get through that process. They're not doing that. So when you get the hygienist out of that, and the doctor does more of that, it's great. Keep your hygienist. Keep her doing the scalings.Most of the office I see, 16 percent to 10 percent of their patients are going through scaling and replanting, or less. Where 50 percent of the public has periodontal disease. If you don't have at least 30 percent of your practice going through scaling and replanting, there's a lot of bloody profits being done.It's just a fact. And your two minute exams, I'll fly anywhere in the country. I'll follow you around, doctor, after you do the exam, and I'll find five to fifty thousand dollars worth of treatment every week that you didn't even diagnose or talk to the patient about. So don't give me that bullshit.Thirty seven years, I can't be bullshitted. There isn't nothing you're going to tell me that I haven't seen in dentistry in thirty seven years. I challenge any doctor at that one. I've done this already. Michael: Yeah. Okay. So then how has the dynamic when this happened your team changed the removal of a hygienist?Like, did you need to train your dental assistants differently? And how does this affect the efficiency? Ron: Yeah. I mean, You have to spend time with the hygienist, which was a lot of fun teaching them dentistry. My assistants knew almost as much as I did, and technically with their hands, geez, I had two assistants.They were better with their hands than mine. You should see their temporaries. Their were awesome. They were very good with their hands. So you might be surprised that one of your team members might be just as good, if not better than you. And they're quick. they come up with ways to make things more efficient.So you just spend time with them, nurture them. And there are a lot of smart people that really appreciate that can really help you, but yeah, you have to train them and be patient. It's like a child. You know, If you're at home, what are you going to do? Scream at them all day? You got to be very patient.Michael: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So then, did you communicate the change to your patients? Or, like, did you face any resistance? if so, how did you overcome that? Ron: At first I did, there's always remarks and dentists, this is one of the things the challenges they have is the patients will mentioned something about the hygienist and most dentists look like, oh, you're doing so bad that you can't even get the hygienist.I flipped that around. I said, look, I spent eight years in school. Would you rather have somebody clean your teeth that's been in school for eight years or somebody that's been in school for two years for the same money? And I had to shut up. Every patient then laughed and says of course, eight years.I go, good. Then you win me today. All right, let's go. And that was the end of it. You built more of a concierge service and a better service. It's like, holy cow, no doctor in this community spends this kind of time with their patients. That's what made us unique. And those are the kind of patients that you're willing to attract, that are willing to pay your fees.Most of my patients were not rich. They were middle class America, but they were looking for better service and they found the money or payment plans in doing a treatment in stages. Michael: I like that. So then is there any fear, Ron, where it's Oh man, I don't ever have time off almost a thing, right?Like I'm going to be called for emergencies for any little thing, for cleanings, all these stuff. It's too much on me. I want to start delegating these things that I kind of don't like like pro fees and stuff like that Where does that mentality go? Ron: Okay. The mentality is Doctor do you like to make money?Well, Of course Well, then you better find a way on how to do a recare and do part of the pro fee You're not doing the full pro fee you're doing part of it. So my sonic cleaner I thought of it as a perioprobe, it just wiggles up and down, because I go through every pocket and look at every tooth and take pictures along the way.To me it was a diagnostic tool. So doctors, it's how you look at things, I looked at it as this has given me an opportunity to find the work that I want to do. All of a sudden I'm doing cases I want to do. So it's the bad attitude that they have, the belief that they have. you got a lemon, make lemonade out of it.It was great. I'm lemonade all day long like this. I was in such a saturated market in Chicago that there was like 15 doctors within walking distance. I was always busy. I made more income. I took more time off and they all were doing the opposite of what I was. And when I told him about it, I go, no, that'll never work.Okay. You keep doing what you're doing, because others clean up here. Michael: Yeah, Ron: works. It works every time. You just have to change your belief system and I'll prove it to him. I've been doing this for so long. Michael: Yeah, no, that's wonderful. Now, real quick. One of the last questions is this model.Cause you mentioned where you were at in the location. Is it scalable for practices in different settings, like urban, rural, large or small, what adjustments would need to be made? Ron: It's easier to do in the rural area because you're the only one there. And if you give better service than any dentist, within 30 miles, 40 miles around, holy cow, they immediately drop all the insurance.They can't believe it. I can give you a bunch of names of a bunch of doctors that haven't to in urban areas where there's a lot of competition. New York City, Chicago, big cities that are wealthier. This is perfect because you don't need a lot of patients. There's patients that want good service in urban areas, period.you don't need a lot of them because it's so condensed. It's not that difficult to find 400 patients. you gotta get a really good marketer, but you gotta learn how to answer the phone. the doctor has to present treatment and treat people well.You have to learn those leadership skills and those presentation skills too. Michael: Awesome, Ron. Thank you so much for this. 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? Ron: Okay.DRS Coaching Systems, Facebook page. Just go there. You'll hear what a bunch of doctors are saying about the coaching. And go to make an appointment with me at pharmaden. net. That's P H A R M A D E N dot net. Yep, at my calendar. that's my nutraceutical company. we figured out at Loma Linda, we did a double blind test and figured out the periodontal disease.If you give them a certain nutraceutical during treatment the outcomes are much better. The bleeding pocket depth was much better. We created that 20 years ago, used that on so many patients. go to there, go to the website, go to the calendar, make an appointment. I'll talk to anybody for free.I'm not an expert, I'm just going to tell you what worked in our office. what worked really well and what we achieved, most dentists are trying to achieve. So I'm not saying I'm some guru, I'm just going to tell you what worked for me. and I'd be happy to show you exactly the same way.I got no special skills. If I could do it, you guys could do it. Michael: Nice. Awesome. So that information is going to be in the show notes below and Ron, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Ron: Thank you very much for inviting me.

How can a dedicated CEO day skyrocket your practice growth? In this episode, Dr. Rehan Shahid shares his wisdom on transitioning from merely being a dentist to embracing the role of a CEO. Discover how to "work less and earn more" by implementing efficient systems that streamline operations and enhance patient care. Dive into the nuances of building a robust practice, where patient feedback is the compass guiding success and training your staff is the keystone to maintaining excellence.Dr. Rehan opens up about his personal journey, taking you through the trials and triumphs of managing a practice from the ground up. Explore his strategies for time management during the challenging startup phase and understand the critical importance of dedicating time to strategic business planning. Through practical tips and heartfelt stories, this episode sheds light on creating sustainable growth in your practice by sharpening operational efficiency and elevating the patient experience. Whether you're a new practice owner or a seasoned dentist, Dr. Rehan's insights are your roadmap to redefining dental success.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Key strategies for shifting from a clinical role to a CEO mindset.How to work smarter with efficient systems for patient care.The art of effective staff training to ensure consistent quality.Importance of patient feedback in measuring practice success.Time management techniques for startup practice owners.Significance of scheduling CEO time for strategic planning.Steps to enhance operational flow and patient experience.Tune in now to discover how to elevate your practice's growth with Dr. Rehan's expert advice!‍‍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. Rehan Shahid here:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drrehanshahiddds/Email: drrehanshahiddds@gmail.com‍Mentions and Links: ‍Terms:LMS - Learning Management System‍People:Dr. Scott Leune‍Books:Buy Back Your Time‍Businesses:Breakaway‍If 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 Rehan, talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Rehan: Hey, Michael, the best piece of advice I would give would be work less to make more money. Michael: Work less to make more money. Expand a little bit on that. What do you mean? Rehan: Yeah. So it's kind of, ironic when you actually play less dentist and play more the owner or the CEO of your company, you'd actually end up making more money.And a lot of people find that counterintuitive, but when you actually really dive deeper into that, it makes 100 percent sense. Michael: So for example, when you're doing your startup, you're opening up things like that, you kind of have to be on the clinical side, don't you? Rehan: Yeah. So you have to be on the clinical side, but in a startup example, someone has to be actually creating the systems that you do in your office.Figuring out your marketing campaigns, figuring out, Hey, if I want to do this amazing new patient experience. What does that look like from someone walking into the door to leaving the door? And that's not going to be your team, really, that's coming up with all of that because it's a startup.Like you have to, as an owner, create that. And so a lot of people make that mistake and they just jump right into dentistry. And that's good as a producer, but then you're not really playing the owner at that point. So you don't want to be your own associate. You want to be the CEO of your company. Michael: So that just Rehan: happens to do dentistry. Michael: Yeah. I like that. So then I know many practice owners, struggle with, streamlining their operational flow. So for you right now, what specific systems or processes have you implemented that have made the biggest impact do you measure their success?Rehan: there's a couple of ones that we've done, but one of the most important ones is what I call. Follow the patient. And that means from the moment the patient literally stops their car and walks in the building from that moment, all the way until they're leaving the door, really mapping that out.So when they're walking in, What are they looking at? So, Aka, what's on the front door? What's your signage look like when they open the door? What are they walk into? Do they just walk into a huge smelly dental office or is it nice aroma, a refreshment center on the side, etc. So, Really mapping out every single moment from that patient walking in to walking out has been a game changer for us.Michael: Okay. So follow the patient. Interesting. I like that a lot. And so then that operational flow that came from where, why did that come out to such specifics? Rehan: I think a long time ago and you might've heard of Scott Luna before. I took a course a long time ago when he was previously feeling with breakaway.He had a thing called the five senses, which was as a patient, what do you smell? What do you touch? What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear? And all the five senses and just expanding that further. I took it on myself and just call it the follow the patient from walking into walking out.And when you started doing that, you really get to put yourself in the patient's shoes. AndIt allows you to find all the areas of improvement that you're not probably doing, but also really to focus on areas. So when a patient comes in, as a patient, I want someone to greet me and even tell me where the bathroom is or offer me some water, little things like that.Now that I'm mapping it out. Helps me provide the best experience, but then also allows me to create an operational flow for the team to be able to, do just that. Michael: So you created that system. And then how do you measure its success? How do you know? It's like, Hey guys, we're doing it.We're making it happen. And everything's going greater. Rehan: So there's something called NPS. Something score. I forget the word off the top of my head, but just random audits and then getting feedback from patients. So occasionally we'll get patient feedback and say, Hey, actually describethe flow.Hey, when you walked into walked out,what was the amazing things you saw? What was some areas of improvement? And then just asan owner. I like to just randomly walk in and not say anything, but every morning when I'm walking into the office, I'm pretending I'm a patient. So I get to kind of see that almost daily when I'm walking first thing in to see, their aroma?Am I seeing that, when they're greeting the patients? It's just really auditing it every single day and then allowing the patients to audit it at a frequency that you're comfortable with. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. That's interesting. So then when you're doing this training staff, and I know possibly the operational flow is like new patient calls, things like that.Right. And we know that's crucial. But how did you go about creating an effective, training program for a lot of these things? Especially like new patient calls or, yeah. The things like that, what key metrics do you track for that? Rehan: first is always just understanding the why behind it, meaning, hey, why do I even care about this?For example, a new patient call, why do I even care about how it goes? If the team's in alignment with why it's so important, then you get to actually, when they understand the why, talk about now how do we actually make it better or even improve it? Things that we then track is one, how's the quality of the call?So if you're using some sort of phone tracking vendoryou get to actually write that and you put a frequency on that where some former of leadership team or manager. Is listening to a call once a month, which is, you know, very, very easy to do, spot auditing calls where I have literally my family members call my office and just tell them, Hey, give me your feedback right after that.And I'll record that, date and time or they'll record it and then I'll be able to listen or have a leadership team member listen and say, Hey, here's X, Y, Z that they didn't do. And believe it or not, you can actually tell if a person is smiling through the phone. Just by their tone of voice.And so that's one of the things are great on is, Hey, is everyone smiling a few seconds right before they pick up the call? And then just, you know, there's certain parameters in the call that we look for. Like, Did you mention the patient's name? Which is the most beautiful word in the English language is what people say, patient's name.Did you repeat that name multiple times throughout the conversation? Did you offer. A scheduling opportunity. And then did you follow the two concepts of yes. Meaning instead of saying, when would you like to come in? Did you give them a, Hey, we have Monday at two and a Tuesday at four, meaning either way, it's a yes.So we're looking for certain key things that they're saying in that call, and if they're not allowing training opportunities to help get them there, members like that, Michael: I like that, man, real quick, how long have you been Rehan: I'm a COVID grad. It's a 2020. I have four offices and so I work clinically about half the week and then I focus on running the actual organization the other half the week.Michael: Wow. So since 2020. you graduated and then you opened up four offices. Rehan: Yeah, so 20, 20, I mean, a Covid grad, we got tipped off on our education, so I had to kind of learn a little bit on my own. But I was the very big, from dental school I was gung-ho on hey, I want to learn as much as I can about business because my goal was to be my own boss and have an empire really. And so just been really. Spearheaded toward that. And blessed to be able to hit the goals that I want and just continue to keep that path growing. Michael: Interesting, man. Okay. So then I have a question, like when you were doing these, I guess the operational flows and the systems, do you, cause I feel like a lot of the times, Rehan, we focus on.got to get new patients. I got to get patients just in general. Right. I opened up, it's just my family. I'm seeing right now. I got to get more. So we focus on like filling that up and then sometimes we create systems based on mistakes, right? That are we're seeing are based on flow. Is that what happened with you or no you, you created this infrastructure.First, Rehan: you have to really focus both at the same time, a lot of people will focus so much on that new patient acquisition, throw a bunch of dollars in marketing, et cetera. But then their phone call system sucks. So they're getting all this influx of calls, which they're not even tracking.And they're wondering, you know, why am I not getting patients? I'm spending crazy amount of dollars on marketing, but they never realized, Hey, maybe it's not the marketing dollars. It's the training that's lacking or the system flow that's not there. we kind of talk at the same time where, Hey, I'm going to pay a marketing company to do the marketing.but I'm also going to focus on my time on leading the company. And so when you tackle it from both ends you're tackling all the variables that are involved. that's super important. You can't just put all your marbles in one bag, so to speak. Michael: Okay. Gotcha. So you're kind of doing both at the same time.Now, how do you balance your time between producing as a dentist and playing the CEO role? Rehan: Yeah. So I think as a startup, you have the privilege of time. versus, you know, when you buy an office, let's say, or have already producing office, you don't have that as privilege because the startup, you have the time because you're not as busy, like you said, if you're just seeing predominantly family members or, one or two patients a day, utilize that time like crazy to create those systems, because that is the time to do it When you have that luxury of time after you've, you get busier now, you have to buy time. I'm a big fan of Dan Martell wrote the book, buy back your time. And what I do now is the reason I have an admin day is I purposely created time where I have to have time to actually focus on the company. So for people that struggle with that, you know, taking half a day, like an afternoon to where you're still produced a morning.And then the rest of the afternoon, you're not saying.Doctor patients. Maybe hygiene can still go without exams. So your flow is still going over the office, but now you're focused on What actually needs to happen doing half a day, once a week is not a hard thing to do, especially if you recognize the need for it.you have to be able to give the company time to be able to work on the company instead of in the company. That's a big mindset shift. Michael: Yeah. have you ever seen it where it was like, Hey man, I'm the only doctor and I just have one assistant, one office.Rehan: Right.At the end of the day is where I can likeeither have time for myself to focus on, But then you also have your family you have to think about and then you know all these other thingswhat advice would you have for a doctor like that where it's likehey money to friday And then I have to work my associate too because i'm not making enough yet So I think you just described the average dentist, Michael: right? Rehan: And that's the reason the average dentist, if you really survey people, they're really are unhappy because they're working on Monday through Friday. moonlighting at an associate on a Saturday. They're coming home now and actually working on their business and now they've taken away time from family, loved ones, friends, and that's where they become unhappy and experience burnout.So my big thing is. I don't think it's hard to get half a day. If you can't get half a day, then getting two to three hours during a workday, I'm a strong believer of don't bring work home because it never works out for the better for anyone. When you bring work home, you're already drained from the day.Your significant other is upset with you, et cetera. But if you choose like, Hey, if you work till five, three to five is my CEO time. Now you actually have two dedicated hours when you're still mentally in work mode. You're in scrubs or whatever you're in work mode. You're not chilling at home on a couch.Like you're actually still in work mode and you're able to dedicate to creating something for your company. So I always tell people, you know, start with something two hours a week. That's enough for that point until you get to the next level, which is half a day, and then finally the full day. every single owner that I know, they all have some form of admin time to work on the company instead of in the company.And it is a mindset shift. you have to value your time more than, money because you see the bigger picture at the end of it. Michael: So what specific tasks do you focus on during your dedicated CEO time? And how have you seen it drive your practice growth?Rehan: So for example, today during my CEO day I'm focusing on the operational component where, we're revamping all of our, operational flow. So that's the job descriptions. That's every system for every position, every system for every role, every system for. Every task that a team member has to do.So I'm revamping it creating it into video formats. So when new people come onto the company, it's not dependent on me running the show anymore. It's now they get to watch a video, get a handout and essentially creating this LMS, the learning management system. So people can actually be set up for success from day one.A lot of dentists rely on the manager that'll train them or they'll train them themselves and. It's kind of so dependent on a person rather than the system. And when the person quits you're stuck right there. You have to now go and train and you're, you get more burnt out from that.I'd rather create something, spend some time and then let the system do the teaching with a mentorship position created as well to help guide that teaching. Michael: Interesting. So right now you're creating that, right? Systems in your practice, because you have four.Yes. Rehan: So we have the systems already. What I'm doing is revamping them. So every once in a while we hit a level of growth where we have to go and revamp something. Previously, for example, we had systems on paper. I'm adding the video component to it. So just to give it a little bit more of a, more detail, more, takeaways, more tips, et cetera.Michael: Can you give me like clear signs when you hit a new level of growth? Rehan: For us it was when we hit four offices we had to hire Levels of leadership. For example, we have an operations manager. Now, some people would have a regional manager at that point. Now the regional manager or this person operations manager, they have to have certain things that they look for.And so I have to create certain things now for that whole position. You start creating an HR position now at that point. So you have to create new job descriptions that you didn't really have those issues at one office. So you may not need an HR person because the manager is the HR person in one office or the doctor is.Now when you grow, you start having to develop different positions because you're tackling that level of growth. Michael: Interesting. Interesting. Rehan, man, thank you so much. This has been awesome, and 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?Rehan: They can always find me on Instagram, Dr. Rehan Shaheed, or my email which is drrehanshaheeddds at gmail. com, or just tag me in the Facebook group. I'm a part of your group, Michael. I think it's an awesome group where a lot of people get to learn a lot of different things and feedback. Michael: Nice.Awesome. I appreciate that. And that's all going to be in the show notes below. And Rehan, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Rehan: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Is sobriety an all-or-nothing proposition in dentistry? In today's Monday Morning Episode, we've brought on Laura Nelson to uncover the nuanced conversation around alcohol use in the dental industry. Laura challenges the common perception that only those classified as "alcoholics" need to consider sobriety. Through personal insights, she stresses the importance of making conscious, sober decisions and explains how even social drinking can impact professional performance and practice culture. Dive deep into the pressures dentists face that often push them towards alcohol, and learn why open conversations about this topic need to happen more frequently and with less stigma.As the discussion unfolds, Laura passionately advocates for a supportive work environment, highlighting how unaddressed stress can erode a team's ability to thrive. She sheds light on the critical role leadership plays in maintaining mental well-being by demonstrating vulnerability. By setting the stage for honest, stigma-free dialogues, leaders can foster a space that encourages healthier lifestyle choices. The episode wraps up with actionable insights, including how individuals can connect with Laura and her community at Sober Life Rocks, to access peer support and resources for alcohol-related challenges.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Understanding the spectrum of alcohol use beyond alcoholism.The impact of alcohol use on dental practice culture and performance.How to cultivate a supportive environment for discussing mental health.The role of leadership vulnerability in promoting workplace well-being.Strategies for addressing stress and burnout in the dental industry.Ways to engage with communities focused on sober living.Tune in to uncover empowering perspectives that can redefine your approach to sobriety and well-being in dentistry!‍‍Sponsors:‍CareStack: Modern, Secure, Cloud-Based Dental Software for Growing Your Practice! With state-of-the-art features including Online Appointments, Integrated Payments, Text Reminders and more. Click the link here for a special offer: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/carestack/‍You can reach out to Laura Nelson here:Website: https://soberliferocks.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soberliferocksprofessionalsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/soberliferocksdental/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@soberliferocks‍Mentions and Links: ‍People:Dr. Brett Kessler‍If 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, Laura. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning. Laura: You don't have to be an alcoholic to stop drinking. Michael: Interesting. Can you expand a little bit more on that? Laura: Yes, for sure. I was one who was the typical casual drinker through my life, conferences, events, mommy wine culture, growing up, the whole thing.And couldn't see life without alcohol because I thought to stop drinking, first of all, I wouldn't have fun. Second of all, I had to hit rock bottom. Like I would, didn't consider myself an alcoholic. And I think there's a lot of people who are in that same space that I was in. But I wasn't educated in this area, and so it's important for me to talk about this because I want to make a difference in dental because there's a lot of people who choose not to drink, who feel the pressure to drink alcohol, and don't realize that you can choose not to drink, and it's okay.We can normalize sober choices in our industry. So. Alcoholism is not a yes or no. it's a spectrum. And if we understand wherever you are on the spectrum, it's your decision, what you want to do with your life and it's everybody else's decision. And we need to stop peer pressuring each other into the need to drink alcohol.Michael: Interesting. So on the spectrum here, where do you kind of see most in the industry as far as when it comes to like events and things like that? Laura: Sure. Yeah. So, Alcohol use disorder, if you've ever drank for the wrong reason, drank too much, or woke up in the morning and regretted drinking, you are on the spectrum, because alcohol is an addictive substance and it doesn't usually serve us well.long term, right? So if you ever regretted drinking at any point or drink for the wrong reason, you're on the spectrum. Now, where is everybody in our industry all over? But the thing about alcohol is it is the number one self prescribed way to celebrate or numb feelings or emotions.And it is the most standardized use of drugs that we use our life. we celebrate with wine, we go out for champagne, we have beer tours, we go on wine tours, we go to conferences, it's all about alcohol. So it's so prevalent in our life that when somebody is questioning their use their,relationship with alcohol, or they're at events and they feel the pressure to drink, that's where it goes too far in the spectrum where we're really pushing in on each other.So, In our industry specifically we have an issue in the sense that we have lots of people who are licensed professionals who worry about their license who Have a lot of stress in their lives running practices and alcohol is where we tend to lean When we're dealing with the hard stuff and so, you know, I would say for that regard.There's probably a few who are secretly having the discussion in their head, based off of what they have in their life Michael: What psychological barriers do you think prevent? Practice owners or dentists from admitting to or seeking help alcohol use as a coping mechanism And how can leaders effectively dismantle those barriers?Laura: Yeah So the number one reason isas a society for a long time, it's been something that you hide if you have concerns about your relationship with an addictive substance, with alcohol specifically, in the past, there was a stigma around if you were in recoveryit was real, but it's not like that anymore, Overcoming an addiction, especially with alcohol, it is a personal battle that many people do privately, and we're already shaming ourselves enough when you are like, I don't understand why other people can drink and don't have a problem, but I do, and it's already something you're beating yourself up about.And then as a society and in our industry and with people in our circle. there's the shame of like, what are people going to think about me? What are people going to question? and so it's just, prevalent and everywhere. it's such a personal decision and conversation and a lot has to do with the shame around it and the fear.Michael: Okay. So then when it comes to that, especially when it comes to the burnout and stress and your experience, how does unaddressed stress and burnout. Silently erode the culture and performance of a practice over time. Laura: Oh, the fact that we can and we do go to other ways to forget about or numb the bad stuff Doesn't have us deal with the actual issue at hand. So stress depression suicidal thoughts Yeah. you know, All of the things that we deal with as humans, because at the end of the day, whether you're a dentist, a hygienist or a receptionist, you're human. And if we are using a substance to numb the pain, what ultimately happens is we're not dealing with the true issue and we're not dealing with the real emotion.And because we're numbing the pain with a substance that is addictive. Everybody will get addicted to alcohol at one point or another. When do you get addicted? Depends on so many variables. But when we know that we're leaning in to using the alcohol for the wrong reason and not actually dealing with the true stuff going on, that's when it becomes a problem.Michael: What would be using alcohol for the right reason then? Laura: well, To be honest I could sit on a soapbox now and tell you how alcohol is not good for us, but there are people who are in their head right now, they're like, Oh gosh Laura's, reading my mind, right?Having a glass of champagne to celebrate a wedding, you know, having a one glass of wine with a friend, once in a while, alcohol is it's been in our society forever. It's not going away. But if you start with one and now you're, instead of one glass of wine, you're a bottle of wine.Instead of one glass of champagne, you did drinks before you went to the wedding and at the wedding, and then you're post drinking, like there's lots of, we all have stories, right? But research shows the first 20 minutes of alcohol is fun. The first 20 minutes of alcohol, you have the endorphins, you have the dopamine.It's great. But then your body suffers for the next two to three hours. if you're drinking for the 20 minutes and you recognize the next two to three hours and your body is recovering from every glass of alcohol that you have, right? So I could talk about where alcohol is not actually serving you.But if you're using it to numb the pain, if you're using it to get away from true emotions, then that's where I would question why you're drinking the alcohol. Michael: Yeah. Cause I've always understood it in the sense of nutrition, right? Protein is, one gram is four carbs. One gram is four fats.One gram is nine calories, right? But alcohol, one gram is seven and our body doesn't utilize it, right? It doesn't need it for any building blocks or anything like that. So we're just literally poisoning our body, uh, to the sense of that But now we're talking about the psychological part and mental health part, which is increasingly important.Laura: Now, when it comes to this, What are the long term psychological and cultural implications, maybe in a practice that ignores mental health issues, particularly around burnout and depression? Alcohol use. not to get extreme, but we know suicide is a significant issue in our industry.Depression is a significant issue in our industry. And alcohol is usually tied to, a lot of the problems that people have. And soWhen you're suffering, people have a glass of wine when you're upset, let's have a drink.Let's meet over the bar and talk about it and have a drink. And so it's just that it's used so much, and that it's pushed so much. It's just our societal norm to lean into alcohol. I mean, I went to the doctor recently and he's like, how much are you drinking before I stopped? And, I told him what I was drinking.He's like, that's normal. That's not normal. Like we shouldn't normalize that alcohol is our friend. And so when it comes to the stress in the practice, the realities of what's going on, we need to recognize that that is an issue in itself, working on the depression, the stress, the financial issues, your relationships, your whatever it is.if you're band aiding it with alcohol, using that as the crutch to get through life, that is the problem, and the longer you do that, the higher chance you have of bigger problems in the long run. Michael: Interesting. So then how do you ensure. That discussions about alcohol use in the workplace go beyond surface level awareness and truly shift the mindset and behaviors of your team and leaders.Laura: Yep. My bandwagon, my thing I talk about is alcohol others. It's, suicidal thoughts. It's depression. It's divorce. It's financial problems. Like we all have life things. We all have our own dark places, whatever it is. What we need to build and can build is an environment where people can just be okay with what they have.we know our own secrets. We know what's going on in our head. We know the things that have happened in our life, the things we've done. And we always compare the worstof us to the best of other people. Right. The Instagram side of what other people are.If we could actually just build an environment, build a team where people can just have the space to be okay, to communicate their issue, to be allowed to feel, we are humans, you know, no matter who's on your team, we all have real things going on. And if you can build a space that it's okay to Be transparent, be vulnerable and allow somebody to be able to talk about their thing, whatever it is.And so like for me with alcohol, my whole goal in this conversation is just to get people talking. Because if we can't get people talking, we're not going to help people. And so normalizing the okayness to talk about whatever your issue is. Find people who have dealt with what you're dealing with and lean into that because The more we can fill the gap between people who need help and the people who can give help By getting rid of that gap of shame and fear and allowing people to just be vulnerable and be real will change lives and change your practice Michael: Yeah, I agree getting people to talk about it is huge, then I feel like there's that fact of like vulnerability, especially if you're a leader.So I guess, in addressing alcohol use and burnout, do you balance vulnerability and leadership strength, especially when,you may be struggling with similar issues Laura: as a leader. Your team is going to follow you if you set examples, right? So being vulnerable is a completely agreat leadership skill to be able to say, I don't know.Now, I'm not saying that as a doctor, you need to tell everything going on in your private life and in your brain and all of the stress that you have, but To be vulnerable with your team to say, you know, I have some mental health issues. I have some personal concerns I'm dealing with. I have some things and be real with your team.They're going to respect you follow you that much more than trying to fake. that you have it all together because nobody has it all together. And then going and getting the help that you need. Like again, when you can lean into getting help, you can see how it improves in your life as a doctor and as a leaderand then be able to offer that to your team, talk about turnover that we have if your team knows that you really trust and believe in them and you're vulnerable and you're real and you care about them, they're not going anywhere, They're going to be on your team forever.So just be real. It's all we really want. Michael: Yeah. And so that shows strength. Okay. Gotcha. So then, in your work, Laura, how have you seen unresolved personal struggles with alcohol among dentists affect their ability to deliver patient care and are there any interventions or what interventions have proven most effective in these situations?Laura: Yeah, the reality is when I started this journey of sharing my storymy story is a little bit easier than a dentist and a hygienist, cause I'm not licensed. So I can stand on the mountaintops and say, I'm happy to be sober. And this is why I chose it for my life. but for a dentist, there's a real reality of, your team.Your license your patients. And so, the reality is there's a lot of licensed professionals in our industry struggling, struggling with mental health issues, struggling with addiction issues, and they're not getting the help they need. I actually have a hygienist that I'm affiliated with. she was more worried about losing her hygiene license than she was about getting a DUI when she was actively drinking because.That's her livelihood. Many team members are dentists. We know that they're suffering and that's our livelihood. If our dentist has to go to recovery or rehabilitation or, take time out of the practice, what about our jobs? Right. And so it's the reality of what's going on. Luckily I've become really good friends with the incoming ADA president, Brett Kessler, Dr.Kessler, who that is what he wants to change for our industry isto allow and have support for. Licensed professionals. They're bringing in a third party company where you can actually call and get help. You can have real conversations because our jobs are our jobs, but our life is way more important, right?So I'm hoping that the worst cases that I know and the things I've seen, we can make a difference by just starting the conversation. Michael: Awesome. Laura, thank you so much for your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find her on the dental marketer Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?Laura: Sober life rocks that is our new Community and group sober life rocks find me on all the social channels or just come to our website sober life rocks Michael: Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below and laura Thank you so much for being with me on this monday morning episode.Laura: Thank you

The invite to end all invites has landed in Em's inbox and it is confirmed, Em is off to the Australian premiere of the new ‘Wicked' movie in Sydney. She's also hitting up the press junket and hoping she gets to chat with her actual hero Cynthia Erivo, as well as Ariana Grande and Jeff Goldblum. Inside you'll get to hear Em's plan of attack, plus outfit explains for both her interview and red carpet appearance and so much more. Then, as society slowly comes around to the idea that middle age women are an untapped resource worth catering to, we've found two new things targeted at women over 40 worthy of your attention. The first is a full review of the new Netflix movie ‘Lonely Planet' where Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth have a passionate affair whilst on a writer's retreat. Then it's onto the new book ‘All Fours' from Miranda July, which is part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist. I mean, what could there possibly be in this book that Em might connect with? Everyone who's anyone has recommended ‘All Fours' to Em, and having finally read it she's now recommending it to everyone too, from perimenopausal peeps to your partner, this book is worth your time. Then in our Sealed Section, on our premium service Emsolation Extra, Em and Michael ‘Okay, Stop' the trailer for Nicole Kidman's upcoming movie ‘Babygirl', and the upcoming Martha Stewart doco ‘Martha'. Sign up to listen or watch it for under $3 a week at emsolation.supercast.com and don't forget you can watch this episode in full maximalist colour on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@emsolationpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is your dental practice running smoothly without your constant supervision? In this enlightening episode, we delve into the heart of effective leadership with Dr. Sarah Blair, a seasoned expert in guiding dental practice owners toward efficient and engaged management. Dr. Blair candidly discusses the pitfalls many leaders encounter when they aren't actively involved with their teams, especially when it comes to key responsibilities like patient interactions over the phone. Through her insights, you'll discover how attentive leadership can turn potential lost opportunities into lasting patient relationships.Dr. Blair also shines a light on the often-overlooked back-office inefficiencies, using supply management as a prime example. Drawing from years of experience, she shares practical strategies to bolster team performance by focusing on comprehensive training, streamlined systems, and the critical importance of setting clear expectations. As the episode wraps up, Dr. Blair invites listeners to connect with her for more tailored advice, ensuring that leadership gains aren't just theoretical but actively applied to foster a thriving dental practice.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The impact of active leadership on team performance and patient engagement.Strategies to enhance patient communication over the phone.Common back-office inefficiencies and how to address them.Importance of clear expectations and consistent training for team effectiveness.How to transform practice management with effective systems and leadership.Tune in now to unlock revelations that will transform your dental practice's leadership dynamics!‍‍Sponsors:‍‍Oryx: All-In-One Cloud-Based Dental Software Created by Dentists for Dentists. Patient engagement, clinical, and practice management software that helps your dental practice grow without compromise. Click or copy and paste the link here for a special offer! https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/oryx/‍You can reach out to Dr. Sarah Blair here:Website: https://www.indiepractices.com/Sarah's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarah.blair.961993Indie Practices Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IndiePracticesTop 10 Team Management Solutions: https://www.indiepractices.com/digital-resources‍If 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, Sarah, so talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning. Sarah: All right. So my piece of advice is to be aware that the work that your team is doing when you're not around probably isn't as good as you think it is. That's a little controversial to hear. It's not what everyone wants to Michael: So, well, First let me clarify a few things. first by not around. I don't mean you're on vacation. I mean that you're just not present. So it means you're busy, you're distracted, you're not paying attention. that's what I mean by when you're not around. And I also want to clarify that this is not anti team by any means.Sarah: We are super pro team. We love teams. it's just that there, is a disconnect between what the leader should be doing and should be providing and what the team is actually receiving. So I've been a team member myself. I was a dental assistant. I worked at the front desk. So again, we're super pro team.This is more of a leadership concept here. Michael: Okay. Gotcha. So is it more in the sense of like, Hey, we're doing what we're supposed to be doing clinical work, right? Talking to the patients, being with patients, but then we don't know, really know what the front office is doing. They're doing busy work, but not productive work.Sarah: That's a great way to put it. Yeah, the truth is that your team is almost certainly underperforming some areas if you're not engaged managing. So as coaches, we get to see and hear this a lot. owners don't always want to hear this news, but we get to look at the metrics and we get to listen to the phone calls and when we look at these data points, we can see that the team is not performing as well as The way that the practice owner has been hoping or the way that they have always believed that their team is performing.Michael: So why does this happen? Is it from the beginning, from the get go, is it happening like that? Or is it more like they fall into a lull and now they're not performing as good, but they figured a way to, make it look like you are. Sarah: We actually have the top 10 list of all of these key areas.The ways that teams typically underperform, and the ways to address it. And we're going to have that on our Facebook page. It'll also be on our website and under the resource library. So we probably wouldn't get through all 10 of those today. And like you said, some of them do apply early on. Some of them can apply to long term team members that have maybe started out super energetic and fired up and things have drifted off into a different place at this point.So basically as leaders. We're failing our teams if we don't provide guidance, AKA training and systems, clarify expectations, monitor the results and hold the team accountable. So as we like to say inspect what you expect. Michael: Okay. So then What would you say are the most common that you've seen time and time again?Sarah: primary one that I would say is on the phones. So we're seeing, really common things happening on the phones that owners are totally unaware of. They're trusting and hoping that their teams are doing a great job. In fact, sometimes they genuinely. Believe that their team is doing a great job and it can be really frustrating and disappointing for them when they find out that's not the case.So I would say phones and what's happening on the telephones is One of the biggest areas, and luckily for us as coaches, one of the areas that we're able to document and observe the most closely is the way, especially incoming new patient phone calls are handled Michael: So then when you're listening into these phone calls, where do you see them drop the ball the most?yeah, so the most common theme is just Reactively answering the first question of course is usually do you take my insurance or how much does this cost? And so they just go directly into the nuts and bolts of answering that question without building any connection building trust without building value for the practice and talking up the doctor in the practice and why you're going to love it here.Sarah: They go right into the nuts and bolts of complicated insurance plan, something like that. So not taking control of that phone call right from the beginning is where we see team members fall off the tracks most often for this. And again, this is a, leadership issue because the team members don't have the training, the systems in place.to have those successful conversations with new patient callers to get them into the schedule. So it's not a team problem. It's a doctor problem. Michael: Providing the guidance. Could you Sarah give us like a script to that reaction? So like let's just say it's super common, right? Or it's hey, you take my insurance Sarah: usually people it's a lot of nose. It's a lot of going down rabbit holes and oh we don't play some plants here. You'd have to go see a Surgeon, it's a lot of roadblocks You And a lot of denial. So I think a lot of team members are afraid. To give unrealistic expectations so they shut things down right away and consequently the patients are like, okay, I guess not coming in.it's so sad and I hear, we just hear hundreds and hundreds of these calls all the time where it's like a dead end. It's a roadblock. It's a bottleneck in the conversation. So instead, so we have to take that tough question. Sometimes I like to envision it as a brick or something that if somebody's handing you this object, you have to take it.It's not what we're going to deal with immediately. We're just going to set it right here. And then we're going to draw the patient in by connecting. And by building value for the practice before we get to that tough thorny question that we're going to deal with soon. So it could just be something like, First off you answer, you know, hi, my name, practice name. How can I help you today? And then they're going to give tough question. They're going to hand you the brick and you're going to say, awesome. That's such a great question. I'm so happy to help you with that today. Let me just get a little bit more information so I can help you out with that.And then you just go right into, get their name, use their name through the rest of the call. And then you're going to ask, find out why they're really calling. So patients are asking about insurance and pricing because they don't know what else to ask. But what they really want to know is, are you guys nice?Are you guys good? So you got to build that connection. You got to build a value. So you're going to say Oh, you just moved here. That's awesome. Welcome to the area. You're going to absolutely love it. And you're going to love our office. Dr. Jones is amazing with whatever it is that you wanted.So if you asked him how to crown, he's awesome at crowns. you're already building that value and that connection. And team members invariably think that's a waste of time. We don't take their insurance. Let's just end the call, but you're going to lose a hundred percent of those callers. If you at least build a connection and you're building trust, you're building value, so much more likely that you're going to schedule and that that patient's going to actually show up.Michael: like that. I like the way you put it like as a brick. I remember there was a, thing where they said like in different cultures, more like Japan, Japan. When you bring a gift to them, it's considered rude to open it in front and be like, Oh my gosh, compared to here, like in America, right here, we want to open it immediately and we Sarah: expect, Michael: but over there, they say like, put it to the side and acknowledge the person.Don't worry about it right now. Sarah: That's great. Think of it as a gift that someone just handed you because the gift is they're presenting themselves to you as a potential new patient. This is not some. Terrible problem that someone just handed you. It's a potential new patient and it should be the most exciting and important thing in your entire day.But sadly, team members don't get the training on this. They don't know how to take that call and take control of it and turn it toward the things that really matter. Of course, we're going to answer that tough question. We're not going to be evasive. We're not going to be dodging questions. We're going to deal with it, but we have to build that connection first.Michael: I like that. And then real quick for the back office where do you see it? Where it's like, Hey, you guys are being busy, but not productive. Sarah: Yeah. A couple of different areas where your team is probably not optimizing and they're underperforming in certain areas in the back. one area that we've seen recently, a lot of supplies.if the team member is ordering supplies. they probably don't have designated time set aside for themselves to do that. They're just fitting it in wherever they possibly can around a busy schedule. They probably don't have a system, so they're just ordering whatever's easiest with no way to price shop and look for the best possible options.we had a client recently who is.Supply costs were almost 20 percent of their revenue their minds were blown when we shared this data with them because they hadn't looked at it. with just three simple changes, which setting aside time for clinical assistant to actually do this task,training her on how to do it and what system they were going to use, and setting a budget and setting some really clear expectations.They cut their costs dramatically without sacrificing one bit of quality. And in fact, it's actually much easier for everyone on the team now. that's just an example of where if you're not paying attention, if you're under managing and not inspecting what you expect, you're going to get a result that is really out of line with what you're hoping.And you're going to see it in the numbers. Michael: I love that. Inspecting what you expect. Awesome. Sarah, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions, where can they reach out to you directly? Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. So you can email me directly. It's sarah indie practices.com.That's I-N-D-I-E practices. or you can check out our websiteor just chat with me on Facebook. So just reach out to Sarah Blair on Facebook and message us on in practices on Facebook. We're always putting out new content and you can check out what's going on.Michael: Awesome. So that's gonna be in the show notes below. And Sarah, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Sarah: It was a pleasure. Thanks so much, Michael.

Are traditional retirement plans holding you back? In this eye-opening episode, I dive into a conversation with Kyle Christensen, where he disrupts conventional financial strategies queued up for dentists. Rather than funneling earnings into several miscellaneous traditional retirement savings like 401ks and IRAs, Kyle introduces the novel concept of "fake assets" that might not serve you as you imagined. He advises dentists to channel their investments into their sphere of expertise—into themselves and their practice—in order to craft paths towards abundant wealth genuinely.Kyle breaks apart the paradigm of diversification and advocates for other arenas like real estate, intellectual property, and personal development ventures such as coaching. Discover the lengths to which specialization can forge wealth without waiting decades!What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why 401ks and IRAs might be considered "fake assets" for dentists.The importance of investing in one's expertise and practice for optimal wealth creation.Strategies for maintaining high liquidity to seize strategic opportunities.Understanding the value in real estate, IP investment, and self-improvement coaching.Kyle's take on why diversification strategies might be outdated.How specialization, rather than diversification, leads to increased wealth.Ready to reshape your financial future and mastering the art of specialization? Dive into this episode now!‍‍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 Kyle Christensen here:Website: https://uniqueadvantage.biz/Kyle's Book "Principals Based Planning": https://a.co/d/8576RD3Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unique_advantage/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558072766116LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uniqueadvantage-planning/‍Mentions and Links: ‍Terms:Fica Taxes‍People:Bill GatesElon Musk‍Books:FAKE: Fake Money, Fake Teachers, Fake Assets: How Lies Are Making the Poor and Middle Class PoorerThe Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and the Gospel of Wealth‍Videos:Why diversification is for suckers: Warren Buffet and Mark Cuban‍Businesses/Brands:MicrosoftAppleBerkshire HathawayWalmart‍Places:Wall Street‍If 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, Kyle. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Kyle: My advice is to don't gamble with your financial future. And there's a reason I'm saying that. Michael: What's the reason behind it? Kyle: I think most of your listeners are probably being pressured, by the conventional wisdom out there to start quote, saving for retirement.And basically the way I look at that is they're divesting money from their control and their use and their expertise, and they're putting it in things that they have no control, expertise or use. And that's generally encouraged by the financial planning industry. Okay. Michael: So would you say, Don't start putting funds into that. Kyle: I know. Sounds crazy. Doesn't it? Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. The financial institutions that are promoting the philosophy of retirement and retirement planning, they only have one objective, and it's actually a huge conflict of interest.Their objective is to get asset center management. Their objective is to get your audience to send them money on a regular and ongoing basis and not touch it for decades and not receive any income for decades from those supposed assets, Robert Kiyosaki in his most recent book called fakecalls 401ks and IRAs mutual funds.He calls them fake assets. And the reason is he says a real asset is something that puts money in your pocket. And a liability is something that takes money out of your pocket for years. And that's why he calls those kinds of things, fake assets. Michael: So then from your expertise, where should we be putting our money then?Kyle: They should be putting it in what they're experts in. I've been to plenty of dental industry events, conferences. throughout the country. And I can tell you by looking at all the exhibitors of these events, there's plenty of opportunity for, dentists to invest in themselves and to grow and to expand.They're being convinced, however, to, move their money and invest in things that are not in their expertise, which I just finished reading Andrew Carnegie'sautobiography earlier this year. And in his book, he talks about that exactly. He says, I've never seen a man be embarrassed by investing in anything other than things outside of his expertise.his recommendation, which he's the richest American thatthat's ever lived. You know, we think, Bill Gates is super rich and Elon and they are, but comparatively Andrew Carnegie would be worth 300 billion in today's dollars. So he knows what he's talking about.And I think there's some wisdom in what he's saying. He's saying that, look, you should be investing in thethings you can control, and influence. Michael: Interesting. So then what are some strategic investments specifically for dentists that they should be investing in?Kyle: Yeah. So number one, I would say, don't be afraid of having cash. Don't be afraid of accumulating cash because cash means opportunity, think everybody's heard the phrase cash is King and there's truth to that. The people who have cash have opportunity. I'm sure most of your audience has dealt with loans, practice loans, or equipment loans, or things like that, right?What if you could get to a point in time when, you're only using loans strategically. You're not using them because you have to, but you're using them strategically. Maybe when the interest rates are really great and you're making more interest in where your cash is at, right?So at that point in time, it might make a lot more sense to just maintain the cash, take the loan, right? But in most people's cases, they're taking loans because they don't have the cash. So I would say, don't be afraid to build and maintain high levels of cash because cash equals opportunity. I'm thinking about one of my dental clients that's in Oklahoma.I started working with him whenhe bought into his first practice and he was making about 250, 000 a year. so that was in about 2014 when I started working with him this year.in fact, a conversation that I had with him last week, he's buying in three more practices.So he'll have a total of six practices. He has over 10 doctors working for him, his annual income just from what he does managing the practices, he makes over 2 million per year. That's where people should be investing right in their own ideas, in their own business, in their own property. Investment, for a dentist could be, investing in coaching.That's a great investment. In fact, this particular client, that was one of the first big investments that they did is they invested into coaching for their practice. And the amount of increase in efficiency in their practice went through the roof. So those are the kinds of investments that I think that your audience should be considering and, should weigh heavier than things that they have no expertise in.Michael: Yeah. Interesting. was that revenue profit or cash? Kyle: That was net profit per year for him. Michael: Oh, interesting. I like that, man. So then how would you plan for long term, I guess, like financial security and wealth building Kyle: So one of the things that you can do is you can start to invest into real estate, right?For example, maybe the property that your practice is in, that's an opportunity, right? And that's actually a way to, change the character of your income. Let's say that you're paying 20, 000 a month in lease, for your office lease if you were to own the building And now you're practice is paying that to you that twenty thousand bucks a year.You're Recharacterizing two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year now. It's not going to be subject to fikaSo you're saving fifteen point three percent of that money in taxes And now you're going to pay ordinary income tax, which you would have anyway, but you save a huge chunk of money over time if you sell that practice in the future, you could still Keep the building, it's a cash flowing asset to you.You can look at investing in other, what I would call real assets. Real assets are basically things that financial institutions can't sell you. So real assets might be owning a franchise. It might be owning, other real estate property, intellectual property. I think about the inventions that have taken place in the dental industry in just the last 10 years.And it's incredible. If you've been to the dentist regularly, you've seen it, the way they take x rays, the way they do imaging, everything. It's amazing how much technology, how much improvement has been made. What's the genesis of most of that improvement? Is it somebody who's not in the dental world or is it somebody that's in the dental world that came up with those things?And I would say it's mostly things that were brought up or invented Or at least thought of by people in the dental industry. Your audience might be, as they go along, be coming up with ideas that are multi million dollar cash flowing ideas.And what I'm saying is, that's the sort of thing they should be investing in. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So then how do you balance reinvesting in the business with diversifying your portfolio for long term wealth here? Kyle: So diversification, just submit is a marketing idea. Really? Michael: Okay. Yes. Kyle: in fact, I would encourage everybody to look up what Warren Buffett says and Mark Cuban says about diversification on YouTube.Diversification is an excuse for lack of knowledge. So specialization is what creates well, it's having an inch wide. Knowledge, but it's a mile deep, versus the Jack of all trades that has a mile wide basis of knowledge. And it's only an inch deep the whole way.People get paid for what they know. this idea of diversification, it's wall street. Wall Street is encouraging diversification because an excuse for their inability to pick winners and losers, which all the research actually says that they cannot do. And so we pay all these mutual fund managers and these money managers a lot of money right, every year, so that they can pick winners and losers, and yet all the research says that they can't, and what do they tell us we have to do?Diversify. We have to diversify. We have to asset allocate, We have to change that so that if something goes down, which is out of our control, which is a key point, I think then not all of our money will go down. So my question is. Should Bill Gates have diversified out of Microsoft should Steve Jobs have diversified out of Apple should Warren Buffett diversify outside of Berkshire Hathaway, I would say no, I think that those guys know exactly what they're doing.And they're investing in the things that they know that they're experts in. Michael: Interesting. Okay. So then if we do have a portfolio and our consultants are, are, you know, financial advisors are telling us like, yeah, you need to diversify. We did it already.How can we start scaling back? Or do we just take everything out of our mutual fund 401k RAs and stuff like that? Or, Or what are your thoughts? Kyle: Here's my question. How much controller influence do you have over how that performs?Michael: None. Like If I bought Walmart stock, how much influence do I have over that? buy something at Walmart, but nothing happens. Kyle: But it's not going to move the needle, right? It's not going to change the stock price, right? So I have no influence over that. So in reality, if you look up the definition of the word invest or the word gamble, What is that more like, Is it really investing or is it really gambling? I think that's the first thing we need to do. Let's call it what it is. And some people like to gamble and that's fine. for some people it's exciting. It's a fun game, but I don't think that people want to rely, put their entire financial future on gambling, right?But they're being told that that's what they should do. So what should you do if you already have, most of your investment in that kind of situation? Well, number one, does it make it better to put good money after bad? in the business world, don't put good money after bad, right?So if we're already doing something and we realize maybe this isn't the direction I want to go, then don't keep putting money in that direction. Does that make sense? So that's the first thing I would stop contributing If you realize that, hey, you know what? I really do have more confidence in what I'm doing than I do in putting it into something I have no clue and I have no control, no influence over the outcome, right?I'm actually penalized if I touch my money, Here's the other thing. Don't let the tax tail wag the dog. So what I mean by that is, taxes, yes, are an important factor to keep in mind, But they shouldn't be the sole deciding factor, if my entire goal is to avoid taxes, you know what the easiest way for me to avoid taxes is?Don't make money. And I don't know of anybody who has that as a goal. That's not a goal for anybody. It's not a good goal. I don't think to not make money. So avoidance of taxes isn't really the goal. Financial freedom is your goal. It should be your goal. And I think that's what most people have in mind when they think about retirement, even though that's not what the word retirement means.I think that they think about financial freedom, you know, I want to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it. Well, The problem with retirement accounts is that they don't provide you with any. income. They don't provide you with any velocity. That's the principle. It's called velocity of money.So you put money into a retirement account and you can't touch it for a long time. Michael, you seem like you're in your thirties, maybe. Are you in your thirties? So if you're in your thirties, when can you touch that money without paying a penalty? 30 more years. Yeah, it's 30 more years. And who benefits from that?Is it you or is it the financial institutions? Michael: I don't know if I'll be here in 30 more years, even like so. Kyle: that's true. It's absolutely true. There's no guarantee that you'll live that long. Here's the thing. Those products, those accounts are not designed for financial freedom. They're designed for retirement, which is an age.Retirement doesn't mean capability. And so here's the question. Would you rather pay the tax? And maybe even the penalty. Right now we're at, the market's still at, near it's all time high. It might make sense actually, to cash out. And pay the tax and the penalty. Which seems totally crazy. I'm the only financial planner that you'll ever hear that suggests that that might be a good idea.And here's why. Because I believe in you. I believe in you more than I do Wall Street. They have a conflict of interest actually. Their conflict of interest is this. If you take out your money, they make less. That's the reality. that's an actual financial conflict of interest. So when do they want you to take your money out?Never. Michael: Yeah. Kyle: Yeah. It's never. that's the game. They're just pushing it down the road for 30 years. And if you've put money into the retirement accounts, you've agreed to that condition that you won't touch your money for 30 years. Which only benefits them. It doesn't benefit you in any way, but they're trying to convince you that that's true And then when you get to 30 years from now because we just said what's their conflict of interest?They don't ever want you to touch your money. They get financially injured if you take the money out when you hit 30 years from now, do you think they're going to still want you to take your money out at that point? Nope. They're going to give you every reason why you shouldn't because you might outlive it.It's not enough. it didn't grow as much as we thought it would and so on. I would rather you have half of that money in your full control and your full use. Michael: Love it, man. Awesome. 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?Kyle: You can go to my website, uniqueadvantage. biz. And the last letters are B I Z, Boy Island Zoo. Our email addresses are on there. You can, reach out. I'd love to answer any question.Michael: couple other ways you can find out more, right? You can go to amazon. com and you can buy my book, principles based planning, a better approach to financial planning. The other ways you can find us we're on Instagram.Kyle: Facebook and LinkedIn. So we'd love to have you follow connect. We'd love to see on there. Michael: Awesome. Yeah. So that's going to be in the show notes below Kyle's book. I saw social media handles. Please reach out to him if you have any questions and Kyle, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode.Thank you.

Trying to decide whether to purchase a practice or a home first? In this jam-packed episode, I sit down with Morgan Stump to unravel this complex decision-making process. With 15 years of diligent industry experience, Morgan delves into a point-by-point comparison of these life-altering choices, examining the ramifications for your long-term financial health, risk profile, and adaptation to shifting market conditions. Whether you're a first-time buyer or reconsidering your next investment step, this episode is brimming with expert advice tailored just for you!Morgan doesn't stop there. To help doctors looking to relocate, he dishes out practical tips to ease into new markets while understanding the challenges posed by mortgage lenders. He explores why top-notch financial health and liquidity remain crucial, sheds light on economic telltale signs, and navigates the turbulence of market fluctuations. Wrap up your listening with direct access insights from Morgan—offering personalized advice just when you need it most.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Detailed comparison between buying a practice and a home.Key factors in assessment: financial health, risk, market conditions.Practical tips for medical professionals relocating.Tackling mortgage lender challenges.How to maintain strong financial health amid economic uncertainty.Interpreting economic indicators for informed decision-making.Take a deeper dive into financially transformative decisions and smart relocation strategies by tuning in to Morgan's episode today!‍‍Sponsors:‍CareStack: Modern, Secure, Cloud-Based Dental Software for Growing Your Practice! With state-of-the-art features including Online Appointments, Integrated Payments, Text Reminders and more. Click the link here for a special offer: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/carestack/‍You can reach out to Morgan Stump here:Website: https://www.getprovide.com/Phone: 503-686-3284Email: morgan@getprovide.com‍Mentions and Links: ‍Terms:Escrow‍Communities:Dentaltown‍If 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 Morgan. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Morgan: Sure. Thanks for having me, Michael. I really appreciate it. So the one piece of advice is surrounding a question that has been brought up over and over again during my 15 plus years in the industry.And that question is, should I buy practice or should I buy a home first? So what do you think about that? Michael: Interesting, man. I think a lot has to go into that like, the financial health of the person, risk assessment. Economic market considerations, right? All these things. But what are your thoughts?because we see this a lot on the forums, Facebook groups, even downtown, right? They want to do one or the other. Morgan: Well, I see this specifically come up a lot when a doctor is looking to relocate to buy a practice. And, the housing market, the rental market is really crazy.And a lot of folks that are especially going to be larger earners, a lot of folks that might already have a family or be married, they don't want to put off buying a home for two years, Pretty much every bank, every mortgage bank has required that you own a practice for two years before they're going to lend to you to buy a home.The really cool thing is that some banks have adapted to that. And that includes us. In a practice scenario, we're able to actually use the target practices historical cash flow to qualify the new buyer for a home. So as soon as you close on the practice, you can close on the home simultaneously.There still are a few mortgage lenders don't go that route. And so to speak to your larger audience. while it might be a little bit painful to think about renting for a couple of years and then moving again, one of these assets is going to earn your household money.The other is going to be your largest debt. So if it comes down to one or the other, I would always go with buying the practice first. Usually when you're buying a practice, you're buying it for a reason. The demographics fit the procedures that are being done in that practice fit.You might have a good relationship with the seller. And I would argue even in times like this, where, the housing inventory might be a little bit light, I would say the practice acquisition and target practice. Inventory is even lighter. Particularly if you're looking for the right fit, we see doctors have all sorts of, different risk tolerances, where some folks just say, Hey, do you know what?I'm going to buy this practice. I'm going to invest in myself. I see that the seller is somewhat declining. Maybe they're referring out a ton of procedures, that the buyer is going to be able to capture. So now they're not referring out that business, and they're keeping that revenue in house. But I would say eight out of 10 times, nine out of 10 times a buyer is buying that practice because it's a really good fit for them.And that is not an easy thing to find. So I would typically default to buying the practice before you buy the home. Now just to kind of, Back up a little bit. The reason why it is so difficult for mortgage lenders to wrap their head around financing a new buyer is mortgage holders and mortgage banks are much more comfortable underwriting to W 2 or 1099 income.So if you absolutely need to buy that home first, And the bank that you're working with, the practice finance group that you're working with does not offer the option of closing them simultaneously, then your best bet is to qualify for that home as a W 2 or 1099 associate. That's going to allow you to get into the house.And then once you're in that house and it closes, you are free to go, because you've already bought the home. As long as you're making payments on time, there's not going to be any issues with your mortgage. So that's my advice there, but I am very encouraged that banks are starting to adapt and recognizing the difficult situation that this puts doctors in.So this is a topic that has gotten easier to answer over time. Michael: Nice. Okay. So then what would. Those conditions look like where you tell them like, yeah, can see why you do that. Morgan: where they want to buy the home before the practice?Michael: Yeah. Morgan: So in that scenario, they're already making income as an associate in the area that they want to practice. That is really key because if you are trying to buy a practice and you know, okay, we've got 90 days to close. But it's out of state or more than a couple of hours away from where you currently live, then the mortgage bank is going to be collecting bank statements.They're going to be collecting paycheck stubs. And if you're trying to buy a house in another state, but you're showing bank stubs, and paycheck stubs that are out of state or hours away, it's going to raise some red flags saying, Hey, why are you living? Here, meanwhile, you're working hours away or in another state.So you really got to be aware of that because you don't want to put yourself in a really bad position of getting far down the road in the mortgage process, the home buying process, and all of a sudden you get qualified and these questions start coming up, which could really blow up escrow, really, Kind of turn things a little bit sour.So that would be my one big piece of advice to look out for if you are trying to buy a home before the practice, utilizing your W 2 or 1099 income from a job that you know you are going to have to leave. So out of state or multiple hours away, You're not going to have too many options unless you secure some sort of associate position closer to the home that you're buying So be very aware of that And if you are going out of state and the practice finance group that you're working with doesn't have this Mortgage option for youunless you've got a spouse that also makes money might be able to qualify for loan on their own Then you're probably looking at a situation where you are going to have to rent for a couple of years before you buy that house Michael: So when it comes to the mistake here, your eyes, it's like, Hey, you should have gotten the practice first. Right.assuming they're not an associate there. Is it more an emotional decision?Morgan: It's absolutely an emotional decision, especially people with families. You know, If you're married, you've got kids, you want a stable home, and you've also got a partner that's probably pushing for you to buy a home. The flip side of this is, when you're qualifying for a practice, the liquidity level, so the cash in the savings account, cash in checking, stock market, life value life insurance.All of those are considered liquidity. And that is a very important metric when you're buying a practice, most lenders want to see that you've got at least seven, sometimes 10%. If you're buying a big practice. They're wanting to see that you've got 7 to 10 percent on hand that you can show as verifiable liquidity when you're qualifying for that practice.So the banks aren't typically going to take that money, I want to point that out. They just want to verify that you've got it. That makes the bank feel warm and fuzzy, that you've got some reserves sitting there, that you've been reasonable, saving your money with your eye on the prize of buying the practice.So Usually buying a home, there's some good docker loans out there that have very minimal money down, but oftentimes you have to put 10, 15, or even 20 percent down to secure the lowest interest rates. So that's another thing to consider because if you're trying to buy a practice, but then you want to buy the home beforehand, let's say you're looking to buy a million dollar practice.That's a pretty standard average number. In that scenario, most banks are going to want to see that you've got about 70, 000 liquid. So using this example, if you're buying a home that is. 500, 000 and you're trying to put 20 percent down to secure the lowest interest rate in the best terms for yourself, then that 500, 000 home is going to cost you 100, 000 of your liquidity.So you really want to avoid a situation where you're buying a home, you put money down, which completely drains your liquidity position because that is going to then put in danger your ability to buy a practice until you build that back up to about the 7 percent range of the practice that you're looking to acquire.Michael: Okay, so when it comes to that liquidity and financial health, what advice do you give? about maintaining financial health and liquidity when taking on significant investments like a home or a practice and how can they avoid overextending themselves? Morgan: That's a great question. And to be honest, the answer is pretty nonsensical.I grew up on a farm in Oregon, right? Pretty conservative, from a fiscal standpoint where I was raised to not carry debt. That was just, How it was, you pay your bills on time, you don't accrue debt. And we're seeing the average dentist and doctor come out with 400, 500, 000 of student loans, sometimes six, 700, 000 for specialists.So a lot of people have that mindset of I've got to pay this down, that's how they were raised. That's the mindset that they have. If you're looking to buy a practice. Well, and a home, I guess you're looking to buy a practice, soon after graduation, maybe you're going to associate for six months, a year, two years.You've got to put yourself on that income based repayment program. I know it's painful. sometimes you're going to watch the balances rise during that short period, but it's a means to an end because you need to start stacking your liquidity, stacking cash. To get to that 7 percent mark. So let's say you come out of school, you've got 400, 000 of student loan debt.It's stressing me out, but you do know that, Hey, I've got my eye on the price here. I know that making 150, 000 as an associate is not going to, pay down that debt quick. It's going to accomplish my goals of, saving liquidity to be able to buy a practice. Because if you buy that million dollar practice, now you're looking at income levels, likely of 300, 000 plus.So the way I talk to my doctors is, put that out of your head, right? When you get out of school that, Hey, that loan balance on the student loan might be growing a little bit, but this is a path to being able to get out of debt sooner because I'm going to put in a position to be earning more money.Then I'll go pay down those debts as I'm bringing in more income for me and my family. So that'll help you accomplish not only the goal of buying a practice quickly, But also buying a home because liquidity is the name of the game for both of those products. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. I like that. So given like the fluctuations in real estate and business markets, how should practice owners weigh the timing of these purchases? Are there economic indicators that should heavily influence their decision? Morgan: I try to stay away from looking into that crystal ball because this is such a unique time, with so many homeowners holding on to their houses because they're, in a 30 year fixed rate at 2.675. That's what I got in at back in 2018. If I was to try to sell my home and buy a similar house at today's rates. I've been taking on an extra 1, 500 to 1, 800 a month in monthly payments, So my advice to doctors is look at their current situation, prioritize what is the most important thing for you and your family.Is it buying a home? Is it buying a practice? Do I need to relocate? I also try to tell my doctors to go back and look at history. I'm kind of a nerd when it comes economic history. So if you look at the prime interest rates in 1980, 1981, they were upwards of 20%. So I think that a lot of us got very spoiled, coming off of 2008, 2009.Coming off of the pandemic, lenders and the Fed were basically giving money away. The cost of funds for banks were down near zero. So you were seeing people secure these mortgages at two and a half, three percent, three and a half percent, which historically is just. Not relevant, nor is it sustainable.So if you're able to get in right now, The fed just came out and said, Hey, the indicators are that inflation has slowed. He's indicated that we are going to be lowering rates. The prime interest rate, maybe multiple times this year and into next year.So if you do have a little bit of time to wait, I am a believer that interest rates will be coming down a little bit, but at the same time, if you're able to get a 30 year fixed interest rate, or maybe you're confident that rates are going to go down in the future. You could get a 30 year amortization that keeps your payment low, but only lock that rate for five years.So you would have to refinance before five years. But there's usually as much as almost a full percent discount to that interest rate, if you're willing to take that shoulder money. So right now you can likely get into a home for five, five and a half percent interest on one of those adjustable rate mortgages, which historically is incredibly low.So I tell people to not get too wrappedup in the past or the future because all you can do is live for right now and what you and your family need to do over the next year or two. And quite frankly, in this crazy world, nobody really knows what's going to happen. There's so many, global factors involved.There's elections involved. There's all kinds of things that you can't control. So you need to focus on what you can control. And that is Hey, I found this house that I like, the mortgage rate is this, that equals this payment. Am I able to afford that? That should be the bottom line. You shouldn't start speculating about too much in the future because then you're going to get, decision paralysis, which, in my world doesn't usually lead to the best decisions.Michael: Nice Morgan. I appreciate it and appreciate your time as well. 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? Morgan: I try to make myself super available. So, Name of our bank is provide.My email address is just Morgan at get provide. com. You're also welcome to text me. I don't mind giving out my cell phone number. Set up a time to speak that's five zero three. 686 3284. Michael: Awesome. Thank you so much. That's going to be in the show notes below. And Morgan, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode.Morgan: My pleasure, Michael. Thanks so much.‍

How can you, as a dentist, truly make a difference in your profession through organized advocacy? In this episode, Dr. Bob Dee shares vital insights into the inner workings of the American Dental Association (ADA), emphasizing the power of active participation over passive membership. Dive into a comprehensive discussion on the strides the ADA is making in political advocacy for the profession. Discover how influencing legislation, like dental loss ratio and Medicaid laws, directly shapes the dental industry and enhances patient care quality.Dr. Dee also tackles big topics such as corporate intrusion into healthcare, offering a vigorous defense of the dentist-patient relationship's personal nature that corporate entities can't replicate. While concerns exist about the efficacy of membership and communication within ADA, Dr. Dee reveals a determined vision for positive organizational change. Don't miss out on practical advice on joining advocacy coalitions and learn about the exciting upcoming Digapalooza event that promises valuable insights from industry leaders.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The benefits and importance of actively joining the ADA.The ADA's role in critical legislative changes such as dental loss ratio and Medicaid laws.Dr. Dee's perspective on the unique gifted relationship between dentists and their patients in comparison to corporate healthcare.Practical steps on becoming more involved in dental advocacy.Upcoming industry trends and why it's crucial to stay informed via events like Digapalooza.A deep dive into the real impacts of your active participation in organizations like the ADA.Take action and tune in to understand how your dedicated involvement today can create a thriving future for the entire dental profession.‍Sponsors:‍‍For high quality AND affordable dental supply options, visit The Dentists Supply Company(TDSC) website today! Our listeners get a special deal - 25% off on orders over $500 - Just type in the special code: TDM25 at checkout for your exclusive offer. AND if you're a member of your state's Dental Association, you may be eligible for additional savings upon providing your ADA number. Click or copy and paste the link here to save today! https://www.tdsc.com/‍You can reach out to Dr. Bob Dee here:Website: https://dentistryingeneral.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dentistryingeneralFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/share/L5bCmGf8oKHcH3yH/?mibextid=A7sQZpDigapalooza Event: https://pay.dentistryingeneral.com/MondayMorning ($400 Off for Our Listeners!)‍Mentions and Links: ‍Events:Digapalooza‍Organizations:ADA‍Videos:Dr. Dee's Video on Medicaid Laws‍If 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, Bob. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Bob: As we discussed off the air, the one advice I can give you definitively is to join the American Dental Association. And that comes from someone who criticizes them on a regular basis. Michael: So let me ask you this why join them and what do you criticize them about Bob: first of all, let's talk about the positives I don't like to talk about Negativity first, everybody can improve things, right?so why should you join the American Dental Association because for a hundred and sixty three years dentists like myself have contributed to building this huge organizations. We are the fourth largest lobbying power in Washington, DC. Think about it. Hospitals, physicians, all these physical therapists, all these health care organizations.We are the fourth largest. Representatives and senators and politicians know our lobbyists by name. So it is important for us to have proper representation. The government will bring different, ideas to the table. There are a couple of them going on right now that we should be opposing. And we need to have a voice there.So if you do not join the American Dental Association, and if you do not contribute, do not just write a check and go to your offices and say they don't do anything. We need to get involved. We need to have a voice within organized dentistry. It's basically for advocacy. Michael: We're advocating for our patients first. and then the profession. Our oath is to the,patients and then the profession. So that's basically why we should, join. Why do I criticize them? I don't criticize them to weaken them. I criticize them to make them better.Bob: Every, time we, as an advocacy coalition, criticize them is an opportunity for them to correct things and be stronger and attract more people. For me, lack of communication between what the American Dental Association does and the members, that'sbeen an issue. Also lack of focus. To what is important, for the benefit of our patients and the benefit of the profession.I feel like we need to reiterate to them what is important so they can concentrate better. Michael: So you mentioned that we need to participate more and not just cut a check and then, you know what I mean? go back to practicing, but then you also mentioned there's a lack of communication. So do they even listen?Bob: If we participate.They are listening. I guarantee you that they are listening. I have this facebook group dentistry in general. They are part of it. I have heard that they are listening and they are making some changes. Is it fast enough for most people? I don't know. That's why I have created this advocacy coalition that includes 30 people past present American Dental Association leaders and well known people within the dental community to help guide them.We have a platform, a six pillar platform that we have presented to them, and we're going to be at the House of Delegates Trying to contribute positively. I want everybody to understand we're not here to weaken the American Dental Association. This is all for making them stronger. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So it's more like we're just sometimes, downhearted because it's not moving at the speed of our expectations.Bob: there is a, myth that the ADA can do everything. This is a capitalistic system that we live in, right? Michael: There Bob: are laws and there are rules that when a dentist Criticizes them that oh, why can't we have the insurance companies pay more? That's not the job of the American Dental Association That's illegal.We cannot to have Another company pay us more. These are things that we cannot control. A lot of times dentists criticize the ADA for things that's out of their control. Obviously they're struggling and they see their patients being affected. So we naturally want these things to happen, but we need to be realistic.The way we can affect all the things they want is by making sure we know what legislation to support. what issues we can push through the politicians through legal ways to make a positive effect. Michael: Gotcha. So then what can they control in simple terms and what issues right now do you see most trying to push?Bob: Right now two of the most important things is the dental loss ratio, which is identical to the concept of medical loss ratio that the Affordable Care Act brought for medicine. We want the DLR for dentistry. Unfortunately, ADA, in my opinion, agreed to a plan that is not What we should have agreed to so we need to be outspoken and we need to be involved in creating the better than a loss ratio one that was passed in massachusetts Called question two a lot of this information is on my youtube channel on my facebook group So if people need to find out more and educate themselves contact me educate yourself These are the most important things You that are affecting our profession and our patients.That should be the number one thing. We advocate for patients first, not for ourselves. And the second thing is Medicaid laws are being ignored in every state and people will say, why should I even worry about Medicaid? I'm fee for service. I'm a PPO. I don't take Medicaid. Medicaid laws dictate.every insurance law that there is. As Medicaid goes, so does the private insurance. Michael: Gotcha. So we should be focused more, especially if we're heavily insurance, but like Medicaid. Bob: We shouldn't be focused on it, but we should look at states to enforce Medicaid laws that are there. I have a YouTube video on this subject that goes into details of what it means.All we want is to prove to politicians that this is good for the patients and let's enforce it. Michael: Okay. And so doing this. The first steps, if we're like, ah, should we join? Should we not join is joining, right? Continue to join, continue to be a part of it. And then now, if we wanted to start having our input into it, we do what?Bob: The alternative is what? Sitting on social media complaining about our problems, right? And what's going to happen? Nothing. Zero is accomplished by not joining, So joining and getting involved is important, and then support the coalition. Dentistry in General Advocacy Coalition will be out there presenting ideas.It's not a, organization that collects money. I'm covering all the costs because I don't want people to think that this is a profit generating organization. This is to help younger dentists. For years to come. We want to make sure the profession is protected and our patients are protected.Michael: Gotcha. So right now, Bob, me a percentage from one to a hundred? How much of a percentage do you feel protected and your patients protected? Bob: Listen, we are fighting different wars on different fronts. The corporate intrusion into healthcare is something that everybody knows about, We have insurance companies. That's another corporation intruding into our profession and into our patients well being. So for me, to put a percentage on it, I'm an optimist, right? I'm a, Glass half full. I say something that a lot of dentists rolled their eyes at me. We are a lot like. Hairstylist, Then doctors. Why? Because you will drive two hours to see your hairstylist The personal relationship dentists form with their patients is very important to them. So I still believe we have a chance. of keeping corporate intrusion at bay.We can't prevent it. It's there, However, if you create this professional and compassionate relationship with your patients, they will travel to come to you, but they also pay out of pocket to be out of network with a lot of these insurances. So it's important to understand that. So I would say We are still 80 percent strong, my friend.Some people may be less optimistic as I am, but we want to make sure we keep it at 80 percent and we're not going to go down the road medicine took. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. Awesome, Bob. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them in the dental marketer society, Facebook group, but where can they reach out to you directly?Bob: The easiest way to reach out to me or join my Facebook group is to go to my website, dentistryingeneral. com. There are two buttons, you can join the Facebook group, you can look at our event, and there is a chat button there that whatever you want to ask or comment, it comes right to my phone and we can talk.Michael: Gotcha. And then you also have I Bob: call it the Digapalooza, I try to bring speakers that are well known and are all stars. It's October 25th and 26th in the Chicago area. I say Chicago area because it's not downtown. It's 20 minutes away from downtown in a upscale mall. we have a very attractive lineup of speakers for two days and for your listeners, as I told you I still offer the early bird, which is 400 off and I can give you the link that you can share with your audience.Michael: Oh, we appreciate that, man. Thank you. So that's going to be in the show notes below the information for Digapalooza and at the same time, the early bird special So thank you so much, Bob, for that. And I appreciate you coming by and thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode.Bob: Thank you for having me.

Are you a business-minded or clinical-minded dentist? In this Monday Morning Episode, we're bringing on Brian Mills to unpack the true nature of preparing for practice ownership. Brian emphasizes that while clinical skills are vital, being business-savvy is equally crucial. He dives deep into why adopting a do-it-yourself mindset for critical business operations like marketing and website development can set you up for failure, and why focusing on ROI can be your saving grace.Brian also sheds light on the often-overlooked emotional and life-driven catalysts that typically prompt someone to own a practice. Is it a financial calculation or a significant life event that usually pushes the button? If you think owning a practice is the only route to professional success, think again. Brian reassures listeners that thriving as an associate can be just as rewarding, providing valuable insights for both aspiring practice owners and seasoned dentists.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why being business-savvy is as essential as clinical proficiency for practice owners.The risks of a DIY approach to critical business facets like marketing and website development.How to focus on ROI to navigate financial and operational challenges.Common life events or internal drives that lead to owning a practice.Why it's completely acceptable to excel as an associate and not own a practice.Ready to discover if practice ownership is truly in your future? Tune in for a revealing conversation that might just change your perspective!‍‍Sponsors:‍For DSO integrations, startup solutions, and all your dental IT needs, let our sponsors, Darkhorse Tech, help out so you can focus on providing the amazing care that you do. For 1 month of FREE service, visit their link today! https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/darkhorse-deal/‍You can reach out to Brian Mills here:Website: https://www.roamcommercialrealty.com/Email: info@roamcommercialrealty.com‍If 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: Ryan, talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Brian: Oh, first of all, always be prepared for a video call and don't think it's just audio, but a better teacher on number one. Oh, I may lose all my business with this piece of advice, but I'm going to tap some people in the chest and I would say, you got to grow up in the business world. I have too many great clinicians, great doctors who are amazing care side, what they do, they take their craft to the highest level clinically, but when it comes to business, they haven't matured whatsoever.And when I say that, I mean, Don't take pride in doing your own website. Guess what? We can all tell Don't drive around and think, Oh, I'm going to go, look for a space by seeing what's cool out there. You're not maturing in the business world. You may be a great clinician, a great doctor, but your business mindset is not where it should be.You are not functioning as a high level. If you're thinking about how do I. Save the most amount of money. You have to think about return on investment. that would be sort of my tap you in the chest advice and say, Hey, you got to grow up. You got to get serious about your business acumen.Michael: So then. Brian, how do we start doing that, especially like we're fresh out, we want to do a startup or we're in that process and acquisition or whatever, right? And we're like, so Like I got to count my costs. I just took out a 500 plus thousand dollar loan and I have student loans and all these things and I need to count everything.Brian: You may not be ready. If you're constantly thinking and having this anxiety and agita about the cost associated with it, it may not be your time. And guess what? I always say when I speak, you may never be ready and that's okay. you can be a great associate for the rest of your life and that doesn't make you a less than doctor, person, et cetera.But if you can never get past that anxiety and you can never get past that fear, practice ownership may not be for you. There's always a healthy level of fear, but if you're always. Thinking about how do I cut corners to make it easier to save my way into success. That's not a good way to run a business.That's not how any other business would operate. before we were on, we were speaking about multi practice owners and emerging groups and DSOs. That's not the mindset that they operate with. They're always thinking, how can I drive the most production? Where can I get the most ROI?Not how do I success. Don't get me wrong. Overhead is very important and keeping your overhead contained within certain budgetary constraints and buckets is very important to a business, but it's not at the forefront of driving production and driving business. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. if you're Brian: not prepared to do marketing and things like that, then you're not ready for it yet.Again, you don't think, how do I create my own website? is your brand and you have to be able to lead with it. So you have to put the most force, the most effort, the most financial incentive you can behind your website, your marketing your technology. Michael: Okay. So then if it may not be your time, what can I ask myself to know when it is my time and just to like swallow that pill and say, I got to outsource this to marketing.Brian: I know I have enough, I just got to do it. usually there's some event that happens. You get tired of working at your corporate gig or there's something that, you want to do clinically or business wise that you're not able to do, and you feel sort of these constraints on you and people have that, and it's like this light bulb goes off or this moment we have clients that, Sort of boy with this idea for years, they'll sit down, we'll have two hours at Starbucks, they're ready to go. And then I never hear from them again. And I'm like what the heck happened? Did I do something? And then I'll see them at one of my seminars and then they'll call me like a year after that.And I'm like, okay, now what's different from two years ago. And I can tell when they're really ready. Cause then they say, you know what, something happened and I'm just tired of it. I'm completely ready to go. So sometimes you have this life event that may be. in the negative. And it drives you into doing your own thing.people always look at me for this magic pill. Like, Tell me something, Brian, that would give me this injection of confidence that will make me go do it. I think you have to come to it on your own. And sometimes, unfortunately it comes to it when you've just had your full of all the negative stuff or somebody telling you to do something that you don't want to do or, asking you to do something clinically that you don't feel comfortable with or whatever that may be.But there's usually some sort of crossroads in your life where it's just like, all right. I've had enough I've got to get out and do my own thing or I'm actually going to go crazy. Michael: Yeah. No, that's true. Have you ever seen someone who've has had the confidence, but they have no money? Brian: Oh, yeah, lots.Yeah, that's a little bit of crazy. That's my kind of crazy. I've had people who have had really big dreams. They can't get the financial support to do that. that's good. That's ultimately what keeps dentistry so safe is you have some people that graduate from dental school and they're like, I'm ready day one.And I had this Amazing idea. And I just need a million dollars to go do it. And the bank's going to say we get it. But our job is to keep you safe. So let's wait a little bit, Let's get some experience under our belt and see if that idea that you had, upon graduation is the same in two years, or maybe, you've morphed or changed a little bit.So it's great to have that passion and that energy, but it's also great to have it. Institutions behind you saying, Hey, we appreciate that, but we also want to keep you safe and there's some structure to these deals and that's what keeps the failure at almost, 0%. Michael: So it sounds like it's better to have that.Let's go get it. Confidence kind of thing. And then there's institutions that tell you like, Hey, slow it down. Right. There's little speed bumps instead of. You being the guy who's like, I'm going to take it super slow and safe and everything, but you'll still have institutions that say, slow it down, kind of a thing.Brian: I'm a serial entrepreneur. You got to be a little bit crazy to be an entrepreneur, right? You have to be able to, at some point, throw caution to the wind and say, I don't know what's going to happen, but I feel like this is a mitigated risk. I've done everything that I can possibly do. And now I'm going to look over that edge and I'm going to make that leap of faith.There has to be a point where you make a leap of faith. I would much rather have somebody be a little bit wired crazy and have. The lenders, people like me other institutions say, okay, I love the passion, but let's make sure that we're being responsible versus a lot of great doctors who have what we call paralysis by over analysis.They're always analyzing everything to the nth degree and they're frozen in fear and they can never get off the starting blocks. Michael: So then, in your experience, Ryan, specifically, if you can be like almost like a script, what do people normally say where you can tell like, You're not ready.Brian: when they start focusing immediately on overhead, right? The conversation automatically goes back. Well, How much is the rent, How much is the build out cost? And we're not thinking about how do I drive business? Who's sitting in my chair? What's the demographic? How do I appeal to them?What is my brand? What is my image? there has to be a passion that's driving this business. It can't be well, if I can keep my rent to, 2, 500 a month, I'll be successful. Do you know anybody who could do a website or half the price everything is brought back to how much is that going to cost?That's how I know you're not ready. Cause it's going to cost what it's going to cost. Nobody ever gets an award for doing the cheapest startup or the cheapest practice. You never want to be cavalier or foolish with your dollars. but you have to think about where am I going to wisely invest my money and what's the biggest return I can gain from that when it always comes back to How much is that going to cost me?How do I do it cheaper? You're not ready because you're not thinking about driving business. You're only thinking about overhead overhead, overhead, and your practice is going to suffer. Michael: And so do you tell them that you tell them like, Hey, you're not ready. Or do you try to shift their focus in that moment?Brian: I, Would hate to be the one that says you're not ready because maybe there's something inside that I'm not seeing. Maybe they go home and they do some soul searching or et cetera. But it is my job to educate and say, if we're solely focused on the overhead and not production, we're never going to be a high performing practice.And I don't want you just to open. I want you to open and succeed at the highest level possible, I want you to make 10 times more money than I make. I want you to make. 50 times more money than you ever thought you could make. I want you to be a high performing startup. I don't want you to just check the box and say well, I opened my practice and I made as much as I did as an associate.I want you to open your practice and say, wow, that was life changing for me and my family. So it's my job to say, I understand what you're saying. I understand why you're nervous. These are big figures. But we have to think, how are we going to drive business or you're going to miss the mark. And if you're not prepared to drive, business may not be something that I want to be associated with.Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So make sure they have the confidence, make sure. They don't save their way into success. And then at the same time, if you feel like they don't have all that, then it may not be their time. They may not be ready. May never be ready, right? Kind of Never Brian: be ready. And again, don't think of yourself as less than, you know, You have colleagues out there who never open a practice. They're called physicians, Most physicians go work for a hospital network, and that's what they went to school for. least when I started in this business 25 years ago, most dentists went to dental school to own their own business.But Just because you graduate today and you go work as a great associate at a corporate gig or private practice or something else doesn't mean that you're not a phenomenal doctor, clinician, person, et cetera. So don't do it just because you think that's the path that you're supposed to do. Do it because you have this drive within you and you feel like if I don't do it, it's going to eat me up when I look back on a life of regret.There's nothing worse than a life of regret, but don't think that Somebody else's path has to be your path. If you're not wired to be an entrepreneur, don't do it. Go do something else that you're passionate about. But if it's eating you alive, just know that what you're about to embark on is the safest thing you can do.You just have to approach it like a business and not purely from clinical standpoint, because it's a business first and foremost. Michael: Gotcha. Awesome. Brian, 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?Brian: You can hit us up on our website, which is Rome, R O a M Rome commercial realty. com. You can email us directly info at Rome commercial realty. com. Michael: So that's going to be in the show notes below and Brian, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Brian: Thanks for having me.‍

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.

It's the gunshot that'll change the political landscape in America, and you better believe Em has been on a hyperfixation trail all night trawling the deep dark recesses of the world wide web for as much info as she can get. That's why this episode starts with a flurry and doesn't slow down for the first half an hour, as Em and Michael talk through the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in detail. We follow that with a full rundown of the opening weekend of Em's Outgrown tour in Queensland. Michael takes on the role of interviewer to get us all the behind the scenes goss, from the struggles to get it to the stage, to the amazing reception and support the Outgrown audiences have given Em at each show. Lastly, there's a bunch of campery to close things out as Em talks us through those steamy paparazzi pics of Theo James filming a fragrance commercial in a glorious white speedo. Then there's that footage of Kylie Minogue being carried on stage by two of our favourite gay actors, Jonathan Bailey and Andrew Scott. Then in our Sealed Section, on our premium service Emsolation Extra, Em and Michael ‘Okay, Stop!' the new music video  ‘Woman's World' from Katy Perry. Sign up now to start listening or watching the Sealed Section at emsolation.supercast.com.

It's the gunshot that'll change the political landscape in America, and you better believe Em has been on a hyperfixation trail all night trawling the deep dark recesses of the world wide web for as much info as she can get. That's why this episode starts with a flurry and doesn't slow down for the first half an hour, as Em and Michael talk through the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in detail. We follow that with a full rundown of the opening weekend of Em's Outgrown tour in Queensland. Michael takes on the role of interviewer to get us all the behind the scenes goss, from the struggles to get it to the stage, to the amazing reception and support the Outgrown audiences have given Em at each show. Lastly, there's a bunch of campery to close things out as Em talks us through those steamy paparazzi pics of Theo James filming a fragrance commercial in a glorious white speedo. Then there's that footage of Kylie Minogue being carried on stage by two of our favourite gay actors, Jonathan Bailey and Andrew Scott. Then in our Sealed Section, on our premium service Emsolation Extra, Em and Michael ‘Okay, Stop!' the new music video ‘Woman's World' from Katy Perry. Sign up now to start listening or watching the Sealed Section at emsolation.supercast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Could subbing in multiple offices before starting your own be the key to clarity? In this episode, we're bringing on Dr. Lara Saleh, a seasoned dentist, to reveal some game-changing advice for aspiring practitioners. Lara shares her journey from working in various offices to finally opening her own practice, highlighting the invaluable lessons she learned along the way. She candidly discusses the protocols and strategies that have made her practice thrive, from managing financial challenges to implementing clear emergency protocols. This episode is packed with real-world insights that could make all the difference for anyone dreaming of establishing their own dental hub.Lara delves into the critical importance of working in multiple dental environments before taking the plunge to start your own practice. Recognizing what works and what doesn't has helped her shape a practice that not only meets her standards but also ensures patient safety and satisfaction. She pulls back the curtain on the must-have protocols and the potential pitfalls, including which stress-inducing sedation techniques to avoid and why hiring adaptable team members is crucial. With a focus on continual learning and adaptation, Lara's advice is both practical and inspiring for any dentist looking to elevate their career.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The benefits of working in multiple dental offices before starting your own practice.Key protocols to have in place for a successful practice.Financial challenges of running a dental practice and how to manage them.Non-negotiable practices that will ensure the smooth operation of your clinic.Effective team management strategies and the importance of hiring adaptable team members.Why continual learning and adapting to new systems keep your practice competitive.Tune in now to empower your career with Lara's expert advice!‍‍Sponsors:‍Oryx: an all-in-one cloud-based dental software created by dentists for dentists.Patient engagement, clinical, and practice management software that helps your dental practice grow without compromise. Visit Oryx today for a special TDM offer! (Just click or copy and paste the link here) https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/oryx/‍You can reach out to Dr. Lara Saleh here:Website: https://drtoothfairy.com/Email: lara@drtoothfairy.com‍Mentions and Links: Terms:Demerol‍If 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, Laura. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Lara: my one piece of advice for anyone who is thinking about opening their own practice. is if it's possible to do what I did. And I think it's a wonderful start of a career. If you want to do private practice is to take some time off, but not completely off.You'll be doing subbing or replacing doctors. Either because of an injury, or they go on maternity leave, or for any other reason, they just want to go on vacation, you just cover for them. So I did this exclusively for about 18 months before I opened my own practice, and that really opened my eyes to what I wanted to implement in my office, what were the non negotiable things that I wanted in my office, what I could compromise on, And the definite no no's. And I gained a lot of perspective by knowing what not to do in my office. And actually it set my priority list on what's really important and non negotiable all the way down to what's really a kind of forbidden to be done in my office. And that I do not want to go down that path.And that was. The best thing that I did throughout my career, because when you work in one office for a long period of time, you're an associate, you get sucked into that office and the policies of that office. I think I covered about, 21 offices in the whole state of Virginia, where I worked, I just got to see so many things that I never thought I would implement in my own office, or I didn't think it would have been, a good idea.But when I was there and practice in these offices, it turned out to be fantastic ideas that I would have never thought about had I not been in that situation in this office at that time. Michael: After the 18 months, did you feel ready?Were you like, okay, this is all I needed. I'm good to go on my own. Lara: Absolutely. I felt I'm ready to do everything that I needed to do clinically to open a practice. But also there's not a lot of transparency when you're actually visiting an office. There's not like that huge door that they would open for you to look at their finances and to look at billing issues.So that part, I just had to learn when I opened my own office because you learn it hands on, like the first time I saw an EUB is the first time I learned how to deal with an EUB. I've never seen one before until I opened my own office and that's how I learned it.Michael: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. And then what were some of the non negotiables or the no nos that you mentioned? Lara: most of it were protocols. That I did not want to implement those. Emergency protocols. really learned it the hard way in one of the offices you never think that it's going to happen to you, but it might happen to you.And the worst thing is not to be prepared for it. So even subbing at those offices, I had it in my contract that I had to look at their emergency protocol before actually going into that office and making sure that. Their emergency kit is up to date and well stocked. Michael: Gotcha. So emergency protocols and you immediately implemented that into your absolutely now.Lara: Yes. Michael: Okay. And then what were some things that you watched that you said, I would never want to do this. I thought I did, but I would never want to do this with my team or my practice. Yeah. Lara: Honestly, oral sedations. my training program was very heavy on oral sedation. some of the practices wanted me to do.To sedation at a time and then sedation fell out of favor, but some offices still were heavily sedating kids some of the offices would advise you to use their protocol, which might be something that you're not trained to use, like Demerol. I was not trained to use Demerol. they had good record with Demerol. my stress level was much higher with sedations. And I knew that right there. And then when I wanted to open my own office, keep in mind that I opened my office after 10 years of practicing. So I've had a lot of experience experience and I saw a lot of things and I was okay doing sedation the way I learned how to do it.But once I started seeing how these sedations are and how little control you have after the sedation for monitoring, I decided that is something that I do not want to do in my office. Michael: So do you get a lot of parents who ask? Lara: Actually some parents don't really know the difference between nitrous, mild sedation, moderate and deep sedation.So there's a lot of people who don't know, so kind educating them. And I do refer some cases to other providers who do them. It's just I learned to be true to my comfort level and to listen to myself. If I'm not 100 percent comfortable with a procedure, I'm not doing it. And I learned that from, age and just stress levels.I don't want to be stressed for the rest of the day or for two days after my sedation. Michael: you ever feel Laura, like the ones that you feel super stressed or not comfortable, do you think okay, you know what, I'm gonna get there. I want to get there. I'm going to get some training. Or you're just like, Nope, that's just not how my practice runs.That's not how we are. Lara: After 10 years, I kind of learned, what really stresses me out. I just want to avoid it. let's say it's an advancement in pediatric dentistry, I definitely want to learn about it. So if it's something that we were not heavy on in my residency, I would want to learn about it.But sedation, I had, a lot of training on it. And we were super competent doing sedations. We did this every morning in our residency. So every morning we started with a sedation three days a week. So we're super, super comfortable doing the sedation. It's just my stress level was high after doing them that I decided I do not want this chronic stress, even if it's not super high stress, chronic low stress, I feel is very detrimental for your health, your mental health, your physical health, and for everybody around you. Michael: Yeah, no, a thousand percent. So then You worked at 21, that's a lot, 21 Lara: Sometimes it was just an afternoon.So it still counts, but it was just an afternoon. But it was quick in and out. It would be an emergency. They'll call me and can you come in this afternoon and I'll show up for the afternoon. Michael: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So the 21 offices that you worked at, which were the things that you saw when it came to systems that they implemented?Were a good idea or were not a good idea, but it turned out to be fantastic to you in your eyes. Lara: Some of the systems that I thought were a great idea are system implemented by someone on site. There was that office manager that she ran this office.lovingly being respectful to everybody and in an emergency situation, you have the team leader, you have everybody knowing their roles, things just fell into place. And the day went by so well. Another thing is an office manager that was super tight with the owner, I feel like everybody liked that nonchalant, but nobody knew what they were doing. So instead of doing your job, a hundred percent, everybody was getting by, by doing 50 percent and people just getting confused, who does what and when should it be done? So I feel like these kind of situation I wanted to avoid.Michael: All the confusion and everything like that. So be more specific. Lara: Yeah. having like a role for everybody and a very well defined role. So these are your responsibility. And it's kind of hard sometimes when you're a startup, cause you really don't, know everything.And then you start making lists. And that's what I did. I started making lists and start as I go adding on to these lists of responsibilities, but it's so well defined that people have their boundaries and also like, this is what's expected of you and.this is the outcome that I want. So you can do everything that is expected of you, but not have the outcome that you want. That means maybe you didn't give them enough training on it, there's something that needs to be fixed within those boundaries that you've set.Michael: I like that. So then whenever you're making this list and you add new technology, new practice management software or something. Do you put it on there like, I expect you guys to get it, to know it, or do they sometimes say like, I don't like this practice management software, it's not working with us, Lara: some people express this pleasure with some things. It's just cause you're adding things on their plate. But I was very clear that I am learning with them. So as I learn more things, they need to keep up with me. And that's how we're a team. If I'm just learning, that means everything is falling on me.That's not teamwork. So as I learn and every CE that I go, I try to take at least one or two people with me, even though it will not be super beneficial for the dental assistant to come to a trauma. for me, it's just keeping that teamwork. If I learn something, I want them to learn with me.If I evolve, I want them to evolve with me. And that's how I think the best thing for a team is to evolve together. So we have actually blocked time on our schedule when you're a startup, you have a lot of time, but I do block time for us to go through pediatric dentistry articles and I have also blocked time to go through our software.everybody needs to know how to schedule an appointment, how to cancel an appointment, how to collect payment. Everyone in the office, no matter what their role is, everybody needs bare minimum. And then with our current software, we have a lot of evolution in it. And requests, so they keep adding stuff to the software and we block time to actually go through every additional feature, whether we use it or not, it's going to be determined later, but we all go through it together.Michael: I like that. And then the software you guys use is what right now Lara: is Oryx cloud based. Michael: Gotcha. Is there a reason why you guys went with cloud based? Lara: I think this is the future of everything having your software, your radiographs, everything in the palm of your hand, anywhere you go was just a non brainer for us and not having a server and depending on backing up those servers was just I feel like it's a dinosaur age to have anything that is not completely cloud based. Michael: Okay. I like that. So then any final pieces of advice that you would like to give to our listeners? Lara: If you're thinking about opening your own practice. Open it with the mindset of the future.if you're going to hire somebody, hire them thinking that they need to be open to all the newer technologies that you want to implement. Do not hire someone who's so attached to their previous, say software, or do not hire someone who's attached to their previous practices who are not open to learning new things. Most of my hires have no dental experience. And it worked out great for me. Michael: Wow. That's fantastic. If anyone had any questions or concerns, where can they reach out to you? Lara: They can reach out to me at my first name, Laura at Dr. Tooth Fairy, which is the name of my practice. Laura at drtoothfairy. com. Michael: Nice.Awesome. Laura, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it. And thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Lara: Thank you for having me.‍

We all love when our peers agree with us online, but could this be hurting our mindset and creativity? In this episode, I sit down with Jennifer Pearce to explore the perils of groupthink and the profound impact of mindset on success in the dental industry. We dive deep into how maintaining a healthy, critical approach is crucial for dentists, especially when transitioning from larger DSOs to private practice. Jennifer passionately discusses the dangers of groupthink, revealing how it can obstruct innovation and stunt personal growth.Through examples and insights from her coaching experience, Jennifer sheds light on the necessity of evolving one's mindset. Whether you're just starting in the field or looking to make a significant career change, this episode is packed with practical advice and thought-provoking ideas. Tune in to discover how critical thinking and self-awareness can become your greatest assets in navigating the complexities of a dental career.What You'll Learn in This Episode:What is groupthink, and how does it affect personal and professional growth?Why mindset is critical for success in dentistry, especially in private practice.How to transition from working in DSOs to establishing a private practice.The importance of critical thinking and self-awareness in overcoming industry challenges.Real-life examples and insights from Jennifer's coaching experiences.Practical tips for evolving your mindset at different stages of your dental career.Strategies to maintain an independent and creative approach in a collaborative environment.How to identify when you're falling into the groupthink trap.Let's get into our episode with Jennifer Pearce today and learn how to steer clear of groupthink!‍‍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 Jennifer Pearce here:Website: https://prosperitydentalsolutions.com/Email: jennifer@prosperitydentalsolutions.com‍Mentions and Links: Terms:Groupthink‍People:Travis Kelce‍Events:Super Bowl‍Football Teams:Dallas CowboysKansas City Chiefs‍Insurance Companies:MetLife‍Companies/Brands:American Airlines‍‍If 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, Jennifer. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Jennifer: Good morning. Um, the first thing I would like to say is group think is a powerful thing. It's also can be a very harmful thing and your mindset is pivotal. But how you establish that mindset is more pivotal, and this is why I bring up the subject of groupthink. Michael: Okay, so groupthink, and then you, one thing you mentioned is how you establish your mindset. First and foremost, how do we establish a good mindset? And what would be good? Jennifer: I don't think that you wake up one morning and say, I'm going to get a good mindset. I think it's an accumulation of experience. things that you do right, things that you do wrong.We all tend to learn more from things we do wrong. But I do feel that it needs to be, um, critical as to what you're trying to accomplish. Because. What I see a lot of today, and this is why I talk about groupthink, is, oh, I'm experiencing this. Let me go on social media or Google and Google what I'm facing and see what other people say or think about.current conundrum, problem, or whatever. And so when you're a dentist and you're raised in the critical thinking, genre in your schooling, that's great. But sometimes I feel like the critical thinking or the awareness of the mindset thinking gets a little bit muddy when we're looking for a solution to a problem.So this might seem a little like a vague answer and I don't mean it to be, but mindset is. It's not something you wake up one morning and say, okay, I'm going to do a through Z. And then I'm going to have a good mindset. It has tributaries. It has things that take you off of stream. And then you come back onto the stream and being in the ebbs and flows of your mindset, awareness, and growing sometimes for dentists being highly technical thinkers, this gets scary, muddy, um, overwhelming And that's part of it, too. It's part of the process. So I think mindset a little bit is an overused word or a misunderstood word, but your mindset and how to fix your business is pivotal. So let me give you an example, if I may. Michael: Yes. Jennifer: So when you're a new practitioner, you've decided I've come out of school and I'm going to go work at a DSO and I'm going to get some skills, whether it be becoming faster at your skills.better at your skills, whatever. your mindset at that time is knowledge acquisition, time inefficiency, learning how to be with a team, what you need from the team, those kinds of things. I coach some people, some doctors who have come DSO environment, go into a private environment, and it's not the same they've evolved.What they expect from their team could be different and they haven't done enough work on their mindset. They've mainly worked on their technical skill sets. So there's technical prowess, there's a mindset, and there's leadership. And all of these are pivotal pieces to your practice growth.If you decide to have one or your own, clinical growth. If you decide not to have a practice and be within a DSO environment. could be DSO. It could be ideas. So it could be a number of things. I use DSO. It's a very broad term for private. Versus corporate versus anything you do not own. Okay.So a lot of the doctors don't realize they have been put into a mindset and leadership, path or story. And sometimes they're not aware of that's what's happening. And they adopt some of that as their own. So this is where I say your mindset is very important because it's almost like you've been kind of in a cult and you may not know it.And then you come out of the cold and you decide I'm going to open a practice or I'm going to do this. Your mindset has to be your path. Your mindset has to be where you take it. It becomes your vision. It becomes your, your style of business. I often say with mindset, I'm from Texas, so pardon my frankness, but if you do not choose your saddle, your saddle will choose you.Michael: And it may not be a good saddle for you. So people choose to go into different business models within dentistry for whatever reason. There's, so many reasons we can give for why people choose. But. the mindset that got you there when you choose whatever you choose. And then the mindset that takes you along your career, five years, 10 years, 15 years in has to evolve because what got you the first five years won't get you to the next five years.Jennifer: What got you through the first 10 years may not get you through the next 10 years. Um, because I probably am not telling anybody anything they don't know, but we are in what I consider to tonic shifts in dentistry. which I've been in for 30 years. So over the last, I would say 12 years, I've seen tectonic shifts, whether it be from technical disruptions, team disruptions, COVID, you know, incidents, which has changed us all.So, mindset is something that has to always be, brought to awareness and, challenged with inquisition of what you really want, not just challenging, just to challenge. Yeah. Michael: Yeah. Cause I feel like, well, then let me know, Jennifer, when it comes to mindset, let's just say we come out of a DSO.This happens a lot, right? We come out of a DSO, we enter into a private practice, then we start liking the private practice. Oh my God, the doctor was amazing. I love the way she works and everything, but it's time for me to open up my own practice. Right. And so they open it up. They take systems from the private practice.They take some things they like from the DSO, but they hated it. They're like, I hated the, the non. You know, we were like a drill and fill and get out kind of thing. Right. And so where is it with the doctor who's opening up the practice where they're like, all of this is mine, my mindset, or is it okay enough for us to kind of take pieces of stuff that we like and things like that.But maybe later on, we never questioned it. And then we're like, I never really liked that. I, it just worked to make money kind of thing. And I guess. Jennifer: It's called the status quo. I coached two practitioners right now that did just that. They were very successful in a DSM environment.And so yes, event, they knew eventually they were going to have their own. That's no big secret. It's something that happens, right? But they love the, the systemization. Yes. Of what they had at the DSO. And they were then in this illusion and bubble of what the DSO had created as far as the continuity of how things went, whatever leadership had been established.They may have liked pieces of the leadership as a doctor, but not the other pieces. Michael: You Jennifer: know, there's so many little intricacies to this conversation about that, but they never realize. The stress. The amount of personal time everything's going to take till they buy it. And then, uh, one that I have been coaching now for a year and a half, but unbeknownst to her, a dumpster fire, she did not know what she bought because.A lawyer told her it was okay and a broker told her it was okay, but she never really looked the business itself and in got in the practice management software and all those kinds of things. So, and many times she has said to me, I was really good at this and a DSO environment, but in this environment, it's completely different.And I said, so yeah, we've got to work on. Your mindset towards now that you own it, your leadership style. Now that you own it, which systems did you like? Which systems did you not like? Let's make this saddle fit your ass. you now own the saddle, you own the horse, you own it all. and they just don't realize it's like anything else.None of us realize till we jump into something. And then we're like, wow, I can't swim this fast or chew this fast. What do I do? How do I get it? Right. And I think the hard thing for all this is then we're talking to somebody who now has a husband or a wife. and children and life and those things may not have been part of the stressors to begin with, right?So your mindset towards what gets your attention at what times and then focusing that attention, um, cause usually dentists, as you know, and it's no big secret that they're technical. they're the technical tinkers. They want to work with their hands and all that stuff. So. Michael: Interesting.Okay. So internet show group think Jennifer: yeah Michael: is powerful. You said, but horrible sometimes. Jennifer: Yes Michael: In the sense of when can it start becoming horrible for someone? Jennifer: So I'll see something being said. let's just talk about, you know, on Facebook because it's something everybody understands, right? And you'll be in a group and there'll be, you know, a doctor will state something and then 60, 70, 500 comments come along with other doctors and it's.Same, same, same, same, same. Michael: Yeah. Jennifer: So, one of the things that I really work individually with people on is standing in your rightness. R I G H T N E S S. But when you get a hundred things of agree, agree, agree, agree, and you realize there's, there could be some nuances to that answer, not judgment or this is wrong, whatever.Um, you realize they're all group. Think group. Think feels comfortable group. Things feels vindicating group. Think feels, Oh, I must be right. If I can just get everybody else to listen to me. My pain will stop and no, you're all actually maybe only a skosh wrong, but you're wrong, you know, in how maybe you're leading or how you're trying to get something to be accomplished or whatever, which then over time leads to status quo, where they just.Pull back. And they just say, this is too hard. I pay my team. They're doing okay. We're doing okay. I want to be with my wife and children or my husband and my children. This is okay. This is enough. This is, this is what dentistry was for a very long time. You know, it was a cottage industry business. and the dentist would show up to do his or her work, tinker.Michael: Yeah. Jennifer: They'll go home. Now we have more entrepreneurial based dentists. We have more competition. We have the insurance derivatives. DSOs, you know, different models. And so it's like a pressure cooker now. And I think the pressure cooker. gives groupthink a place to go and kind of hang out for a minute and yeah, yeah, yeah. So funny share. Okay. Michael: Yeah. Jennifer: I love football. I'm from Texas. I'm a football girl. If I could buy the Dallas Cowboys and flip that team, I would. Okay. So watching the super bowl, most people tend to watch the super bowl. So it tends to be a good bonding discussion. And Travis. Kelsey, and his coach with the, Kansas city chiefs, you know, they were having a moment. They were having an intense, passionate moment with a top performing athlete. Okay. Did the coach get all reactionary and bench him because he was like misbehaving or speaking inappropriately to the coach at the moment?No, that coach has been around a while. That coach just looked at him and he heard him. But is that the time to punish him, get into it or whatever? No, he let, he let him have his moment and they went on to win in the celebration of the super bowl, what were that coach and player doing, loving on each other, high fiving.They just made a ton of money. And one of the group things I saw in one of the chats on Facebook was he was disrespectful, he should have been benched. He should have been this. Very much standing in rightness at the end of the day, that coach was very wise with a very talented person. Let him have his moment, let him blow some steam and then let him ride, let him fly, let him get out there and do what he needs to do.And I think sometimes this is what I see in group thing in dentistry, killing a little bit of our ingenuity, our creation within our team, our advancement. Really crucial talent in our teams. So sometimes the doctor's like, well, they did this and I'm going to, you know, and I'm like, Hmm, that person closed 500, 000 in your books last year.Is this a battle or is this a war? Cause you're making it a ward. It might just be a battle we might just let this one go. So this is mindset. This is mindset. And you can tell how much I love this. I'm very passionate about it. I can go on, about it because I think in dentistry, one of the most, the biggest blessings I had is my clinicians that I worked for, male, female.I've, I've had both that I've worked for as an employee. Michael: Mm-Hmm. . Jennifer: they empowered me. They let me take my passion. They let me. You know, grow and do things. And they allowed me also to challenge their mindset at times about how they were thinking about something. the first one happened very young in my career when my dentist wanted to get in network with MetLife, we were completely fee for service practice, like literally the patient came and got a crown, they gave us a check.We gave them a super bill to melt to their insurance. And he says, we, we need to go in network with MetLife. And I said, tell me what that means. Not a clue. Michael: Yeah. Jennifer: We were right down the street from American Airlines hub at DFW Airport. We had pilots, we had flight attendants, we had baggage throwers, and he said, well, we can get more patients.And I said, we have three operatories. We're booked out six months. in hygiene right now because we have one hygienist. look at the fee schedule. So I looked at it and I said, you want us to take a 40 percent decrease in our pay. You want us to see more patients. We don't have capacity. Why would we do this? He said, they're going to leave us. Who told you this? Mindset. Michael: Mm hmm. That's why. Gotcha. That's nice. That's nice, Jennifer. Awesome. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure. If anyone had further questions or concerns, where can they reach out to Jennifer: you? You can find me at Prosperity Dental Solutions.That is my website. Um, my email is jennifer at prosperity dental solutions. I'm reachable through there. That's probably the easiest way to get ahold of me. Michael: Okay. Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below. And Jennifer, thank you so much for being with us on this Monday morning episode.Jennifer: Thank you for having me.‍

Have you heard claims like "less than 1% of dental practices fail"? Today we're exploring how that may not be the case! In this episode, I'm sitting down with Ali Oromchian to debunk common myths about the failure rates of practices and uncover the essential strategies that can help you mitigate risks in this challenging field. From the critical importance of due diligence when acquiring a practice to the necessity of robust HR practices, we delve into the nitty-gritty details that can make or break your career. Ali's insights are not just theoretical; they are drawn from real-world experiences and seasoned legal advice.As we navigate through this discussion, Ali emphasizes the transformative power of creating a positive work environment to attract and retain top talent. You'll learn the subtleties of maintaining compliance with ever-evolving legal requirements and avoiding common HR missteps that many practice owners fall victim to. Whether you're just starting or looking to optimize your existing practice, this episode is packed with actionable advice that can help elevate your practice to the next level. Stay tuned until the end to find out how you can get in touch with Ali for personalized guidance and support.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why the "low failure rate" of dental practices could be a misconception.Key strategies to minimize risks as a practice owner.The importance of thorough due diligence when buying a dental practice.How to establish solid HR practices and stay compliant with legal requirements.The vital role of creating a positive work environment in recruiting top talent.Common HR pitfalls and how to avoid them.Let's learn how to minimize risk and maximize peace of mind in our practices today with, Ali Oromchian!‍‍You can reach out to Ali Oromchian here:HR for Health Website: https://www.hrforhealth.com/ (Don't forget to mention the podcast sent you!)Ali's Website: https://www.dmcounsel.com/Phone: 925-999-8200‍Mentions and Links: Software/Tools:IndeedMonster.comCraigslist‍‍If 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 Ali, so talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning. Ali: All right, Michael, thanks for inviting me on here. You know, I'll tell you, you know, business owners, whenever you talk to these lenders, they always throw this statistic out at you. They say.You know, less than 1 percent of all dental practices, you know, fail. and they, they always throw that out there because they're excited to want you to kind of be energetic And, empower to start your own practice, um, or to buy a practice. but the reality is, is that it's really not 1 percent or less than 1%. you know, there may be very few practices that don't do well, But a lot of people suffer, right? A lot of people suffer. you know, the way to avoid suffering, the way to make the practice ownership kind of process, um, exciting and fulfilling is to limit and minimize your exposure to risk.Right? and so, with that, you know, if you're buying a practice, making sure you're doing all of your due diligence, right? you know, making sure you're looking at. you know, the patient, you know, charts, you know, looking at all the financials, looking at everything that you need to look at from a legal perspective to make sure that you're actually buying what you're buying.if you're doing a startup, you know, making sure that you have a lawyer or someone looking at your leases and making sure that's done well. Um, and then finally, I would say, you know, making sure in either scenario that you have your HR house in order, that you are hiring your employees correctly, you're giving them lunches and breaks when you're supposed to you're giving them overtime when you're supposed to doing all those things that you're supposed to do, you're actually doing from a legal perspective.And, And I think if you do those things, your risks will be minimized, and then you can not suffer. Right. And so, you know, it's a little bit unpopular, but people, people are like, Oh my gosh, less than 1 percent of dentists fail. So let's all go do it. And it's like, yeah, everybody should be in, you know, a practice owner.Absolutely. But I want to prevent you from suffering. Right. And the suffering is when You know, you don't do the right marketing, you don't have the legal, components done well, and then, and then over time you struggle and you grow not as fast as you should, you get sued, you know, you get all those things happen and, that can really impact your happiness and your drive to continue growing the practice and, uh, and, and that's one of the things, Michael, that's been my mission throughout my career has been to help young doctors get empowered to become practice owners.But doing it in a way where their risks are minimized so that they don't have those exposures long term. Michael: Got you. Okay. I like that. So one thing you mentioned is, which we appreciate that, right, the preventing the suffering, right? Because it is true. You can say you're not going to fail, but is it worth the, you know what I mean?All that, man, we've been suffering for like 20 years, 15, 10, five, right? But you mentioned have your house in order. And I know something right now, and maybe you've been seeing this, Ali, where it's like It's hard to maintain or retain those great employees sometimes and then sometimes it's even just hard to find Ali: yeah Michael: team members So what are your thoughts like on that when it comes to suffering in that sense?Ali: Yeah. Oh my gosh I'm, so glad you asked about this because this is like one of those areas that we get so many questions about here's the thing i'll tell you the number one recruiting tool hands down year over year over year Is not indeed. It's not monster. com.It's not Craig's list. It's none of those things. The number one recruiting tool for finding really good employees is your current team, Because guess what? They're going around saying to people. Yeah, because they have friends who are RDAs, DAs, hygienists, you know, whatnot and they're going to them and saying, you know what, I love where I work, you know, you know, my doctor does this and my doctor does that and, and we have so much flexibility in this regard where I get these benefits and then their friends want to join the practice, right?So I always say, It's really important from a recruitment perspective that you create an atmosphere that people want to come and the best way for people to come is by the current team recruiting them in, you know, inviting their friends. And so I always say, talk to your team and say, Hey, if you know anybody that's good, that's looking to change, please invite them in for an interview and whatnot.And you'll be surprised how many people do that if it's a good environment. If it's not a good environment, then they won't. Right. They don't want to do that. They won't invite people to come in and interview and whatnot. So, so I would say from a recruitment perspective, I would focus on that. from a legal perspective, I think, uh, you know, making sure you've got all the basic documents that you need when you're hiring everybody.Uh, you know, making sure you have an employment manual and things of that nature. I think those basics that companies like HR for health provide, I think are, great. You know, and if you do that. then that suffering goes down because the chance of a lawsuit also goes down dramatically. Michael: Well, that's interesting.Where do people normally, in your experience, drop the ball when it comes to the basics? Ali: I think they rely on companies that they shouldn't rely on for their HR. Like, for example, a lot of people will Rely on their payroll company to provide them HR documents. Well, the payroll company is a payroll company, they're going to provide you the basic documents they need for running payroll They're not an HR company, right? So so I think I think that's the first Um, the second is not having an employment manual that's up to date, and I think you know, especially with all the rule changes since covid it's super important to You To have an updated employment manual.Um, and then the third is what's called wage and hour and wage. An hour is something that's a problem nationwide because it's about paying people correctly for overtime, giving lunches at the right time of the day. Giving breaks when you're supposed to, making sure the paychecks are correct, you know, all the, things around the financial side of, payroll, um, that people make mistakes on.So, I think if you do those three things, and you do them well, you're well on your way. Michael: Ali: for health from a HR perspective. We'll make sure your hands down compliant from A to Z a hundred percent. Michael: Okay. Wow. That's amazing, man. I know you guys have a software too.Is that true? Ali: so HR4L is a SaaS based software, so it's all online, you know, the employees, you know, clock in and clock out, they sign things electronically, so everything's very sort of streamlined. Michael: Do you guys ever, if I needed like a person, you know what I mean? Like, can I need a consultant to talk about this type of like compliancy or something's happening a unique situation, right?Do you guys have that too? Ali: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, we have a unlimited hr support actually, where they can be on the phone Uh with some one of our you know, hr experts at any time of the day Uh, really all day long, um and as many times as they need if for some reason they can't answer it then it goes one level higher to lawyers And depending on where they are in the country, they'll either be talking to, you know, our firm and someone like me or a friendly firm that does a lot of HR.but either way, you know, we take care. Michael: Yeah. Cause I know that's super important, Ali. I feel like sometimes maybe you might've seen this. We ask questions like on a forum, right? Like dental town or Facebook groups and things like that. Yeah. And people give their advice and opinions, but it's a different state.Right. Different rules, different things. And so like maternity leave, right. Or when it comes to, I don't know, like, depending on should we pay them for, lunch and learn, right. Kind of things like that. And so do you see that a lot? Ali: I do. Yeah. People, I like to think that people are good intention, Michael.And so when they go on these, uh, blogs and whatnot, whether it's Facebook groups or it's, uh, you know, like using like dental town or other things that they contribute. Because they want to be helpful, right? And they're using their own base of knowledge, but you hit it on the head. I mean, I can't tell you how many times somebody has given advice to someone else without even knowing what state they're in, you know, and if you don't know what state they're in, then you, how can you advise on any of these rules? But what people are doing is they're giving their own personal advice based on their experience, which may not be right. And what's scary is we see it sometimes where somebody takes that advice, And does something with it and then they get in trouble because it was the wrong advice, you know, and this, this happened actually recently where, you know, a young doctor coming out of school on the practice for a few years and, uh, hadn't been paying their, uh, assistance minimum wage.They weren't paying the minimum wage in the state that they were in. Why? Because they had gone on one of these groups and asked the question and the person replied with the minimum wage in their state, not in this person's state. and what's even worse, and you'll, you'll laugh at this. The payroll company that was running their payroll didn't even tell them, right? Wouldn't you think, Michael, that if you're using a payroll service and you're paying someone below state law in terms of minimum wage, they would tell you what that is? I mean, it's just like crazy. And they didn't, they didn't. And of course, You know, the employees got upset, and, uh, when they found out and it's funny because they went like almost a year, almost a whole year, like nine months without saying a word.And then that January, the law changed and, the minimum wage increased. And then the employees saw it in the news and they were like, Wait a second, like I'm being paid 14. 25. It says minimum wage went up to 16 from 15 like something like what the hell just happened, you know? Yeah, yeah.And so, so like it was a disaster, but that's what I mean by, you know, payroll companies are not HR companies. And there's so many ways of, doing this wrong. And, and remember what we were talking about in the beginning about suffering, like how bad does that doctor feel? Yeah. Right. Right. It's not like, I mean, you know, you work with doctors all the time.They're not trying to steal from employees. They're not trying to not pay them the minimum of what they, but they just make mistakes and like, it's just, you know, that's the suffering that I want to avoid. Michael: Yeah, that you want doctors to avoid. Awesome. Holly. I appreciate your time. If anyone has further questions or concerns, where can they find you?Ali: you can just go to our website if you'd like. It's, uh, d m council. com C O U N S E L. Uh, or you can call the office at 9 Um, and of course, if you just Google my name, you know, I'm everywhere. And so you guys can find me there so Michael: awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below. If you guys want to.Go in the show notes below and check out and ask and pick Ollie's brain a little bit more. Right? Ask him any questions or concerns about this. So awesome, Ollie. Thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Ali: Thanks, Michael. I appreciate it.‍

Welcome to Michael's petty era, he's come in raging over an article asserting that Season 3 of his hit TV series ‘The Newsreader. Rumours that the series is wrapping up because his cast don't wanna do it anymore are false, and the truth is he never planned to go beyond a third season ever. Cut to Michael calling the article's creators to have it adjusted (something Em was never able to do when fake articles about her came out) and much discussion of who cares, who's show gets better numbers, and assurances we won't be cutting anything Michael says out (which we didn't). Then it's onto the biggest mistake in Em's life, jumping in on a Craft Market stall with comedian Lizzy Hoo to sell a bunch of clothes and shoes. Em went in hard, we're talking swings tags, paper bags, classy coat hangers, clothing racks, full outfit washes and Em's mum Jenni stepping in to help organise and run the market stall too. It is a LOT and Em will never be doing it again. Finally there's the shocking news that Jennifer Lopez emailed Em to tell her that she was cancelling her ‘This Is Me…Now Live' tour, plus there's the latest attempts to prove her and Ben Affleck are still very much in love and all is fine in Bennifer land to check in on too. Plus there's much gushing when they both discuss the new doco based on the creator of The Muppets, Fraggle Rock, The Labyrinth and so much more, ‘Jim Henson Idea Man'. In our Sealed Section, on our premium service Emsolation Extra, Em and Michael ‘Okay, Stop!' the viral TikTok of comedian Giorgia Godworth vox popping the one and only Baz Luhrmann, whilst having zero idea she was chatting to someone so famous. Sign up now to start listening & watching the Sealed Section at emsolation.supercast.com.

Welcome to Michael's petty era, he's come in raging over an article asserting that Season 3 of his hit TV series ‘The Newsreader. Rumours that the series is wrapping up because his cast don't wanna do it anymore are false, and the truth is he never planned to go beyond a third season ever. Cut to Michael calling the article's creators to have it adjusted (something Em was never able to do when fake articles about her came out) and much discussion of who cares, who's show gets better numbers, and assurances we won't be cutting anything Michael says out (which we didn't). Then it's onto the biggest mistake in Em's life, jumping in on a Craft Market stall with comedian Lizzy Hoo to sell a bunch of clothes and shoes. Em went in hard, we're talking swings tags, paper bags, classy coat hangers, clothing racks, full outfit washes and Em's mum Jenni stepping in to help organise and run the market stall too. It is a LOT and Em will never be doing it again. Finally there's the shocking news that Jennifer Lopez emailed Em to tell her that she was cancelling her ‘This Is Me…Now Live' tour, plus there's the latest attempts to prove her and Ben Affleck are still very much in love and all is fine in Bennifer land to check in on too. Plus there's much gushing when they both discuss the new doco based on the creator of The Muppets, Fraggle Rock, The Labyrinth and so much more, ‘Jim Henson Idea Man'. In our Sealed Section, on our premium service Emsolation Extra, Em and Michael ‘Okay, Stop!' the viral TikTok of comedian Georgia Godworth vox popping the one and only Baz Luhrmann, whilst having zero idea she was chatting to someone so famous. Sign up now to start listening & watching the Sealed Section at emsolation.supercast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever considered how vulnerable your practice might be to a cyberattack? In this episode, Reuben and I delve into the alarming issue of cybersecurity threats targeting the dental industry. With recent warnings from the FBI about credible threats, it's clear that dental practices need to take cybersecurity seriously. We explore the potential consequences of these threats, the crucial need for comprehensive security awareness training for staff members, and essential steps to prevent email-based attacks.The conversation goes in-depth into why using Microsoft 365 for enhanced email security is a game-changer for dental offices. Reuben also discuss the importance of working with IT experts to set up robust cybersecurity measures. Whether you're a dental professional or someone concerned about the security of sensitive patient information, this episode offers loads of practical advice. Don't miss out on this vital information that could protect your practice from devastating cyber attacks.What You'll Learn in This Episode:What are the credible cybersecurity threats currently targeting dental practices?Why is security awareness training crucial for dental office staff?What steps you can take to prevent email-based threatsHow Microsoft 365 can enhance your dental practice's email securityWhy should dental practices consider consulting IT companies for cybersecurity solutions?Take action today to secure your dental practice's email communications and protect sensitive patient information!‍‍Sponsors:For DSO integrations, startup solutions, and all your dental IT needs, let our sponsors, Darkhorse Tech, help out so you can focus on providing the amazing care that you do. For 1 month of FREE service, visit their link today! https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/darkhorse-deal/‍You can reach out to Reuben Kamp here:Website: https://www.darkhorsetech.com/Email: sales@darkhorsetech.comPhone: 800-868-4504Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DarkhorseTech‍Mentions and Links: Businesses/Services:Henry ScheinAspen Dental‍Organizations:HIPAAFBIChange HealthcareUnitedHealthcare‍Software/Tools:DentrixEaglesoftOpen DentalChatGPTOutlookMicrosoft 365G Suite‍People:Bill Gates‍If 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, Ruben. So talk to us. What's happening right now for this Monday morning episode, we're going to be talking about something specific when it comes to security, Michael: What's going on? Reuben: Emergency pod. First of all, emergency pod, Michael. Michael: All Reuben: right. You know, those, uh, Reuben: those sirens Instagram are overused, but in this case it Reuben: does apply. FBI warns of credible cybersecurity threats of the dental industry. that's why we're talking today. Michael: Okay. So what's happening. This happened. One of the articles we're looking at is on may 8th, so Michael: like not less than a week ago, less than a week, a couple of days ago, something's going on specifically with this cyber security threat. To all Michael: dental practices everywhere in the nation or Reuben: yeah, so it is morphed into that over the last few days. So basically, uh, the FBI was monitoring, uh, a hacking group, Reuben: connected to change healthcare, connected to United Healthcare, connected to Henry Schein, connected to Aspen. You know, all these groups have obviously made the Reuben: headlines in the last uh, year or so uh, change healthcare, obviously being uh, most recent, Reuben: they were actually investigating a threat because they were attacking the plastics. Surgery market. And Reuben: then they shifted their focus to Reuben: oral surgery. And that's kind of, that was the, the Reuben: splashy update from last week, right? Reuben: May 6th, May 8th. And now the FBI uh, FBI is Reuben: basically saying general dentistry is now being targeted as well. So, Reuben: See, it went from outside the dental industry to a dental, you know, specialty. And now to the majority of dental practices out there are you Uh, actively being targeted. Michael: So then a couple of things, I mean, we Michael: obviously want to know what to look out for, but what's the consequences here? Michael: If let's just say. We did end up accidentally doing something that we weren't supposed to do, like Michael: opening up an email or clicking specific Michael: link, you know, stuff we don't really know. Reuben: Yeah. Let's all the way to the end is you're bankrupting of practice, right? We Reuben: go back one step that is, you know, uh, the Reuben: overwhelming majority of practices that suffer a cybersecurity attack go out of business. All right. So we're starting at the end, we're working backwards. So that, that means. you, Or if you are a doctor or a staff member, you Reuben: clicked on a staff member, clicked on it. an email, a link that downloaded a payload to your office, right? Ransomware is, is most of what we're talking about here. Reuben: And that ransomware, let's say you're running Dentrix or Eagle software, open dental, one of these, uh, you know, server based practice management Reuben: softwares, that ransomware was able to embed itself into your practice management software, right? Patient health information, Reuben: uh, x rays, uh, social security numbers, medical history. You know, all the stuff that we call protected health information or EPHI electronic protected health and Reuben: they get that data and they exfiltrate it or take it out of the office, that is a Reuben: breach, which then feeds me into most practices that go through a breach, go out of business, and then you're, you're no longer an owner of a practice, you're an associated at another practice. I guess that is actually the last step. And that Reuben: is why this is so important is because Reuben: it's so darn easy to protect yourself from this Reuben: happening. But only 6 percent of the dental offices out there are HIPAA compliant. So hackers go, wow, we have a 94 percent Reuben: chance of getting into this office. Thank God. But, and that's why, Reuben: Honestly, it's like Dennis and the, the only really industry Reuben: less compliant the dentistry, Reuben: you guys can make fun of them is chiropractors. Reuben: So, Hey, those are the industries that, that are go after because of the lowest hanging fruit. if you Reuben: have dogs at your house, and Michael, you know, Reuben: I have, you know, 10, 000 dogs that live with me, Reuben: a robber does not want to come rob my house, because they're going to be attacked by a bunch of dogs. they want to attack the house. That the owners are on vacation, there's no animals, it's dark, you know, they Reuben: are opportunistic just like any other profession. So Reuben: that is why they're going after the dental industry specifically. Michael: Gotcha. Something you mentioned, man, where you said staff members click on it. I think the most common Michael: thing. I mean, one of the practices I worked at the actual doctor clicked on it and Michael: ended up paying. But like with, when it comes to the staff members. Do they need to receive specific training for this? Or Reuben: yeah, we call it security awareness training or SAT for short. Uh, not to be confused with the test Reuben: that is, it is coming back now. turns out it's a great predictor. If you're going to be okay at college, Reuben: um, I digress. So basically security awareness training trains your staff. who, You Reuben: know, you got to give to them. They're Reuben: busy. They're your phone calls. There's patients in front of them. They're scheduling, their billing, they're checking people out. There's Reuben: a lot going on. So you kind of have to, you know, if they do have an email come through Reuben: and it looks like it's from UPS, or it looks like it's, you know, from a Reuben: credible source and they don't, they don't have their guard up and they click Reuben: on it. It's Reuben: really hard to come down Reuben: on that person right? Reuben: You're expecting a lot out of them. And, and, and also, you know, be, have your, you know, your hat on your cyber Reuben: hat on and be vigilant at all times for through. So it's really important that you set up like. Let's not do a free Gmail account, right? That Reuben: has no security protection. Reuben: It's really important that you have an email system. I recommend Microsoft Reuben: 365 for all businesses that will stop those emails from coming in to begin with, because it never made it through Reuben: the spam filter. Right. Uh, the phishing filter. Reuben: So what's it worth that your staff. Doesn't even have to see that email that's worth a lot, right? Reuben: And then secondarily, let's say it is something that's more sophisticated, right? AI is obviously Reuben: playing a huge role in these emerging threats because it's no longer, you know, Prince of Nigeria Reuben: asking you for money who doesn't speak good English. It's like a perfectly crafted Reuben: email that's written by, uh, Beauty. so what security awareness training does is it, uh, it's a campaign. So like, if Reuben: I set this up, I'll randomly send out emails to your employees, right? If they click on a message that they Reuben: shouldn't have. have. Reuben: They are forced Reuben: down the training loop of, okay, Reuben: you have to go to school to realize like, what does a real email looks like? You know, is this Reuben: an external sender? Is it an internal sender? So it Reuben: really, it's just another, uh, training element, but you know, we're in the prevention business, right? I don't, I don't want Reuben: to clean stuff up. I want to play default. I want to block stuff from happening. And Reuben: of course the client wants that too. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So then right now, what steps can we do or what to look out for? What can we look out for? What steps can we do when it comes to preventing this threat that's happening today? Absolutely. And Reuben: I'm going to focus on email because that is, the Reuben: FBI is, the warning is specifically tied to email. It's the easy, again, we talked about ease of Reuben: access is the easiest way to get into a Reuben: business is to send someone email. I can Reuben: send Bill Gates an email right now. Right. It Reuben: It doesn't matter. I have his email. I get sent to him. and so there's hundreds, thousands of practices out there that use Reuben: friendly smiles at gmail. com. So the Reuben: to action is sign up for a Microsoft account. It's Reuben: going to do two things. One, uh, it's going to give you that increased protection we talked about. Reuben: Two, It's more professional, right? It's more professional to receive an email, not from friendly smiles at gmail. com, Reuben: but office at friendly smiles. com, right? You're using your domain name. Reuben: tied to your website. It's professional. Maybe you have a signature. It just gives your, the people you're communicating with Reuben: patients, staff labs. an air that, you know, you are a professional Reuben: business. So, it Reuben: just have to be for cybersecurity. It can be to kind of raise your professionalism as Reuben: a business. Gotcha. So get that first. Microsoft three, six, five. Reuben: Microsoft 365. It's a, it's a suite of products, right? We use Microsoft 365 Reuben: for open dental cloud hosting, but we also use Microsoft 365 for email for Microsoft teams, for one drive. So Reuben: there's a lot to it, but we're really specifically talking about, email or some people refer to as outlook, which Reuben: is a specific email product that Microsoft offers. Okay. Michael: Okay. So we do that next steps. Would that be the only step or that's it? Reuben: We're only going to focus on. Protecting yourself from the credible threat Reuben: the FBI, we can have a hour long about all the other stuff you need to do, but please, the takeaway from this is really bolster your email security. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So get that So if we have it already, we don't got to worry about Reuben: IT company check it your it company, check it out, Ask them a question. Hey, am I doing Reuben: I need to do? If you don't have an it company, I run one. I Reuben: can help you out, but there's a lot of companies out there. So, either, you know, if you have an incumbent IT company, just reach Reuben: out to them, say, Hey, Can you guys get me set up with this? Or hey, I'm running this. Is there anything better we can do? Cause Reuben: there are some nuances there that are a little technical, but you know, you as the, uh, you as the client really shouldn't really have to worry about setting that up. Gotcha. Michael: Awesome, man. Any other pieces of advice you wanted to mention in this episode? Reuben: The FBI got involved, so they don't just like, Reuben: uh, creep into the dental industry, Reuben: uh, just cause they get bored. Reuben: So this is, it's a credible threat and just, it's a great reminder to just do the, Reuben: honestly, I'm just asking you guys to do the bare minimum here. Reuben: it's just sign up for secure email, which is also a HIPAA Reuben: compliance requirement, just. Just for the record. Yeah. Michael: Is that the only option? Microsoft Office Michael: 365? Or we can go with another one? Reuben: I mean, G Suite is also an option. So there is free Gmail right at gmail. com. And G Suite is Google's business version. And Reuben: that, that does have a much higher level of security than the free Gmail. You Reuben: do have to add, uh, an encryption element to it to make it HIPAA compliant, but I Reuben: just bring up Microsoft 365 because it is the lowest expense, easiest way to do this. Oh, lowest expense. how Michael: much is it? Reuben: Four bucks an email. Man. Yeah. So it's Michael: pretty easy. It's Reuben: cheaper than G suite. Yeah. It's, it's just, and then you don't have to worry about the whole. Encryption piece, uh, like you do with G suite. So Reuben: that's why I mentioned Microsoft 365 and also most it companies have a relationship with Microsoft and they can set this up for you. Gotcha. Michael: Awesome. Ruben, thank you so much for this. We appreciate it. Anybody listening go take action right now. Michael: And if anyone has further questions, where can they reach out to you? Reuben: Hey, sales at dark horse tech. com. I'm all over Facebook. You can bother me Reuben: on there or 800 868 4504 be happy to help anybody out. Thanks Awesome. Michael: that's going to be in the show notes below and Ruben, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Reuben: Thanks Michael.

It would seem we've hit a teensy hurdle in the planning for Michael's Hip Hoorah Disco Cowboy themed party, he's got the Orville Peck inspired pink cowboy outfit, but as he's seeing out his crusty old hip, Michael's keen to wear a comfortable sneaker and forgo a cowboy boot. Em is having none of it, offering up a variety of alternative options, including some that don't actually exist, while Michael tries to use said hip as an excuse for a lifetime of shonky dancing. Then it's onto the news that Fleabag and All Of Us Strangers hottie Andrew Scott is about to gift us erotic audio called ‘The Queen's Guard'. After watching the teaser trailer, Em challenges Michael to take the script and give us his own version of erotic audio. Em then makes a number of character choices and delivers us versions of the same erotic script as Effie and a Southern Belle, with added options for her hubby Scott and Idris Elba too. Finally we need to talk through the new season of ‘Bridgerton', season three drops this week and Em gets her eldest daughter Chella to bring us up to speed on what's coming and why we're so excited. Also in our Sealed Section, it's all about Elizabeth Hurley and her son Damian, as Em and Michael ‘Okay, Stop!' the trailer for their debut film together ‘Strictly Confidential'. Sign up now to start listening & watching at emsolation.supercast.com.

It would seem we've hit a teensy hurdle in the planning for Michael's Hip Hoorah Disco Cowboy themed party, he's got the Orville Peck inspired pink cowboy outfit, but as he's seeing out his crusty old hip, Michael's keen to wear a comfortable sneaker and forgo a cowboy boot. Em is having none of it, offering up a variety of alternative options, including some that don't actually exist, while Michael tries to use said hip as an excuse for a lifetime of shonky dancing. Then it's onto the news that Fleabag and All Of Us Strangers hottie Andrew Scott is about to gift us erotic audio called ‘The Queen's Guard'. After watching the teaser trailer, Em challenges Michael to take the script and give us his own version of erotic audio. Em then makes a number of character choices and delivers us versions of the same erotic script as Effie and a Southern Belle, with added options for her hubby Scott and Idris Elba too. Finally we need to talk through the new season of ‘Bridgerton', season three drops this week and Em gets her eldest daughter Chella to bring us up to speed on what's coming and why we're so excited. Also in our Sealed Section, it's all about Elizabeth Hurley and her son Damian, as Em and Michael ‘Okay, Stop!' the trailer for their debut film together ‘Strictly Confidential'. Sign up now to start listening & watching at emsolation.supercast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your introduction to this episode covers everything from American Idol shock eliminations, to Elio discovering the delights of mooning and Michael Lucas sharing his name with a gay pornstar, so chefs kiss for all of that. Then we deep dive into Em's spoiler free review of ‘Dune: Part 2'. Expect much giant worm chat and everything else in between, from who was giving act-TOR on the IMAX screen, to if Austin Butler brought Elvis along for the ride. Michael then goes against type by turning up with content, and it's the kind of content we live for. Yes, it is about J'Lo's movie musical ‘This Is Me…Now: A Love Story' and yes we were shook and utterly delighted by every detail. There's also Scott Morrison's farewell speech, and the continuing train wreck of Donald Trump's campaigning to touch on, before we pick and choose our favourite bits of the SAG Awards. However if you're keen to hear Em and Michael ‘Okay, Stop!' Barbra Streisand's lifetime achievement acceptance speech, you'll need to head to our premium service Emsolation Extra. Finally there's Em's upcoming birthday and some Mardi Gras chat to see us out. Get BONUS eps & other perks with Emsolation Extra https://emsolation.supercast.com/

Your introduction to this episode covers everything from American Idol shock eliminations, to Elio discovering the delights of mooning and Michael Lucas sharing his name with a gay pornstar, so chefs kiss for all of that. Then we deep dive into Em's spoiler free review of ‘Dune: Part 2'. Expect much giant worm chat and everything else in between, from who was giving act-TOR on the IMAX screen, to if Austin Butler brought Elvis along for the ride. Michael then goes against type by turning up with content, and it's the kind of content we live for. Yes, it is about J'Lo's movie musical ‘This Is Me…Now: A Love Story' and yes we were shook and utterly delighted by every detail. There's also Scott Morrison's farewell speech, and the continuing train wreck of Donald Trump's campaigning to touch on, before we pick and choose our favourite bits of the SAG Awards. However if you're keen to hear Em and Michael ‘Okay, Stop!' Barbra Streisand's lifetime achievement acceptance speech, you'll need to head to our premium service Emsolation Extra. Finally there's Em's upcoming birthday and some Mardi Gras chat to see us out. Get BONUS eps & other perks with Emsolation Extra https://emsolation.supercast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's CIHAS episode, I'm speaking to online personal trainer and performance nutritionist, Michael Ulloa. Michael is on a mission to make the fitness industry a more welcoming and accepting space for all, which is exactly what we dive into in this ‘sode. We are unpacking some toxic myths about exercise, Michael spills the beans on his feelings about Joe Wicks, and we discuss what really goes into professional fitness models' photo shoots. Plus we answer loads of your questions like how to find a more joyful relationship with movement after a lifetime of using it as punishment for eating. Find out more about Michael's work here.Follow his work on Instagram here.Follow Laura on Instagram here.Subscribe to Laura's newsletter here.Enrol in the Raising Embodied Eaters course here.Here's the transcript in full:INTRO:Michael: The way that we're being sold health and fitness just isn't sustainable or achievable in any way and then people blame themselves and feel worse and then therefore they're more likely to spend money on all these other programs repeatedly and it's just a vicious cycle that just doesn't ever end.Laura: Hey, and welcome to the Can I Have Another Snack? Podcast, where we talk about appetite, bodies, and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I'm Laura Thomas. I'm an anti diet registered nutritionist, and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack? Newsletter. Today, I'm talking to Michael Ulloa.Michael is an online personal trainer and performance nutritionist who is on a mission to make the fitness industry a more welcoming and accepting space for all. In today's episode, Michael and I are shooting the shit about the fitness industry, unpacking some toxic myths about exercise, and answering loads of your questions: like how to find a more joyful relationship with movement after a lifetime of using it as punishment for eating.Some of you have been asking for more episodes on movement and fitness, so I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. We'll get to Michael in just a second, but first, I want to tell you real quick about the benefits of becoming a paid subscriber to the Can I Have Another Snack? Newsletter and community.For just £5 a month, or £50 a year, you get access to the extended CIHAS universe. That means exclusive weekly discussion threads, links and recommendations, you get commenting privileges and access to my monthly Dear Laura column, as well as the whole CIHAS archive and a few other sweet perks, but more than anything, you're supporting independent evidence based nutrition information free from diet culture and anti fatness. I can't do this work without the help of paying subscribers. So if you get something out of being here, then please consider upgrading your subscription today. And if you're still not convinced, then check out this recent review I received from a reader. They said: "Laura's podcast and newsletter are always thought provoking, filled with care and compassion, and a respite from one size fits all health and nutrition advice."So if that sounds good to you, then head to laurathomas.substack.com and become a paying subscriber today. Alright team, let's get to today's episode, here's Michael. MAIN EPISODE:All right, Michael, I need to know what the deal is. Because you're like one of maybe five PTs who isn't pushing aesthetic or weight loss goals on us.Has that always been your deal? Or is this more of an evolution for you? Michael: Yeah, it's definitely an evolution and it's funny you mentioned that because I get a lot of angry messages from personal trainers that don't think that my approach is right, which is always quite funny to me. I don't know, it's, I definitely, when I first started off in the fitness industry... I've been a personal trainer now for nearly 10 years.And in terms of personal training, that kind of makes you a bit of a veteran because a lot of trainers are quite short lived on average. When I first started off, I definitely did have your typical, like, mainstream slightly bro approach to fitness and nutrition. And I know most people that maybe work in the kind of space that, like, you operate in, for example, there tends to usually be a reason or a thing that caused them to go down that path.But I didn't have that at all. It really has just been a really slow evolution of just actually reading the research, working with people on a day to day basis, getting feedback from clients about what is working and what isn't, and then just really tweaking things over a very long period of time. I've also had some very honest clients, which have been great too, who kind of really follow my content on social media and they would message me like, oh, that's not very helpful. How about approaching it like this? And i'm always open to feedback, I always want to improve my practice and my messaging and I was always just quite receptive to that and I don't know... 10 years later I now finally feel like i'm working with people in a way that genuinely helps them long term and i'm actually creating content that is useful for people rather than just almost creating content for other personal trainers, which seems to be what a lot of fitness professionals do.Laura: Tell me about the angry messages. Why are other PTs up in your shit about...? Michael: I really don't know. I wish I knew the answer. I think... I guess if you're attacking someone's entire being and their work and their ethos that they've believed in for so many years, then I guess that a lot of people will react to that in quite a negative way.I really don't understand it at all either. Usually male coaches too, are very angry in the way that I approach social media and some of the names and things I've been called are pretty grim, but I only... I wish I knew the answer to that, but some, for some reason people get very angry in the way that I am approaching fitness and nutrition.But yeah, I really don't mind. Like I, as I said, I feel like I'm really helping people now and I'm happy to keep championing that message. Laura: I mean, I'm just wondering if part of it is because that myth, certain myth of no pain, no gain. And that you need to like, basically punish yourself with exercise in order to achieve a particular body type.You're saying, actually, we don't need to do that. It's okay if you don't kill yourself with exercise. We shouldn't be weaponising it against ourselves. For me, it speaks to how deeply internalised people's anti fat bias is. You're challenging the fundamental sort of premise that their beliefs are resting on, which is that, you can't be fit and fat.Or you...yeah, like I said before, that you have to punish yourself with exercise or like that... it's somehow okay to exist in a body that isn't fulfilling this ideal that we have been told that we should not strive for. Michael: Completely. And I mean, if we're completely honest about it, the way that the fitness industry is set up now is way more profitable for these people too.So if you do start attacking the way that they're approaching their lives or their businesses too, then they're probably going to be a little bit grumpy about that. It's so much easier for me as a personal trainer to make money saying, here we go, come sign up for the six week program and we'll strip body fat off you in such a short space of time, rather than me saying, cool, let's work together for three, six, 12 months. And let's really work on those habits and have you feeling and performing better. Like it's just such a hard sell. I mean, especially for, as I mentioned, like, personal training tends to be quite a short lived career for a lot of people. And I appreciate that when people first start off, the best way to get clients is shock and awe, like showing before and after photos, like having the secrets or whatever it is. And the best way to get clients at the start is by doing that. So people are going to follow that path rather than doing it the right way. That is a bit of a slow burner. I know that a lot of coaches aren't really up for that, sadly. Laura: Yeah, no, I think you make a really good point when you're talking about... the financial aspect of things, because, yeah, there's no money to be made in being like, yeah, take a rest day or go for a gentle walk and look at the sky. Yeah, those like making huge promises of around body transformations and then making people sign up for some sort of like intensive bootcamp situation. Of course, that makes sense from like a business model perspective, but as so often is the case, anything that involves capitalism is probably not great for our health overall. Okay, so I am absolutely not in the fitness space at all. I've purged my social media account. I think I follow you and maybe a couple of other personal trainers, because I find it really annoying, honestly, watching fitness content.Michael: I strongly relate to that. And first of all, thank you for following me, but yeah, I honestly, I feel exactly the same way.  Laura: And I think, especially since having had a baby and because I have some enduring physical stuff going on as a result of my pregnancy in terms of, like, pelvic health, even the stuff that is like geared towards women who have had babies and like postpartum stuff.It's just anyway, so I've just checked out of it. So I have no idea. What is going on in that space, really? So I need you to like, translate it all for me. What are some of the most pervasive and toxic fitness myths that you're seeing at the moment? Michael: Everything. Honestly, every topic is so toxic at the moment.It's really frustrating. And I speak to... There's a few coaches that I'm really good friends with, who I think you probably know as well, that I tend to follow their content, I like engaging with them and talking about the fitness industry, but I have also removed myself from a lot of the mainstream approach because...I don't find it motivating or helpful in any way. Like I think a lot of the... Laura: You don't even hate follow some people just to have like stuff to...? Because I hate feed a lot of big feeding. I hate-feed?! I hate-follow a lot of big accounts. I just have this folder on my Instagram called Ammunition.And I just save posts in there that I want to come back and get angry about at some point. What are you seeing from... I know you do it! But what are you seeing from those folks? Michael: So I do a little bit of that. And I, so I've also, I've got an Instagram account for my dog, but I started up ages ago. I don't post anything to it, but every time I see something pop up on, like, the explore page or I see another trainer share, I'll send it to her account. And then I'll use that as fodder for, like, creating content and coming up with ideas. But I do not, I don't hate follow that many people now because like I spent a lot of time on social media, right?And I know that because of that following these accounts and seeing them on a day to day basis all of the time does massively negatively impact my mental health. And I think if i'm feeling that way as a fitness professional who knows the research, knows what these accounts are doing to us and can see through the nonsense... how are everyday people feeling? When they're seeing this content and they don't really know if it's the truth or not. So I actually don't follow that many trainers. There's probably a lot of trainers who... . Laura: So very evolved of you. Michael: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. There's a few trainers who, like, I know through just from working in gyms or whatever, I'll follow them, but I mute them so that I don't have to see their content.Laura: Yeah, that's smart. Michael: But yeah, I don't know. There's so many myths about every topic. Like you mentioned there about, like, women's health and pelvic health and anything pre and postnatal. The stuff around that is really gross because it's not even just the fact that they're spreading misinformation. They somehow always tie in with just losing weight, like this is pretty much what it all comes down to, right? Laura: Yeah. Yeah. That's the subtext. It's always there. Michael: It's always like improve your pelvic health and slim your waist, like it's everything. It just pushes people down the route of still obsessing about body weight and focusing on body weight rather than focusing on general health and wellbeing and health promotion, and it's infuriating.I guess the same as, like, building muscle. Like it's nearly always advertised by these guys that are absolutely jacked, clearly taking steroids, using images of themselves going... you can look like this if you work out like me and buy my programs and my nutrition plans, and you're just never going to look like these people. So you're always going to fail. Like everything within the fitness space is geared towards repeat sales and having people come back for more because the way that we're being sold health and fitness, just isn't sustainable or achievable in any way. And then people blame themselves and feel worse. And then therefore they're more likely to spend money on all these other programs repeatedly. And it's just a vicious cycle that just doesn't ever end. And that's why with my page, I'm trying to step away from any aesthetic goals. Like you'll probably see through my social media, I don't, I'm not against people having aesthetic goals. I just don't really ever talk about it because I don't think it should ever be the focus of someone's fitness journey. I mean, I think that's the bit that seems to piss people off. Laura: Yeah. And I mean, there's some interesting research that shows that people who exercise for aesthetic goals, they're less likely to engage in something that is sustainable for them.Like, it's more likely that they will give up. And I don't mean that in, like, defeatist kind of way, but it just won't be sustainable for them. Versus for people who are approaching, I don't know, a type of exercise or training or whatever it is from a place of maybe wanting to feel stronger or feel more comfortable in their bodies or because they have mobility stuff that they're working through or something like that.So it's really difficult though, because And we'll get to some of the listener questions in a bit where they're asking this, like, how do you uncouple the aesthetic goals from, those more internally motivated goals from the perspective that we are just constantly being drip fed, idealised images of people all over the internet? And then, like you say, half the time those images aren't even real, right? There's people on ‘roids. There are people who are like starving themselves, like making themselves dehydrated, like posing in particular ways. I don't even know what other tactics people use to stylise these images.But I feel like the sort of falsification of these pictures is huge in the fitness industry. Michael: It's honestly horrific. And I would probably go as far as to say, like, every professional fitness model has taken or is taking steroids of some form. That's like the level of manipulation that the fitness industry...I don't know, I don't think there's any issue with... having aesthetic goals. Like I always like to hammer this point home because I think sometimes with my content, I can... people misconstrue that I'm against anyone having any aesthetic goal at all. I'm not, it's just, I think that the emphasis needs to be elsewhere.For example, when I first started in the fitness industry, I was in that loop of must build muscle, have to build muscle to show that I know what I'm talking about and also to be seen as manly and capable or whatever, and I would do a lot of strength training. I would never do cardio because cardio is bad.It ruins your gains. Laura: It's for girls.Michael: Yeah, it's just exactly that. And it's so frustrating that I would... I spent years just, like, strength training, nothing but strength training, even when I was going through cycles of really hating it. Like I had to do strength training, got to build muscle. When I switched up my training... I still do strength training now. I enjoy building muscle. The challenge of building strength and muscle is really fun, but I also do a lot of cardio because I really enjoy it and it makes me feel great in terms of physical and mental health. And actually since switching up, dropping a bit of strength training that I was doing and doing more cardio, the exercise I really enjoy, I've made so much more progress with my strength building and muscle building gains.And I've just got such a better balance with it all. So if someone listening to this is really struggling of knowing like what they should really be doing, what should they be focusing on? Honestly, just like enjoyment and mental health, that needs to be the priority. And then everything else just tends to fall into line after that.And the fitness industry, just the tactics, as I said, like the trainers use. The one thing that really annoys me is a lot of personal trainers will, anyone who follows any trainers will... I've seen this in the past where a trainer goes through a really extreme cycle of dieting, exercise regime because they're training for a photo shoot - in quotation marks - Where they'll go and get professional photos done that they've dieted down to within an inch of their lives. And they'll get a little snapshot image of look how amazing I look and then they'll use that in all their advertising of promoting healthy behaviour change or whatever other nonsense. It's if you're not using healthy, sustainable habits in achieving your physique, then you should not be allowed to use that in terms of advertising it to say that you're going to help people improve their health and their life, their health and their lives.It's just, it's incredibly infuriating and... Laura: it's false advertising. Michael: Massively. Yeah. Massively. Laura: Need to get that fucking, is it ASA, advertising...? Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Standards Agency. Absolutely. Yeah. Laura: I'm on the case! But two interesting things that I wanted to pick out from what you were saying.First of all, I think there's some complexity and nuance around this idea aesthetic goals, isn't there? Because we are all aesthetically driven, right? We are all, like we're aesthetic creatures in some ways, like when you brush your hair in the morning or I don't know, you trim your beard, Michael, or like I chose clothes that I thought looked somewhat okay together. Like those are all aesthetic goals, right? And so I think it's really, like, hard for people to decouple aesthetic goals from their overall movement, exercise routines, whatever you want to call them. But I think what you're saying, and certainly what I would advocate is that the fitness industry has just blown... yeah, they've blown up aesthetics to be like the sole purpose that people should exercise, right? And that I think is the problem is that yeah, they've just coupled exercise and aesthetics to the point that it's like you were saying, people are engaging in disorderly eating behaviours. They're using illicit drugs, they are, like, punishing themselves to look a particular way, and that's when it becomes problematic, right? Michael: Completely agree. Laura: And you end up on that slippery, slippery slope to disordered eating and eating disorders. Michael: Yeah, it's so true the barometer of success or health or knowledge within the fitness industry is body fat levels. That's pretty much what it all comes down to. Like a trainer who is absolutely jacked and really ripped is seen as being an authority figure without really knowing anything about them. And whereas you'll have a trainer who's in maybe a naturally larger sized body who naturally carries a little bit more body fat, has a much healthier balance of exercise and nutrition, a far better trainer. Just look at the comments under the content that they push out there onto social media and people will criticize them and say they don't know what they're talking about. Like our barometer of success is leanness. I don't know what the answer is to trying to combat that other than just keep churning out content, calling out this nonsense.But unfortunately you feel like you take a few steps forward when it was like two, three years ago, when you see, started to see a lot more body diversity on fitness accounts and kind of big companies like Gymshark and Nike and stuff were using people in larger bodies to advertise clothing.That's now disappearing again because it's no longer.... and it's just toxic. And you just have to go on like TikTok, the latest platform, even though it's been around a few years, I felt like we were maybe making a bit of progress. Then TikTok just flips that again, and you just got to search the hashtag fitness on TikTok.And it's just white, slim, muscular people clearly taking steroids that are the main bulk of the content that you're going to see. It's infuriating. Laura: Everyone in the fitness industry really collectively needs to be speaking out against this, but I think there's a simultaneous thing that has to happen whereby we are amplifying and centering experiences and the work of fat fitness creators, right? And I'm using fat, for anyone who's not listened to the podcast before, fat as a neutral descriptor, as a reclamation of a word that is often used to weaponise and hurt people and harm people. So, yeah, I'm just thinking of some people off the top of my head.Like Intuitive Fatty, Jessamyn Stanley is fantastic for yoga content. Lauren Leavell does a lot of barre stuff, but there's loads. I mean, is there anyone that you would want to give a shout out to like anyone that's doing...? Michael: The Instagram handle Decolonizing Fitness? Ilya. The content is amazing. We're trying to set up a time for Ilya to come into our podcast to chat about this at the moment. And I just... there's so many voices that need to be amplified. And I know that I always have to check my privilege in the content that I'm creating. Like you see very few men within the kind of body neutrality, body positivity, space, whatever you want to call the area I'm working in.So I always like to acknowledge that, okay, I'm creating content for a space that isn't really for me, but I do think that can be really powerful. And we still need more voices of guys, especially within this space, calling it out because I rarely ever see male fitness professionals creating the kind of content that I am.They tend to go down the more mainstream approach. And I like to yes, fitness can look like me. I look how the fitness industry says you're supposed to look, but it doesn't have to look like that, right? This is one way it can look, but it doesn't need to be like that for everyone. And I think that can be really powerful whilst amplifying the voices of those who are marginalised and don't get the airtime that I do.Laura: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah, you make a really good point about men in this space. Like just in body neutrality, body positivity and again, there are some really great people doing stuff in that space. I agree like it's still underrepresented, but like the 300 pound runner. I don't know if you've come across his stuff? Michael: yeah, Martinus Evans.Laura: Yeah, His stuff is really cool as well. But yeah, anyway, just wanted to shout out some accounts and I'll link to them in the show notes as well. Yeah, so you mentioned that fitness professionals will embark on this really extreme diet, they will really bulk up, they'll, probably restrict what they're eating for a really long time, and then they'll do all their photos, and they'll probably go back to whatever they were doing before that. And it just reminded me when... and this is it's like really sad, but do you remember when Joe Wicks was talking all about binging? He went to America, and then it ... he just started talking about like he was eating all this chocolate and pizza and like stuff that he obviously was restricting so hard that when he went to the States, he had this like backlash against all of that and his body was just like, fuck this, and he just started eating like all of the food that he'd been denying himself.It just made me think of that and how he's... how disordered like this space is and how normalised that kind of thing is like that just like binge restrict cycle. Michael: Yeah, I mean when your entire business model relies on getting people really lean. If you're not sticking to those rules and keeping your body lean 100 percent of the time, then your business model kind of goes to shit. And I guess that's probably why he was having issues coming to terms with that. Joe Wicks is a really funny one because I don't like his content at all. I'll throw that out there. Some of the nutrition stuff he's spouted has been... I was going to say nonsense, but it's actually just damaging some of the stuff he comes out with.Also, on the other hand, I feel like, maybe this is giving him too much credit, I always feel like his heart is in the right place, but he just goes about it in completely the wrong way. I don't know if you would agree with that. When I hear him being interviewed, I feel like he's a really passionate guy who feels like he's doing the right thing, but he's just absolutely not.Because all of his content is focused on being lean and weight loss. And I just wish that... he's got such a huge platform now. It's terrifying. That if you had someone like him who could start promoting like a balanced and sensible message, it's never going to happen because he makes too much money now, then it would just be so powerful.Laura: But I don't know, like this piece around heart in the right place. I think we say that about a lot of these actually quite problematic white men. Joe Wicks, Jamie Oliver, I'm just gonna say it, don't @ me. But, of course their heart's in the right place, but their heart's also in their fucking bank balance, right?Michael: Completely, 100%. Laura: So that's one part of it, but also, I don't know when we can, when someone is, like you say, promoting harmful messages around food and around nutrition. And I don't. I think it matters where their heart is. Michael: Agreed. I wonder whether this... Laura: A murderer could use that justification to be like, Oh, well, this man is really toxic to women, so I'm just going to kill him.But that's not the solution. Michael: I know. I wonder whether kind of in my head, the reason I use those words is because I think of kind of the fitness industry as like a huge, like a line of like how problematic someone is. And I feel like he feels he's trying to do the right thing despite doing it very badly.Whereas you have a lot of people within the fitness space that go far beyond that, who are intentionally doing the really bad thing, trying to make a lot of money, it's still very bad. And Jamie Oliver is one of those as well, where he's got such a huge platform, thinks he knows what he's doing is the best thing, but it's just not. Like trying to ban the buy one get one free offers when people are really struggling to feed their families right now.It's just, I feel yes, hearts in the right place, but just no, like they need to be more informed and go about it in a better way. Laura: And especially when they are being given this feedback, right? Like it's one thing if you fuck up and you say, I was really wrong about that and I've learned some new information now like you have, right? And like I have. And you hold your hands up and you say, yeah, I was really fucking wrong and I'm sorry that I've caused harm and I don't want to do that anymore. I'm gonna learn and I'm gonna do better. And Michael: that's the sign of a good practitioner, right? And yeah. Laura: But speaking of Joe Wicks... Michael: Oh god!Laura: So, so you are a new ish parent, right? You have a seven month old. Michael: Yes, my son is seven months old, yeah. Laura: How do you feel about the prospect of Joe Wicks teaching your kid PE someday? Michael: Oh, just no, like awful. Yeah it's terrifying, isn't it? And these people do wangle their way into every aspect of our society of fitness.And there's just no getting away from them now. Personally, I never watched any of his school fitness things throughout lockdown. I know they're very popular. What was his wording? Did you watch any of them then with your kids? Laura: I didn't cause my little one was just a newborn at that point. And he's only three now.It just wasn't on my radar. I've seen his books. He has the burpee bears. And I've written a couple of like book reviews. They're super like, just tongue in cheek. But it strikes me as really problematic that he feels that we need to teach specific moves like burpees or other things like that to children, like to young children, like primary school age kids, and I don't really have a good justification for that because I'm not a fitness professional that other than does a five year old need to learn how to plank? Right? Or should we not be focusing on embodied movement that is climbing on play equipment in the playground or running or skipping or jumping or like, all of these things that kids, depending on their level of mobility and ability that they would intuitively do?Michael: I am completely with you there. I don't think we need to be teaching a five year old how to do a burpee. It's a bit ridiculous, to be honest. Yeah, that's the way that movement should be promoted and advertised to kids, if you want to use those kind of technical terms. It should just be about play and fun and movement, and that's... what it should be. Like if a kid sees their parent doing burpees or lifting weights and they want to try a bit out and get involved yeah, absolutely. But it just, it shouldn't be the go to, right? Yeah, absolutely. Laura: Yeah. My kid has seen me do a downward dog and he like gets involved and we do the cosmic kids yoga. I feel like that's a slightly different thing because it's a, it's so gentle and b it's animal poses. I don't know. All right. So I got sent through loads of questions from listeners and I thought they were really fun. So I just thought we could go through them. I think we've touched on a bit of it already, but maybe you can just give me your quick fire answers.Michael: Sure. Yeah. Laura: So this is an interesting question that Gwen from Dieticians for Teachers sent in. She said she would like to know more about the messages in your formal training. I think we can take a good guess, but I guess what she's getting at is, like, what toxic messages were in your formal training?Michael: Unfortunately, when you're learning to become a personal trainer still so much of it is about weight loss, still. You'll get taught, right, this is what we're going to learn about nutrition and this is how you help someone lose weight. So that is still at the core. And I guess a lot of the training for personal trainers, in terms of nutrition anyway, It's still very like basic government guidelines, which you can take those as you will. Some recommendations are maybe okay, others not that helpful. The training for nutrition for personal trainers is so, so, so, so basic that I would encourage any personal trainer who has recently qualified and not done any further nutrition study from there to please sign up to another course and learn more because what you learn as a personal trainer at the basic level is just nowhere near good enough to work with clients in depth.Laura: I have a lot of thoughts about personal trainers and nutrition, but I'm going to keep them to myself! Michael: No, no feel free to talk about it! It terrifies me. And it's very rare now that... a lot of the people I work with have had personal trainers in the past. The large majority of them have had negative experiences, and it's quite scary that's now just the norm.And I'll ask questions of my clients in consultations whilst working together and they'll be like, Oh, I've never been asked that before. I've never even considered that. And it just blows my mind that these things are being missed out or neglected by coaches. But the training is just not there. Laura: It's so interesting that the focus, I mean, it's not surprising, but that the focus is still on body size and not like flexibility or mobility or like rehab or like any of these, which I'm sure they like get touched on, but it sounds like from what you're saying that the real central focus is not mental health or like overall wellbeing. It's here's how you try and get people shredded, which we know is like biogenetically, if not difficult, if not impossible for most people. Michael: Pretty much. Yeah. Like I'm sure... I don't want to call out every personal training course. Like I did qualify a few years ago now, but I know there's some personal training qualifications that are trying to shift that, but it is still a large majority.And that is why a lot of the coaches coming through now, it's still very much before and after photos, weight centric. Yeah, unfortunately. Laura: Well, it's good to know that maybe there are some shifts coming down the pipe a little bit and I guess it just goes to show why again, you need to keep, like, pushing these alternative messages.Okay. This I thought was a really interesting question. And so this person asked, is exercise truly necessary? I don't enjoy exercising, but I do move a lot during the day, running errands and running after a toddler, all while baby wearing a newborn. And then the follow up question is, and if it is necessary to exercise intentionally, what form of exercise is best for someone who wouldn't otherwise prioritise it? Michael: That's such a good question. And it's very nuanced as well, depending on the person's situation. I would say, I mean, no, it's not necessary if you're moving around a lot throughout the day. However, so many health benefits come from incorporating some form of like direct exercise that it would be really sad to not explore all the potential areas that people could incorporate exercise into their life that maybe might not be the mainstream approach, right? If you are someone who moves around a lot throughout your day, if you say running errands and your general movement and step count is actually really high, then you could argue that as long as you get your nutrition, right, you're doing pretty well.However, strength training. Every time someone comes to me, no matter what their fitness goals are, I try and incorporate some form of strength training that I can, but that can take so many different forms. Laura: This person is carrying a baby around! Michael: Right. Yeah, exactly. Which is strength training, right?Exactly. So it's... when I say strength training, a lot of people listening to this episode right now will automatically... they'll think, like, gym, barbells, dumbbells, heavy weights, and it can come in so many different forms and it can be with resistance bands, body weight, dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells at home. It can be like TRX, it can be like so many different ways that you might enjoy at some point. So don't just think, Oh, I'm not an exercise-y person. I've always hated it because there are so many different ways that we can incorporate exercise. That is a very vague answer. without me knowing much more about this person. However, if you can find a form of exercise you enjoy, that should be a priority because the health benefits are huge. Laura: I'm going to push back because this is my opinion, not necessarily based on scientific fact, but it does feel as though there is this tendency, and I'm also conscious of your bias as a fitness professional, that exercise is held up as the pinnacle of health.And it's like the one thing that we need to do in order to be healthy. And I'm not disputing that there are health benefits. I also am like curious about the magnitude of those benefits within the broader context of health and health behaviours, but also nesting that within sort of social determinants of health and like, how do we measure the effect size of exercise individually from, I don't know, sleep, other elements of mental health, community? I guess what I'm maybe trying to temper is like that there are so many, like, variables and factors that contribute to someone's overall picture of health and I appreciate that movement can be an important facet of that.Michael: Yeah, no I really like that point because it is so important and I think that's why it's important to approach exercise and hence why I said without knowing more about this person, it's hard to give an exact answer. I think it's important to look at all of those things in terms of context when you're trying to prescribe or recommend exercise to someone, right?Let's say that this person is, they're likely lacking in sleep right now at the moment, right? Because their life is very busy running around after small humans. If that person is exhausted and they have no free time at all. I'm not then going to say, right, you've got to go and exercise 30 minutes a day for three times a week, because it's just not going to be helpful. There's other areas of your lifestyle that we can focus on to improve your health. However, if there is a bit of wiggle room, if you have a bit of time, then maybe there are things that we could explore that you could quite comfortably fit into your day without it taking over your life like a lot of the fitness industry wants us to do. Laura: Yeah. I think that the, maybe the TL;DR there is you don't have to sweat it when you are running around after a small child and doing other, all these other things. But if it feels like it's something that you want to explore, and you're curious to give something a try, then yeah, you could have a think about some gentle movement or something, see how that feels and how that fits in the context of your life But yeah, it's tricky to prescribe something without knowing, yeah knowing someone's life and what they want to get out of it. Michael: So true and you're never gonna know if it was directly the exercise. It could be so many other things that then, yeah, that then causes the health benefit.I would just say, once again, like anecdotally, rather than looking at research, every person that I've worked with that we've tried to think, right, how can we incorporate exercising today in some format? The large majority of the time, everything else feels better and improves as a result.Laura: Yeah, no , it can, it has a knock on effect on like sleep and pain and like all these other things. So, okay. How can I move my body without shame and guilt driving it? These are two separate questions, but I'm just lumping them together, and then this, another person asked, how to find the joy in movement after a life forcing it?Michael: I think first of all, it's really important to, like, vet where you're getting all of your inspiration and information from is a really important one because a lot of the time, if we're following the kind of general societal recommendations when it comes to exercise and nutrition. It's always going to have quite a prescriptive image focused approach to movement.And if you can shift away, like what we spoke about at the start of this, you don't follow many personal trainers because you don't think that they're motivating or helpful to you. They actually just make you feel worse. I'm the same. When I constantly see gym bros. telling me that I have to lift weights X amount of times a week, and I've got to get shredded and have low body fat levels, it has the complete opposite impact on me. So if you can first of all vet where you're getting your information from, that is absolutely huge. And then, yeah, I guess also once again, it's not beating yourself up for having the more mainstream thoughts that you used to have. I know a lot of people when they're trying to shift into kind of taking a more intuitive eating approach or a more intuitive eating approach with like exercise too, as well as nutrition, we can sometimes feel really guilty when we start slipping back into older habits that maybe are slightly disordered.I'm just... like giving yourself a bit of leeway and a bit of space to grow and learn. I'm still doing that. I still probably get things wrong and have room for improvement, but I think by doing that, removing the pressure on yourself can be really helpful. Laura: Yeah. Two things that I might add to that are something that I've explored with clients as part of working on the relationship with food and body and movement often comes up as part of that, we might explore this idea of, what it feels like in your body where you've had a period where you haven't moved at all, right? Maybe it's because you're recovering from an injury or because you just were so burnt out with exercise that you just really didn't move. How did that feel in your body? Did you get any pain or did it feel nice to rest or what was that experience? And then also thinking about periods of your life where maybe you've been really deeply invested in fitness culture. And maybe doing the punishing exercises, maybe also getting injuries because of that, maybe getting ill a lot of the time, maybe losing your period, like all kinds of different things, like different experiences that you could have in your bodies.If you've got that framing of this is what no exercise feels like in my body, and this is what too much feels like in my body, then it can help you explore what some sort of happy balance might feel like. So that's something that I encourage people to think about. And I also just wanted to shout out Tally Rye's Intuitive Movement Journal.It's her book Intuitive Movement as well. It is isn't it? Clients have found that those are helpful resources for navigating stepping back from exercise and just exploring what rest feels like through kind of the framework of, or a similar framework to intuitive being. So if intuitive being resonates with you, then maybe Tally's work will as well. So I'll link to them in the show notes. All right, this will be our last question. And it is: I cut out all deliberate movement for a while, by which I mean, I walk to get places and that's it. I'd like to try some movement. and see how it makes me feel. But where on earth do I even start? Michael: Okay, once again, without a lot of context, this is very hard to give specific advice.So I would say think about where you would feel most comfortable exercising and start from there. So I know that for a lot of people, the gym environment can be incredibly intense and intimidating for many reasons. So if you think that maybe that feels a bit much and it's going to put you off. Let's write that off. Don't do that. So let's think, okay, maybe we could start some movement at home. Is there a form of exercise that you really enjoy? Do you like dancing? Do you like jump rope? Do you like bodyweight workouts? What is it that kind of you think, Oh, actually that sounds quite fun to me and start there.And then let's say that there's so many decent content creators online, depending on what you like that I could recommend. Feel free to reach out and just start from that point. If you're thinking that kind of back to my earlier point that, okay, strength training doesn't have to look like that in the gym. What can it look like? A set of basic resistance bands from Amazon for 10 quid, you've got a gym at home. Like you don't have to go to a gym. There's so many different ways that it could look start from that start from what gives you that, Oh, that's interesting. I might give it a try, and start really, really small and build from there and that's probably the best place to start. Laura: If someone hasn't done much movement other than, like, incidental daily movements for a while... there's obviously a lot of privilege in this question but I'm wondering if you would recommend like doing a couple of one on one sessions with a trainer, like a safe trainer that could help build up strength or make like a bespoke kind of program for someone or just help them with their form so that they... I'm maybe thinking of myself here, but I know that I have to be really careful what I do at home because I'm more likely to end up injuring myself just because of my like, specific needs and in terms of managing pain. And so what I've ended up doing... and again shitload of privilege in this but, I'm, after three years of pelvic girdle pain, I'm like, at my limit. So I've started seeing a physio one on one who does clinical Pilates. So it's like very much helping me build my strength, which I could do... like I was going to a barre class before that, but I was walking away with more pain, even though it was supposedly like a supervised class, like there were no adjustments. There were no like modifications for my body, like nothing. So I personally, I have found that trying to build my strength and reduce pain, like finding someone who's really specialised has been a game changer for me. Michael: Yeah, I would say... I was gonna say one of the benefits of COVID. That's not what I meant. I was gonna say for the benefits of kind of the lockdown that happened as a result of COVID is the fitness industry got pushed forward by about five to ten years in terms of the way that it can support people, especially on a tighter budget as well. There are now so many... Laura: oh, you mean like online?Michael: Online support, right? Because I know that personal training is an investment for a lot of people. It's not a cheap route to go down. If you can afford it, absolutely, yes. If you can have the support of a professional who's got years of experience, it does speed things up and it makes things a lot more kind of personalised and perhaps more enjoyable.However, the way that the online fitness space works now, it has improved massively. And for, kind of, much cheaper options, monthly options, you can get the support of a trainer online that will be able to do a video call with you to check your form. You can send them videos. Like I speak to people that follow me on Instagram all the time and they'll ask me a question. I'll say, just send me a video of you doing the exercise. I'm happy to give you some pointers. If you find people online that are truly passionate and care. If you send them a video of you doing an exercise, they'll happily help you out. So there are so many different routes that you can go down to get the support that don't cost a huge amount of money.Once again, even the cheaper forms are still an investment, but there are different routes that you can go down now. Yeah, absolutely. Laura: Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that. And then just to add to that, like I've done some sessions with this, like a one on one physio. And now I'm going to, like the group classes as well.So it's, I think, helpful to just... if you have any kind of rehab that needs to be done, or if you just want to feel more confident in the movements. Cause like Pilates can be tricky if you don't know exactly what you're doing to just be thrown into a class situation. So it's helped me at least like doing a few sessions, even though I've done Pilates before, but just having that refresher to then go into a class setting, it's just helped build up my confidence a little bit. And it's also, I'm not going to like this, like a gym. Sorry, I said that with so much disdain, realizing you're a personal trainer! Michael: Ugh, these disgusting personal trainers!Laura: It had, like, a visceral effect. Michael: It's so funny though, isn't it? That it's so sad that's what the fitness industry has become. And especially as a trainer who is one, every time I meet someone and they'll ask oh, what do you do? I have to like preface, Oh, like I'm not like the rest of them, but I'm a personal trainer, like it's really sad.Laura: I do the same thing, but with nutrition, I'm like, I'm a nutritionist, but I'm not that kind of nutritionist. Michael: I'm not going to sell you a cleanse, I promise! Laura: All right, Michael, this has been so fun to have you on and just shoot the shit about fitness culture. But at the end of every episode, my guest and I share something that they have been snacking on. So it can be a book, a podcast, a TV show. Yeah, just about anything that, that you feel like. So what are you snacking on at the moment? Michael: So one podcast I'm listening to, this is going to be a bit of a curve ball, there's probably quite a few people, especially in the UK listening to it... I don't like politics because in this country, it's so gross the way that politics is at the moment, but I like being well informed in what's going in politics because it has such a huge knock on impact to like societal changes.Laura: I was really glad that you said that, because when you said I don't like politics, I was like, argh where is this going! Michael: no, I do, but I get so infuriated by it because it's so important and I feel like coaches need to be informed because it does directly impact everything we're doing with our clients in terms of like socioeconomic impacts and food access and education and stuff, so I've been listening to The Rest Is Politics podcast. I don't know if you've ever listened to it. It's actually really good. It's Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Labour side, Tory side. They chat about all daily topics and I quite like that they disagree and argue. I, depending on what you think about those two individuals, I'm still very mixed on what I think of them.However, I think it's very good to have a nice balanced approach there. So that's the podcast I've been listening to a lot recently. I really like it. In terms of food. So I can't eat eggs and dairy. I'm lactose intolerant and intolerant to eggs as well. Laura: I think you were probably going to wait for like the bummer, yeah, for me to be like, oh, that's such a bummer. But I'm vegan, so I don't eat any of that stuff . Michael: Yeah, I know. I was saying, I'm like the worst gym bro ever. I can't have whey protein shakes and I can't eat like 12 eggs a day. So maybe that's another reason they all hate me. So I found a vegan chocolate bar from Aldi. I don't know if you've ever had it. I don't think so. What? So they do milk, in quotation marks, milk chocolate and a white chocolate. They do a dark chocolate too, but a lot of vegan chocolate is dark. Anyway, so I haven't even tried that but their milk chocolate and their white chocolate is so good .And i'm getting through far too much of this chocolate at the moment but I finally found a chocolate bar that tastes amazing. They're by far the best chocolate you can get that's vegan, hands down Laura: That sounds really good, but we don't have an Aldi near us. We have a Lidl. Michael: So it's worth commuting. Laura: Oh, is it? Michael: Yeah. Yes. Laura: Okay. Might have to go to the dark depths of Dalston too.Okay. So I'm actually going to do a podcast also, and it's Getting Curious with Jonathan van Ness, which everyone knows who JVN is, obviously. He's amazing. Yeah, love them. There was like a bit of a thing a while ago where on their Netflix show they talked about like food addiction and it was just really problematic and icky and fatphobic. But JVN seems to have really been on a bit of a journey with this stuff and the latest, well, at the time that we are recording, they've just come out with a podcast called... well, an episode of their podcast Getting Curious called What's the Cultural History of the Calorie? With Dr. Athia Chaudhry. They're a fat activist and it's immersed in like fat politics. So, yeah. I would recommend going and giving that one a listen, because yeah, JVN has been on a journey, it seems. Michael: That sounds awesome. And that is my afternoon listening. Thank you very much. Laura: I will link to all of those things in the show notes.Michael, before I let you go, can you tell everyone where they can find out more about you and your work? Michael: Of course, so, most of the content I create is through Instagram, so it's just my name, which is very hard to spell, so probably best if you check it in the show notes. Laura: Yeah, I will link to everything.Michael: Thank you very much. So it's @MichaelUlloaPT, and that's on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, TikTok, whatever platform, it's all the same. Laura: All right, Michael, I will make sure that... It's all fully linked in the show notes so that everyone can find you. Thank you so much for coming on and yeah, like I said before, shooting the shit with us about fitness culture was really fun.Michael: Thank you so much for having me.OUTRO:Laura: Thanks so much for listening to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast. You can support the show by subscribing in your podcast player and leaving a rating and review. And if you want to support the show further and get full access to the Can I Have Another Snack? universe, you can become a paid subscriber.It's just £5 a month or £50 for the year. As well as getting tons of cool perks you help make this work sustainable and we couldn't do it without the support of paying subscribers. Head to laurathomas.substack.com to learn more and sign up today. Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas. Our sound engineer is Lucy Dearlove. Fiona Bray formats and schedules all of our posts and makes sure that they're out on time every week. Our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser, and the music is by Jason Barkhouse. Thanks so much for listening.ICYMI this week: "I'm Not Your Target Audience" - How Do We Get Men To Care?* Reclaiming our Appetites* MORE Teens, TikTok, and some Good News for a Change.* Dear Laura: I'm freaking out about what my kids eat - but is it really about them? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurathomas.substack.com/subscribe

We aren't able to record a new episode this week, so here is a great interview we did with Michael H. of the Atheopagan Society Council. See you next week! S3E41 TRANSCRIPT:   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm Mark, one of your hosts. Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting episode. We have an interview with a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, Michael, who is joining us today, and is gonna tell us about his journey and what this community means to him and his vision for the future and all kinds of cool stuff. So welcome. Michael: Well, thank you very much for having me. Mark: I'm delighted to have you here, Yucca: Thanks for coming on. Michael: Yeah, no, I'm excited. Yucca: Yeah. So why don't we start with so who are you? Right? What's, what's your journey been to get here? Michael: Gosh. Well, I kind of have to start at the very beginning. So my name's Michael and you know, I've, I start, sometimes I go by Mícheál, which is my Irish, the Irish version of my name. And that's something I've been using more as I've been involved in the Pagan community. My parents are both Irish and. They moved to the United States in their early eighties cuz my dad got a green card working over there Mark: Hmm. Michael: and I was born in America. And then they decided they want to move back to Ireland then in 1991. So already I had this kind of dissected identity. Was I American or was I Irish? I never really lost my American accent. When I, when I moved to Ireland my sister who was born in Ireland, she actually has a slight American accent just from living with me. So she never people always ask her, are you, are you American? And she's like, I've never lived there. So it's funny that it's kind of stuck with her, but I moved to Ireland and I suddenly was kind of got this culture shock at the age of five and moving to this new country. And my mother has a very large family, so she has like, two, two brothers and seven sisters, and then I've got like 30 cousins. So , it was a big, a big change from AmeriCorps. It was just the three of us. Moving back to Ireland and. It was a very, you know, Ireland, you know, is, would've been considered a very Catholic country, and it's been kind of secularizing since the nineties up until now. But back then it was still quite Catholic. Like homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1992 and divorce was only made legal in 1995. So, I guess the first kind of sense of, of what I meant to be Irish back then was, You know, you learned Irish in school, you learned to speak Irish in school, and this was very it wasn't taught very well, I would say, and I think most Irish people would agree with that. It's kind of taught like almost like Latin or something as a dead language rather than as a living language. So you're spending time learning all this grammar. And you don't kind of develop that love of it that I think you should. I did go to like Irish summer camp in the Gaeltacht . The Gaeltacht  is the Irish speaking area of Ireland, and I kind of became aware of my Irishness, you know, just through being part of all this and also. I would've introduced myself as American when I was little but people didn't really like that. It was kind of a, like a weird thing to do. So my mom eventually told me, maybe you should just stop paying that. And so throughout my I, you know, as I mentioned, it was a very Catholic country. And when I was in the Gaeltacht in Irish summer camp one of the kids said they were atheist. And I was like, what does that mean? I'm like, I don't believe in God. And I was, and in my head I was like, I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know that was an option. . So I kind of thought about it for a while. I became, we started studying the Reformation in school when I was about 14. And then I learned that Catholics believed in transubstantiation and nobody had really mentioned that before. They didn't really teach the catechism very well, I guess. I'd done my communion and my confirmation, but nobody ever mentioned that. We literally believed that the, the body and blood, you know, was that the bread and water? Oh, sorry. The bread and wine actually became literally, And the body. And I thought that was a very strange thing, that that was a literal thing. It wasn't just symbolic. And then we also studied Calvinism and all that stuff. And I was like, then I started to read the Bible and I was like, then it fun, it finally just dawned on me that I didn't believe any of this, and it was kind of liberating. But it was kind of a way of being d. In a very homogenous society too. You could be a bit of a rebel. So I think I was one of those annoying teenagers who was always questioning everybody and having, trying to have debates with everybody about religion and they didn't enjoy that . And so I went through school and I just remember hating studying the Irish language until eventually when I left school. On the last day, I actually took all my. My Irish textbooks and burnt them and I feel I . Yeah. I mean I feel so much guilt and regret about that and I think about that how important it's to me now and that, that was a real shame that, but I didn't, partially I didn't put the work in, but also I just think the structure. Was not there. I mean so many Irish people come out of outta school not really know, knowing how to speak the language, you know, and I think it is an effective col colonization as well, where, you know, you consider English is a useful language and learning French or Spanish, that's a useful thing, but there's no use for Irish in people's minds, which is a, and I find that a real shame and I. could go back and change that. In university I studied anthropology and history because I was very interested in religion. All throughout my teenage years, I was obsessed with learning about world religions, you know, there was a world religion class in, in secondary school. I didn't get into it, but I begged the teacher to allow me to. Into it because I was so interested in the topic. And he was like, fine, fine. And he kind of thought he'd humor me in one class one day and he was like, well, Michael, maybe you could talk about satanism. That's the topic for today. And I was like, well, let's start with Al Crowley. And he was like, okay, maybe he actually knows what he is talking about So, I went, I. I went to the university sorry, national University of Ireland, Minuth Campus. And it's funny because that used to be known as so it's actually, it's two campuses. They're St. Patrick's college, which is like a, a seminary for priests. And there's the I, which is like the secular version, and they're both, but they both share the same compass. So it's funny, it used to be the, the biggest seminary in Europe. They call it the priest factory cuz they pumped out so many priests that sent, sent them all over the world. And it's when you go out and you walk down the corridors, you see all the graduating classes. So you go back to 1950 and you see a graduating class of like a hundred priests. And every year as you're going down the corridor, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Until I think the year I graduated, there was like two people graduating as priests. Yeah. So that was, that was a, I decided to study history and anthropology at n Y Minuth and one of the books that I read. Was kind of a gateway into thinking about land and language, which are two things that are really important to me in my, when I think about Paganism. It's a book called wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Bato, bass by Keith Bassell, and. I'm just gonna read a little bit here from the book because he was an anthropologist working with the Apache, the Western Apache, to try and remap the land using the Native Apache words rather than the, the English words. So trying to make a native map and working with Apache people to find all the true, the true names of all these. so this is the quote, but already on only our second day in the country together a problem had problem had come up for the third time in as many tries. I have mispronounced the Apache name of the boggy swale before us. And Charles, who is weary of repeating it, has a guarded look in his eyes after watching the name for a fourth. I acknowledged defeat and attempted to apologize for my flawed linguistic performance. I'm sorry, Charles. I can't get it. I'll work on it later. It's in the machine. It doesn't matter. It matters. Charles says softly to me in English, and then turning to speak to Morley. He addresses him in Western Apache, is what he said. What he's doing isn't right. It's not good. He seems to be in a. Why is he in a hurry? It's disrespectful. Our ancestors made this name. They made it just as it is. They made it for a reason. They spoke it first a long time ago. He's repeating the speech of our ancestors. He doesn't know that. Tell him he's repeating the speech of our ancestors. And I'm gonna just there's another section here, a little, a few pages. But then unexpectedly in one of those courteous turnabouts that Apache people employ to assuage embarrassment in salvage damaged feelings, Charles himself comes to the rescue with a quick corroborative grin. He announces he is missing several teeth and that my problem with the place name may be attributable to his lack of dental equipment. Sometimes he says he is hard to underst. His nephew, Jason, recently told him that, and he knows he tends to speak softly. Maybe the combination of too few teeth and two little volume accounts for my failing. Short morally, on the other hand, is not so encumbered though shy. Two, a tooth or two. He retains the good ones for talking and because he's not afraid to speak up, except as everyone knows in the presence of gar women no one has trouble hearing what he. Maybe if Morley repeated the place name again slowly and with ample force, I would get it right. It's worth a try, cousin. And then he, I'm just gonna skip forward a bit and he successfully pronounces the name, which translates as water Lies with mud in an open container. Relieved and pleased. I pronounce the name slowly. Then I, then a bit more rapidly and again, as it might be spoken. In normal conversation, Charles listens and nods his head in. . Yes. He says in Apache, that is how our ancestors made it a long time ago, just as it is to name this place. Mm-hmm. So this became important to me when thinking about the Irish language because something similar happened in Ireland in the you know, we have all our native Irish place. But in the 1820s the British Army's Ordinance survey came and decided they were gonna make these names pro pronounceable to English ears. And so they kind of tore up the native pronunciation and kind of push an English pronunciation on top. So you have these very strange English Anglo size versions of Irish Place names Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Soin in is is probably better known in English as dingle, but doesn't really have anything to do with the Irish. And there are plenty of, there are so many examples of this and I think when you're trying to learn about a landscape in your relation to a ship, to a landscape, it is important to know the native place. It's something that I think about a lot and I try to learn. One of my favorite writers is named Tim Robinson, and he's well he died in 2020. But I had the opportunity to meet him in 2009 and he was an English cartographer. But he moved to the west of Ireland, to the Iron Islands and also to Kamara. So he kind of moved between those two places. He lived there for more than 30 years, and what he actually did was he went out and mapped the landscape and talked to local people, and he was able to find some of the place names that had been lost over the years that weren't on the official maps, and he was able to help recreate a Gaelic map of those areas. I think that's a really kind of religious or spiritual activity to go out onto the land and walk it. And to name it and to name it correctly. And I think that's what I think my pagan path is in a way. It's to go and walk the land and learn it, what to call it. Cause I think language is the most important tool we have as pagans. Mark: Hmm. Michael: So those are, that's kind of when I started to think about this stuff. I've always been interested in folk. It was actually funny. There was, it started with a video game one of the legend of Zelda video games called Major's Mask Mark: Hmm. Yucca: Yep. Michael: in, in the game, they actually have like a mask festival and they dis they discuss the the history of the festival. Anna was just like, wow, I didn't, I ended up making masks with my sister and we kind of pretended to. A little mask festival of our own Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: that you're, you're familiar with that? Yucca? Yucca: Yes. Yeah, I played a lot of it. Michael: Yeah. So, but I guess I really started to think about folklore when when I watched the Wickerman as um, as a teenager. I was probably at 16 when I watched it, and it kind of opened my eyes completely. And we've talked a lot about this in the group. And I. It's watched as a horror movie in a way, but I think I really got into the, the paganism idea of, of paganism as a teenager because of watching the Wickman and just the symbolism and the pageantry. And I also just like the idea. These island people turning on the state in the form of, of the policeman. So that's kind of been something I've that I've really enjoyed over the years, watching that every every May as part of my, my, my annual ritual so, you know, after university, I, I moved to South Korea to teach English, and, but at the same time I was quite into Buddhism. I had been practicing some Zen Buddhism from about the age of 18, and, but not like, more as just a practice rather than believing in any of it. Not believing in reincarnation or anything like that. I just found the ritual of it very beautiful. And I ended up going and doing a temple stay in a, in a place at, at a temple. Up in the mountains and it was very beautiful and really amazing. You know, something you'd see in a movie because the monk, the head monk actually brought us out into a bamboo grove and we sat there meditating just with all surrounded by bamboo. And it was waving in the wind and it felt like a correction, tiger Hidden dragon or something like that. And one of the powerful events that happened on that trip. Doing the Buddhist meal ceremony where we ate in in the style of a Buddhist monk. And the idea is that you do not leave any food behind. After you're, after you're finished eating, you've, you eat all the food, and then when you wash the bowls and they kind of put the communal water back into the, the, the waste bowl, there should be no no bit of food, nothing. It should just be clean water. That comes out of, after everybody finishes washing all their bowls. So we followed all the steps to do that and, you know, some people really, really weren't into it. They didn't wanna do the work of, of being extremely thorough. And there were a few rice pieces of rice in the water at the end and the head monk said to us oh, that will now get, you're, you're gonna cause pain to the hungry to ghost. Because the hungry goats ghosts have holes in their throats, and when we pour the water outside for the hungry ghosts, the rice particles are gonna get stuck in their throats. And a lot of people were like, what? What are you talking about Mark: Hmm. Michael: But I thought that was beautiful because it doesn't, not, you don't have to. It's a story that has a purpose, and that's why, you know, It made me think about the superstitions that we have. And I don't know if I like superstition like these, calling it that. Cause I think a lot of these things have purpose and you have to look for the purpose behind them. And the purpose of that story of the honky go story, maybe for him it is about not causing harm to these, these spirits, but it's also about not wasting food. And I think it, it has more power and more meaning. And you remember. More thoroughly when you have a story like that to back up this, this practice. So I think it kind of made me rethink a lot about the kind of folkloric things that I, in my, in the Irish tradition and that, you know, I think about things like fairy forts, which are, you know, the, these are the archeological sites that you find around Ireland. Like, I think there's like 60,000 left around the country. These, these circular. Homesteads that made a stone or, or saw, or saw that you find all over the country and people don't disturb them because they're afraid they'll get fair, bad luck. The, if you, if you disturb the, the fair fort the ferry's gonna come after you , or if you could, or if you cut down a tree, a lone tree. Lone trees that grow in the middle of fields that don't have a, a woodland beside them, just singular trees. These are known as fairy trees and it's bad luck to cut them down. But I feel like these folk beliefs help preserve the past as well, because, you know, farmers who don't have this belief, they don't have any problem tearing down fray, forts and that kind of thing. They just see it as a, something in the way of them farming, especially in the kind of age of industrial agriculture. Yeah. So it just made, that was when I started to think about how important it is to keep folk belief alive. And I've really, and I really started to study Irish folk belief after that point. And I lived in South Korea as I mentioned. I met my wife there, she's from Iowa and she was also teaching in, in South Korea, and we moved to Vietnam after that. And we lived there for a couple of years, and I might come back to that later. But fast forwarding, we moved to Iowa then in 2013, and I'm teaching a course in Irish. At a local community college, but I always start with this poem by Shama Heini Boland. And I just wanted to read two extracts from it. So the first stands out is we have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening everywhere. The eye concedes to encroaching. And then moving downwards. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards. Every layer they strip, they, every layer they strip seems camped on before. So I, I started with that initially, kind of trying to, as, it was almost like a gateway for my students to kind of look at. Look at Iowa with its historic prairies, which don't really exist anymore. It's all farmland. There's very little prairie land left. I think maybe 2% of the state is prairie. But that idea, that idea of our pioneers strike downwards, and I've been thinking about that a lot as well, that that's kind of a, a colonial look at the land because this land, the American land has is just as camped. As Ireland, and I've been kind of experiencing that more and more. I have a friend who's an archeologist here and just hearing them talk about the kinds of fines that they have. You know, we lived in a town where there was a Native American fishing weir was a couple of hundred years old. It you could kind of see the remains, but it mostly washed away by the time we had. But I did see an old postcard of it from the seventies, and you could see it very clearly. And so just make, and then we always it's become a ritual every every autumn, we go up to northeast Iowa to these, to these effigy mounds, which are some Native American mounds up there on a bluff, just overlooking the miss. Mark: Hmm. Michael: And that's really amazing to look at that and experience and experience that. And you know, I'd love to go back, unfortunately, Shamus, he died more than 10 years ago now, but I'd love to go back and ask him if he would consider rewriting that line, you know, because this land is just as a count on Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: and I'm trying to, trying to make sense of that and what it means. As an Irish person living in America, Yucca: Mm. Michael: Cuz we, Irish people are victims of col colonialism, Mark: Hmm. Michael: Irish people, when they moved to America, they just became white as well and had the same colonial attitudes as everybody. And I'm trying to kind of, but you know, there's, there's, there's kind of stories of reciprocation as well. Where during the famine, the Irish famine the, I think, I believe it was the Chota Nation sent Emin relief to the AR to Ireland. Even though they didn't have much themselves, they still saw this. People in need across the water and they sent money to help. And, you know, there's that connection between the Chta nation and the Irish has continued to this day. But I am just trying to figure out what it means to be an Irish person and a pagan living in this country. And that's kind of where I, where I am right now. But to get back to how I got into Ethiopia, paganism I mentioned earlier that I was really into the Wickerman and I found this group called Folk folk Horror Revival on Facebook. And somebody one day mentioned that there was this group called Atheopagan. And so I decided to join and I found a lot of like-minded people. And I've been kind of involved in the community for, for, I think that was maybe 2018. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: And I've been involved in the community since then and maybe on a bigger, I've been much more involved since Covid started and we started doing our Saturday mixers. And I think I've made maybe 90% of those Mark: something Michael: and we've, yeah, and we've been doing that for the last three years and it's just been. It's a really amazing, it's one of the highlights of my week to spend time with with other people in that, in that hour and 45 minutes that we spend every Saturday. Mark: Mm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah, I, I really agree with you. That's, I, it's a highlight of my week as well. Such warm, thoughtful people and so diverse and living in so many different places. It's yeah, it's just a really good thing to do on a Saturday morning for me. And. We'll probably get into this more a little bit later, but the idea of creating human connection and community building I know is really important to you and it's really important to me too. I think there have been other sort of naturalistic, pagan traditions that have been created by people, but they just kind of plunked them on the internet and let them sit. And to me it's. That would be fine if I were just gonna do this by myself. But when other people started saying, I like this, I want to do this too. To me that meant, well then we should all do it together. Right? Let's, let's build a community and support one another in doing this. And so the Saturday mixers, when we, when Covid started, I think. I mean, to be honest, COVID did some great things for the Ethiopia, pagan community. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: yeah. Kind of accidentally, but that's, that's Yucca: Well that's the silver linings, right? That's one of the things we, you know, life goes on. We have to find the, the, the benefits and the good things, even in the challenging times. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Michael: yeah. I think. I'm just thinking back to when we started. So it's kind of, we have maybe six or seven regulars who come to every meeting maybe. And then we have other people who join now and then, but I'm just trying to think back to the first meeting. I think we, that's when the idea of doing virtual ritual began as well in that first meeting. And we were trying to figure out how to do. Yucca: Was that was the first meeting before Covid or was it as a response to Covid? Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember. I think it must have been in response to Covid because everybody was shut in and, you know, everybody was kind of starving for human contact. Michael: I think the first one may have been March or April. 2020, Yucca: Okay, so right there at the. Michael: Yeah, right at the beginning. Yeah. And I think, I remember in the first meeting we were talking about ritual ideas and I think the first suggestion I came up with was like I'd love to somebody do like a, describe what an atheopagan temple might look. Mark: Oh yeah. Michael: Yeah. And I left, and I think you were recording the meetings at that time, but we don't record 'em anymore, just so people can feel free to be themselves and not have a recorded recording of themselves out there, . But I know that, I think James who you interviewed recently he, he was listening to that one, I believe, and he came the next week and actually had prepared a guided meditation. Of what a pagan temple would be like to him. And it was a walk through nature. I think that was the first, our first online ritual together. Mark: Yeah, I remember that now. Yeah, and it's been, it's really been a journey trying to figure out how, how can you do these ritual things over a, a video conferencing platform. In a way that makes everybody feel like they're participating and engaged. Right. So that there's a, a transformation of consciousness. But I think we've done pretty well, to be honest. I mean, some of the rituals that we've done have been really quite moving. Michael: Yeah. And I think the ritual framework that you've worked at translates very well to. A Zoom conference as well. I dunno if maybe, if he wants to describe that, what the usual atheopagan ritual would look like. Mark: Sure. We've, we've talked about this before. The, the, the ritual structure that I proposed in my book is basically a, a five step process where the first is arrival, which is sort of, Transitioning into the ritual state of mind from the ordinary state of mind, and then the invocation of qualities that are a part that we'd like to be a part of the ritual with us, which is sort of the equivalent in Wicca or other pagan traditions of invoking spirits or gods or what have you, ancestors, what have you. And then the main working of the ritual, which varies depending on what the purpose of the ritual is. But it can be, well, we've done lots of different kinds of things. We've braided ribbons and then tied, not tied magical knots in them. We've made siles, we've we've done just lots of different kinds of things. And then gratitude expressions of gratitude. The things that we're grateful for. And then finally, benediction, which is sort of the closing of the ritual at a declaration that we're moving back into ordinary time. Yucca: So how does that look in, in a meeting, like a Zoom meeting In a digital format? Mark: Michael, you want to take that one or should I? Michael: So you know, you have maybe, I think usually when we have a ritual more people attend that and so we might have 12 people there and often Yucca: cameras on. Michael: Camera's on. Well, it's optional. Yeah. If you don't feel comfortable having your camera on, that's completely fine and you don't even have to speak. We do encourage people just to you know, leave a message in the chat so you can just listen in. You can engage as much or as little as you want. And you, you, so. We have all the people on in the conference, and maybe we'll try and get some more of the senses involved as well. So sometimes we'll like candles and everybody will have a candle in front of them. I do know for for some of our sound rituals. Mark, you've used two cameras where you, you aim one camera at maybe a focus, like what's one of the examples of that that you. Mark: Well we did that both at Sown and at Yu. So both the Halls ritual and the Yule ritual where I would create a focus or alter setup with thematic and symbolic things relating to the season. and then I would point, I would log into Zoom with my phone and point my phone at that. And then, and then I'd log in separately on my laptop for myself as a person, and then I could spotlight the focus so that it's kind of the centerpiece of what everybody experiences on their screen and sets the atmosphere. Michael: Yeah. So just a virtual focus that everybody can, everybody can virtually gather around. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. And I think we've also used a Pinterest board in the past as well for people. I think it was at Sound again, we had that Pinterest board where people could put up notes about. Their ancestors or loved ones that they were That's correct, isn't it? Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Or pictures of people that had passed recently or. Yucca: mm. Michael: yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of digital space that you can use for this ritual. We also try not to involve too many props as well. Because we wanna make it as easy as possible for people of all abilities. And just if you don't have the space for something, for a large proper if you don't wanna make a lot of noise, you know, we're not gonna have you using chimes or things like that. So we try and make it as easy as possible. Sometimes we do invite you to bring some food to eat as well, because, you know, a lot of these are feasting rituals. So we maybe, if you feel comfortable bringing some refreshments, you might want to do. And just have a friendly meal with people online. For example, we're actually gonna start doing I'm gonna be leading full Moon meals every month on the, on the, so the first one's gonna be December 7th. And I'll post, post about that on Discord, and I think Mark will post about that in the Facebook group. Yeah. And so the idea is everybody just comes. Joins the Zoom meeting and everybody should have their meal. Whether you're, whether that's lunch or if you're in a different time zone, maybe there'll be dinner or maybe it's just a snack. And then we'll spend a minute just thinking about the providence of the food and then we'll eat us and maybe people can talk about the food that they're eating and what it means to. And I'm hoping to make that a monthly event that we meet every full moon to share a meal together Mark: That sounds. I, I, I really I have pagan guilt over how little I pay attention to the full moon. I'm, I'm always, I'm always aware of what phase the moon is in, but I, I don't do a lot in the way of observances of the phases of the moon. And so, I'm excited to have this added in to something that I can attend. Michael: Mm-hmm. . But yeah, as you can see from that format, it's very simple. And again, you, if, if people listening would like to attend as well, there's no obligation to keep your. Your camera on, there's no obligation to speak. You just, you can just listen in and just feel part of the, part of the community that way. Yucca: Mm-hmm. So in the mixers sometimes ritual, are there discussions or what else do the mixers. Michael: Usually the mixer is kind of a freeform thing. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Maybe we'll have a topic sometimes, but usually people just come and do a check in and talk about how they're, how they're getting on that week and if there's anything they wanna discuss, we just open it up to that. Depending on the size of the turn, we may require some kind of etiquette stuff. So if there are a lot of people and we don't want people to. Shut it down or have spoken over. So we'll ask people to raise their hands if they wanna speak. That's, that really is only when there's a lot of people and, and often I, I know I'm somebody who likes to talk, so it's a, I think raising hands also gives people who are less confident, or, I'm sorry, not less confident, just not at, don't feel like interrupting. It gives them an opportu. To to have their say as well and be called on mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Mm. Mark: I think it's really good that we've implemented that. It, it's, it helps. Michael: Mm-hmm. I think one of the really cool rituals we had recently was for like the ATO Harvest, so that was when was that? That was in September or October. In September, yeah. Yeah. So. We were trying, I mean, usually it's, you could do some kind of harvest related and I think we've done that in the past. But I have a book called Celebrating Irish Festivals by Ruth Marshall. And this is my go-to book for, for, for ritual ideas. And this is, and I like to. Kind of some of the traditional holidays and maybe just steal from them. . So Michael Mass is is the holiday around that time in Ireland? It's a Christian holiday, but it's also it's a Yucca: were older. Michael: yeah, yeah, Yucca: Christians took for the older Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, it's about St. And he's known for slaying a dragon as just as St. George was known for slaying a dragon. But I thought, well, let's turn this on this head and let's celebrate our inner dragons. Let's bring our dragons to life. So it was the whole ritual was about dragons. And we actually drew Dragons, drew our inner dragons and shared them. Talked about what they. And kind of we were feeding our inner dragon so that they could warm us throughout the coming winter. Yucca: Hmm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: as well as watching the home. Star Runner Strong Door, the Ator video, Michael: Oh yeah, Mark: which you, you have to do if you've got dragons as a theme. It's just too funny to avoid. Michael: That's an old flash cartoon from the early two thousands. That was pretty popular. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. Track toward the ator. Google it, and in fact, I did a, I did the hot chip challenge as part of that ritual as Mark: That's right. Yeah. Michael: where I ate a very, very hot tortilla chip on camera. And. It was it was painful, but I'm sure, I don't know if it entertained other people, but it was, it was fun Mark: Oh yeah. It was fun. Michael: So, yeah, they're like, I mean, these rituals aren't all, they're, they're fun and they're kind of silly and goofy and but I mean, I thought at the same time they're very meaningful because people really opened up in that one Mark: Yeah. Michael: and shared some really profe profound truth. That was one of my favorites actually, and I hope we do another, another dragon invoking ritual in the future. Mark: Maybe in the spring Michael: yeah. Mark: you do it at, at both of the equinoxes. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: so you've joined the Atheopagan Society Council, which is great. Thank you so much for your, your volunteering and your effort. What do you think about the future? How do you, how do you see where this community is going and what would you like to see? What's, what's your perspective on that? Michael: Yeah, so just before I discovered the Pagan Facebook group I had attended A local cups meeting. So that's the covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And so it was just a taro reading workshop and, you know, I was, I, I like kind of using these kind of rituals just for their beauty and, but not, for not, not seeing anything supernatural in them. I was, it was amazing to, to find a group that was interested in these kind of things too, but without the they weren't incredulous. So I guess what I'm hoping for is that as we, as we kind of find more people who are, are, are aligned with us, maybe we can have more in. Experiences. That was one of the great, the great highlights of, of last year was attending the Century retreat and meeting all, all these amazing people in real life and being able to spend time together in real life. And I hope that as we kind of, as the word gets out about this group, more and more of us can meet in person or as we are able to, Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: That's what I really hope for the future that you're finding your, your people that we are, we are being able to get these local groups together and then spend time on these important days of the year. And I believe the Chicago Afu Pagan group was able to do that not too long ago. And I know Mark, your local group meets quite regularly as well. Mark: We, we meet for the, for the eight holidays, for the eight Sabbath. So yeah, we're gonna get together on the 18th of December and burn a fire in the fire pit and do a, a ritual and enjoy food and drink with one another. And yeah, it's a, it's a really good feeling that that feeling of getting together is just You can't replace it with online connection, but online connection is still really good. So that's why, that's why we continue to do the mixers every Saturday. And Glen Gordon has also been organizing a mixer on Thursday evenings. Well evenings if you're in the Americas. And. Yeah, there's just, there's, there's a bunch of different opportunities to plug in and it's always great to see somebody new. Michael: Yeah, I think that would be another hope as well that, you know, if you've been on the fence about coming to a mixer I hope that what we've described today maybe entices you to come along. You know that there's no expectations and you can, you can share, you can just sit in the background and watch, or you can participate. There's no expectations and it's just a nice way to, to connect with people, so, Yucca: how would somebody join in? They find the, the link on the Facebook discord. Michael: that's right. Yeah. So I think, mark, you post it regularly on the Facebook group, and it's also posted on the disc. As well. So, and it's the same time every Saturday, so it's 12:15 PM Central for me, so, and that's like 1115 for you, mark, on the, Mark: No, it's 1115 for Yucca. Michael: Oh, okay. Mark: It's 10 15 for me. Michael: Okay. Okay. Yucca: one 15 for Eastern. Then Michael: one, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yucca: Hmm Mark: And. Michael: and it's always the same time, and I think we've, I think we've only missed one week, maybe in the last three years. Mark: Yeah, I think that's right. I wasn't available and I couldn't find somebody else to host or something like that, but yeah, it's been very consistent. And I see no reason to think it isn't gonna keep being consistent. But yeah, we, you know, we welcome new people. And if you're not in the Americas, that's fine too. We've got a couple of Dutch people that come in all the time. There's a, an Austrian woman who lives in Helsinki who participates. So Yucca: E eight nine ish kind of for Europe, Mark: Yeah. Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've even had on the Thursday night mixer, we've even had Australians join occasionally too. So Yucca: That sounds like that'd be early for them then, right? Michael: yeah, Yucca: getting up in the. Michael: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But I'd I'd love for some of the listeners to come and join us on one of the mixers and then cuz you know, you bring new ideas. And I we're always looking for new ritual ideas, Mark: Mm. Michael: That kind of bring meaning to our lives and to everybody else's. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yeah, cuz that's, I mean, that's what we're doing, right? We're, we're create, we're, it's a creative process for us. We've got these sort of frameworks like the Wheel of the Year and the, the ritual format that I laid out. Although people can use other ritual formats too. That's fine. But it's, it's an ongoing process of creation and of taking some old traditions and folding them in where they fit but creating new stuff as well. One of the innovations that we, that we've been doing for the l past year or so is if people want to be done with something, if they want to be finished with something in their. They can write it in the chat and then I take the chat file and I print it on my printer and I take it and I burn it in my cauldron. So it is actually being burnt physically. But it just takes a little bit of technical processing before that happens. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And it's those kinds of innovations that are really useful for online rituals. And boy, if you have new ideas about things we can do for online rituals, I, I would love to hear 'em. Yucca: So thank you so much for sharing your story and your visions or the future with us. This has been, it's, it's really been beautiful to hear and to get that insight. Thank you, Michael. Michael: Well, thank you for having me on. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's been delightful hearing from you and, and I, I gotta say, I, I feel like our community is very lucky. You've been exploring religion and and folklore and ritual for a long time in a lot of different frameworks and I feel really fortunate that you've landed with us cuz I like you so. Michael: Okay. Well thanks very much. I like you too, Mark: Okay folks, that'll be all for this week. And as always, we'll have another episode for you next week on the Wonder Science Based Paganism. Have a great week. Yucca: Thanks everybody.

Thank you for staying with us as we missed another week last week. Edward is traveling with his family this summer, making recording difficult. We still have a half dozen episodes recorded and we will trickle them out over the summer months, but there may be a few weeks this summer without an episode. But we have some fun ones coming! This one made me laugh while I was editing it… Enjoy!In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss Daredevil's recent loss to Stilt-Man. Does Daredevil even have any super powers? If not, is he just a crazy man who swings from building to building with a grapple hook? And what's up with Stilt-Man? Did he choose his own name? Why doesn't he have extendable arms as well? Is this all a joke? And if so, how did the “joke” defeat Daredevil? Behind the issue:This is the first appearance of Stilt-Man, who goes on to try out names like “Stilty” and “Daddy Long Legs”. By the end of the issue, Stilt-Man is defeated and shrunk into nothingness. That does not stop him, though, as he comes back to be active in the Marvel Universe through to the present day (he is killed by the Punisher at one point, but his clone continues to use his stilts for villainy).In this issue:A new villain appears on the scene - Stilt-Man - and he starts his career of villainy by robbing a helicopter mid-flight. Seems complicated for a heist, but there you have it. In any event, Daredevil tries to take Stilt-Man down after the heist, but does not succeed. Back in his civilian guise as Matt Murdock, Daredevil takes on a new client, Wilbur Day, who hires Matt to sue his boss Mr. Kaxton, who has stolen his patent. As the case goes on, Stilt Man continues his crime spree. It is eventually revealed that Wilbur is Stilt-Man. He goes on the run from Daredevil, and eventually, he is hoisted on his own petard when he accidentally turns his shrinking ray on himself, shrinking him to apparent nothingness.This episode takes place:After the short reign of Stilt-Man comes to an end.Assumed before the next episode:People did not really think much about Stilt-Man.Full transcript:Edward: Mike Daredevil is not dead, but he has been pretty badly injured, and I think this is what you get when you have someone who's just a vigilante with no real powers trying to take on super villains.Michael: Well, wait a minute. I don't know if he's spoken about this before, but is he a normal guy?Just in a funny costume, like he seems fine. He define seems similar.Edward: Well, define normal. You say normal to what does normal mean?Michael: Okay, so Spider-Man isn't normal, right? We know Spider-Man. Spiderman isn't normal. Climb balls and he's swinging from building to building. But what do we know about Daredevil? He fights on rooftops and kind of swings down from rooftops. Like, I could not,Edward: but he swings on a grappling hook. You could swing at a grappling hook.Michael: No, there's, there's a, there's a zero chance, even in the best shape of my life, would I use a grappling hook to swing from one building to another without a net?Edward: I'm not saying is something, I'm not saying it's a smart thing to do, but I'm saying you could do it. I think if push came to shove, I have faith in you, Mike. I think you could swing from a building to building. It's in a rope. You could, all you have to is hold onto the rope. Just hold onto the rope.Michael: Ed, have you ever gone to a cottage on a lake in the summer we're gonna a swimming hole and there's a rope? Yeah. And the rope it's tied to a branch overhanging in the water Sure. And the rope. And you grab the rope and you swing out. Yeah.That is still scary. Cause if you don't let go in time and you go back to shore and you let go, then you land on the rocks. Yeah. That's bad. As opposed to the water. So would I swing like that without the water? No,Edward: well, I'm not saying you would do it because you, cuz you have more sense than Daredevil does. Are you saying Daredevil's superpower is he's unafraidMichael: The man with no fear. I mean, he is. Pretty fearless, I suppose. But my point isn't that, that's what you would say is his superpower, is my take is that he, I think he has, he must have a superpower. He can't just be a regular guy in great shape who's like, no, cuz like, it seems like swinging from building to building isn't necessary to do what he's doing either.It's like, you know what I mean? It seems like, it seems like almost like an add-on, like gratus gratuitous s**t. Gratuitous. Yeah. Like, and it would be exhausting, think about Ed. I don't know the last time you tried to do a pull up or a chin up, but imagine that andEdward: I can do pullups and chin-ups.I can do that.Michael: Okay. They're hard cause you're lifting your full body weight up. Now imagine you're doing that a few times through the evening and then you fight. Super villain. I mean, it does seem that's,Edward: I'm saying he's making poor choices with his life.Michael: Okay. Okay. So either he's making poor choices and he has no fear, or he's got some kind of superpower. So anyways, you and I were talking about that, but you mentioned Daredevil andEdward: yeah. And then you went off on how superpowered he is and I don't know if he actually is, I think Thank you. He, he clearly has exceptional abilities, right? Whether those are super abilities or not, it feels like he's in the Captain America style. Then Captain America some sort of super soldier. Yeah. But, but he's not, he can't breathe fire. He can't fly, he can't stick to walls. And I think Daredevil's in the same class, he's Clearly very athletic. But man, is he athletic take on super villains. What's just happened is he was very soundly defeated by, basically a guy in battle armor with really long legs.Michael: You know what? They're calling him, ed,Edward: they're calling him the stilt man. The villain, the stil man.Stil man.Michael: It's just, it, it's just, it's just ridiculous. I don't mind, I love, and you and I, obviously we have, we have a show about this. I do love how humanity is evolving in these new things we're seeing, but, Doesn't it seem like we're scraping the bottle of the barrel for the influences, where you're naming yourself and your whole persona, your super villain persona is based on, in this case, stilts.Edward: Well, did he name himself stilt matter or did the media name him Stilt Man? Well, I don't know, but they, but that's what he has. He wasn't having a press, he wasn't having a press release. He was just going out and robbing things and the poor guy got labeled as a stilt guy. Well, okay, but we got it. It should have . Called him, I don't know. Armor Battle man.Michael: It'd be better, but he's clearly got some kind of body armor. That's fine. Yeah. And bullets, power bullets off him. Right.Edward: And he can got that he stole from a helicopter. He used his well, his stilts to extend upward and then, stole from a helicopter that the helicopter thought they were safe.They're like, nobody can get us up here because there's no such thing as a flying villain. Oh, wait a minute. Or a stilt villain that just came up and sell.Michael: It's just, that's the defining. Feature of it is that whatever you wanna, like stilts is what they are. He has these extendable stilts and it just seems so stupid. It's just, I don't know, for all that technology, first of all, it's impressive. It's an impressive engineering feat to say if a helicopter is 500, a thousand feet in the air, To basically be able to extend your stilts up a thousand feet and not fall over.Edward: And then, and then, yeah, balance.Look at the balance on that guy.Michael: It's incredible. It's incredible technology. It's just thatEdward: I would argue he probably more impressive than a grappling hook.Michael: I would give you that, but The Thing is, but why would you do that? Why would you spend all that engineering, why would you direct your energy towards that engineering feed where he could have created something else?Except, unless he's just going for the sort of the whimsy of, I'm a guy that has stills. I'm like really tall.Edward: He built like these hydraulic extension things that are, I think are really if you built this hydraulic extension technology and you decided you wanted to go and use it for crime? What type of battle suit would you maybe I'd have extending arms too. I'd have like extension arms to go.Michael: The arms are way more practical. Yeah, but the think with the power you'd have. Bam.Edward: But they can do the same thing with his legs. He just kick people with like his big extension. Legs and kicks are more dangerous than arms.Michael: He's not, he's extending the stilt so that he can perfectly time getting in front of a helicopter and hoping the helicopter doesn't just turn around or just,Edward: if it does, he can, can chase after climb. They go fast. He can run, his steps per minute could be very low and he could still achieve very high velocity.Michael: We haven't seen any film of this, and I'd like to because that would be interesting. But anyways, the point I'm making though is I hate it. I hate the idea that we've gotten to the point in this marvelous age of heroes and villains and super scientists and aliens and gods, and it's like, you know what? We've kind of run our course. Let's have. A stilt based hero or villain? Villain. Villain. Like a psychic ladder. Ladder boy. Like any, you know, like tall guy.Edward: I think you can be cynical on his name, but clearly Daredevil has a better name than stilt man, but like this guy defeated Daredevil. And so whatever superpowers you think Daredevil has, apparently they were not powerful enough to defeat this poor villain that you're mocking.Michael: Oh no, I agree with you on that. Even though I think the daredevil must have some powers, powers are not, he's probably exhausted by the time he flipped around and grappled through the city to then fight the stilt guy.Edward: But he has to grapple up the stilt man. You can't even get to him with those grappling hook that grapple is doing a lot of lifting,Michael: silly. Whether you're defeated daredevil or not. I just find it so silly. And I, maybe I'm okay. Don't take this the wrong way, but I feel like you and I put a lot of energy into our show talking about these amazing people, good and bad, and then along comes still, it kind of just undercuts everything we're talking about where that's what it is.It just seems so silly.Edward: He's not undercutting anything. He's way up high in the sky. Everything is below him.Michael: I just like to take his legs out cuz it just bothers me.Edward: Take his legs out. 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 this episode:Mike and Ed discuss the Avengers' public search for a fifth member: the Hulk. What are they thinking? Is strength the only requirement for membership? How bad is “rampaging” before you decide not to let someone on the team? Should someone take Captain America's license away?Behind the issue:Stan Lee is leaning into the idea that the team is under-powered after losing the original Avengers. The team feels the same way until they discover that when they work together as a team they can defeat powerful villains — maybe they don't need the Hulk after all?In this issue:The new Avengers meet for the first time. Rick Jones - teenage sidekick with no discernible powers or abilities - is jealous that the three new members - Scarlet Witch, who can warp reality; Quicksilver, who can run at the speed of thought; and Hawkeye, who has an uncanny martial abilities - are members and he is not. Anyways, Captain AAmerica announces to the fledgling team that their first mission is to find the Hulk to see if he will join their team. They then go to train, and a giant robot sent by the Mole Man breaks in and attacks them while informing them that they can find the Hulk in the desert. It's a trap, obviously, but the Avengers still set out for the desert and battle the Mole Man's Minotaur underground. Meanwhile, the Hulk chases down his foe, the Leader. The issue ends with the Avengers realizing that they are quite formidable on their own and do not really need the Hulk.Assumed before the next episode:People are still wondering what the deal is with this odd team of Avengers.This episode takes place:While the public considers whether the Hulk would be a good addition to the Avengers or not.Full transcript:Edward: All right, Mike, we know who the fifth member of the Avengers is or not. Is, is going to be, is going to beMichael: wild man. It's actually crazy. It's actually crazy. How do we get here?Edward: You thought given the fact that The Thing is leaving the fantastic f. For, they'd bring him in. Mm-hmm. As the big strong man. And they said, no, no, no. That's not crazy enough, Mike. That's not crazy enough. We're no, we're gonna go back to our roots and find the most powerful man in the world and bring him onto the Avengers cuz the Avengers are not the second best mark. They're not the second strongest person in the world. They're going for the strongest.Michael: Yeah so they're out there trying to find the Hulk because the Hulk is the strongest one there is. And it's like, hold on a second. He's caused a lot of damage. He's fought you guys.Edward: Of course, of course. He's caused damage. He's the strongest man in the world. How can the strongest person in the world not cause damage?Michael: He, he, He's a, well, I dunno if he's a man, he's a monster.Edward: They're, they're calling, they're, they're calling him a man. They're calling him, man.Michael: Okay. And I shouldn't be, so I don't want to be negative towards him. I don't wanna use pejorative terms.Edward: You're like monstrous. Is that a word?Michael: But he has acted monstrously, you know what I mean? Like, so he, he has,Edward: he's a person who acts like a monster. He's not a monster himself.Michael: Well, yeah, sure. That's right. And he's out there causing terror and mayhem and. Battling the Avengers.Edward: Fair enough. And so then, not just Avengers, he's fought the Avengers, he's fought the fantastic F, he's f the Avengers more. I think he's fought the Avengers more than he's been on the Avengers in terms of like Right. Which side he's been on. He's been anti Avenger more times than he's been Avenger.Michael: So, I should say, gee whiz, you know, I'd like to get married. I'm gonna marry my, the worst girlfriend I've ever had because, you know, Because she's been my girlfriend in the past and she was a great girlfriend for like a week and then a terrible girlfriend for like a month. And so,Edward: yeah. But Mike is this girlfriend the strongest girlfriend in the world.Michael: Well, okay, how about this? The most attractive, my most attractive girlfriend in the world. That's all I'm going for if I'm super superficial. There you go. And so that's kind of what it is, right? They're picking one serious trait. So yes, the Hulk is the strongest one there is, but he is the best teammate? Like, yes, this woman. Is the most attractive woman I've ever dated. But is she the best girlfriend? And it's like, I don't know. I don't care. She's like the hottest, so I'm gonna go marry her.Edward: You presumably, you only have one girlfriend at a time. The Avengers have five at a time, so they need different pieces. They have Captain America who's probably the best teammate in the world and they have I dunno, the quick silver Quicksilver was the fastest in the world and the. The witch who's the most magical in the world. And so now they don't need another great teammate. They need someone who's just they have no one who's strong. They need someone who's strong.Michael: And I think my analogy holds, it's like you're my friend and you're one of the smarter friends I have and I've got other friends.Edward: Somebody say the smartest in the world would you say that,Michael: you know, I'm not gonna say, but you might. And, uh, and then you get, and then, and it's like, gee, on outta my friend network, I don't have the hottest one. So I'm the hottest one. The hottest, craziest person, coming into my life. Which is, what the adventures are doing. So, No, I think it's weird. I think it's wrong. And also,Edward: are you saying the Avengers don't have the best judgment in the world?Michael: Yeah, I am. And then on top of that, on top of that, it's hard not to notice that the Avengers are recruiting people who, a year ago we considered to be villains.Right?Edward: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. A month ago, no, two months ago.Michael: You're right. Sorry. Time flies. So we have quick Silver Scarlet Witch who used to be in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. That's terrorists. They're, they're terrorists. They're terrorists. Terrorists. Terrorists.The Commonwealth War Hawkeye Hawkeye, who was like, oh, no. Criminal?Edward: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He was also a super spot. He was working with the Russians and the Soviets.Michael: That's, that's right. And then they're like, you know what? Okay, we've covered, we've covered those areas. Let's get a guy who rampages.Edward: We have, we have no vandals. We need a vandal. Vandal, the terrorist, we have the communist. We need just someone who's pure, pure anarchy.Michael: Like is Captain America a right? Is he making the decisions right now? It's like he's a little older. I guess he's been around since World War ii. Do we just step in and say like, you know, you step in and take away your parents' driver's license. You gotta say cap. You know, if you're the one driving this bus, we gotta, we got some questions, we got some concerns here.Edward: What's what's amazing to me, it's not just that they want the Hulk, it's that they haven't spoken to the Hulk. It's not like they just gotta put it out there. It feels like, it feels like, yeah, exactly.If you want the Hulk, let's get the Hulk in the room and ask and be like, Hey, listen, it's like selecting a vice president. You don't go and say, Hey, I'm looking for you like, uh, uh, Mr. Uh, vice president. Um, do you, uh, are you, uh, are you out there? I'm just gonna put an ad in the newspaper and maybe you'll. Come to me. No, you take them aside one by one and be like, Hey, if we were to ask you, would you join? And oh, by the way, if we were to ask you to join, would you stop rampaging? Would you stop destroying cities? Because that's kind of a requirement for the organization. But right now they've reduced all their ability to negotiate.The whole comes along. It's like, yeah, I'm gonna join. You want me to join? I'll join. But here's my requirements. I get to destroy five buildings every week. Take it or leave it, then what do you do? And then what do you do?Michael: And I might get into fist way with you, you know, so just, just like it or lump it, but it's happening and it's like, well, okay, maybe we shouldn't like it.Edward: Maybe putting ads and newspapers across the country was not the right choice. 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 this episode:Mike and Ed discuss the shocking loss of scientific skill among the country's top scientists. It clearly seems purposeful, but what is the purpose? Aliens trying to keep humanity from developing new technologies? A domestic test to take away targeted abilities from exceptional people? Will they be able to take away superpowers next? And if so, is it ethical? If we can't keep someone in prison, is the choice really between lobotomizing their abilities or capital punishment? What is the ethical choice? Ed and Mike disagree!Behind the issue:The after-effects of this issue result in Giant-Man unable to shrink smaller than a normal human for the remainder of his time in this title (which is ending soon and will be replaced with Namor. More on that when it happens!). Otherwise, nothing special here. In this issue:A guy is driving around town while being directed by a man in a hidden laboratory in a funny costume named the Supreme One. When the driver sees Giant-Man, he decides to zap him in a green ray, which causes Giant-Man to grow weak. This is because the ray is designed to steal power. The Supreme One becomes obsessed with stealing Giant-Man's power, as he was unable to do that the first time he had someone try. To that end, he has his minion drive around town bathing scientific geniuses in the green ray, stealing their next-level scientific abilities, i.e. a top physicists forgets everything he knows about physics, etc. Giant-Man and the Wasp investigate, eventually tracking down the Supreme One, who escapes in a spaceship (turns out he is an alien).In the second story in this issue, the Hulk fights the army in a foreign nation, and when he turns to Bruce Banner, he is captured by some locals. Major Talbot is sent in to rescue Bruce Banner, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger - will Talbot and Banner fall to their deaths as they escape? Tune in next week!Assumed before the next episode:People are wondering what is happening to all the smart people. They are getting … less smart? How does that make any sense?This episode takes place:After people learn of the de-smartening that is happening.Complete transcript:Edward: All right, Mike, we're gonna change it up this week. We're gonna change it up a little bit because I have a story I think we should be talking about that's not, well, maybe it is superhuman. The scientists around the world are losing their scientific abilitiesMichael: right?Edward: So these are top physicists who are losing the ability to do physics or top geneticists who can't do genetics anymore. Top chemists who can't do chemistry anymore. And their brains can still do everything else. They can still have conversations, they can still love their families, but they're losing their scientific abilities. And so I think this is a super thing. We don't know who's doing it or why, but it sounds superhuman.Michael: Okay, before we get to this superhuman, if they're superhuman. Not saying that what you're saying is thatEdward: No, I'm not saying human. It's a superhuman, some sort of superhuman thing. I don't think we know any scientific way to remove parts of knowledge from someone's brain like that feels like a superhuman thing.Michael: Right. So you're saying that there must be a purpose to it. This phenomena that's only targeting extremely intelligent and highly accomplished and specialized people like physicists. They're being targeted and their abilities are removed, which. Yeah, it doesn't sound normal.Edward: Um, well, it's never happened before, so therefore it is by definition, abnormal. Although it's abnormal, it's happening more and more now. So is it becoming normal? It's becoming normal. It was not normal, but now it is.Michael: It's normalized almost, and so normalized.So I guess the first question is, what's the purpose of it? So your first thing is that you're thinking that there's a super villain possibly, or an alien or something that is doing this for a reason. Right. In that it's making humanity weaker. It's making our ability to defend ourselves worse. Worse. Is that where you're kind of going on it,Edward: it sounds that way. Like, oh, you're right. Maybe it's a villain who's doing blackmail, but it seems purposeful. If it was a virus, That was just spreading around, right? And causing brain damage to people. First of all, that'd be terrifying, but secondly, it feels like that viruses don't work that way. The viruses wouldn't go and attack just the most intelligent top scientists in the world and just attack their scientific knowledge and leave everything else untouched. So you're right, it seems purposeful.Michael: And that's alarming because we know that in the last few years, in addition to what appears to be naturally occurring superhuman abilities and extraterrestrial or, paranormal, superhuman abilities, we have seen that there's been greater advances in technology, in science that have allowed humanity to reach new levels. So Iron, Man and other, you know, giant. Giant man have been able To create things that are just impossible they're fantastical. It's basically modern magic, the science that they've been able to wield so is this a preemptive attack, a taking away the ability of other people to create such modern miracles?Edward: Oh, you're right. Yeah, it could be stopping the creation of new superheroes. We know, if you look at the superheroes that are out there, a handful of them, like the X-Men seem to be that this people who are born with this weird gene that's being activated by something.But for most superheroes out there, or, super villain for that matter. It seems to be either, Some sort of science that science is doing it. That's right. Captain America is experimented on and turned into Captain America, like the Reed. Richards took fantastic four up into space and space stuff turned them into the Fantastic four. Sandman was like atomic research, whatever turned him into Sandman. So it feels, or to your point, Iron, Man and Giant Man was actually, or the porcupine, they're actually building technological wonders. And so if our top minds, the people who can like do the engineering, the people who can understand the atomic science are losing their ability to do that.Hey, maybe it is aliens. Maybe aliens are trying to put humans in their place and say, Hey, stay on the planet Earth. Stop leaving and stop developing powers.Michael: It's wild. It sounds paranoid, but at the same time it's starting to make a lot of sense. This will fundamentally weaken humanity. By taking our top scientists off the board. That's right. Quite frightening. That's right. But then the other part of it is leaving side the motivation which is alarming and I'm hopeful that say the Avengers or the various federal agencies are on top of this, you gotta wonder how they're doing it. Like how is it that they're doing almost micro lobotomies. Is it a technological basis for it or is it magical? How exactly are they doing it at all.Edward: You're right. Clearly, it's not something that anyone has done before, but someone has found a way to go and do, lobotomy is a good word. It's a very, it's like a targeted lobotomy. Because what's fascinating about this is it's not like these scientists are coming in with other brain damage. They're able to continue on their lives. Normally. They are still able to, whole jobs. Not even like they can't do normal stuff. They can do all the normal things. They just, it's like this piece of knowledge. They're cutting edge brain power and I don't even know if their intelligence was affected so much as their knowledge was affected. So if you're a scientist who's like really brilliant and spend 40 years of your life diving deep into physics, you're not gonna be able to spend another 40 years we just don't live long enough.Michael: It's quite a violation of their autonomy too. I don't want to discount that, but, however they're doing it, it's wild. And you gotta wonder if it's not some extraterrestrial kind of thing or some kind of super thing. What if it's actually a, just, it's something more domestic? We talked before about, What do you do with these super villains that you capture and have these amazing abilities? Like say, let's say Sue Storm turned into be a bad person and she has force fields and can turn Invisible. Like how do you deal with that and make, and IM prisoner if she was a villain, is this. Some technology that somehow got into the world where they've been experimenting on how to turn off abilities and it's got into the wrong hands and they're using it to turn off the abilities, for lack of a better term, of regular humans.Edward: If you're right, maybe it is just an experiment then, and they're testing to see if they can turn it on and off before they say, Hey, let's turn off the superpowers of. Sue Storm or Reed richards. Let's turn off the brain power of some physicists and you're right, if it doesn't work and they can't turn it back on again, that would be really bad. But not as bad as if we like turn off the superpowers of the Avengers because hey, that's irreplaceable.Michael: It does lead into to a consideration of like, how if this is like a deliberate thing that might be done by people on our side, say a government kind of project that got the wrong hands, that tells us I guess I've ever thought about the idea that turning off, say, superpowers is akin to a pure violation of a person's autonomy, right? It's more relatable in a way to basically make a very intelligent person, less intelligent in a particular area that is actually, it's so remarkably unethical, cuz it is effectively targeted Phlebotomy.Edward: Clearly whether it's just happening to Random intelligent people, it's unethical. But if we did this to get against the guy who was building the porcupine suit or the wizard who is like notoriously committing crimes and breaking outta prison and committing the frightful fore attacking the Fantastic four, if we just reduced his intelligence and stopped his ability to go and create these fantastic suits, I dunno, is that still unethical?Michael: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. It, definitely is it is a version of lobotomizing those intelligent people. We don't do that right now. There have been super intelligent people in history and if the choice is to build a better prison or to lobotomize somebody, you would choose you should choose to build a better prison.Edward: That's fair. And I guess I feel like we haven't really. On that route, far enough. We still are building these terrible prisons and allowing these criminals to escape again and again. But I guess let's go further. Remember there was the vanish. Do you remember the vanish, right?Yes, I did. So that's, yeah, so the vanger had the ability to teleport and, I'm not sure how he was dealt with, I assume, like we assumed at the time maybe that they just killed him. There was just a extra, judicial murder to take this guy out because otherwise what do you do?You can't put in prison someone who can teleport outta prison. He was teleport into the Oval Office. He was threatening the president. You, can't stop someone like that. And so if we had, if for the vanish or. Let's say what they had this ability to turn off his power. Or, and along the way it also turned off his ability to do complicated differential equations. It feels like that's a better alternative than allowing him to go free or a better alternative than murdering him.Michael: Yeah. But it's the same, you know, The Thing with ethics is that they're not relative. This goes to, the question I suppose, is the ability to have like a superhuman power, and you, if you remove that, is that the same as effectively doing a version of a targeted lobotomy? And I think the answer is yes. I mean, I think that the Vanger, even by basis of just looking at his name, He identifies, that's a core part of who he is.Edward: He enjoys vanishes, and if he stops vanishing, then who is he anymore?Michael: Well, exactly. And so to remove that from him,Edward: it's, I'm the talker. If you take away my, if you make me mute, who am I?I can't, I can't, I can't do The Thing that I do.Michael: But it, but it's the same thing, like, so it is the same thing removing an ability for somebody to solve differential equations as a top physicist is the same as taking away a person's ability to, in this case, do a unique thing, which is the ability to,Edward: so I'll grant you that, but the difference is, is that the guy doing the differential equations isn't trying to murder the president. It feels like that. Like that's the difference. You're right. I don't think we should go and find everybody who can teleport and then go and take away their abilities. That seems like a draconian a totalitarian government that would do something like that. But if there's somebody teleporting around murdering people, I think by all means we should stop that person. And if that means taking away their ability to teleport, I think so. Be it.Michael: I guess the question is, what is a worse and more abominable crime towards an individual or harm that you could cause them? Is it one to give them effectively a brain injury so that they are not the same person as they were before, because that's what you're doing if you turn up abilities. I think it's similar to making somebody less, less intelligent to like solve differential equations either argues the same as turning off their ability to do what they're born to do, which is teleport. So it's a better termEdward: to murder. I was born to murder precedents.Michael: Wait, so you either give them effectively a brain injury, so you actually violate what they are as a human at who they're as a person. Their core being or you killed them, is what you're saying. Or you build a better prison. Yeah. Yeah. And you're saying you handled a better prison. It's only two choices.Edward: That's right. That's right. So I think we are all agreed that if you can build a better prison, you build a better prison that feels like the right thing to do, I think. Mm-hmm. When you can't build a better prison, when you have someone like the vanish or the absorbing man who can, if you put him in a prison, whatever you. Put him in, he can absorb the strength of that thing and bust his way out. And so what do we do? The absorbing man, they set him into space to drift aimlessly for eternity. Like that seems worse. It feels like if you had a choice between, that's the worst one. Drifting through space for all eternity, or losing the ability to absorb the strength of materials around you. I think most of us would give up the ability to absorb, even if our name was the absorbing man. It feels like you can get a new name.Michael: Hey. They sit him down and say, listen, here are the two alternatives. We've been up all night thinking about the options here, and one is that we turn you into a race that'll float through the empty space forever, or we give you, effectively we change your brain chemistry. And I think that, historically, it's a pretty slippery slope when you start messing around with people's brains and changing who they are. I don't know what the right answer is, ed, but I have to say youEdward: really don't know the right answer. You really think that maybe the right answers to have 'em drift through space for all eternity.Michael: I don't know. You're forcing me to say that. I think it'd be better. I think it would probably be better to actually like, uh, And I'm against a death penalty. But that seems to be preferable to actually really lobotomize againstEdward: sin. Bomb the ball. No, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, imagine. So let's put you in that, those shoes. Okay? Now, Mike, you now have the ability to fly. You are flying, man, and you could fly around and so on. But you know what? You used that, you used that flying power for evil, and you started killing presidents. And so now they're like, Mikey, you need to go to jail. Unfortunately. This metaphor is falling apart because we could put a flying guy in jail. You,Michael: you put a, the ceiling solved the problem, ed.Edward: Okay, Mike, you have the ability, we're gonna use this vanish again. You can teleport Mike, you can now teleport everywhere and you're murdering people left, right, and center. Because you know what, maybe the teleporting also meant your brain go, went crazy, and the government comes to you and says, Hey Mike, we have two choices.We can take away your ability to teleport and you'll go back to being old Mike. Or we can murder you. Are you really, are you like, have you given that choice? Like you think the right choice is to murder you?Michael: Uh, it's, it's just such a hard It, it is. It's not hard. Murder. Murder is a problem. The slippery slope stuff is terrible.Eddie, you're actually,Edward: yeah. But one of them, one of them has a slippery slope. The other one is a giant hole of death.Michael: You know what I think because,Edward: you can recover from a slippery slope, you can't recover from a murder.Michael: Eddie, I'm a lawyer. I'm not a judge. I'm not making that call right now. But you're, but clearly I know where it goes with you. You'd be like, take away my ability. Give lobotomize me so that I don't go out and vanish anymore and I'll live the rest of my life.Having you having fundamentally changed what, who I am as a person? Yes. Yes. How is that any different than Lobotomizing people that. The state didn't, consider to be, desirable?Edward: Well, we've already, I think the difference is, is we've agreed that you are only doing this as a last ditch effort. We're not saying, Hey, you're a murderer, a normal murderer who like walks around with knives and guns. We'll just take the knives and guns away from you. Even though you call yourself gunman and you define yourself by using guns, we're gonna take away the guns. And then, and you're like, oh, but I can't be gunman without guns.Well, too bad you're no longer gunman. You are now just man, and we're gonna put you in a jail. And that jail is not gonna give you access to guns and that's the preferred choice. But if you can't, but if you can't put them in the jail, you need another choice. And the second choice should not be killing them indiscriminately.Michael: So I guess the problem and hear me out on the slippery slope, but like if the technology is developed and you can use it on these, in these extreme situations, my fear is that you use them. Even if you could rationalize that, you would use them in more mundane situations where all prisoners, all people convicted of violent crimes are now gonna get, effectively get a lobotomy because it's safer.Because you can't keep them in prison forever. Or if you do, the prisons are unsafe, et cetera. There's gonna be a rationalization for actually using this technology to effectively lobotomize them too. So it won't be limited, I'm afraid to this very unique situation that. The teleporters of the world. I wish we know there's one. And it could extend and it could, it would extend what I consider to be an abomination throughout. Oh, again, you're worried Our society.Edward: Well, maybe we just put in rules in place that the person needs to choose to have this. We just get to a certain point where it's like, Hey, you can choose to be lobotomized or murdered, and if you prefer murder, we can do that for you.The state's really good at murdering people.Michael: I think it's what, I think one of those, that's what they consider to be actually not a real choice. Ed, I thinkEdward: know that's the point is, but like, we're stuck at this point where we have to choose the choice. We don't give them three choices if it's not like we can take away your powers, murder you or put you in a jail that you can escape from in two seconds. Which do you choose now? Well, clearly the guy just escapes from jail and so that's not an acceptable choice for our society. We need to stop the vanger and people like him from murdering people. And so far it seems like what we're doing is we're just murdering. We murdered the vanger and we sent the absorbing man into space. And this molecule, man, we don't know what happened to him. These people who are extremely powerful. They seem to just be disappearing and we're not talking about it. That is the slippery slope. And so this is a way to reduce the murdering this against villains.Michael: Well, if I had to guess. I suppose the murder's been working out. At least that's what's been happening and I think it's unfortunate. I think it's horrific. And so what I hope will happen is that maybe if the government is secretly funding this research into this technology, maybe they should direct their attention. Towards better prisons that would solve the problem and avoid these thorny issues. That, that you're pushing on me.Edward: Teleportation proof prisons. That's the next scientific achievement. Read Richards. Go do it.Michael: Send them to Asgard Ed. We know that they must have their, they're superpowered.God's like Thor. They must have the technology up there to deal with strange, unique powers. Let's, let's, let's start talking about that.Edward: Vanisher, get off Earth. Go murder Odin. 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

Next week is our 200th episode! It was fortunate timing that it ended up landing right on our episodes about Avengers #16, which was one of the most important issues of the era. If you are enjoying What If Marvel was Real?, now would be a great time to spread the word! Thanks for your help in getting our little show out there, and for all the listeners who have been here from the beginning.In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss the surprise announcement that Hawkeye, the supervillain, will be joining the Avengers as a new member. The Federal Security Agency has given Hawkeye a thumbs up, but how is that possible? What do they know that we do not? Do we need to talk conspiracies again? The rumors are that Captain America and Thor are out of the organization. If true, we will only be left with heroes with technological powers - have the people behind the technology (and masks) been replaced? Is this the end of an era?Behind the issue:This is one of the key issues of the mid-60s. The Avengers were originally Marvel's answer to the Justice League, whereby the publisher put all the heroes from different titles into one book to get the readers excited and turning over their hard-earned cash for tales of camaraderie and adventure. But the individual hero titles continued, and Stan had to keep his developing Marvel universe consistent. He had to juggle the storylines in, say, the individual title Tales of Suspense with what was happening in the team title Avengers. If Thor had been called away to Asgard, then how would be be around for an Avengers adventure that same month? Making it all make sense every month was challenging for Stan, and he wanted a solution.The answer was to take most of the heroes with their own titles off the team. He kept Captain America, and maybe rationalized it by knowing that the Captain America stand-alone stories could be set back in World War II whenever he wanted them to be. Then he filled in the rest of the team with supporting characters from other titles - characters who did not have their own books (and would not get their own books for many years, i.e. Hawkeye did not get his first solo title until 1983; Scarlet Witch, with Vision, until 1982; and Quicksilver until 1997).In this issue:The issue opens with the Avengers once again emerging victorious over the Masters of Evil in New York, with Captain America defeating Baron Zemo in South America. It continues with Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp in New York having a team meeting and deciding to take a break from being on the team. At the same time they are having the meeting, Hawkeye breaks into their headquarters and asks to join the Avengers. His beloved Black Widow has been murdered by her employers behind the iron curtain, and he has had a change of heart on his line of work. The team decide to take him up on the offer, and on top of that, seek out new potential teammates, with the papers reporting this initiative. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver decide to apply to join the team, and they are admitted to the ranks as well. By the time Captain America returns, the team has been completed reconstituted, with Iron Man, Giant-Man, and the Wasp out, and Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch in as their replacements.Assumed before the next episode:People are excited, and a little nervous, that the Avengers roster has been changed so completely.This episode takes place:After the announcement that Hawkeye will be on the team, but before Captain America returns from South America.Full transcript:Edward: Mike, I told you that Hawkeye was a superhero. I told you. I told you. You were like, oh no, he's not that good. He can't even fight anybody just as Arrows. Oh, go back to the 14th century. But no. Now Hawkeye is an Avenger. Mike. He's an avenger.Michael: Yeah. I guess the Avengers, they already had a man who's basically a one man rocket and can shoot energy from his fists as an Iron man. They needed to get somebody who could. Arrows on the team.Edward: Hey. The last time Hawkeye faced Iron Man, first of all, last time he faced Iron Man, he was a villain. We should talk about that. But when he did, yes, he defeated Iron Man, right? He blasted him with his energy discharge arrow and took him out. So, hey, this guy is versatile. We've had this debate. We don't need to debate it again. I think you are against Team Hawkeye. I am on Team Hawkeye. I think that it's absolutely fine from a power perspective that he's on the team. I'm not sure from a, ethics perspective, he's the red venture.Michael: Well, okay, let's break into, those two points then. So from a powerless perspective there must be something to him that he brings into the team, right? I can't imagine that it's solely just really good aim. There must be some other, maybe he's got some other ability that like he's, um, some kind of likeEdward: oh, maybe his really, maybe his really good eyesight. HawkeyeMichael: In the name, I mean alone, but he's got, there's some kind of, maybe, I'm just thinking maybe this is a signal that the Avengers are going from less, overt action to be more in the shadows.Edward: And nothing says sneaky like a purple costume carrying a bow and arrow.Michael: It's a dark purple ed. It's a dark, dark purple. No, but there must be something to it. Like he did take on Iron Man. He did seem to defeat him. So in a skills-based contest and maybe he's. Like you notice that Captain America wasn't at the press conference when they announced Hawkeye, so maybe he's a replacement for Captain America's, who's also similarly strategic and stealth based in a lot ways.Edward: There you go. There you go. Cause the rumors are right now that Captain America and Thor are being replaced and Hawkeye is the first edition to the team, but there will be,Michael: and your second point was the ethics. It does strike me as being a little odd that there's a guy who's worked with a known terrorist. The Black Widow. Correct. A Russian agent and he's fought Iron Man a few times. And, I would imagine in the course, Committed some crimes may, maybe he did, maybe technically he didn't commit any crime.He's justEdward: He did. No, I just did. I think they were doing something robbed. They were robbing Stark Corp or something. Yeah. They kidnapping somebody he was doing bad stuff.Michael: They kidnapped, they kidnap people. Yeah. Yeah. That seems a bit much to sweep under the rug.Edward: That's right. Where I come from, kidnapping is a crime, Mike. It's a crime. But come from planet, but not according to the federal security Agency. The federal security agency has approved Hawkeye as a member of the Avengers, says that his record is clean, that he is totally allowed to be on the team.Michael: Well, I know when I became a lawyer there is a requirement of good character to become a lawyer and. I think that there's a lot of lawyers, soEdward: I think the bar should be higher for the Avengers. Shouldn't the bar be higher than the lawyers?Michael: I think it should be. I think it should be. It should be higher than the bar for lawyers. The bar for superhero should be much higher and it turns out that it isn't. And let's be honest, the Avengers are the super team that people are in, are interested in, and it that are called in as the heavy hitters. So this seems like. Quite a promotion for somebody who, as you say, committed the crime of kidnappingEdward: That's interesting. Let's go back and talk about your issue with, Hey, lawyers have a high bar. I think part of the reason why we can hold lawyers to a high bar is that the supply of lawyers is really high. We're graduating more lawyers every year, and if there's an unethical lawyer, we can say, no thank you. We don't need you. We can replace you with an ethical lawyer. I wonder if the problem is, People who are powerful enough, superheroes who are powerful, super people who are powerful enough to be Avengers. There's not an excess supply. There's a handful of these people. Mm-hmm. There's like a few dozen maybe on the planet. And so if you're looking to augment that team and your bar is high from a power perspective, maybe you have to bend a little bit on the ethics perspective.Michael: Or maybe, if you believe in rehabilitation, which I do, maybe there's a steep rehabilitation curve? Because as you say, demand exceeds supply. And so if we need to have, Superpowered or super skilled people either we're willing to turn a blind eye or we're willing to go through the process that hopefully allows him to achieve rehabilitation. So behind the scenes there's been this sped up process. Yeah. Because we need to have this person. I know what you're saying. It does seem a little fu butEdward: it does. I'm stretching a little bit, trying to make sense of the fact that we have a known super villain on the team. And not just on the team, but specifically signed off by the federal government, the federal security agency has come on and said, Hey, this guy is clean. He's totally, totally legit. Now, and maybe the other possibilities that maybe the whole villain thing that Hawkeye was doing before was a misunderstanding, like the, the Avengers declared martial law on America. Turns out it was a mistake. Right? It wasn't actually them maybe and we're okay with that because Avengers do good, Avengers do. We'd say, oh, the bad was a mistake. We're all good. And Hawkeye just didn't do the good part at the beginning. He was just doing much of bad, but then like, oh, nope, we are okay with it. It was a, it was kind of a mistake. It was a misunderstanding. He's actually a good guy and maybe we just have to accept that.Michael: I guess, and the fact that it's Iron Man who he's fought, who's come forward and vouched for him, must mean there's something to the idea thereEdward: that's assuming Iron. Man is Iron Man.Michael: I know it's the Iron Man with whomever that person is has come forward and voast for him? For, for Hawkeye, andEdward: well, no, no. Let's say a Iron Man has come forward and Vos for Hawkeye. Yeah. But that's a whole other point. We've talked about this conspiracy. Do we know that the Iron Man inside the Iron Man suit is the same as the Iron Man who was in the Iron Man suit fighting Hawkeye. Maybe the Iron Man inside the suit. The individual inside the suit has been replaced and now he's like, I was an enemy with the old guy in the suit. Let's bring on some more of the people who are also his enemy onto the main team.Michael: So a hostile takeover, Eddie, like you got. This Iron Man. That's not real. Who's recruiting a villain and who's left on the team? Who are the other people on the team? Ed?Edward: Well, we know that I think giant man in the WASP are still people on the team, and so, hey, we, know that giant man in the wasps, their powers come from technology, right? We know this now too, right? There's some sort of helmet or pills or something they take and they wear masks. We don't know who they are. Maybe they've been replaced at the same.Michael: It's Wild Day, so the three members of the team of the Avengers, who are technology based, Iron Man, giant men in the Wasp are still on there and they could be swapped in. And interchangeable. For all we know. Thor isn't exactly interchangeable.Edward: That's right too. So the two people that are not, that looks like they're being replaced are Captain American Thor and Thor is, that's right. Clear. Like whatever. Thor is magical, powered, mutant. We don't know exactly what he is. We know that he is not an armored suit. He's not taking a pill. And turning to Thor and Captain America we know is some experiment from like the 1940s during World War ii, who is Un aging and like super strong. And he's a super powerful individual. He's physically fit and he's not replaceable either. He's not like, you can just put someone else, put the,Michael: there's footage of him going back to the forties as well, so maybe hard to just replace him. Whereas you have the, you're right, you have the only three members of the Avengers left are one second, easily be swapped out, and now they're. Pac a villain, or at least a criminal.Edward: I think somebody should be taking photos of the lower half of Giant Man's face and matching that up to previous photos. I guess you could still replace him with someone who's lower Jaw looks the same, but maybe they didn't go to that much trouble. I think someone should at least investigate.Michael: Or get his dental records, or photos to get a sense of his teeth and then compare them to old photos and say, aha, aha, I can see that that front tooth is shifted over quite a bit. That's not the same giant man.Edward: He's like, but I was punched in the face. I'm an avenger. I can punch in the face a lot.Michael: Uh, maybe wouldn't be the best one. But the nose, even like noses are pretty distinctive. Or even ears that they pot. Well, I don't think ears pot though, butEdward: his ears are covered. We don't, we don't know what his ears look like,Michael: but this all goes through our fundamental problem is that we, as a public and as the fifth, the state, have a hard time, Getting a sense of who these people are or possibly being fooled because they wear masks. And I guess, if we see that the Avengers as basically a very public facing, paramilitary organization that's to some degree manage or governed by the government say the Federal security agency in this case, then I guess there must be some safeguards. I good, good guess, but it's hard to say.Edward: And even if there are, it feels like, it's not the first time that you can imagine some corruption within the government, right? Maybe it's not even, a giant corrupt thing that we're talking about, but maybe that giant man in the wasp, our agents of the government, Iron Man is an agent of the government and somebody in charge. Whoever we don't know who that is. Someone in charge decides to bring on Hawkeye, and let's say all five members of the team are. Forget it. We don't want this guy on the team and the government guy's like, no, no, no, no, no. We've done the checkup. He's totally fine. He's totally legit. But they're like, no, we, we all quit. And so Captain American Thor are gone. You can't replace them, but you're like, oh, well hey, you three, you can't quit. You can quit if you want, but whatever. Tom Jones and Bob Smith can quit, but a giant man and the Iron Man in the was, they don't quit. They just get replace.Michael: Yeah, this deserves investigation. This deserves further inquiry. There's too many moving parts of the story to just let it sit. It's easy to be distracted by a new member of the adventures for the public, it's the first new member that they've added since they formed,Edward: no, no, no. That's not true. That's not Captain America came on. They, and he joined the team. Wonderman came on and he joined the team. Now, Wonderman died almost before we knew he was on the team. But he was an official Avenger for Okay. Some period of time. So this is the third new member of the team.Michael: Okay. It's still relatively unique though, let's just say that it's a big deal. Like Captain America is a new Yeah, it's a big deal. So it's, but it's distractingly. Interesting. And so other people, other journalists, and if I don't think we would consider ourselves journalists, but maybe we should, in this instance, should be asking these tough questions. And then I would think if they are truly a paramilitary organization, there is an interest, a public interest in perhaps knowing their identities in the same way that you would of any kind of, Government agents, unless they're spies, which the adventures aren't.Edward: Okay. Can we talk a little bit about speculation? We've done this conspiracy stuff, but now we have so it's true the Captain American Thor are off the team. I think your argument is that Hawkeye kind of replaces Captain America and I can buy that, right? Like they're both extremely talented individuals in some way, shape, or form. Both of them have projectiles that they incorporate one arrow and one a shield. I would argue arrows. More effective than shields start in terms of projectiles. But so that leads Thor. How do you replace an as guardian thunder God?Michael: Maybe with a Hulk. I don't know. Like, I mean, like what?Edward: Yeah, that went well last time.Michael: Maybe. The Thing, maybe.Edward: Oh, maybe The. Thing. Oh my gosh. That's a great call. Great call. Maybe it's time to shift things up.Michael: Yeah, I mean like maybe he's tired of being I wouldn't say that the fantastic four second tier, cause they aren't, but they do serve a different niche right, than the Avengers. And maybe that's true. Maybe Ben Grimm who was in the military. His interest might align better with a paramilitary organization rather than a more adventuring kind of organization. Fantastic.Edward: That's a great idea. Now, here's another theory is that Hawkeye was a villain that they got over to the hero side. Why don't we look at the list of villains out there? Radioactive man. Radioactive man from China. They decide to he's gonna defect and join America and join the Avengers. Because I would argue radioactive then wasn't evil. He was just serving the wrong master. And people have defected from China to America all the time.Michael: I mean, it'd be hard to get notice to him over in China, but Sure. He does have a skillset. He is extremely powerful. Similar to, I don't think he's the same strength level as Thor, butEdward: hasn't he battled Thor? Isn't Thor and radioactive man, aren't they arch.Michael: It's hard to tell. How many battles do you have to be an Archie enemy? I think you need a few, but,Edward: Just a regular enemy.Michael: Yeah, he's an enemy. Well, how about, okay, there's two. I'd say if you wanna go straight on, as guardian to as guardian, it would be the executioner. Executioner, yeah. Or Loki. Are the, oh Loki. If you could rehabilitate in the way that they rehabilitated, Hawkeye presumably, but I'd imagine rehabilitating an ancient immortal being that it might be a little tough. Tougher it. A little tougher to serve the interests of America or the world.Edward: No. You've been focus, we've been focused on like strength though too. Mr. Hyde is another strength strong guy. Yeah. Right. Maybe Mr. Hyde. But I wonder Thor is more than just a strong guy. He's more than. Pure muscle, the guy can fly. Remember we talked about how fast he can fly across the ocean?Yep. So do we need a guy who can fly? Like how about the wizard? Can we bring the wizard back?Michael: Yeah. But it's not like he's made a couple mistakes. Like you suggested maybe hot guy. He's a career criminal now. He just broke bad. How about, how about that guy with the, the wings from the x.Edward: Oh, angel Fly. Angel could fly Fly Angel. Yeah. Angel. Angel could fly. Yeah. You know, I think the point is it's gonna be hard to replace Thor cuz there's people who are strong that we could find. There are people who can fly. We could find, but trying to find somebody who can do both, that's a pretty unique spot. I think maybe there, there were, they made a mistake to let Thor go.Michael: Like I say, it's a developing story and I'm still distracted by the idea for lack of a better term, a super villain. Hawkeye is now in the Avengers, seems kind of funny. For a couple reasons. And then longstanding Avengers are just, I just disappeared. The only ones that remain are ones who are basically, are suits, where power suits seems kind of strange. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder what's happening. You know, we gotta get into this.Edward: There's also the point that we, this is all speculation too, because they did not say the Captain American Thor off the team. There was questions asked, and it was all just no comment. No comment, no comment. We're not gonna talk about it. What did he, he said something about the lives of Avengers are private citizens. We can't comment on them. Like, it was a definitely a very sketchy statement of we're not gonna go there.And so, hey, I guess stay tuned is the answer. More to come. More to come. 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

EPISODE NINE: SYSTEMS‍We're getting into Dr. Naomi Sedani's world!‍Follow her journey, week by week, as she creates her start-up: Lil' Dente‍Naomi is scheduled to open up her practice in February 2023... that's only a couple of weeks away!‍Listen each week to hear the raw truth and the "behind the scenes" details that not many talk about publicly when it comes to starting up a practice!‍We uncover unexpected struggles she is facing, what "life-saving" practice tips she discovered, how much everything is costing, what equipment/ companies she decides to go with and why, her vision to grow in the community, all her financials, how all of this is affecting her personal life, and everything in between!‍Naomi may need your help and advice, so please feel free to engage with each episode, share your feedback, and ask questions here:‍The Making of a Dental Start-Up Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1511481045554890‍The Making of a Dental Start-Up Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themaking.of/‍Message us through our website here.‍Find Out MoreThank you for listening to this series "The Making of Smile Oasis" on The Making of a Dental Start-Up. If you enjoyed it, please share with anyone you think will gain value from the show by clicking on one of the sharing tabs above.Also, please consider leaving an honest review on iTunes. It helps other listeners find the show, and I would be forever grateful.Questions or comments? Feel free to contact me here.Follow me on Instagram or Facebook and improve your dental practice every day!Have you subscribed? Don't miss a single episode!‍You can also find us on Spotify now, just type in the search bar "The Making of a Dental Start-Up".‍Listen to podcasts and learn more about The Making of a Dental Start-Up on the website.‍Remember that Naomi's dental practice is being built in real time. Follow her incredible journey and message her here:‍Naomi's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nks7499‍Naomi's Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.naomisedani/‍Naomi's Practice Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lildentesmiles/‍p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your start-up.‍[TRANSCRIPT]‍Michael: What's up Naomi? How's it going? Good. How are you doing? Doing pretty good. T today a snowstorm. Snowstorm hit you, right? Naomi: Yeah, unfortunately, supposedly the biggest one, New York has gotten ak. The only one New York has gotten. Are you serious? Yeah. That's the first snowstorm in the area, basically. It's crazy. It's like in March. Michael: Was it, was it like a legit one or were you like, uh, Naomi: I feel like they were making it out to be like something really bad. Um mm-hmm. . I mean, it definitely snowed and there was freezing rain last night, but it was like all the schools canceled. Everyone was two hour breaks. Businesses were closing and then we drove, or like we came in by train just so we didn't have to deal with the highway, and it's totally fine. , Michael: is it real? So there's nothing No. Is it, has Naomi: it passed? Uh, yeah. It's not even snowing. Like The snow has stayed and it's definitely there and it's like slushy icy status. now, but. Nothing wild like New York, it was fine. I don't think Connecticut knows what a snowplow is, but that's all good. Does the snow in Connecticut? No, it definitely does. It's just like the roads here are way worse off than New York roads. Michael: Oh, I get you. I get you. You don't, they don't, they don't know how to like, to plow in people get, just get stuck. Gotcha. You. That makes sense. Yeah. So has that set you back today or what has it done? Naomi: Yeah, um, I had four or five patients on like the calendar today. And three of 'em canceled, yesterday just because of like the snowstorm and snow days and they were gonna have to be home with the kids, blah, blah, blah. And then we had, I had an op this morning, like a nitrous op and then her brother was gonna be getting a new patient exam and we kept trying to contact them to see if they wanted to reschedule, but she was insistent on coming in, so we opened up the office to be able to see them. Michael: Were you trying to reschedule people today Naomi: or. I mean, I was just asking them, I didn't wanna force the appointment or anything. I know some people just don't feel comfortable driving in snow and mm-hmm. right now. My schedule has a lot of flexibility in open spots, so I didn't mind like being like, Hey, if you're not comfortable, I totally get it. Yeah. Michael: So then were they all able to reschedule or were they like, oh, I'll get it back to you, or, Naomi: um, one of them's getting back to me, she tends to only come here because right across the hall is like that pediatric therapy group. Mm-hmm. and their therapist is supposed to come in on my dental visit with him, so she has to re coordinate that whole thing. And then the other one is my cousin and her kids . So you better come, we rescheduled her. I was like, you better be coming. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other ones were just the op and the sibling and they definitely came and it was actually good because I got to spend more time with them and. . It was like easier for sure, and I, it turned out to be a good visit, so it's all good. Now. I'm just here doing admin work. Michael: Oh, that's good. How long is normally like that new patient or that patient visitation that just happened? Naomi: I mean, I think if it was like recalls and then more frequently, I wouldn't say it would be take more than 20 minutes, but just because you're trying to get to know the families, you're talking, you're trying to understand what they're coming from. I would say it takes 30 to 40 minutes and I did some like same day like sealants and all that stuff on him, so. Michael: Hmm. Yeah. Are you asking for like reviews and referrals already or No. Naomi: So the mom today, she on her own says she's gonna refer a family friend to us, which was like really sweet. But like I'm starting to ask Beatrice to. say at the front like, Hey, if you had a great experience, which it sounds like you did, we really love a review, I'll be happy to send you a link once you're home. so we're starting that dialogue here. Mm-hmm. , no one has done it like in our face quite yet. And then 24 hours after the appointment we always send like a follow-up text Hey, we're hoping blah, blah, blah. Did. Well as you know, we're a brand new business and readings and reviews mean a lot to us. if you enjoyed your experience, we'd love to hear about it and here's a link. Gotcha. So you're doing that now? Yeah. Yeah. We started like those texts. So I have to work with Casper on like if it can be automatic because right now Yeah. I'm the one that's going in 24 hours after the appointment and sending that text Michael: message manually all the time. Naomi: Yeah. Right now. But I think there has to be a way to do it through Casper. Yeah, I was Michael: gonna say there has to be. Yeah. I would assume, Naomi: I dunno, they're very good at automation, so Michael: that's good. That's good. So far out of all the, I guess, software that you have, has any of 'em been like, I didn't really need this, or, eh, I expected more from you or kind of thing or No? Naomi: Mm-hmm. , Casper truthfully has been like my, I don't wanna call it saving grace, but I think it's the one that's like showing like a lot of great feedback. Beatrice, my front desk slash assistant, she loves it. she loves the patient communication, like she loves, like the ease of being able to see everything. the forms are something I'm just still trying to get a little bit more used to, but everything has been like really seamless so far in terms of like, at least the communication side, being able to do whatever I want. And so I'm, I'm extremely happy, but I love the fact that I don't have like Mango Flex. I don't know what else. Swell. Michael: I dunno what's like in those Ed Dental, all Naomi: that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Next health, whatever. I'm very happy and as a minimalist myself, I just really appreciate it's a one all be all and one program. I don't have to like contact all these different people. it's just there. And what's also great on Casper, if none of you guys have like ever demoed it, they have like a little chat button, like on the main desktop page itself. So it's kind of nice that while I'm dealing with an issue or a question comes up, I can still have a chat text with them and they'll be able to fix things. While my day is going and it's up on a web browser, it's not like a software program that's integrated onto your desktop so I can access it from anywhere. Hmm. Michael: When it comes to the forms you mentioned, you're still getting used to that. . Naomi: So theirs is definitely more set up for gps, I think just PS just has a little bit of a different need. So like the extraction form, ? Mm-hmm. . Um, it's saying please don't smoke after the extraction. . I don't think my , my little seven year old today is gonna be having a cigarette afterwards. Yeah, yeah. Michael: Yeah. Naomi: I keep telling the parents, I was like, I'm so sorry. This is an adult form. I'm still working on the kids form. . Please ignore this part when you're signing the paperwork. . Michael: Yeah. They're like, oh no, he does. He does. They're like, Naomi: I, I, I assume Luna is not like smoking. Right? And she's like, no. I was like, okay. Just making sure , Michael: uh, that's funny. Okay. So just stuff like that you have to adjust. Naomi: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good. I'm learning. I'm learning as we go. So far it's been Okay. . Michael: And then you also started your work, huh? Or your associateship. Naomi: Yeah. Yeah, so that's, I'm actually gonna be there for three days this week. Um, my boss that's usually there three times a week. He just got married last weekend, so he's kind of escaping for a couple weeks. So I opted to cover him cuz I haven't had a job since December. The bills are gonna be coming, so I figured might as well work the next three days and I'll just consolidate everyone as much as I can. Michael: Okay. That's cool. You're working what, three days? Naomi: typically I'm there Wednesdays and Thursdays, but this week I'll be there Wednesday, Thursdays, Friday. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. Have you done any marketing since last week? Naomi: So I'm trying to reach out to one of the most local schools. right now, the daycares, we had dropped them off cupcakes and like tote bags for the employees. So I've been trying to contact the director. like about doing a presentation for the little kids. turns out like a few days after we went, some other pediatric dental office went and dropped off toothbrushes. So the director was getting us confused with them and blah, blah, blah. But basically he just said send him over an email. What we'd like to do, he's gonna forward it to the teachers and see which teachers wouldn't mind us Michael: Did you Naomi: forward the email? No, I literally just found this out last night, so, okay. That was part of my plan today to send an email, but I also don't wanna just send like a little text, email with like, bullet points. I think it would be a good idea for me to have maybe a small presentation or p d f like thing about this is like what I usually do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. just so I can have it for like future daycares or school presentations. Michael: Do you have something like a presentation already, or No? Naomi: I have an idea of what I would wanna do, but it really depends on the age of the kids. , like I think for more of a daycare sort of developmental thing, like having them, for example, you can do a happy tooth and like a sad tooth and kind of put foods mm-hmm. that like go towards a happy tooth or the small sad tooth. Another one would just be taking like a toothbrush and they can dip it in white paint and paint the tooth with the toothbrush. There's like little things like that just kind of just depends on what the teacher is up to. But I wanna be able to have, marketing materials also available as well. So outside of like the toothbrushes, I wanna be able to have like a small little, not just business card, but like a little detailed sort of like, I don't know what you call postcard. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , I guess a postcard. Mm-hmm. like some more bullet points that are a little bit more, um, catchy and stuff like that. So I'm just trying to make sure I have all the right stuff. Like available too. Yeah. And then the other marketing thing is we're having like a five day local business giveaway. starting next week. Mm-hmm. So I've been in contact with a few of the businesses in the Darien area. Um, three or four of them have offered to donate some product or services, and we're just gonna be matching each other on the days of the giveaway. Uh, so some like local people can get some swag two of them have been like really, really sweet and like totally on board to help promote me, like both internally as well as like on their social media. Mm-hmm. . So one of them is a local soccer league that just opened up in the past like six months. So we obviously definitely have the same age groups, like two to eight. they have currently like 50 people in the, 50 kids in the area that are part of their. Soccer league thing. And then in April they're gonna be doing spring registration, which is definitely gonna be even more people at that time. So they said that I could come in with swag bags and they would be giving it to all the parents for me, which is like really nice of them. So I'm trying to create like marketing materials dedicated to that. Like I'm trying to go the trauma route if your kid has this, here's a few bullet points. Don't forget to call us. We're also here. You know, stuff like that. And then, um, there's another business, it's like a stretching sort of thing. It's called Limber. Mm-hmm. . But, uh, they have a lot of middle school and high school students, so it's a little bit of a different age group than the soccer one, but they have a lot of like sport athletes as well who come and like, get their services. Um, a lot of the families like come into their thing and she was like, yeah, just drop off your business cards or whatever else you want. And I'd be happy to give it to anyone who I know who's a family. So. Nice. That's gonna be good. Michael: Yeah. we literally just came out with an article on the dental marketer.org website about how to do a presentation and get into schools. I'm reading it right now. There's a sample email reaching out to school administrators if you ever wanted to use it. Um, it's kinda like a good outline, you know what I mean? On saying like, the presentation will be approximately like, you know, this long and we'll cover topics such as the importance of brushing and flossing. Then you can kind of ensure what you're gonna do, the role of diet, oral health, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. Naomi: Wait, that sounds like right up my alley. I know that in the marketing course you guys have really awesomely covered, like this thing. So that was my goal tonight, which was like, part of why I also didn't wanna send anything out like quite yet. I wanna be able to go in like sounding like a little bit more professional. Yeah. I was gonna re-listen to that part of the course and like, well Michael: read this, read this article about you. Like this one is a little bit more like up to which I'm gonna, we're gonna add it to the. Of course here pretty soon. But if you want to, um, look into this one, cause I think that would be cool. Also, at the same time I wanted to ask you social media-wise, what are you doing? Naomi: So I have, uh, someone who's doing graphics for me, she's putting out 12 graphics like a month. Um, I don't know if you can even get access to it, like right now while we're talking, but, Michael: it Instagram or Naomi: what? My, my Instagram. it's a little Denti Smiles, but basically I just sent her my branding stuff. I sent her some like pinpoints of like things I wanna cover for the month. So we just actually had a call like yesterday. My goal is obviously this giveaway for the next, like for next week we're gonna start promoting it. I'm starting to try to promote educational content through reels, um, and then. . I also have just, one of the things I keep getting a lot of questions from parents, just because it's on my website quite yet, is what insurances am I in network with? And that's something A, I'm working on the website side, but B, I wanna now start like publicizing through social media. I was waiting to get in network with few more before I started putting the word about it out there. And I also created an in-house membership plan, so I just sent her all those details. So that's gonna be starting to get pushed out during the month of March. Michael: Gotcha. So do you guys have like a specific day where you're like, this is the day we're gonna create a ton of content for Instagram? Or is Instagram your main, I guess what's gonna be your main. . Naomi: Yeah. And anything that's going from Instagram is going straight to like our Facebook page at the moment. And I'm still playing with Facebook ads like a little bit, but what I, I haven't created any specific ad just for Facebook. I've just been boosting some of the posts that are a little bit more engaging, more educational or more about come to little DTI for X, Y, Z. And I'm just kind of seeing right now like what is biting and what's not biting so that then I can kind of know where do I want my efforts to go into a little bit more. Am I getting more engagement on reels and cool, I'll make a reel. Um, am I getting more from some of the stuff that I spent more time on artistically fine. Then I'll try to come up with a little bit more creative posts. I just don't wanna keep bleeding money out into something that's not actually gonna be working for the sake of saying it's a Facebook ad. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So I'm just trying things out right now with Michael: the little things that you've been trying out. Mm-hmm. , I mean, not the little things, a lot of things that you've been trying out, but the little time that you've, I guess, been trying it out. Mm-hmm. , what have you seen where you're like, This looks like it's moving the needle Naomi: Interestingly, um, one is like my business card logo. I don't have it with me right now, but it's, I had done like a specialized like photo shoot months ago that I'm gonna plan on be putting out on like social media. Um, they're just like basically taking everyday objects and it's gonna be the way I speak about like dental education mm-hmm. . But in that photo shoot, one of the images was specifically for my business cards and like any sort of related content. when I posted that on Facebook as like we are opening up February, that one just blew up. Like the amount of dms I was getting about like, oh, I love the creativity, I love this. It got a lot of engagement, I think just like from maybe the way it looked. and then secondly was anything that's been involving my. which I wasn't expecting. . , Michael: you're like my face, which I wasn't Naomi: expecting. . like, that's a good thing though, I guess, right? No, it's great. Like, thanks guys, like for liking, but I kind thought uh, initially Little DTI was the office and I'm kind of like an actor for a little enti. Hmm. So I wasn't planning on like promoting me solely as this is Dr. Naomi's office, this is Little Denti. So as a provider I started showing the staff a K, me, and Beatrice. So when I start putting my face out there like a little bit oh, this is Dr. Naomi, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those have been getting a lot of more engagement than I was like expecting. So I think I'm just gonna start trying to promote things like of me doing stuff around the office or whatever, not specifically for Dr. Naomi, but just. little dentists, providers, or whatever you wanna call it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. . Michael: So, yeah. Are you, are you also taking pictures of you going to these places, where your ground marketing or doing events and stuff like that? Like, that'd be good, I think. Naomi: Yeah. That was, uh, a mistake I made when we went around and I didn't do that. Mm-hmm. , but, as a small, like refresh, I'm in a medical building and there's seven other businesses in my particular building, but we have a neighborhood build, literally right next door to me is another medical building full of 10 businesses. they're all owned by the same like landlord. And he gave me all their information so I could connect with them. So I'm gonna be doing stuff with them and I think through them I'm gonna. Showing that like, I'm coming to these businesses, going to the pediatrician's office, blah, blah, blah. The hardest part that I'm actually finding, and maybe it's just because I'm in a suburb and I'm coming from like a city in the city, pretty much every single location and company has a social media page. Like it's probably one of the most widely used ways to connect with like customers in New York City here. Like not so much, if they do have an Instagram, I would say 60% of them are actually active. There's been some that are just, haven't even been touched since 20 20, 20 21. And then at least like 15% of them just simply do not have Instagrams. So for example, the pediatrician here, there's two of 'em, Stanford Pediatrics and Healthy Child. Neither of them have Instagrams and I don't know how to show, Hey, I went to blah, blah, blah, and have them possibly repost it or something like that. Just because they don't have an account. . Michael: Yeah, I wouldn't, try to be a collaborator with them. I'd just more just take it for the content, you know what I mean? Like, hey, like we're here. And people would be like, oh my God, my kid goes there. Mm-hmm. , you know, and then that's it really. And then you can like, do the hashtags of their, the community. Not so much like, cuz they have one. That's Naomi: actually funny you were saying that because I'm trying to figure out now now that I'm getting my groove and I'm kind of understanding things a little bit more, I wanna do something silly for St. Patty's Day. Get a little bucket and fill it up with like gold Hershey kisses, even though I'm a dentist, whatever. I like to give out candy . Yeah. Just like little things like that. Easter is coming. So like, the fun of these holidays that are coming up my way along with delivering them to like other kids, kid-friendly places like around here, e pediatricians, um, maybe like even nursing places, lactation places, doulas, like, all of that sort of stuff. I wanna try to find these businesses and just start connecting just like have some fun with it. Michael: Yeah, I think it'll be nice. I think you'll, you will, but yeah, I'm looking at your Instagram right now. It's pretty good. Like as far as like the colors and everything, you know? Yeah. And then the, the content, I think last time it was at in the hundreds and now we're looking at it and it's in the two hundreds. So, . Naomi: Yeah. It's slowly like getting built out, like a little bit more. It's kind of fun, like seeing it grow. I remember, last, I think you and I spoke last, like Wednesday maybe and mm-hmm. when I saw Beatrice on Friday, I was like, Beatrice, we're at 1 99. I can't wait till we get 200. And then at the end of the day, we had 2 0 2 or something. And I like high-fived her. I was like, yo, , Michael: this is, this is fame bro. This is fame. . Yeah, . Naomi: I was like, do we get our blue check? Mark Michael: a message Instagram right now. Be like, I'm ready for it. Like Naomi: this. You right. I'm ready to be Michael: verified. . No, but it's gonna be good. It's gonna be cool. I think that's the key though. You have to, um, everybody I talk with who, you know what I mean, obviously has a lot of followings where they do have the blue check mark. They kind of do say that. They're like, yeah, even though it's your business, you gotta somehow make it your own kind of thing. Right? Unless you're like a big brand like Nike, you don't see the c e o posting his face or anything like that, right? Naomi: I'm taking all, like the little wins, like when Charlie, my dog comes and visits, I'm constantly showing him, like throughout the day we had the photographer come in yesterday for the giveaway, so we kind of showed him sitting in like the midst of all of this. People are like, oh my God, he's so cute. it's nice to get those like little engagement stuff. today before we walked into the office, Beatrice and I took a picture in like the snow for example, the snow day. And it's just like little silly things. And now I'm starting to get a little bit more patient, um, content. So like today I extracted a tooth. she took a picture with her tooth fairy certificate that I give for any kid that whose teeth I take out. Um, and so she looks like miserable cuz she was like hardcore like standing, but it's still a cute picture Nonetheless. ? Yeah, . She's like wearing a mask and like her eyes just look like she. So intensely . Michael: So I'm like, Naomi: who's the sweetest person? Um, oh, just not in front Michael: of the camera. . Maybe like if, if you could, but that you make people, the parents sign a consent Naomi: or? We, I have been like having them just sign something. But through Casper, again, I need to actually create like a real social media form because I'm not loving like what I do currently have right now. What are you doing right now? so when I hired Beatrice, there's like a thing that says like, oh, you'll be allowed to be on like the social media, blah, blah, blah. I just kind of took that blurb and I like send it to them and I'm like, Hey, just like acknowledging this. Yeah. So yeah. Worst case scenario, they yell at me to take it down. That I take it down, Michael: but yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's like the worst case I think. Yeah. Wanna say. But that'd be cool, like to post that up and make it like a caption contest. , what is she thinking? Like best, funniest one wins or whatever Right. Kind of thing. That would be, that would've to be really funny. Naomi: Yeah. Yeah. Like I swear that Luna really had a great visit, but what do you think she's actually thinking? . Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Funniest catch wins. Yes, exactly. . Think about that. Think about that. Awesome. Okay, so this episode we're gonna talk a little bit about systems that will be implemented and ones that you implemented already. Okay. What have you implemented already? And what I mean by systems is like, it can be anything from not software related, right? But like anything from like morning huddles, downtime, protocol, patient experience, new patient experience, uh, recalls, things like that. Naomi: I guess first I'll start with uh, we had Jean, my consultant come in for two days before opening, and she kind of went through the idea of systems, like with us a little bit. some of the systems that she's pretty rigid on is obviously she's a consultant, so she's always thinking like financially. Mm-hmm. , she. Was very big about making sure that you don't lose track of your patients. Um, so she set up if a patient like requires treatment, say, I don't know, an extraction of a tooth, she has like paper forms that we have to fill out that stays in a binder right by the front desk that we constantly have to refer to. So on down days, like when Beatrice is like here at the office, when I'm at my associate job, she has like a stack of papers that she can go through and make sure there's no unscheduled treatment. She also has like in that same binder, kind of like a follow up schedule of every seven day, seven days you contact this next batch. And so she put in a lot of paperwork systems, if that makes sense. Um, she just believes that like electronically, like things are really great. . There also needs to be a paper trail as well. Mm-hmm. tracking patients. so that's been like one thing we've been trying to work on. It's a little bit weird doing it. It seems kind of excessive only because it's just me and Beatrice right now. We don't, we only have 20 patients, like in our roster, . Mm-hmm. . But I'm pretty sure once we add on like more staff, more front desk and all of that, it's probably gonna be a system that's good to implement just so that anyone and everyone who's involved in the office knows where to find unscheduled treatment. now in terms of morning huddles, that's not something we're doing per se officially, mostly because Beatrice and I traveled together. When we come to the office, um, we either take the train together or we're both in the car. That's kind of when we connect and we sort of talk about like our day. Hey, we have X, Y, Z coming up. Hey, we have these tasks. we're just constantly checking in with each other. So we haven't exactly done that. properly in the office itself, but we do have the talks that we expect. So for instance, what I usually bring up whenever I'm talking with Beatrice is like, okay, what patients do we have for the day? Anything special that we need to know about them? I would like you to do X, Y, Z. Mm-hmm . Then she'll bring up, Hey, I've been following up on this claim. I haven't done this. I need to do this with Open Dental doc. You have to also like call this person, like she also does like her check-ins, and then we just kind of talk about other things that. Kind of feeling need to be adjusted and stuff like that. So that's just a daily conversation that me and Beatrice always have together. when we do plan on like adding on a third person, I am probably gonna make it more of an official morning huddle, but right now it's just working for us because of the way that we travel together. Michael: Yeah. That's kind of like your morning huddle right there you know Naomi: what I mean? Yeah. . Yeah, exactly. But I do think it's actually vital. I remember in my associate jobs, they kept trying to push like morning huddles on us, and we had like treatment coordinators that we worked with individually, and it just always felt like a waste of time. Maybe it was just the way that the office was set up or something, but I'm finding personally a lot of value in them and just having those check-ins. And God, I feel like I'm promoting Casper, like hardcore in this, in this. But, um, Casper also has like a task list that I can assign Beatrice. So it'll be like, Hey Beatrice, I need you to do like this, this, this, this. And I can even put due dates on it. Mm-hmm. . And then I can see when she's checking it off and if she needs something from me, she can also task me. And it's just like really nice that I can go back home and she like put in something like, yo, you need a, I don't know, email Mike about like changing the podcast. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or something like that. It's nice to have that system there as well and that all of us have access to so we can kind of see what we all need to do. , patient experience. That's actually funny that you bring this up. Um, this is something that me and her have been having more conversations as of late. I think the past like couple weeks, I've only been open 20 days. Wow. So it feels like Michael: longer. Have you been open 20 days? 20 days Wait, 20 working days or like 20 days? In Naomi: just 20 days in total. I open up. It's still a lot. That's a lot. That's a, that's a lot. Yeah. It feels kinda weird though when you say that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's good though. Out loud. I think the past couple of weeks though, have been a lot about like just us getting our footing in like our own space and like just trying to figure out we're both friendly people. We're nice people. So I think just naturally we're like, Hey, how are you? Blah, blah, blah. But everything I'm doing right now really needs to have a foundation so that when my team grows, all those people are acting in the same boundaries that I want for my brand to have. does that mean like for example, when someone walks in, do you stand up or walk around the desk? Do you give 'em a tour of the office? Do you go by first name? What are all of those like little minute like patient experiences and interactions that are part of your brand and also part of the patient experience that you want? So now that we're having a little bit more downtime on like during the day, Beatrice, I am trying to make our focus on stuff that has nothing to do with me on the days I'm not here. But yesterday we were having like a pretty good dialogue about like patient experience and what we really want and what does that mean. those are systems that we're just trying to create like a little bit more and whenever we decide on something, I'm having her create like a manual in a way that, so when someone, or, yeah, hopefully soon, but like whenever someone does join the team, they have the words that we're using, the dialogues that we expect and blah, blah, blah. Michael: What? How would it work if, when someone comes in, right? Mm-hmm. and then they're, they come in from a practice that, you know what I mean? Like another practice. they come in how would you know if you're like, Hey, no, use what we have, but what if they're like, but this works better. Naomi: I think better is different for each person, right? but I think that's also on me to be open and receptive to hearing what they say. Cuz it could be true, it could be better, right? Mm-hmm. , I, I might not know. I don't know everything, and I might be like, oh, whoa, wait, that's actually like a really good thing to use. Yeah, let's like implement that and let's like all try it out. , but better to them might just be that they don't understand little density quite yet. And like what I want out of the patient experience and maybe hopefully through conversation or seeing the way that we interact, they'll actually be like, oh, this actually works for you guys. But I'm always open to hearing what someone thinks is better. it's kind of nice for someone else to be thinking about it instead of me . Um, but it doesn't mean that it will Michael: work. . Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Yeah. Because I know sometimes people want to come in and you know what I mean? Depending on Yeah. I've felt like it's depending on a couple things, like their experience and also like age, if that makes sense. Yes. You know what I mean? Like you hire like a old like, no, I don't wanna say older, but like a really, really older right person. And then they're like, no, older than you, is what I mean, right? Naomi: Oh, no, totally. Totally. it's amusing to see even like for example, gene Gina is older than both me and Beatrice. , she's fantastic with communication. She's dealt with it on multiple different levels throughout her career, but the way that we even would go about something, what she views as like a great patient experience, I'm like, we could do one step better. I'm valuing like these minute details while she is like, well, I'm valuing this part. So it's like funny to kind of like see the differences, like right Michael: there. What minor details or minor details are you battling then? Naomi: I think what makes your practice stand out besides like maybe your demographic reporter and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All that's fun stuff is really like when a patient, the moment that they contact your office, right? Mm-hmm. , even if something as simple as like how many rings before your front desk picks up the phone. Is it two or is it. . all of those like tiny, tiny little details make such a big difference. for a patient experience when they're placed on hold, how long do you keep on, on hold for? How do you communicate with them? when they walk through the door are you saying, hi Michael, it's really great to see you and what's your name? And things like that. Do you stand up at the desk? Do you offer them a water? Do you do all those things? Those little details I think is what's gonna make your office stand out versus the office, like down the street if they have the exact same thing. So those are the experiences like I value, I might, I do think I'm a good clinician, but like I think dentistry, like the actual clinical dentistry is maybe 10% and eighth of what it is that you're actually doing on a day-to-day. Mm-hmm. , you really need to make sure that a patient, and in my case, the parents are really getting care and value and like trust within our office. and the way I might interact with a new patient would be different than maybe a recall patient. I haven't reached a recall phase. , I've only been open 20 days. Right? Uhhuh? . But , maybe the time that I'm taking with a new patient and just like discovering who they are. Like those interactions, those little details, like what is a kid's favorite color right now, for example, it's gonna be different than a recall patient, which I've already built up that rapport with a little bit more. So all of those, like I think details really, really do make a big difference. And I would hope that when I bring on an associate, that's the stuff that I have written down of what I expect of them to be doing as Michael: well. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Do you have a protocol or like system for like the end of day, like this is what everybody, Beatrice is what you need to do At the end of the day, Naomi, this is what I need to do at the end of the day kind Naomi: of. Yeah. So I think we just naturally fell into the roles versus like it being listed. But since I'm the one in the back, like kind of dealing with the kids and like more of the op stuff, I'm the one that's basically cleaning up the rooms. I run the autoclave, I run, I do all of that behind the scene stuff. Beatrice is like confirming everything was checked out. Okay. She'll run the production reports, she'll make sure like the phones are being forwarded to my cell phone. Um, there's no pat last minute patient communication stuff. Um, any admin related things, that's what Beatrice is taken care of at the end of the day. So I'm definitely the one who's in charge of making sure all the sections are off, all of this is off, blah, blah, blah. Um, and it's just, it's been working for us so far. Um, but we'll see. I'm open to it changing, but it hasn't been too drastic right now. Yeah. Michael: I think when you get like an assistant and stuff like that, it's, it is gonna, you know what I mean? Hmm. Change the Oh, yeah. Naomi: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. Michael: What's the like. Have you guys, or did Jean ever give you guys like a weekly maintenance, monthly maintenance kind Naomi: of thing? Yeah. So that's actually funny that you're saying that because me and her name Beatrice have been talking about like how we wanna implement this. Jean gave us like just through her training manual, kind of like what you should be doing weekly, what you should be doing monthly. And me and Beatrice have been trying to figure out what's gonna work for our office. So for example, I don't even think this is written Gene Sing, but I have AAC chairs. when the guy came, he was like, you have to make sure that you maintain them a certain way during the week. Definitely cabby, wipe them down, do whatever it is you need to do, but you need to actually like, rinse off the cabby, wipe residue with some simple soap water and a microfiber cloth, but one time a week. It doesn't have to be anything more than that, but you have to do that to maintain the longevity of your chair. So now like, When do we do that? ? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Could be every Friday. Cuz Fridays, I'm trying to close a little bit early just so we can use like the last hour to do those little catchup things. It's right before the weekend. Mm-hmm. , maybe every Friday is when we do all the cabby wipes up. That's when we do anything autoclavable and like blah, blah blah. So we're now approaching that one month mark where we have to like kind of run through the stuff with my chairs, my autoclave, all that stuff. I just haven't figured out what day of the month I want that on. so T B d . Michael: Okay. That's good. Wait, the chairs are a weekly maintenance thing or a monthly? Yeah, Naomi: so definitely he told me just like once a week, just wipe down the cavi, wipe residue. That's all you need to do and it's going to expand the length of your chair. Michael: Yeah. I wonder if that's every chair or, cause I don't, I don't remember Never doing, I mean the CBI wipes here all the time. Right. after every patient, but. The sofa. Yeah, Naomi: I know. I never, I personally haven't seen that myself, but like I haven't worked in an office that had eight x chairs, so I don't know if it's because like their leather is like a little bit softer and like more malleable. Like I think I've used Peloton and cranes chairs and I've used uh, forest chairs and you can definitely feel the difference in the leather. It's like way more like firm, so Yeah. As porous. Yeah. Yeah. So I dunno if that has anything to do with it, but I'm listening to the guy right now. best Michael: you do? Yeah. Listening to the guy. Yeah. Okay. That's good. So you're gonna have, now are you writing all this stuff out, Naomi? Like the weekly maintenance, are you thinking about it throughout the month or how Yeah, Naomi: so just because I'm running the OP stuff, like the backroom stuff, like at the end of the day, I'm the one that's like remembering it. But I think what I might do is. Uh, calendar, in the back, and then just like for the entire year, like right on the Fridays with the checkbox, like next to it. I, I don't know what system to really implement right now. Honestly, if anyone has one for like, how to handle that, that would be great. But I can easily, assign tasks, I can do all that stuff. But I think it's important that it's written somewhere, almost like a monthly, like repetitive thing. We have a Google calendar that Beatrice and I share for like the office. office. I don't know if I should put it on there, but I have room in my sterilization to put up a calendar, so I was like tempted to kind of just put it up on there. Michael: Hmm. you, you and Beatrice have your own separate Google Naomi: calendar? Yeah, we both use like Gmail, so I just, Before we physically were coming into the office so that we could like kind of, she knew like when I wasn't gonna be available, um, what I was expecting when I was expecting her to be in the office. We have a shared Google calendar on there and also through Dark Horse. All of my email platforms are through Gmail. So even though it's like hello little denti.com, it's a Gmail workspace. Mm-hmm. . So everything is done through Drive and the calendar. Michael: Okay. That's nice. So that's like a little, or not a little, but like a whole system in itself kind of thing, right? Yeah, Naomi: exactly. Exactly. Michael: Are you gonna add more of your team members on that calendar or no? Naomi: I think so. I think especially who whomever's third, I'm assuming it would be an assistant, but, whomever is on there. I think they need to be on there as well, because just because your assistant doesn't mean you wouldn't be doing admin and all that stuff, so, Michael: mm-hmm. when it comes to admin work and your systems for that, how do you know what to do? . Naomi: so Jean did kind of like guide us like a little bit about what your expectations should be like in terms of the insurances, blah, blah, blah. I think just an understanding from working as an associate in other offices, I've been able to get a grasp of what needs to be done, but quite frankly, if I'm really honest, I'm still learning. for example, yesterday was the first time I got an insurance check like ever to the office. it's just like a fuzzy feeling. I finally got paid . I haven't put Beatrice on like my checking account yet for the office. So I'm the one that has to go and deposit it at Chase. I'm trying to figure out like that system for it. Am I comfortable yet with her doing it? Am I not? Even in putting in the check number into open dental, having her like input the things like properly, are we scanning every single e o b in the check? all of that stuff. I'm just trying to figure out the systems, like as it comes and I'm hoping to make a proper protocol as it's like kind of Michael: echoing right now. You're doing all that though, Naomi: kind of slash I'm telling her to do it. So . Okay. . Like for example, the checks came yesterday. Me and her were driving in my car, so she was opening it up. We got it like right before we left. , I kind of thought they were gonna be claim denials just because I've been dealing with issues with Delta Dental. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Then we thought they were checks, and I was like, okay, great. I took the checks home with me, and then when I brought them in today, I was like, all right, let's like get this scanned into each patient's chart because it has the EOBs on there. I was like, let's make sure that all the insurance checks are like put into like their accounts. So I kind of tell her, but then she actually does it and then, I mean, one of her best qualities is her problem solving, so we we're having some issues like understanding some like minute things with like payments on open dental. She immediately gets on the chat with them and like, we'll figure it out. and then she'll update me. She'll be like, yo, by the way, this is like how you do this. I'm not doing it per se, but I'm letting her know what to do. Michael: Makes sense. do you trust her already to be like, go to the bank? Make this deposit? Naomi: I think so. Um, I have Chase for my bank account. Um, it's literally right across the street. Mm-hmm. , so I don't think I care so much if she deposits and stuff, but I'm just trying to figure out the system of am I, do I want the, we're gonna be doing EF fts soon, it's not gonna be these personal checks. So will she have access to a checking account of any sorts? will I give her access to electronically deposit all the checks, or is that something I should be doing? I'm trying to figure out where my comfortability is when I research online or just see what others are doing. It seems to be a 50 50 split. I just have to figure out where my personal I think one of the hardest things for me, and at least anyone else I'm talking to is that it's hard to give up control. But there's gonna be a time that I just don't have the bandwidth to be doing this. There's a reason I'm paying someone to take care of like, ,, all this stuff. Mm-hmm. . But it's just, I think right now it's a little bit hard to kind of give up that control because then I know exactly what checks are coming in. I know exactly what this and this is, but I do know I need to let someone do it and start to learn to kind of let go control a little bit while keeping an eye on it. Michael: Yeah, no, makes sense. Makes sense. Awesome. Okay, so then monthly performance reviews. are you gonna have those or not really? Are they gonna be quarterly, weekly? I don't know. What are you thinking? or yearly. Naomi: Definitely quarterly. I think that's really important. Quarterly, it allows me to do the three and six month checkup, which I think is really good. Mm-hmm. , um, once again, Jean, she had created like an employee review sort of thing about are you up to standards on X, Y, z I just have a personal angst against objective criticism of someone. And I mean that in the sense of giving someone a, say for example, a score of four out of five that just. Sounds awful to me. I don't know why. I'm just, I don't know. Like maybe it's because I've been in school for too long, so like numerical grades or like anything on this sort, yeah. Just doesn't really like work for me. I do think it's important though, to always like, highlight someone's positive traits and what they're really, really doing great on. and then things I would like for them to work on. But I think those are so individually based versus even like somewhat agree, agree, strongly disagree, like all of those sort of like things, I don't know. I, I'm just trying to figure out like what works for me on that front. But I think would, like for example, bhs just because I have her, I think probably sometime in May, I do wanna catch up with her and be like, Hey, I'm noticing you're doing a really great job with like, communication, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I would like for your role to start including, more responsibility with the back. So I've noticed like we haven't really like done that before, so now I want you to do this. Mm-hmm. and let go of like X, Y, Z I think it just needs to be like almost like a dynamic dialogue Michael: a little bit. That's interesting. Yeah. in Jean's performance review, I guess outliner template, is it like, hey, number them from one to one to five, one to six, and you're not comfortable with that. You're not like, I don't wanna number, but you kind of have to see it. Like maybe you don't have to do it that way, but You know what I mean? Kind of like how good are you doing? Naomi: I know I. . I think if I had an office manager underneath me, for example, and she was the one that was like doing these, I would want her to probably do it. But I think with just such an intimate team, I feel uncomfortable doing that at this moment in time. I do think it's important to like let someone know where they need to improve. Because for example, these quarterly reviews are also to see if and when they get a raise, right? Mm-hmm. , if I'm constantly just only giving positive feedback and then suddenly I'm like, yo, you're not getting a raise. That's not gonna make any sense. . Yeah. Yeah. but if I'm, for example, say in three months, I'm like, Hey, I need you to be on time a little bit more. I'm just noticing we're having some, a lot of discussion around like your, timeliness. Mm-hmm. . And then in six months I am still noticing it. At least that's documented even though they're doing a great job and everything else. And then when it comes time to the raise, then I have it the ability to be like, you know, this is just a common theme that we've been like bringing up. So I just need to figure out how I actually wanna do it. I, I guess I'm just taking it how I personally am, and I would hate to be graded out of score of five or even 10. I think I would prefer like more specific bullet points that are just related to me, but maybe I'm just being like sensitive and Michael: need I agree. But at the same time, I think, if I were to like, okay, yeah, you're a Naomi, I'm sorry, but when it comes to like interpersonal skills or personal or whatever, I don't know. Right. Like Picking up the phone, timeliness, timing, let's just talk about that timing year or two, but here's why. Right. Kind of thing. Here's the thing, there's two ways I think you can do this. Have you heard of the sandwich compliment? Naomi: Oh, like start with a compliment about them. Yeah. Michael: Yeah. I've heard of that. And then do you know who, um, Irene Iku. Naomi: Sounds very familiar. I feel like you've brought her up Michael: before. she's been on the, on the podcast. She's, um, on Instagram, tooth life, Irene. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's what, yeah, she's, I think she has a practice in Canada or something like that. She thinks that's, she hates that sandwich compliment. She, on the, she says, she's like, I think if you're giving enough good appreciation to your team, then you won't have a hard time saying what the heck? You're late. Right. Kind of thing. Um, but obviously in a better terminology, right. You're not gonna be like, what the heck? You're late. You know? You're gonna be like, Hey man like, is everything okay? Like, You're, you're, you're late, you know, again, this time. But I've gotten enough good feedback and appreciation from you to be like, okay, all she does is tell me negative stuff, which is not true. I don't know. Which one do you prefer to those two? Naomi: The latter. I think Irene's for sure, I think you really need to motivate your staff and I think sometimes motivation comes in positivity. I don't think it always needs to just come in what? What they need to work on. So let me just use Beatrice for example again. Mm-hmm. , she has been getting actually a lot of compliments from parents about her communication through text. people who haven't even seen us yet, they're like, Beatrice, you've been, you're so great at like your job. Thank you for communicating. This is like the first time I've ever gotten like such good communication before. And she's feeling very proud of that. Mm-hmm. . And it makes me happy that she's feeling proud. And that's one of my biggest pillars, like in this office, is like transparency and communication with my patients. So the fact that she's doing it, I couldn't be more thrilled. I constantly motivate that side of her by letting her know, I see this and I appreciate a hundred percent that you're doing a good job. At the end of the day. If she handled, for example, an insurance claim that. Has been one of our biggest pain in the butts. Mm-hmm. all I have no problem. And think it should be said like, good job, like high five, like you're doing really, really great at this. It did make it easier when I did have an issue, with her, it was a miscommunication between us. I wanted her here at the office not working from home and she like misunderstood what I had said and landed up like working from home. It was a quick fix, not a big deal. Yeah. However, when I was able to tell her, hey, let me just like restate like kind of what I expect from you, blah, blah, blah. This, these are the days I expect you to be in the office. It made it very easy for me to talk to her about it. And she knew I wasn't coming from like a bad place. She was receptive to it cuz she was like, oh, normally, like Dr. Naomi would never say this. Mm-hmm. . So, and it was received well and so. , would it also work in that manner as well? If someone was constantly critiquing me, I'm just gonna be like, let down and would wanna distance myself. So Michael: yeah. I think sometimes people feel, or back then, I feel like it used to be like that where it's like you can't always compliment them or else, you know, when they, you do give them a compliment, they're gonna be like numb to it and it's, I don't think that works like that. You know what I mean? I don't think it's like that. I think you, it it's building blocks. You're getting built, built, built. Naomi: Yeah. But you also have to be confident to actually let someone know, like when they're not doing a good job. I think that's like where a lot of this stems from. It's like that anxiety about letting someone know that they're doing something wrong. I think that one of the reasons I don't love the sandwich technique is o oftentimes when people implement it, they use that word, but. instantly negates any of the positivity that's been said either before or after. Mm-hmm. . Cause you just send me, you focus on like the meat of the sandwich, , you're just like, Ugh, they're mad at me and this butt, it doesn't even matter. It's Hey Naomi, you're nice, but . Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, okay. And you can say all these different things, but I still know the technique enough to know that you're just trying to soften the blow. Yeah, Michael: I agree with you. I feel like it does that, or I've noticed what I do is I'm like, Naomi, man, like I appreciate you coming on the podcast. You know, you're a fantastic person, but you need to say more things, right? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I'm like, but you know, other than that, you're really great. So don't even worry. You know? Don't even worry about then now I just like the one thing, the negative thing. Yeah. I like even undermine that myself even more. I'm like, don't worry about that. You know? So, It's kind of um, that's weird. Naomi: It, it does undermine it. And then honestly, like if you would've just told me that right now, then I think I leave confused. I'm like, but isn't really that big of a thing cuz you just complimented me too. So . Yeah, yeah, yeah, Michael: yeah, yeah. I'm like, uh, . So it's better to just do the other thing than how what I, yeah. Yeah. What new idea. Okay. That's good. That's good to know. I also Naomi: think, I don't know if this has been something that's been talked about like with Irene, maybe I should look into it, but I think intentionality behind someone's mistake also is a big thing too. I don't know, just I'll even use dating or relationships or whatever. Mm-hmm. sometimes when like our partners like do something that irritates us, it doesn't mean that they came from a bad place. They might have no idea. They might not. They might just be going about their day and they're like, oh, I like this person, but I'm still acting as me. And then you're like, Ugh, what you just did is so annoying. Um, it doesn't mean that they did it to annoy you, it's just whatever they did was just like the wrong thing. I think that kind of goes the same in business. for example, if Beatrice like misunderstood me or did something that I don't really love, I don't think that she came from a bad place. She's not purposely like, I wanna screw you over Dr. Naomi. why would I go after her with like such judgment? Michael: No, yeah, I agree. But then let me ask you, how much of that would you tolerate where you're like, you know, that's not her intention, you know, but she keeps not maybe the same thing but different things. It's like you're just misinterpreting, or I'm misinterpreting your actions and we're not hitting the ball Naomi: here. . Well, I think it's like dating. Then you gotta break up. It's like, I love you, but our communication sucks and no matter what we're doing, it's not working. So , I just think maybe we're not suited for one another. Michael: Do you have a system for that firing Naomi: policy? Yeah, through HR for health, but I don't remember it. . Michael: Wait. HR for health Naomi 9 DRAFT: fires? Naomi: People for you or if I remember when I made the employee handbook, there was like a section about if you don't do X, Y, Z, there's like the right to it or termination or something. So they wouldn't do it for me, but they have all the paperwork and all the stuff that I would. Need to kind of go about it. But yeah, I would probably have to just be like, this is not working. It's like breaking up with a patient. They don't believe in what I'm doing. Audios. Michael: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. There has to be systems for that too. You know what I mean? Yeah. Naomi: But you know about the firing. I'm hoping it doesn't come anytime soon. never Michael: happening is open . I know, but would, would you prefer having to fire someone or someone just ghosting you? Fire you Naomi: prefer firing? Yes, 100%. I don't do well with no communication. Michael: Was it me? What happened? What's going on? Naomi: Oh my gosh. I would be questioning it like all the time. I'd be like, what did I do? What was wrong? Yeah. I'm totally the girl that like needs answers. Michael: closure. You're like, I need this closure right Naomi: now. Yes, Michael: closure. There we go. Got you. . Gotcha. Gotcha. Awesome. Okay. Uh, so then what's. Naomi: so definitely, and I think marketing is just gonna be a really big push for the next four weeks. So we're starting off March strong with like our five day local giveaway. I'm trying to get more personal, um, relationships going with gps, orthodontists, oral surgeons, pediatricians, like just in the area. I just really wanna start developing, ties with the community and that's just something I w really wanna dedicate, like my admin time and like time off to. So that's kind of like the goals for the next, next month. Yeah. Nice. Michael: Take as many like videos and pictures as you can with all that stuff. That's the key. That's gonna be it right there, you know what I mean? I think Naomi: the content is just something I'm I need to like remind myself that I have to do it. I'm also. Beatrice has also gotten to the point. She's like, I'm taking out my phone doc. I'm like, thank you, . Or I'll be like, Beatrice get out your phone. Cuz her camera's better for some reason on hers, even though we have the same iPhone, it makes no sense. But , Michael: I know the consistency with iPhones is weird, man. Naomi: But yeah, it's so annoying. Like mine is always hazy and I'm constantly having to wipe it down. Hers is like clean as a button, every single time and I'm like, what the heck? But do you Michael: think you got in the lens dirt and stuff or? No, Naomi: I, I have a gut feeling there's something wrong, but quite frankly I really wanna update my phone anyway. So maybe I'll just write it off as a business expense sometime soon. Michael: Yeah. , which one do, which one do you Naomi: have? the 11 Promax. Michael: Oh. Oh, that camera's good. I don't know why you, I know, that's Naomi: but like hers is like awesome. So I don't know. But yeah, like I think getting content's gonna be the other thing. Um, I'm just trying to really push out reels now. Someone messaged me saying I should really try to go on TikTok. She was like, it just allows you to branch out like further than just your community. So that's something I'm gonna consider. I don't know if I really want to, I had one viral video go on TikTok, and it had nothing to do with dentistry and then I got freaked out that it went viral. So I made my account private. . Michael: What was it about? It was Naomi: something so dumb. It was like about, um, there was like different sounds. It was like, uh, ambulance, gunshots, like all that stuff. Then there was like a sound of no more fan going in the background. And what it was, was just basically like New Yorkers can sleep through all these noises, but the moment the AC turns off, we all get up out of our bed. And it was just solely because I just wanted to see what TikTok was about. Yeah. I think I did it in like 2021 or something, and all of a sudden it just blew up. I think it got like a million views and then I was like, oh shoot. And then Oh yeah. Michael: Can you share it with us? Yeah. Yeah. I'll send play That'll be, yeah, yeah. Share it with us. So I was on the, literally right before this, uh, recording I was with, do you know who Dr. Simon Chart is? I don't think so. Okay. He's, um, he was telling me a little bit about, if you want, you can look him up on Instagram right now if you want, while I'm letting you know. But, um, he was telling me how he grew his, following and his patience and everything through Instagram. . But he said if he had to do it again, it'd be through TikTok. And he's like, and I know I would instantly kill on TikTok. Like, it would be, it'd be amazing. But, um, it's a whole different reach, a whole different, ballgame, like a machine. So if you want, Naomi: Well, dental, I just feel it's taking over and it's actually kind of fun because I think Instagram is all about like professionalism, making things look good. And I think Instagram is trying to make it toy with the reels. Yeah. I think the fun part about TikTok, at least when I'm enjoying like other creators, is like, , you can just go on like TikTok and you can mimic a kid just like acting up and like how you feel about it. But everyone finds humor in it because they expect TikTok to be lighthearted and mm-hmm. , I kind of wanna take advantage of that because like with kids it can be like funny, it could be horrible. It could be like, you could just like kind of make fun at it and parents could enjoy it. So my might as well, it's just like putting yourself out there is so hard sometimes and I just don't wanna be like, talked about or teased. So I, I just have to suck it up and do it. But I think you're right. Oh yeah, Michael: yeah. Him, him, yeah. Yeah. So he, he doesn't have TikTok, but he's like, if I did, if I did have to do it again, it would be on TikTok and he gave us like the reasons why. So, I don't know. It's something to think about. Something to think about. If you wanted Naomi: to go, why doesn't he go for it though? Like did he say anything about why he wouldn't just start right now? Even with a large Instagram following because he Michael: knows it will take time. . So he, he has like a family. He has some kids and then he has a wife and he has a practice. He has that business. He's running the toothpaste, right. Company. Yeah, yeah. All this other stuff. Um, and so he's like literally . Yeah. Yeah. He's like my pa Literally, I knew I would have to take some time out in order to make content for that. Right. And so that's the only reason he, I mean, he hasn't yet, I don't know if you will, but it was interestin

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. 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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

We used a new AI tool to create a “complete episode summary” (see below). Please take a read and see if you find it valuable. If you do, please respond to this email and like the post. If there is enough interest we can generate the summary for all future episodes (and previous ones if there is enough demand). It costs ~$5/episode for the service, so we will only do it if there is demand for it. Let us know!In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss how the Wasp is being treated while she is in critical condition and digress into trying to understand just how fast Thor can fly. He can cross the Atlantic in three minutes. That is faster than any plane, train, or automobile! Is it faster than a rocket? Does he light the air on fire? What would it be like to be saved by Thor at that speed? Do we need to worry about mid-air collisions? Should we apply speed limits to superheroes?Full episode summary (AI generated from audio):The Trouble with Thor's Speed - Controlling Velocity for Protection.1. The Wasp's Critical Condition: An Update2. Uncovering the Mystery Behind Thor's Travels3. Controlling Thor's Speed: A Discussion4. Speed Limits: The Need for Superhuman RegulationThe Wasp in Critical ConditionReports of the Wasp's condition have been grim, but optimistic. She is currently stable but in critical care. With the Avengers involved, it is unclear what sort of medical help she is receiving and what types of injuries she sustains. It could be something as common as a car accident or sports injury, or something more specific to what the Avengers do.The Mystery of Thor's TravelInterestingly, Thor has been reported to have been flying around the world, potentially looking for a specific doctor to help the Wasp. Reports also indicated that he flew across the Atlantic in three minutes, much faster than any plane could go. Whether he is flying suborbital, as some science fiction theories suggest, or following flight paths at a certain altitude to avoid mid-air collisions, it is remarkable to consider the speeds at which Thor is traveling. One aspect of Thor's power that often goes overlooked is his impressive speed. During a podcast discussion, the hosts discussed just how fast Thor can fly. They estimated that Thor can fly at about 80 times the speed of sound - Mach 80 - which is much faster than any mechanical aircraft on Earth, and even faster than a rocket to the moon.Controlling Thor's Speed:The hosts then discussed how Thor's speed might be useful in saving people. They concluded that Thor would need to understand how to control the speed. If he could fly to someone quickly but then decelerate to a stop, he could rescue them before they were injured. They also discussed the amount of power behind his speed, and the air displacement it could cause if Thor flew by someone on the street. All in all, Thor's speed is an extremely impressive part of his power set and is a major factor in why he is considered one of the most powerful superheroes., The speaker highlights the potential problem of an individual traveling at a speed far beyond what humans would normally experience. They discuss the potential damage that could be caused in the wake of someone flying at such a high speed.The speaker questions whether the superhero, Thor, should partake in control testing far away from other people, to see the damage that could be caused by traveling at such a high speed. They point out that although the idea of traveling from one place to another quickly may sound great, it could lead to destruction in his path. The speaker emphasizes the need for speed limits for a reason, to ensure that people are not traveling too fast, resulting in destruction.Behind the issue:This issue deals with the cliffhanger we were left with in issue #13, with the Wasp in critical condition. The story introduces a new alien race, the Kallusians, but they are not revealed to the human race, and they are never mentioned again in the Marvel Universe.In this issue:The Wasp is in critical condition, and with not a moment to spare, Thor flies to Norway to basically kidnap a medical specialist, Dr. Svenson, to hopefully save the Wasp's life. It turns out that Dr. Svenson is an alien in disguise, and when his mask is removed he dies. And so the Avengers are now on the hunt to find the real Dr. Svenson. They do that by tracking down the aliens in the North Pole; they have a futuristic city beneath the Earth's crust! The aliens subdue the Avengers and, being the bad guys, they monologue about themselves and their plans. They're the Kallusians, and they escaped an interplanetary war and hid out on Earth. They have trouble breathing on Earth, and when all looked hopeless, Dr. Svenson stumbled their way, and they kidnapped him, convincing him to help them figure out how to breathe on Earth. Dr. Svenson figured out how to help them, but the Kallusians have refused to release him. The Avengers break free, battle the Kallusians, and then find out that Dr. Svenson does not want to leave, as he has agreed to stay and help them with their breathing issues for as long as they need to hide out from their interplanetary rivals. And after that exposition is provided, the Kallusians' alien enemies locate them on Earth! What are the odds? Anyway, Thor basically scares them to leave the planet and fight their enemies in space, freeing up Dr. Svenson, whom they take to New York City to operate on the Wasp and save her life (he does). The Watcher also shows up at the end of the episode to explain how lucky it was for humanity that the two warring alien races did not duke it out on Earth.Assumed before the next episode:The Avengers are likely wondering what to do with the now-abandoned alien city beneath the North Pole.This episode takes place:After the Wasp's life has been saved!Full transcript:Edward: the wasp, is still in critical condition? Mike? They think she might recover, but we don't know her her state right now.Michael: No, but I suppose good news to find out that she hasn't passed away. She hasn't died in the line of battle. And our thoughts are obviously with her and the rest of the teamEdward: I think they're saying stable but critical. So she's in critical care. Mm-hmm. , but not getting worse. Stable. They're trying to find some sort of doctor to help her, and they're communicating with us. And so I think we're cautiously optimistic, right.Michael: But you gotta wonder, you gotta wonder what is it? We don't know exactly. We know that she was injured injuring battle. But is it something that is a run-of-the-mill medical issue that could happen to any of us if you're in a car accident or you're in a sports event or even in a regular military engagement?Or is there so. Specific to what the Avengers do, and if it is the latter I'd be curious because we've been following the superhero SUPERPOWERED community for so long, is there something unique that's being done for her? .Edward: We don't know. And it's nice of them to share at all. I think at this point, you don't want to give away too much of the secret sauce that makes them superheroes and what could possibly hurt them? What are things that can hurt the wasp? Probably the same things that can hurt you and I only, mm-hmm. , she's just far more athletic and capable and able to change.Michael: Key among them is that she changed the size. I mean, that seems to be, to be an inherently risky thing to do . So I'd be curious about what the injury is, and also it may affect the ability to treat her. I don't wanna speculate too, too much out of respect for the wasp, but I'd imagine that. There could be something complicated about her physiology now.Edward: We don't even know what size she is now. Is she being treated Yeah. As, a wasp or is she being treated as an adult human, or is she like a giant man? She's extra big. We don't know what size she is. And maybe that's part of the complication. Maybe she is mm-hmm. In a very small form and maybe a very special doctor who's able to treat her with special in.Michael: Well, and don't say this analogy too, too far, but it could be a regular surgeon who might be involved, or doctor, it could be a pediatric surgeon if she happened to be, you know, size, smaller size, quite frankly, it could be a veterinarian, you know what I mean? To deal with the idea of no, seriously, she, oh, sheEdward: has wings, , maybe her wings are anything.Michael: She, she has wings, but also she might be super small, like a small animal. Or she could be the size of a horse, you know? And both those were the fields of veterinarians. So I don't wanna, I'm not trying to suggest in any way anything more than she is a mammal who might be a different size and there are specialists that deal with that. And, on we go, good luck to the wasp .Edward: Do you think this is why, Thor is flying around the world? Is he looking for a specific doctor to help her?Michael: That's what I started thinking about, so we heard the news, that Thor was being tracked, flying across the ocean and by the reporting, and this is interesting, I hadn't heard this before. Thor traveled across the Atlantic Ocean within minutes, within minutes and , you know, and, and it's like, I would've thought he could have, if you believe he's is an as guardian, he's a, a Norse God from Asgard. that he would travel in some form of interdimensional, something rather, that we don't know about. But no, he didn't, and he didn't do that to go to Europe and said he just flew across the yo.Edward: We don't, we don't even know what, I think at one point people thought he has his hammer and he is just so strong that he swings his hammer around, throws the hammer and the hammer like, I dunno, the hammer's so powerful. It pulls him in a direction or people thought that he's the, got a thunder. He can control the weather and maybe he's using the winds to pull him around. But neither of those explanations make sense when you can cross the Atlantic in three minutes.Michael: No, and, the first thought I had is okay, number one, so air travel is carefully regulated. There's flight paths between say New York and London and miami and Dublin. And so there's gonna be paths, and the idea is it's very carefully regulated to make sure that you don't run into people. Uh, so planes don't run into each other as they're flying at the required altitude so is Thor flying? I would imagine Thor to be, if he wants to get there quickly, would probably fly to certain altitude, much like the planes to cut through the air as well as you can. Well,Edward: I'm sure again, Thor does not wanna be part of a mid-air collision. Imagine the news when Thor runs into an airplane and Families are destroyed and died because he was blasting through them with his hammer. And it seems like that's a very easy thing to avoid by just flying at a different height than airplanes fly at. I'm not sure what flight, I'm sure there's like certain flight paths and certain flight altitudes and he would just fly either like lower or presumably higher.Michael: Well, but think about this with my point is that I suspect that, and we should talk to an aeronautical engineer we probably could confirm this. There are heights you likely. for maximum, efficiency,Edward: well that depends on how you fly, right? So airplanes fly because they have engines that are shooting off exhaust that are propelling them forward, and then they have wings that are providing lift. So as they propel forward, the wings provide lift and they get lifted up into the air. And then they can control that up and down. There's no exhaust coming from. , at least no visible exhaust. Unless he's no I don't wanna be vulgar here on the radio, but I don't think there's like exhaust coming from his ass, like pushing out, pushing him through the spaceMichael: Too many beans ,Edward: too many beans. . If, if he's, if he's ever gets into shilling for products, he should definitely promote beans. Like Oh, get your, get your Aus Garan beans from Thor.Michael: It's a magical fruit. .Edward: The, the, the more you eat, the more you fly.Michael: fly. no, but, I'm getting a little bit away from what I really wanna talk about, I would think that there is, if you're Thor and you wanna get across the ocean quickly because your teammate. Needs you to do something, which is what Thor was doing, that you would probably do your best to fly the most efficient way across the ocean. But you're right, I don't think he'd irresponsible. So he is likely isn't flying that high.Edward: Or, I think he's flying probably higher. Like higher. Here's The Thing too. If, if he's. Given that he's like the mighty Thor, he probably is able to survive pretty high in the atmosphere. I dunno, can he survive in space? It wouldn't surprise me. He feels like he's like, he feels like he's the type of person who would survive in space, didn't he? He sent the absorbing man. Yeah. Right into space. Maybe Thor can survive in space and so if he can survive, he can go high enough. It depends if he's able to, if he's able to propulsion himself high enough, he doesn't need air to prop, repulse himself off of which he may not, then going higher is actually better for him cause it's, it's less wind, there's less wind resistance, less air resistance.Michael: Could he also, like, could he also break through the atmosphere and spike up and as the earth is, if he's going across to Europe, the earth is moving in his direction and he goes up and then down, that would be. Efficient way of getting, of getting across the earth quickly. Right.Edward: That's true. So instead of flying in a straight line, he could just fly suborbital that. That's, and there's been lots of science fiction written about that. If you wanted to go mm-hmm. to from London to Sydney as fast as possible, and we had the technology to do it, we would fly a suborbital flight that would blast off. It'd be a parabola, we'd basically a parabola from one to the other. Yeah. And so maybe if that's how Thor travels parabolas.Michael: I mean, in my head, I must say, I wasn't thinking of parabolas. I was thinking of Thor, kinda like just flying, just barely above the ocean. And hopefully not hitting a ship, but maybe he's the right height to not hit a ship either. But my thought was if he flies across, and this is what I really wanted to talk about, even though I'm kind of fascinated by the idea he'd fly into Pablo, which so cool. ,Edward: we, we, you, we should, we should have, we should think, talk more about paras. It feels like parabolas are under talked about topic on radio University.Michael: Our listeners love it. They love those parabolas, but if you are getting across the ocean within minutes, let's say it's about three minutes, and it's about over 4,000 kilometers. Well, you tell me are you applying so fast that you're we're gonna light the, like the air on fire. You know what I mean? That, that seems un unfathomably fast.Edward: It is remarkably fast. I, so yeah. Let's, let's, let's run through the math and so, okay. I know we are in America and we should be using, local imperial measurements, but when you start talking about the speed that Thor is flying at, we're gonna use that archaic metric system that the French use and cause the math is a lot easier. And so the ocean is like roughly, I think from North America through to Europe. We're talking at roughly 4,800 kilometers, 4,800 kilometers, 3000 and something miles, right? For the rest of us. And then, He did that in three minutes. So he's doing that at what, 1,200 kilometers per minute? That's, uh, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's doing three times that. So he's doing, yeah, in a minute he's doing 15,000 kilometers or 14,000 kilometers or something like that. Per, per, no, no, no, no. That was right the first time. No, no. He's doing a little over a thousand kilometers in a minute, and then in three minutes he gets all the way to the 5,000 kilometers. But that turns out that flying a thousand kilometers a minute is really, really, really, really fast. And like the speed of sound is about a third of a kilometer per second. . We do some math, dividing, whatever. I think it works out too, that he was flying at roughly 80 times the speed of sound. So, so mock 80. Mock 80. For those who are familiar with the mock termsMichael: And how fast, I mean, what's our fastest plane like, how fast did the rocket to the moon?Edward: Oh, that's a good question. I don't know I should know that to break the orbit, right? But like I know that planes, like passenger planes don't fly that fast. They fly no, significantly slower than the speed of sound. The really, really fast, like breaking the sound barrier, which we did before we went to the moon. Breaking the sound barrier was a big deal. And that by def the sound barriers was what, what we call mock one and I know we have planes that go faster than the speed of sound now, but not a lot. Fast mock two, mock three, something like that. Thor was going mock. It's fast.Michael: I don't think that that's fast. It's fast. And I don't think that when I, when we've seen the footage on, on our, the rockets to the moon. I don't, they don't, I don't think they were going that fast. At least visually didn't seem that they're . You get across the ocean. How high, how high is it to get to get, to break the atmosphere? Right. How, how high is it? It's not, how high is the atmosphere? Four. Yeah, it's not tough. 4,000 kilometers and it takes, it took a few minutes certainly to get above, to break the atmosphere. So they're not going as fast as Thor a Thor can get across the ocean.Edward: No, no. So, so the atmosphere, so I think the atmosphere is bigger than that man. I think the atmosphere is roughly 10,000 kilometers up.Michael: No,Edward: yeah, yeah. Like 6,000 miles or. And depends, depends where, depends where you, it turns out there's not like a line, there's not like a fence where like now you're, now you're in space and it slowly becomes less atmospheric all along. But when you start going the, the high atmosphere, it's like roughly, roughly 10,000 kilometers, 6,000 miles.Michael: Okay. Well, could you get up there in, I guess within 10 minutes? Does it, does the rocket take, did the rocket take 10 minutes to get above there? Which would be kind of similar to Thor flying across the ocean?Edward: Yeah, so he is going, I think faster than rockets. I think Rockets are going, yeah, I think so. Like somewhere under 10 kilometers. Like they, when they get going to speed, they're going about 10 kilometers a second. And what do we say Thor is doing? Thor's doing. 80 times the speed of sound. And the speed of sound is a third of a kilometer per second. So what's that 80 divided by three? He's doing 20 times, 25 times, times the times. 25 kilometers per second, something like that. And our rockets when they're like, when they're really, when they get this really going up there when they're really picking up speed. They're doing about 10 kilometers a second. And so he's roughly two and a half times faster than a rocket . And so that's, but, but as fast, it's fast. It's fast. But as fast as, rockets aren't setting air on fire. I don't think Thor is setting, he's not setting air on fire fast.Michael: No, no. But he's still going fast enough, like faster than any any mechanical device on earth,Edward: he's definitely the fastest human in any form of transportation that's ever happened.Michael: And it's funny because I guess we've always sort of, when we talk about Thor or any of these heroes, we focus on a few things, like for Thor, we've always focused on, he's a p he's very strong he's a God. But I've never thought much about him flying, which is funny because if you started flying, I would think that's incredible Ed. But it's, um,Edward: and, and if I started flying at 80 times a speed of sound, you'd be like that is, that is extra incredible. That is like more incredible.Michael: Yeah. That's worthy of a discussion. But, um,Edward: that could be don't, but your point is that could be a main power. If someone's power was flying 80 times the speed of sound, we would be. Wow. You are definitely one of the best superheroes on the planet. And yeah, the fact that that was Thor's, fourth or fifth power.Michael: Yeah. Like Thor. Let's just break it down. So if Thor, if you're walking across the street and you're carrying a coffee and you're not paying attention and a truck comes barreling at you, Thor could easily grab. You know, maybe that's not the most heroic thing, but move you from the, the crosswalk so you don't get struck. But there's probably something, there must be a better example, but I wouldn't even know who saved, you know what I mean? That fast,Edward: you know, like if he moved that fast on a human, Thor is very solid. He's a very strong human being who bullets bounce off him and that most bolts don't bounce off cars. And so he is big, he is stronger than a car, more solid than a more dense than a car. And if a car was. 80 times the speed of sound and ran into you. You would not be saved. Saving is not The. Thing. That would happen. .Michael: That's right. Well, is there a way to like, you know, when you catch a ball, someone throws you at a ball at you, right? You kind of grab it and you control the momentum of it. We think we talked about this before. Sure. So is there a way that. How about this? Let's slow it down. ,Edward: I think, I think if you were thrown at Thor, if someone like threw you at Thor and Thor, caught you, but then went with the motion, the way you went with a ball. Yeah. Then yeah, I think that he could stop you from, from being squished, but if you were flying at him and he said, you know what? I need to get to you quickly. I'm gonna fly towards you at 80 times a speed of sound. Like you're not gonna have a body left after.Michael: So if Thor is going at 80 times, the speed sound up to you thinking, oh, that person's in a crosswalk he's gonna get struck by that truck that's outta control. And he went up and just touched you. , , his finger would just go right, like right through your body as he just continued on. There must be a way that he could do it.Edward: Would, would you rather hit by a truck going at. 20 miles, 50 miles an hour. Or Thor going at like 1000 miles an hour.Michael: Oh, Thor. Thor. It'd be so much cooler to get blown up that way,Edward: but I guess if you're gonna die, go out in style .Michael: Well, could you do this? How about this? I'm still now thinking about it. What if Thor went very quickly and went. Under the ground and cut the ground out from underneath you and lifted you through or would like, there'd be so much wind resistance you'd be ripped apart by Well,Edward: if you move through the air Yeah. You're telling me what if the ground underneath me started flying upwards? Mm-hmm. Immediately at 80 times the speed of sound. Yeah, that would, that's not like, let's be human. When we, when, when, when we first started trying to break the speed of like, the sound barrier, like people died trying to make their break the sound barrier, and that's mock one. We're talking about mock 80. It's not, there's, there's no scenario, no world where, that is a helpful place for a human to be.Michael: Okay, let me loop back then, ed. I don't know if it's the most useful power then for saving people. Perhaps, but it's useful to get to where you need to go. As long as he's maneuverable and he can stop and maneuver and not run into things, then that part's useful but I was thinking like, what if he'd be a very useful superhero if he could just go really fast and get you outta danger, but if he just blow you up every time he touched you, ?Edward: No. I think the key is using his speed to get to you and he has to. He just, we need to understand how fast Thor can decelerate. That that's the key. If he can, that's critical fly, fly to you very quickly, but stop on a dime and pick you up gently. Fly away slightly faster than the truck is coming towards you.Michael: Here's another question then just think about how fast story. So, he's coming at you. Is air being pushed in your direction? Or is it not? Or is it, or is he cutting through it?Edward: I think generally he's cutting through air. He's moving so fast that I don't think, I think he's moving faster than any air particles getting pushed. I think if he blew pa, if you were like standing on the side of the road and he blew past you, I don't think you would experience anything until he passed you and then all the air he displaced would hit you and it's like a train. When a train comes by, you can feel the train coming after the fact, but it's not coming before the fact.Michael: Okay, so let's say again, using my example of I'm in the street. Flying on the street, what would happen if he's flying through and, then at that speed, or he is even slowing down, would not like, there would be a train, a trail of destruction right behind him. Things, you know what I mean?Edward: I, could see that I could see like a bunch of it. It, yeah I think what we're dealing at with is an order of magnitude of speed that I think us normal humans can't really comprehend. And, we just don't, we don't experience speed like this at any normal time in our lives.Michael: So I, I'd like to, I guess, Thor, I'd like you to maybe do some control testing far away from other people to see, because I mean, just in case you're attempted to like race to the scene of a crime or an incident or some event that you wanted to prevent at first. Seems like a great idea. But in second thought, it sounds like it might be complete, like it'd be fine flying across the ocean it doesn't run into anything. But it wouldn't be that fine if he's flying across North America, if he's getting too low to the ground, causing damage in his, in, in his wake, right.Edward: Yeah. Hey, hey, we have speed limits for a reason. Thor, we have speed limits for a reason.Michael: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. This is a public episode. 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In this episode, we welcome House Canary's Director of Research, Brandon Lwowski to look at what has been happening in the real estate market over the last years and where we are headed as an industry. We discuss the health of the real estate market, the residual effects of the response to COVID-19, and the main challenges facing investors today. Brandon Lwowski built his career after studying Computer Science Mathematics at The University of Texas at San Antonio. In his role at HouseCanary as Director of Research, Brandon distills what is happening in the real estate market through data analytics and machine learning to help investors make more informed decisions about their portfolios. Links: https://www.housecanary.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-lwowski/ --- Transcript Before we get into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The SFR show is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions, and strategies of the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance, from Roofstock. Make sure to run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to an episode of the SFR show, the place where you get all of your up to date SFR investing information. I'm Michael Albaum, and today my guest is Brandon Lwowski, the director of Research over HouseCanary and he's gonna be talking to us about all of the things that have been going on in the market over the last several years and months, and how we can use that information going forward. So let's get into it.   Hey, Brandon, what's going on? Thanks so much for taking the time to come jump in chat with me today. Appreciate it, man.   Brandon: No, of course, it's good to be here to get an opportunity to discuss the real estate market for sure.   Michael: Yeah, I'm super excited. So you're the director of Research at HouseCanary. Give us all just a quick little bit of insight background on who you are and what house canary is and what they do as a company.   Brandon: Yeah, definitely. So HouseCanary, you know, it's basically a national brokerage and so it's really known for its real estate valuation, technology and accuracy. This company has been around since 2013. It was founded by Jeremy Sicklick, our CEO and our Chief of Research, Chris Stroud, kind of off of the 2008 housing crisis, they did decide to form this company to kind of help speed up the transactions and speed up and really gain knowledge and just competence in the real estate market through using analytics machine learning to provide 100 and 14 million valuations on properties as well as 91 million rental valuations. So if you think of how scary it's built around the analytics and valuations of the United States real estate market.   Michael: It was at $114 million valuations that you said since it since inception.   Brandon: No, that's monthly, we produce 114 million property valuations. Of course, the 114 million is a subset of you know, every property in the United States and that repeated monthly, but we train this very complex machine learning model AI model to produce 114 million property valuations.   Michael: That's incredible. Well, I want to come back to HouseCanary as a company here in a minute. But I want to first start by asking you, Brandon, because it is so analytics and data driven, what is it that HouseCanary as a company and you as an as the director of research are seeing in the numbers in the data with regard to just where we are in the market, there's so much chatter about market cycles and ups and downs and bubbles, give us a little bit of insight to what are the numbers and facts supporting where we are right now, as we're recording this brand new into the new year 2023.   Brandon: I think kind of the one of the biggest headlines to kind of drive home right now, especially in the market, we have this unique combination of these elevated interest rates and you know, the slow buying season that we typically see during the winter months, this has really impacted across the board, our new inventory coming into the market, our new listings, listings going under contract, all of these metrics that we typically look at to understand the health of the market and the health of the real estate market, have really had significant declines year on a year over year basis, that's across the board inventory listings under contract, the Feds kind of you know, their fourth straight 75 basis point interest rate increase, you know, as the thing is, the fourth month straight or the fourth, fourth one straight, has really had that negative impact on net inventory. But this is just providing more evidence that you know, supply of homes is still squeezed and it's remaining negative over time, we've kind of seen this trend since August, right where our supply of affordable housing and actually all housing in the market has really continued to drop and this is basically you know, the biggest driving factor here is that interest rates shot really driving down these new listings volumes to like a multiyear low since pre you know, I don't use the word pre pandemic because you know, we're still in the pandemic, but that pre pandemic peaks we'll call them we're seeing you know, all its multi-year lows in terms of new listings, everything going on the real estate market. The biggest picture here is even as these interest rates come up, our supply just remains extremely negative and still going in a downward trajectory.   Michael: And when you say downward trajectory is that From 12 months prior, or is that from the prior month?   Brandon: We're looking at a year a year basis right now. If you think about the month over month basis, we are still seeing declines. But when we're talking about these multi year lows in terms of net new listings, on the purchase side of the market, we've reached those multi year lows. I think, you know, the reason why this supply crisis is also happening right now is, in this current real estate environment, it's really difficult to convert homeowners and current renters and convert them into future homebuyers, right. In this elevated interest, interest rate market, it just doesn't make sense financially for a lot of people to enter the market, you think of this large group of, of homebuyers that purchase homes at record low interest rates, they refinanced during the peak of a call it the peak of the refinance, boom, that happened during the pandemic and for them to reenter the market, it just doesn't make financial sense for them. So in order to move out of their current home and into a new loan, they're going to be paying a higher premium for the same quality of home. So they're available availability to spend money has definitely decreased and I really don't see this inventory shortage, kind of relieving itself or beginning to increase well into, you know, the first quarter, second half or first half of 2023, the supply just remains super squeezed.   Michael: Okay and so that, like the supply aspect is, I'm guessing one ingredient in the recipe, so to speak, what are some of the other things that you're looking at, and that you're seeing, to give you an indicator of where we're headed and where we are currently.   Brandon: Right. So I think so the supply is, has been squeezed, I think since COVID, there's been a really tight squeeze on the flat supply side of the market. But with those low interest rates that were happening, I mean, 1- 2% interest rates, people were getting their home loans that the demand for property shot up, which is why we really saw that two, three years of just record breaking price growth and the real estate market. Now we're looking at the demand side, and we're actually in the seventh consecutive month of double digit declines in on a year over year basis, we're looking at the listings that are coming under contract in the market. So if you look at inventory as a supply of new listings coming in, if we look at listings of those listings, and the existing market, this existing supply, existing supply, listings under contract is still seven consecutive months of double digit declines since November, are all of our data right now, it's kind of up to that first week of December 2, so we kind of think of it as, as of November. This is this kind of is the driving force behind this is, you know, we've never seen this kind of seventh consecutive month of double digit. So it's kind of driving a lot of fear into homebuyers and home owners and the way we kind of know that this is not normal, it's kind of beyond the typical seasonality we'd expect during the cold winter months to have seven consecutive months, this kind of uncertainty in the market around interest rates, economic downturn, the inflation, they just continue to force homeowners and would be buyers, you know, to play the waiting game, they're, they're gonna sit in the sidelines, they're gonna stay away from the market and so they're a little more competent in in where this kind of roller coaster is going.   Michael: As I'm thinking about such a visual thinker. I'm thinking about this as almost like a race to the bottom in a sense of like supply versus demand once because it sounds like they're almost moving in lockstep negatively, we were having a reduction in supply, but we also have a reduction in demand and once right is that is that the right way to think about it?   Brandon: The demand has definitely began to decrease or is decreasing at a faster rate than supply because supply has been squeezed since the pandemic whenever the shutdowns happened. People just stop selling houses. They stopped listing their home so the supply side of the market has been squeezed since the shutdown the pandemic. The demand side due to the interest rate hikes the economic uncertainty, that's where we're really seeing the decrease on the supply side where the decreases are coming from. So even though you know supply is always been net always been tight. We've been tight recently in recent years. A lot of the continued decrease on supply side is actually coming from net new listings so people aren't putting listings on the market right now. For the reason that we discussed earlier. It's hard to get homeowners back into the game. They're actually down around 25% on a year over year basis, in terms of like how many new listings are coming into the market, but even a bigger piece here is on the supply side is our removals of listings are up 65% on a year over year basis. So houses that were listed last month six are being removed from the market further impacting supply, while supply has been remained squeezed like very, very tight supply of properties over the years, there still is a decrease in net new listings, and also an increase in removal. So in that supply is being affected. But when it's so squeezed already, that that impact in the market will not be as significant as the impact of a decreasing demand side of the market.   Michael: Yeah and that makes total sense and so what are you seeing with regard to sale, as opposed to sale of percent of this price and then also days on market?   Brandon: Yeah. So I think some other key indicators, the market, you kind of just discussed, you know, we have days on market, I think price lists ratio is important, I think, the median price, right, the time series of how is price behaving in this environment, all important and understanding kind of the overall health of the market and I kinda like to go with the big one first, in my opinion, which is the median price, right? Where is the market going? I kind of macro at a national scale. The, if you look at the year over year basis, median price of all single family listings, right, so single family dwellings, that those are actually up 10%, on list prices, and actually up 2% in terms of actual close prices. So even though we're seeing the storyline of these prices really starting to decline and kind of freefall, we're still seeing as a year over year basis, because we hit such a huge peak in the middle of 2022. We're still up year over year, by those two percentage I meant mentioned. On a month over month basis that compared to last month, we are slightly down, but it's very, very small. We're down around one and a half percent on listings and down and less than half a percent on close prices. So we see a lot of the storylines and the headlines across the news, that these prices are falling drastically. We're in a deep decline. The roller coaster rails are off and we're down to 2008 again, but just looking at the data alone without any sort of human interjection or opinions. I'm not an economist, I'm a data scientist. But by heart, I'm just looking at the data because we had such a high peak in the middle of 2022, in terms of the median house prices were still up year over year and on a month over month basis, the declines in price are very, very miniscule, to what we're kind of hearing in the media. So that's one thing, right? The median price is definitely a driving factor. Everyone's concerned about like, what am I going to get for my property? Where's the trend of our nationwide real estate market heading and even though we're in a slight downtick month, over month, if you look at long term, we're still up 10% on listings and up, you know, 2% on closed prices.   Michael: It seems like there has been so much resiliency, if we're seeing such a miniscule price reduction month over month and year over year, there seems to be a lot of resiliency to interest rate increases for folks, and that they're still closing transactions, even at this much higher interest rates, and they're not saving a lot or really anything at all, in terms of the price that they're paying out the door.   Brandon: Right, I think what's causing these prices to, I don't wanna say remain elevated, but kind of not declining at the pace that we would expect is that tight supply. Now, we're still a few months probably away from seeing how this kind of mass layoff and technology could affect the real estate market. Because, in my opinion, what's really going to drive these prices down is when we see supply, increase at levels that the demand has decreased and that imbalance in the market is what will really drive those prices down and the reason why kind of refer to that technology, layoff if that same style, that same volume of layoffs, hits other sectors of employment, then we're going to see defaults and people need to give up their homes because they can't afford it anymore. So unless something in outside of the real estate market really drives the demand. I'm sorry the supply side of the market to escalate at a very fast rate, that safety net is there to kind of keep our prices from really crashing, like we saw in 2008. We don't have the same supply that we saw in 2008. So we're kind of have that safety net there. Unless like I said, something really drives that unemployment up and forces people to default and give up their homes or sell their homes because they can't afford the mortgage anymore.   Michael: But it's interesting, because from all the news that I've been hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong, maybe you've been hearing, the unemployment rate is super low. Like there just doesn't seem to be those mass layoffs that we saw in the tech industry, yet anyhow, affecting so much of the so many other industries. So it doesn't feel as imminent.   Brandon: 100% right, I'm hoping I mean, just for the health of our economy, I'm hoping that that mass layoff doesn't reach other sectors and I hope that we're done with majority of it. But we're probably a month or two away from really understanding did that actually have an impact on our median, price per square foot or median close price of a property and then we can track those defaults, and those the supply over the next few months to see if that really impacted the real estate market or not.   Michael: And that makes total sense. We'll talk this Brandon about those other two factors that you mentioned the price to list ratio, and then the days on market.   Brandon: The price to list ratio has actually been on a pretty big decline. I think back in May 2022, it may have been June or May, I think we're at a multiyear high of around 102%. So most properties, were selling 100 or 2% higher than the list price, which means that it's definitely a seller's market, right. If I if I can list my house for X amount of dollars, I know I'm gonna get 102% return, I mean, I happen to present a 2% return on that is definitely a seller's market. We actually for the first time in about mid-August of last year, we're now down below 100. So that's just an indicator that the markets kind of switched right now buyers kind of have that power and that ratio now stands around 98%, which is kind of the levels before COVID emerged, and actually the lowest number since the first half of 2020. So we're not we went from a high of 102 in May to now we're down to about 98 which is definitely a key indicator that buyers now have more power than the seller's because of you know, just multiple aspects that we've been talking about the high interest rates buyers be a little more choosy. Even though the supply is down sewer buyers, there's not enough buyers in the pool to compete with me anymore. So I have a little bit more pool, which is why we're seeing that sale to list price or price to list ratio, starting to decrease. That kind of in parallel, what we see with that is to kind of tell that same story that we're now entering that buyers' market, even though demand is low, if you look at the volume of price drops, right, think about how many times a listing comes on the market for 100k. It sits there for 30 days, they come back and they say hey, you know what, let's list it for 95 maybe we can get more buyers, those price drops in terms of volume are actually up 142% year over year since the last time. It's just more evidence that buyers now because demand is so is so squeezing this high interest rate environment, they get more power listings are staying on the market longer list to or sale to list price ratio is down and then but yet the because supply still squeezed, we're not really seeing a huge impact that we're kind of seeing in the news right now, on the actual median price of all listings.   Michael: Brandon, just out of curiosity, I think I remember if my memory serves me correctly, which it often doesn't, but like in the height of 2022, the max or the highest median home price in the country was like 395k. But do you happen to recall what that number was and maybe what it is now today?   Brandon: Yeah, so if you look at the peak of 2022. So kind of that halfway mark, I think it was right around the ending of H 122. The actual median price is actually higher, at least according to our data, right? The data that we have availability to our actual median price was actually above 400,000. We're sitting right around like 420,000 was kind of that median price for closed listings for active listings was actually even higher than that. So for closed listings were around that for 120,000 range, right now as of the first week of December is kind of our data cut off. Right now in terms of the data that I'm giving you, we're sitting right around $380,000 as the kind of median price per square foot, I'm sorry, median price of closed listings, it sounds dramatic, and we go from, you know, that 420 ish down to three, it's a pretty big drop. But as you look at the entire time series from, we'll call it the pandemic, the start of the closed downs, all the way to today, if you bought a house, during those pandemic years, you're still doing really well in terms of the amount of equity, it's still in your home prices haven't dropped that drastically to where you're now upside on your loan, you're still well above you know, what you bought the house in, during the bottom of the pandemic years, what's really going to cause kind of some worry, and headaches is these people who kind of bought later in the year, kind of towards the end, or middle of 2022. Now, they're beginning to worry the most because they didn't have that same amount of cushion that these homeowners bought when they don't worry about houses a year or two years ago. So that number does seem like a big decrease. But if you look at the longevity of the time series of the pandemic eight pandemic shutdowns to now, you're still up quite a bit in terms of percent and you have a large cushion before you even have to worry about being upside down in a mortgage or, you know, losing a large amount of equity in your property.   Michael: Does the data give us any indicators as to what's coming down the pike because obviously, data is rear looking. But how can we use that to be forward looking or is there a way to be?   Brandon: Yeah, so I think you're talking about forward looking, you know, the next 6,12,18 months. If you look back slightly, we hit this topic quite a bit. It's a big topic right now in real estate is these large interest rate hikes. If you look at the timeline, the time series of the real estate market in terms of medium price terms of you know, list to sale rate of sale to price ratio, you look at, you know, the days on market, it seems that with the large amount of growth that we experienced in two years, you know, record growth, that was actually able to absorb a lot of the impact that people would assume, continuing to month over month raise this interest rate to higher and higher levels, they assumed that it was going to impact the real estate market at much a much quicker, much faster way. So then they can stop, right, the goal of raising interest rates tend to raise them forever. They're just raising them until they kind of see the market growth kind of settled down and adjust and kind of normalize. But it's kind of shocking when you think about how much and how quickly that interest rate rose and until a few months back. I mean, most of 2022 there was very little impact from those rounds of interest rates. So it's one thing that we can we can learn as, as we saw record growth, even that dramatic increase really did not impact the real estate market as we thought it would. Secondly, what's really kind of driving any sort of kind of negative view of the real estate market right now around this interest rate, is you gotta think of like purchase power of our homebuyers, right?   We didn't see salaries raised at the same rate as the real estate market, we didn't see household income raise at the same rate as real estate. So the really big question here and the kind of the, you know, the driving force here is the purchase power of homebuyers. We actually seeing and this is from Freddie Mac, I believe a 32% decrease in purchase power, based on this 30 year, you know, FRM, that's given the same monthly payments for a loan made at the end of 2021. So we're really seeing a decrease in what homebuyers can afford and that combined with hopefully the Fed has definitely signaled smaller rate hikes in the future. We're hoping that housing fundamentals can hopefully come back to a quote unquote normal seasonality cycle and the expected returns, but into early 2023. I think we're still going to see you know, a real estate market that's just characterized by this continued tight squeeze on supply tight squeeze on demand. With the exception of what we discussed earlier, which was a major economic event causing mass layoffs or firings, then I'm thinking early 2023 is going to be characterized the same kind of, of patterns we're seeing now, which is tight supply, shrinking demand, days on market, increasing. median price is slowly decreasing month over month, until we see hopefully towards the second half of 2023, a market that's brought back to its normal seasonality and its normal housing market fundamentals.   Michael: Brandon, I want to be super respectful of your time and get you out of here, man. But before I do if people want to learn more about you and the research team HouseCanary has a whole services that y'all provide. Where's the best place for them to do that or get a hold of someone?   Brandon: Yeah, I would definitely just go to https://www.housecanary.com/ . From there, you can get a list of all the products services, there's probably people on our company that can explain the better business use cases and appear researcher, I'm all about the data. But if you go to https://www.housecanary.com/, there's plenty of people to contact through there and also, I'll attach my email. I'll pass it on to you, Michael after this. So you can share it with the listeners.   Michael: Thank you so much for taking the time. This was super informative and definitely again, curious to see how things all pan out.   Brandon: Yeah, stay up, same tune. I think next week, our new market pulse comes out as well. So if you're interested in different states and how the market is performing, and also at the national level, it's a free report and that report will be valid all the way up into the end of December. So it will have kind of our December numbers added to that report and you can see those trends going on there as well. So usually is dispersed on our website. Also LinkedIn, if you follow HouseCanary on LinkedIn, that report is shared monthly for free and you can see all those metrics that we talked about updated on a monthly cadence. So you can kind of have competence in your decision making process.   Michael: Love it, love it. We'll definitely check that out as well. Well, thanks again, Brandon. Appreciate you and we'll chat soon.   Brandon: Appreciate it, thanks, Michael.   Michael: All right, everyone. That was our show a big thank you to Brandon for coming on and dropping so much knowledge, facts, data and statistics on us to help us guide our investing through these kind of tumultuous times. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we would love to hear from you all ratings and reviews are always appreciated as are comments with additional topic ideas that you are interested in learning about. We look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

Being only an employee leaves you vulnerable to the ups and downs of the market. Real estate investing is one powerful defense against job loss and economic downturns. In this episode, Neil Timmons provides insight into the real estate business and shares his experience with overcoming economic adversity to secure a robust financial position. Neil Timmins is the CEO of Legacy Impact Partners, where they invest in real estate opportunities ranging from houses and apartments to industrial and medical offices. In 2021 Neil published his first book, Unicorn Hunting for Real Estate Investment Companies: How to Easily Attract, Screen, and Land a Unicorn. The book is tailored to helping real estate investors find and retain top talent through the strategic systemization of hiring. Neil also hosts his own podcast, “Real Grit” where he pulls back the curtain on real estate investing through interviews with industry titans. “Real Grit” provides listeners with the tools they need to secure their lasting real estate legacy!   Episode Links: https://legacyimpactpartners.com/ https://legacyimpactpartners.com/podcast/ --- 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 Neil Timmins, who is an author, a podcast host, entrepreneur, real estate investor and he's gonna be talking to us about going from an agent and employee to building a significant business in the real estate space and what it takes to do so. So let's get into it.   Neil Timmons what is going on, man, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for taking the time to come hang out with me today.   Neil: Good. It's so good to see you again. I appreciate the invite. Looking forward to this for some time now.   Michael: No, likewise, the pleasure is mine. I'm super excited. So you and I of course know each other. We were chatting offline just before we hit record. But for anyone who doesn't know Neil Timmins, give us the background quick and dirty. Who you are, where you come from, and what is it you're doing real estate.   Neil: High level out of Des Moines, Iowa, born and raised, started as a residential real estate agent built a built a brokerage there on to REMAX for a number of years was a top REMAX guy with my 20s and then eventually found my way stumbled into investing worked my way through single family investing, we still do a little today but morphed into commercial investing. And that's a primary focus today.   Michael: Love it and I hear this this theme so often with agents start as an agent, got my teeth cut, then went into the investment side. My guess if you're a top performing agent, in your local market, you're making a lot more money on an annual basis than you would if you're investing. So why did you make that transition? Why'd you make that jump?   Neil: Yeah, no good question. Well, the not so fun story is I was probably 31 ish at the time. Maybe 32, I came home one day to my wife of a decade in our three little kids, all about five or younger, and my wife had them all packed up and said she was leaving, leaving for good. I had spent the better part of seven years or so working like a dog every day of the week, I worked. My second year in real estate, it worked 355 days. So that business was built, ultimately, you know, I was able to put his team in place and that business, but it largely was built on my back and my effort and so it was at that point that, you know, I had an ultimatum and I begged and pleaded with her to go, you gotta give me give me an opportunity. I understand. So give me an opportunity. She did thank God. 45 days later, I sold my REMAX and took a whole bunch of time off to decide, well, how am I going to how am I going to do this? How am I going to make a living in contribute because I like doing what I was doing and not the not to the degree in which I did it. But I enjoyed real estate a lot, right? The people, all the fun things around it. So it took some time off to evaluate things and then ultimately plugged back in largely on the investment side.   Michael: And today you own a business around the real estate investing space. Tell us about that.   Neil: Yeah. So I own a couple of things. On the on the investment side of things. We're primarily focused on commercial investing, right, we buy by multiple asset classes, you're on a primary ladder, Des Moines, Iowa, we still do fix and flip in the office. Although I'm not largely involved, we've got a nice little machine that runs that really good. Contractor base in place, literally same contractor. Don't quote me on how many but we've done probably nearly 200 with the same exact crew. So it makes running things and the efficiencies there of all awfully simple. I love talking to people going you know what I don't like flipping because then I gotta go pick the carpet, I gotta pick the paint whatever else I'm like, What do you mean, you have to do that we picked it once. It's the same carpets, the same paint, same countertops, the same appliance, nothing, nothing changes. You're not doing a whole block of these things. It's not like anybody notices. You just pick it once yeah and so then also, I run an education business, which we launched this year, which has been very well received from folks who want to make that bridge want to leap into commercial real estate and, you know, figure it out either how to do their first deal or how to do their next deal.   Michael: And I'm curious, Neil, because I also come from the education space, and the folks that you're working with, are they the DIYers or are they the folks that have heard of commercial and want to get exposure to it in some form or another are a mix of the two?   Neil: Yeah, no, it's really DIYers. Yeah, that's not largely the passive investors, if you will, it's people who are active in real estate like, like using… if you will, you know, in my career was it just laid out you know, as well cradle to grave if you will, coming through I'd like if you were to go, how should someone progress? Although most don't do that, you know, they end up in one thing and often stick there, but I kind of work my way through that. Is this constant evolution of how do we elevate oneself and one skill set to take it to a to a new level and that's where these folks are they know they've done, they've done single family, they've largely been exposed to it, maybe they've been exposed a little commercial, but just haven't gotten to the results. They haven't they haven't been on a foundation, a legacy had been on a foundation of financial freedom and, you know, arguably, in mice that that commercial gets you there faster and easier.   Michael: And within commercial because it is such a diverse asset class and really name where do you see folks going that are having the most success?   Neil: Oh, good question there. You know, we bring people in, and we do a lot of things from a training standpoint, want to be in an asset class exercise to go alright, well, fill this little asset class matrix out, we have my hand if answer a handful of questions to go, you know, do you resonate better? Would you rather work with people or businesses, and we just bring them through a series of questions, and that lines it up to go well, top to bottom ranked, we focus on six level six largest asset classes, there's top to the bottom, here's what here's what it looks like and then my encouragement from there is, Listen, if number two resonates a whole lot better with you than number one on that list, that's what you should do, because it's just easier and you know, this, if we were to go work on something you can get passionate about, it's a whole lot simpler, then put a little more effort into it and something you're just like, huh, maybe?   Michael: Totally, totally and, you know, I'm curious, so many folks, I think can go invest in single family on the side as a project as a test as an experiment, the DIYers that are doing commercial real estate, are they doing it on the side? Are they really jumping in with both feet, kind of like you did, and making this their full time gig?   Neil: Yep, great question most are doing on the side, most are either stacking it on to their single family business or, you know, if they've got a day job and several folks do is they're doing this, you know, in the evenings, nights and weekends, side hustle, if you will and you think about you know, from makeup, a number of you were to go market to single family or markets or commercial just by being in commercial, the number of available prospects has been largely diminished. It's a much more manageable group of makeup, an asset class, let's say self-storage, you're going to go market self-storage is in your county, well, in comparison to houses, it is a mere fraction. So your ability to call text or you know, mail somebody or connect with a broker, perhaps it's very manageable. You don't have to do it full time. In fact, that would not encourage it, because you're gonna sit around, you're gonna get discouraged. Because there's candidly not enough to do versus the single family side, you could always find something to do.   Michael: Interesting. Talk to us about kind of the exits and the thought process around the exit from that business. Because in my mind, and I think in a lot of other investors' minds, a house is a house is a house, you know what it is? I know what it is everybody on the street, you know, that you bump into knows what it is, and knows how to buy it, versus a self-storage unit. I could maybe Name one person that I know that's involved in that business and so if I'm trying to sell it, who's gonna buy it?   Neil: Yep, no, exactly. So that's, you know, what I do on the training side is bring people through, even if you know, largely set some goals, understand why you want to be in this business, and perhaps what you'll do get through the training go, I don't want to be in the business. And that's okay, too. That's okay because what you don't know or what you what you now know, empowers you, right? To make a better decision about what the path you should be going down. So we bring people through that large infusion for retraining to expose them to what this world looks like, and then how to, you know, identify an asset class that really resonates with you how to price something up, how do we get leads, so largely from a marketing standpoint, from a lead standpoint, what do we say then? How do we value it? How do we actually put something a price to it to go alright, this looks like a potential really good deal, then how do we put it under contract and then from there, you know, the exit plans largely are or we get to resell the property. Occasionally, we get a property that comes in our wheelhouse, what I call, it's not our perfect seller, so it's a good deal, just not for us. Now, can we move that along, so to liken that to single family wholesale it double close it novated right, do all the same things in the commercial side or, you know, we decide, hey, this is our perfect seller with the property we want to own. So how do we how do we close it up or we get to raise equity? How do we go get debt and then how do we bring the whole thing together to properly manage it? So that's what we show folks how to do and ultimately starts you know, on the front end of the process to go Alright, how are we buying this because I know what our required returns are and if it doesn't hit that I'm that's gonna lead us down a different path to either go it's either a non-deal or we're gonna get this moved along to another investor and cash up the big check that we can utilize for the next year.   Michael: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense and you use the term that I'm not frankly familiar with novate. What does that mean?   Neil: Novation is that this has become very popular on the single family side. So there's a lot of buzz on the single family side, especially for those in the wholesaling business. Okay, it is to replace one contract with one another with another contract. So essentially, if I was to, you know, say, for example, I was to buy a property from Mr. Jones, I have a contract in place with Mr. Jones, I decided I want to move this property along under innovation process, you would then provide me a contract that would replace mine, there's typically a difference in pricing, right, you're gonna pay more than what I've just paid and that delta ultimately gets paid back to me. As part of the process. I'm high level in here. There's some moving pieces but high level?   Michael: Yeah, okay okay. Great to know. Neil, I'm curious if we can zoom out for a little bit, because you went from realtor agent, which is a kind of a unique profession and that, yes, you are an employee, but also you are kind of the business owner, your own of your own little business, your own little domain, and then you went and put a team in place, and then you ultimately sold that business. But for so many people that are employees in a traditional nine to five w two employee position to make the transition from employee to business owner, I think is a big leap for a lot of people. What was that like for you mentally going from? I'm going to be an agent to now I'm going to start and run and operate a business.   Neil: Yeah, no good question in it. I think that's, it comes in incremental gains, right. So how do you how do you elephant, right, one piece at a time and so the same thing occurred from me mentally and I think that is? It's a terrific question because I think so much of this business, in business in general is mental, right? It's a six inch game in between your ears and so how do you combat that I read a book when I was probably 20 to 23 years old. The Millionaire Mind by Dr. Thomas Stanley. He wrote The Millionaire Next Door, that's probably his most famous book, The Millionaire Mind was incredible and it broke it down to, you know how millionaires think and my thought process, of course, is well, if you just think like a millionaire eventually, and then, therefore, act and operate like a millionaire, I will eventually become one, right. So it's not it's not hard success leaves clues. So there was a lot of things in there that that impacted me at a very deep level and one of them, the biggest takeaway for me was, the largest risk that one has is being an employee. They can let you go any day of the week, this is what I came to believe in, it's still my operating beliefs today are just risky, if you have no control and I, I am well aware that as a business owner, as an operator, as a real estate investor, we take tremendous risk. There's no doubt about it but I still think they pale in comparison to putting all eggs in one basket, men have an employer of someone else.   Michael: Yeah, it makes total sense. So as you started moving things along, and created and formed and founded your business, how did you figure out who the right people were to put on the proverbial bus because I think, again, so many people have either a great idea, and they're really good at maybe doing that one thing. But doing that one thing isn't a business and so how do you scale it and have a proper functioning, running operational business?   Neil: Yeah, no, great question and that's, that's probably, if I was to attribute any of our success over the course of last three ish years, two and a half years, somewhere in that range, we've had significant success in that period of time, it's largely been correlated to my evolution as a leader, knowing that the only way forward is ultimately with and through other people. And so I've had a focus internal so go back to a question you just asked earlier, from a mental attitude of taking that leap. For me, it's how do I develop as a leader how to become a better a better person, somebody that people look up to somebody that people want to be around, so many people want to listen to, and, and be on the same bus with going rowing in the same direction and so that has largely, that's been a big focus over the course the last couple of years. When I was at a spot where he's gone, it's time to grow. You can't hire and retain a player's unicorns as I call them. You can't hire and retain unicorns if you're not one. So how do you how does one improve their personal self to be able to get to that level? That other a players want to be around?   Michael: Yeah, that makes total sense. So what it what did you do? Can you open the vest a little bit, let us peek under the curtain…   Neil: Yes, you know, it's, I wish there was a silver bullet here, but it's largely just been, you know, what do they say what's mentionable is manageable and for me, it's just having that Cognizant thought that okay, well, now, I'm mindful of this and so now I need to give thought to this. How do I say things how do I handle things? How do I handle certain situations? What is the impact when making this isn't with an employee or with a team or with a customer in front of folks, how's this gonna resonate? What does this look like and then having the vision as a leader, as any leader, doesn't any organization, that vision to go, where are we going and this isn't about me, this is about us and so oftentimes you'll hear me say, we did this, I almost, you know, I try very hard to say that 100% of time, I didn't do anything. We did this collectively, all the results are collective right. It is us together and that reading, continuing to stay focused on that, stay ahead of what's transpiring, trying to, you know, hosting a podcast being around other people like yourself, other people in the industry having an understanding what's going on. So been trying to be on that curve from a knowledge base standpoint about what's transpiring that's helpful, too.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. I love that and asking for a friend. I hate people and I don't think I want to interview people and screen people and that sort of thing. Does that mean that I shouldn't start a business with my great idea?   Neil: The first part is I don't like people. So let's just call that the introverted, right? They don't want to interact with other people. My right hand gal is an introvert. She's not very gregarious as it relates to people. She's very good with people. But she wants to she's far more task oriented about how do we execute on what we're doing? I think that's terrific and now, what hadn't you hire her because she's the Yang, right? It's Ying and yang. She complements me in a perfect opposite fashion and I do the same thing. The other way around. Yeah, it's, I think that's terrific. I think it's wonderful, if you can, what you just expressed was, you know who you are, if you know who you are, you can identify a path forward and I would encourage you absolutely. Knowing what your deficiencies are is wonderful. We're all we're all given strengths someplace, just balance this balance your weakness with somebody else. Don't try to what are the what don't master in the weaknesses, right? So anytime we have a weakness here in anybody, you know, largely for me, it's going just don't do it. Don't master in the minors, because at the end of the day, you're still going to be a d minus for you, no matter how good you get at your weakness focus on your A's.   Michael: Yeah. Oh, that's such a good expression. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, oh, I wanted to visit with my best friend. We're so similar that I'm like, that doesn't sound like a good partnership.   Neil: Sounds like sounds like a great bar and I but not a good business decision.   Michael: Yeah, I know. Totally, yeah right.   Neil, if we zoom back into the commercial side of real estate coming from the single family space, what is it that you see is the biggest hurdle of barrier to entry for folks that want to make that leap into commercial but utilize someone such as yourself to help them get there?   Neil: You'll never guess us? Are you ready for this?   Michael: I hope so.   Neil: I know, you're it's a mental barrier. It's all made up in their head. It's they don't think they can't. Yeah, but they don't think that that is it because past that, the ability to go well, okay. Well, if you've ever let me let me liken it to single family. A duplex is like a single family rental house, right? It's just two doors and the numbers change a little bit? Well, a 20 packs is the same thing. There's largely, there's not much difference in these things you're adding some zeros are calculated a little differently, but it's pretty much the same. In fact, management, in my opinion, gets easier. The more doors you have, right, you get professional management, you get it, it becomes simpler. Yeah and then to make a change to go into some other asset class, we just have to make a bridge. What does that look like? They have to go to an industrial buildings on a triple net lease, which is probably the simplest thing to calculate and get one's head around when you're going, well, they just pay a lease rate, and then they fix all the stuff that goes wrong with it, right? That's it your true and your true and why is the rent, we've got multiple properties like that and we're the management company, which means we just get the rent and never hear Yeah.   Michael: Yeah, that's by far the easiest piece of property in my portfolio is triple net.   Neil: Yes, correct. But people are, you know, we're scared about what we don't know and that's true of all of us, right? We're scared about what we don't know, afraid to make mistake, which is totally understandable and so we just help folks, we educate them as we go answer questions as we go and show them the exact path to be able to get from, you know, I want to learn more about commercial real estate, I'd love to be able to buy a deal to actually get to a close.   Michael: That's awesome. And I'm curious, Neil, what's your favorite asset class and why?   Neil: My favorite asset class, although I own I'd have to calculate up four or five different asset classes, but my favorite today is going to be industrial.   Michael: Industrial why is that?   Neil: Yeah, industrial is in demand like crazy. Secondly, in 2021, had the second largest rent increase across all asset classes, only trailing two apartments. But in comparison to apartments, they're far easier to manage, right, I get a triple net deal, or a double no deal, there isn't much to do, there's very few moving pieces you end up with, on average, let's say a five year to 10 year lease is pretty straightforward.   Michael: Okay. So if I'm playing devil's advocate here, and we're looking at this industrial building, this is suited only for a business. This is not for people can't come live here and the type of business you might have to build to suit it out for that particular business 5-10 years down the road, that might be a future Neal problem. But let's drive down that path that tenant leaves goes out of business, what have you economy turns? If businesses aren't doing well, in the area, are you stuck with this vacant building now?   Neil: 100%. If businesses are doing well in the area, meaning they're laying off or not employing people, my thesis is you still have you still have an apartment problem relative to occupancy and or rent rates. This goes back to earlier question is, admittedly, we have to take a risk someplace, right? It's just my comfort level and I like the box, you know, not a somehow engineering building has been added on to or defined for one, one person's exact use, I like a big giant box, just a rectangle, that's it, a business of multiple businesses come into that and fill it out in which way they want to. So like the fact that if I can buy my, my preferred buying is for buying some older not buying brand new stuff, buying some older buying something with a value add or on buying at a discount of some managers, the intent is to buy it correctly. And if I can buy a property, let's call it make up a number right now 70 to $80, a square foot brand new construction is gonna be 120 to 130 a square foot, I think I'm in pretty good shape over the course of coming years, I think that my dollars, and my rent rates get pulled up to the fact that sheer cost of new construction is gonna be 60% higher.   Michael: All right, I dig it, I dig it and for anyone, I'm just realizing now, some of our listeners might not be familiar with the term double net triple net lease, can you give us a quick definition of what it is?   Neil: Yeah, it just defines what people pay for double net, for example, is probably one of the least likely terms that use but let's say triple net triple net means ultimately that the tenant pays for everything, there may be some nuances inside the lease, but taxes, insurance, repairs maintenance, the tenant pays for that. So if your releases 100 grand a year, your net is 100 grand a year before, before your mortgage, any sort of debt payment you have on it. A double net means they don't pay for everything they pay for perhaps taxes and insurance, but not all the repairs and all the maintenance, and therefore your NOI is gonna be a little lighter, depending on what you have to maintain and pay for.   Michael: Okay, perfect and I'm sure some of our listeners are hearing that and thinking like, this is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm gonna go put all of my single family homes and all my apartments on Triple Net leases. Why is it only a thing that's been heard of in the commercial space?   Neil: Yeah, no good question. You know, to liken it to single family, you're like lease with an option or a contract sale, that's probably the closest thing you get to a triple net in the in the single family house side, right? So you kind of contract sale, somebody that mean that contract buyer is now responsible for everything associated with that house, right? That's what it looks like. If you look at the closest thing, there's some differences there. Obviously, a contract sale into a down payment interest rate. That's not the same as a triple net lease on the industrial side but that's probably the easiest way to liken it to single family.   Michael: Yep. Yeah, that makes total sense and for anyone listening, like Neil mentioned, it's just the cap rate is like the easiest thing ever in the Analyze easy thing ever, you got a million dollar building cap rate 6% they're paying 60 grand a year, then bam, boom, end of discussion. You're not paying taxes, you're not paying insurance, you know, capex and maintenance. So you can calculate your true return, and then look to calculate what your debt service payments gonna look like and determine what your return looks like after that, versus the traditional single family rental or apartment or traditional residential space. They pay you a set fixed amount, the rent, and then you have to go figure out the taxes, insurance, repairs, maintenance, capex, that sort of thing.   Neil: So hey, just because I like it or you know, in other investors likes something else doesn't mean it's right. There's only what's right for you.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. I love it. Neil, this has been so much fun, man. I want to be very respectful of your time. Let's get you out of here. But before we go, like where can people reach out to you find out more about you continue the conversation if they're interested?   Neil: Yeah, no, great question. Well, if you want to learn more about commercial real estate getting rich in what I call the 20x niche, why do I call it that? Well, because our target internally is to produce in a monthly return that's 20 times that of us Single Family return so we're scaling up largely is just go to my website give you a free download free report just you can learn more about the industry getting into commercial. So www dot legacy impact partners forward slash gift JF T legacy impact partners Ford slash gift: https://legacyimpactpartners.com/   Michael: Right on thank you so much and before I let you go I mean I'm not gonna let you out of here without mentioning your podcast you're also the host of a podcast was that was a you're kind enough to have me on what is that called and what can people expect to hear on it?   Neil: Real grit is the name of it it's about the trials tribulations anybody from real estate. So we talked about single family talking about commercial talk about everything in between. But really, so that we fully admit that you know, life isn't all about Lambos and big houses on cash and checks and everything on Facebook that or social media wherever you'd see it right? That there's ups and downs there's, there's we have to go through stuff and many times to be able to find our own personal success and so we talk through that and people's personal stories and how they got there because all bunch people, they get their different ways and it's really exciting. It's, we get into some really interesting, very dynamic conversation a lot of fun, love it. You and I had a great conversation.   Michael: I had a ball. I had a ball.   Neil: It was a blast, man.   Michael: Awesome. Well definitely go check out that podcast, real grit, a lot of fun, really cool stuff going on there. Neil, thank you again. Any final words thoughts for our listeners?   Neil: No, you're going to find me you know, like I shared it though the website I'm also on all the all the social media platforms. Facebook's the best place to find me Neil Timmins, or there are many Amin just spell it right you got me   Michael: Right on, many thanks again. Appreciate you, see you soon. Bye.   Neil: Bye, bye.   Michael: All right, well, that was our episode. A big thank you to Neil for coming on the show. Really, really interesting stuff that Neil's been through seen and experienced. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we'd love to hear from you with a rating or review wherever it is get your podcast, and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

In this episode, we welcome Public Adjustor, Andy Gurczak to speak about the role of PAs, and how you can make the most out of the undesirable experience of haggling with your insurance provider -- ensuring the highest possible settlement under the terms and conditions of the policy.  Andy Gurczak started in construction as a laborer and got his in as a public adjustor through a contractor he worked for.  Quickly climbing the ladder, he helped grow the business by attaining new clients and further building relationships with existing clients. Andy started his own company, AllCity Adjusting, where he and his team process over 1000 claims per year. Andy's Contact Info: https://www.allcityadjusting.com/ c: 708 655 4186 --- 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 Andy Gurczak with All City Public Adjusting. And he's gonna be talking to us today about what a public adjuster is, and why anyone who owns property should consider using one if they have an insurance claim. So let's get into it.   Andy, what's going on, man, thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I really appreciate you coming on.   Andy: Mike, thank you so much for having me on. It's a pleasure. It's always it's fun to do these. So I'm excited.   Michael: No no. It's truly my pleasure. You're the first like we've done I think this is episode 300 and change and you're the first public adjuster we've had on so anyone who knows me knows that I'm a total insurance nerd and insurance buff so but for anyone who's not familiar, like what is a public adjuster and kind of give us a quick and dirty of what you're doing in real estate.   Andy: First of all, Bravo on 300 episodes. Plus, that's awesome. So thanks for you guys. And I'm lucky PA so this is pretty cool. Yeah, so public adjuster is is licensed by the state, he's legally able to represent the insured in their claim process, negotiate and settle the loss for them. Whether it's commercial or residential. It's basically like having an attorney on your side or an accountant doing your books. It's the same exact thing. They're licensed by the state that they work in as well.   Michael: Okay, okay. And I mean, it just seems like kind of counterintuitive. I go and pay an insurance company every single month, every single year to give me insurance. Then when I have a claim, an insurance claim, I go to the insurance company said, Hey, insurance company, here's this claim, pay me for the claim what I'm owed. So why do I need a public adjuster? Like why does your job even exist?   Andy: Yeah, that's a that's a great question. The reason our job exists is because insurance companies don't pay claims and don't pay them fairly. We've talked about this before the show, Mike, you work the insurance side. So you know, that claims, actually two people that work in our office work the insurance side, and they've got they seen how bad a guy and came to our side. Because claims are handled, I mean, horribly every year, it gets worse and worse. And our we just had a meeting with a couple of attorneys just discussing what's going on and what we could do in some situations, because it's getting so bad, that, you know, insurance companies aren't responding for a month or two months, or just I mean, so having a PA on your site, even though it's your claim, and you think you have to remember that insurance adjuster, that staff adjuster and every one that they send out every vendor contractor they sent out, they all get paid by the insurance company. So they're all working for this one entity. And then you're by yourself. And you're thinking, well, they're on my side, no doubt on your side. It's all about profits, margins, all that good stuff. So…   Michael: Yeah, I know it's so the word of news is sick. When you find out kind of what's going on under the hood. It's really what should be a partner relationship. Like you mentioned, everyone on the same team working for the same goal can be come very contentious very quickly. So you said it's like having an attorney or like having a bookkeeper on your side? I mean, it sounds expensive. How much do public adjusters charge? Like, how does that work?   Andy: Easy. Yep, Pa is most of the time charge a contingency fee. So there's no retainer is nothing, it's all contingency on what they recover. And you know what the claim settles for. And standard is 10%. Like our company has adopted just a 10%, nationwide, whatever claim we're handling, whatever the size is now, some situations where we come in, let's just say months after a year after the claim has been paid, and we're just trying to figure out maybe another coverage or paid additional than it might be a higher fee of maybe 20-25 on the money that we recover above that amount that would the only difference,   Michael: Okay, and so just so we get it crystal clear for all of our listeners, because I just went through this on a claim to fire claims I had on a property. If the insurance company comes into my claim, and says, Hey, Michael, we're gonna give you $100,000 For your claim, and I'm like, There's no way it's gotta be worth way more than that. You will come in or a public adjuster comes in, you end up getting me a million dollars, you're gonna take 10% of that additional 900k That you got me above and beyond what I was originally awarded.   Andy: Yeah, exactly. And something in your situation. So when we have claims, and we have large investors and management companies, we have a pay scale that actually the percentage goes down once it reaches a certain amount. So reaches, you know, half a million that 10% may become nine, right for every client, we kind of work with them, just because we kind of know their position. And again, we want to create a relationship that is long term, because then we're getting called when before the claim even starts right because we want to be there. You know, another question is when do you want to hire PA for the day you have a claim, because you want to make sure if that claim is a legit claim, if you should even file that claim, whatever your deductible is, is that even a covered loss?   A PA will, you know, we do this for our clients all the time we do their policies with their claims without making any money or charging any fee. It just part of our relationship with our clients.   Michael: Okay, I'm so glad you brought that up, Andy, because I get this question all the time. Because so many people don't like, insurance, education is not something that's really provided out there. And I'm wondering if that maybe is on purpose by the insurance companies, but like, how should people if they have something happened to their property? And statistically, if you own a property or enough properties long enough, you will probably have a claim?   So what's the process? Like if you could articulate and paint us a picture of as a property owner, whether it's our own property or an investment property? What should that process look like? What should what should owners be doing? Who should they be talking to?   Andy: Yeah, if you don't have a PA, and you're kind of going to try to do this on your own, you want to first stop whatever loss happens, you want to mitigate the loss, right, you want to get first you want to you want to get your copy of your policy to you want to see if your agent because you most likely don't have a copy, because no one knows that they don't have a copy until they have a loss to be like, Oh, I have this page, I'm gonna get your declaration, you need your policy, your booklet, you know, no one gets that usually, until something happens. And then it's hard to get it from the insurance company, it's like, they don't want to give you your own policy, very normal. Then you want to mitigate the loss. So if it's a fire, you want to board it up, protect it, make sure no one can get in there. Or if it's a roof, you want to cover the roof, if it's a roof claim, and then you want to go and take pictures and document as much as you can, and then call the claimant.   And when you call on the claimant and you're trying to set the reserves high enough. So then when they come in, and let's just say you have $100,000 loss, but when you told them the claim, you might have said, well, it's a small fire in the kitchen, small smoke, they might have reset the set the reserves at 25,000. And now the claim is actually 100. So now when we're trying to fight it, we're going to five managers like what's the example at State Farm, for example, once it goes past the reserves, you're going through letters like five managers to approve one payment are one extra additional line item, it's it gets really crazy.   So the most important is mitigating, mitigating the loss, getting your policy, reserving the claim calling the claimant, right? And if you don't know the answer, when you're discussing that claim, when you're calling it in, just say I don't know, because a lot of people get into trouble by trying to say too much to be too honest. And it's not about being honest or not, or, or lying. But people say the wrong words, they might use the word like mold, I see mold. Oh, well, molds not covered. Here's a denial letter. Well, the water, you know, the water happened three days ago, we have there's mold, because you know it's wet, it's humid mold molds catch up, but there's still water damage that's covered.   So different words they use. So you gotta be careful with words you so you want to do your due diligence, or even call your agent to call that claimant for you. If you need help.   Michael: Let's talk about that for a minute. Because in the agent world, you have captive and non captive agents. And so just like you were saying all the vendors are paid by the insurance company. I mean, in a lot of instances, aren't these agents paid by the insurance companies as well?   Andy: 100%. And I have friends that are agents and I know people are agents, and agents have a bonus if their clients don't file claims. So there is a bonus, there's a perk of them if their clients don't have claims or the correct. So everyone's got a benefit if the claim is not filed, and if it's underpaid, everyone gets points on that.   Michael: So can we surmise that if you have a claim, you should just call a public adjuster immediately?   Andy: 100%. Because it's a free review, what's the worst is going to happen? He's going to come in there and say don't file it. You don't have to sign with that PA but at least get that expertise. Now you want to make sure you find the right one. But if you do you have them looked at it and in depth look at the claim inspect the roof, inspect the fire damage inspector water damage and let you know everything you should do.   Michael: Yeah, I am. I had my first big claim to have them back to back couple years ago, I had two fires in a commercial building back to back a week apart, which I used to work as a professional fire protection engineer. And it's like statistically impossible to have that happen. I'm the one exception, right? So I went through the claim process I had the insurance company come out do their inspections like oh, it's small fire just like you said, you know teeny tiny claim payout. And I'm like dude, that doesn't even cover the materials that were sitting on the roof when I had the roof fire. So I brought in a public adjuster and they know about 15Xed that claim. So I can't sing their praises enough. When someone is searching for a public adjuster and you just mentioned this, you want to find the right one, like what does that process look like? What questions should you be asking?   Andy: I've never been on the other side. When I look and talk to our clients how they found us obviously they were looking online Googling and stuff and they were doing a search engine and kind of we came up online we do a lot of blogs and stuff. So we'll come up there with a lot of tips and stuff for people so they'll find our name. Otherwise, so if you're not looking online, you know, you can check websites like patio, which is Texas associations of public insurance adjusters, California has their own, some states have their own. There's the NAPIA National Association of Public Insurance. So there's different associations that you could go on, and find adjusters pas that have been screened and have backgrounds and pay their dues, because they're part of an organization. So that would be your, you know, your best bet. Referrals. Again, if I, if I knew you, I would say, Hey, Mike, you had a couple of fires, you know, did you hire who's a PA, you have someone to recommend. That's, that's your best bet. Someone that they worked for referral.   Michael: That that has had the actual experience with them? Yep. Okay. Are there certain questions that someone should be asking? I mean, what separates the different pas that are out there? Because I'm sure if I google that would get tons of different results. Is one better than the other? Like, is it just based on the fee structure? What should people be be considering? If they're going to hire someone?   Andy: That's an awesome question. So a lot of what you should be asking, and when you go online and look for PAs, a lot of them say, you know, fire water, they do all these things. But 90% of PAs handle just roofing claims, usually residential, some commercial. So it's, you have to make sure that hey, how do you handle fires? And how many fires have you handled? Or what do you specialize in? You might say, Well, we do a lot of roofs. That's not the PA, if you had a fire, you don't want the guy that's handling roofing claims. Right? For us, we do large loss, fires, water, hurricanes, we don't if someone calls for a residential roof. We don't we don't do residential roofs, we would love to, but we don't we don't specialize it. There's other PAs that do a great job, here's a couple of names you can call or, you know, Google and and find the problem just and it's in that it's just a committed, you know, attorney, some attorneys do, you know, personal injury, some do properties. Same thing with PA some PAs are better at some coverage than others.   Micael: Yeah, that makes total sense. Andy, let me ask you a question. Because it happened to me. And I'm curious now with the hindsight, what the proper move is, so I had this fire, and it was on the roof. And it was during a reroof. So they had all the materials up there. So all the materials burned up. And my public adjuster said, Don't touch anything on the roof. He said, We got to come out, we got to photograph everything we need to take care of, you know, we need to document everything. And meanwhile, it's really windy. There's debris blowing onto the neighbor's property into their, into their, into their courtyard and their fence. And so the neighbors called me complaining threatening to sue, they got crap blown everywhere. And I'm like, I can't it's like an active insurance investigation.   So you were talking about you want to mitigate the loss stop the loss from getting any worse. But are there instances where physically mitigating the loss than is like evidence tampering is the wrong word, but you understand how it's changing the scene.   Andy: Double edged sword? Yes, a double edged sword. We walk into properties all the time. And you know, or let's say we go into a hurricane area, or right now in Florida, and we see people outside with all their contents, right? Like all their house stuff, just in a pile. And I'm like, did you guys order material? Everything's gutted? I'm like, did you guys inventory take pictures? Well, no, but the insurance company said to just throw everything up. That's the worst idea ever. That's what they want. You just get rid of all your evidence. So that's a double edged sword. So when I say mitigate, you're supposed to mitigate the loss because they can technically your duties after last say you will mitigate. So if you don't, they can deny it. But what's mitigate right? If I had a pipe burst from the third story water comes as floods my whole house right? The insurance company is going to want to send a vendor out to pull some drywall or spray everything or dry everything and leave it. That's the goal. That's mitigation. But mitigation is you turning off the water. That's already mitigation, because it doesn't specify what technically mitigation is. It just says mitigate. So by me turning off the water, I have mitigated the loss. And I will tell my insurer just leave it because it's already all damaged. Whether you dry it or not, that's just gonna go against your thing. It's already damaged. It can't be its category three water. So it's got to be all replaced. Instead of paying a vendor all this money, this has got to be gutted, all that money should just go to you instead of that vendor.   So yeah, there is instances. So in yours, just because we have insurance, karma saying any Can we start rebuilding? Well, now because we're still fighting with the insurance company, and we're still negotiating, and if you start the repairs, then you you can date that's what they want. They want to keep holding, holding until you actually accept it and start the repairs.   Now, if they don't start the repairs, then they'll go well, why didn't the insured start the repairs? Right? So it's, we're trying to keep our clients in the best situation to make sure it's the best possible outcome. But it's hard sometimes, especially with landlords when they have tenants, right? Hey, my tenant is going to sue me or my tenants gonna go this if I don't do the repairs. Then do the repairs, I guess. And this is the settlement we're getting. So an insurance company knows this. So, in your situation. That's a tough call. What do you say like either the PA say, Hey, we got to do it this way. And he was doing it the right way. Because if you did mitigate or clean up that thing? And they come in? They're like, ah. Even if you document it, I'm telling you, it's like they don't even look at your photos. They don't care. Yeah, so they did the right thing.   Michael: Okay, good. Well, that's good to hear. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go send them another thank you text after this episode. Yeah. Andy, can you give us like, maybe two scenarios to stories that you've experienced one where things went perfectly well, or as good as they could have gone and what you you're insured what your clients did to get there. And then maybe a scenario at the opposite end of the spectrum where things just like, just like, give us like the worst thing you've ever seen happen? Just so we have a little bit of context that…   Andy: Part of like claim handling or like? Okay, so I'll tell you, we were just like I said, we had the attorney, we were kind of going over claims and we have one, and I won't say the insurance company. This is in Gary, Indiana. This this poor lady that waged her claim has been handled, and it's by an adjuster that we've seen handle bad claims for other people in that area. Whether it's color, race, area, I don't know. But the way this this claim has been handled this lady the under oath and everything she's been through, like we thought we had it all over, they finally after six months, say okay, well pay the claim. And here's the money, we got to argue with them. They started at 30,000. It's $160,000 claim. But then we have contents another 160 that we sent wants to go and now we're asking what's going on with the content. So they come back well, well, which which was the insurance and which was her daughter's. Why does it matter? If you had a fire Mike, and you have your kids and your wife stuff in the house? That's all personal property? They're not on the pile? Are your kids on the policy now? Yeah, no kids are on the policy, but their stuff is covered. Right? So why are they're asking her so now they want to examine her again and her mom. So this is going to drag on for 10 months. So this and this claim is ongoing. So to us that to me, it's like, well, now I'm powerless as a PA. But what can I do?   So the only way is the attorney can help. But again, she's still going to have to do that examination. But it just shows how long they'll drag it and try to find ways of however, to underpay or just deny that claim. So that's bad. Yeah. And we have a bunch of those. So those hurt a lot of them, we win, this one again, we got the structure paid and figured out. Now we thought the contents was going to be a slam dunk, easy. Here's everything, even your vendor said, you can't clean this stuff. Great. Here's the list. Here's the pricing age of items. And now they come back with this. So, another tactic to delay the claim.   On a good note, we had one, it was a it was from another podcast, one of the investors students called us, he got the number to us and he called us he had a 16 unit in Champaign, Illinois, burned down here to ACV policy, you are familiar with actual cash value. Your listeners might not but meaning he would not recover depreciation, he would not get that amount even if he rebuilt. So he was just getting what's what it's worth now. So that building, he had a fit 550 limit that just came in, he wrote like 560. And they depreciated and cut him a check for maybe 300,000, something like that. So when we got hired, we sent our letter representation, and the adjuster called and said, Hey, Andy, you know, I paid this, I paid this to Max, I don't know why he hired you. I'm like, Well, you didn't pay loss of rents. And also you haven't paid demolition expense, and you only paid 300 when it's a 550 policy, you stopped writing, because our estimate is like 900,000. With no like edit, like this is just it.   So then we reconcile and the insured ended up getting 100%. So 550 plus 5%, debris removal, some other endorsements, plus he maxed out everything. So he ended up walking away with another 400, like 300K. So again, when an adjuster says, you know, we don't need you. And that's it again, there's many claims like that, those are the positives, it's the ones that drag on, and that you like, you know, you're close, but they're still like delaying, delaying, delaying. And it's like they want the insurance to just finally say, Okay, well, I'm done.   Michael: I'll just throw in the towel.   Andy: Yeah, it sucks. And, you know, there is statutes in each state, which they have to follow, but it's never followed, because no one ever calls them out on it. Because unless you actually go to court or litigation, that's when they show okay, we didn't do this. They didn't do this. But other than that, they don't really know. They kind of do their own thing.   Michael: Yeah, because they're so big. And you bring up you bring up a really good point ACV versus replacement costs for anyone that's not familiar with the to give us from from like the PA side of things. What is the benefit of one versus the other? Because I'm sure your clients have seen like the reason your client probably had the ACV was because the replacement costs value on that 70 unit 50 unit was just probably astronomical. So it's often a cheaper policy to get like what's the downsides of going with one versus the other and what risks do people run by choosing one versus the other?   Andy: So the riskier is with the actual cash value policy and most most policies are RCV based. And then they have the actual cash value endorsement that says we only pay actual cash value, what happens is why you would do that policy where some people might get that policy and our insured wasn't even aware of it. But the agent sold it to him didn't explain to him the differences. He didn't know that he had that extra cash value policy. So you know, that's another story. He went on his own. But, so what happens is you, it saves you a lot on your premium, especially if you're investing you're trying to make margins and you know, it could save you on a property like that 2-3-4K a year, right? Well, it's great until you actually have a loss, when you have a loss. You know, it's especially on older buildings, it's cutting your payment by half. And you can't recover that money because it's actual cash value. So the replacement cost of you know, your home today is 300,000, but the actual cash value after depreciation, your actual cash value is 150. Well, you're only getting that 150. Even if we got the settlement of 300. With insurance, your policy will only allow for the actual cash value of 150, which will leave you with only half the money to rebuild.   So you're always as an as an insured, you should always have a replacement cost policy. And now they have you know, different like guaranteed replacement costs and all this other openly, openly insurance actually has it. They don't even have its guaranteed replacement, because they don't even have a limit. I think it's up to one like there's no limit on structure a   Michael: Holy smokes.   Andy: So there's some new carriers that are really, really, really good, actually.   Michael: Okay. And that brings me to my next point. And I'm so glad you brought it up. Like Should folks be involved in public adjusters in their insurance carrier decisions as they're looking to go place insurance on properties?   Andy: I would hope so. Because all we do is read policies every day. All I do is read policies interpret policy. So I know when I'm looking at a policy, I'm like, Well, you have a good policy, but you don't have you have a finished basement, you don't have any water backup, you your roof is actual cash value only. Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know there's a lot of stuff you you should be aware. So yeah, our longer term clients will actually inspect their properties, look at their policies to make sure they don't have any exposed liabilities. Right. Now, it's not our job. It's the agents job. But most of the agents now are just, you know, selling policies instead of actually doing their due diligence and ensuring the claim the right way, they insured.   Michael: Yeah, I just want to echo exactly what you said, for all of our listeners, like now the public adjuster that I worked with on this on these fire claims, I sent him every policy and every quote that I get for properties, and he told me he's like, happy to do it. He's like, Yeah, this is a great carrier. But this is the other thing. And also, he can tell me like, Hey, I've run up against this insurance carrier, we see them all the time, like they don't pay claims, we're going to be working together a lot more if you have a claim if you go with this company, which is super great insight to have.   Andy: That's, that's awesome. And that's the same thing. I would say, I would say this carrier, we have a lot we have, you know, this many claims every year. And you know, maybe it's a lesser policy, and that takes longer, but they'll pay the claims, right? These guys just don't pay or they didn't know, I have a list of insurance companies that I know that are easier to deal with. Now, it's your claim guarantee you're gonna be paid when you file a claim with them. No, it still might be a hard process. But they're much easier than these eight other carriers that they're that are out there.   Michael: Yeah. This has been so great. Andy, my last question for you, man. How many claims do you handle a year just out of curiosity? So I can we give people an idea of…   Andy: Yeah, we do over 1000 claims a year?   Michael: Well, but how many how many public adjusters in your office?   Andy: Oh, right now we have four. Right now we have four and we're just we just keep growing. We do a good job marketing and, and building our social media presence. And yeah, it's, it's, it's good. And I mean, I guess it's bad for the insurance. Maybe these claims are handled. But yes, tactically, we, our business grows and we get more calls.   Michael: That's awesome. And I want you to share with everyone your contact information where people can get a hold of you and like what kind of I know you said you don't do residential roofs, but what kind of claims should people consider reaching out to you for?   Andy: Any fire, you know, water claims, you know, whether it's broken pipes sewer backup, we can inspect those or at least advise sewer backups, usually, or water backup limits, they usually have a limit. So I see your limit is 10,000. I look at the photos and I'm like, Well, you max out the limit. You don't need a PA this one's just a max policy easy. A lot of people that call us if we get to two calls, three calls a day of clients that we just kind of give them advice because there's no need for a PA in some instances, they will but we can give them at least advice and help them out.   But fire claims hurricane even commercial roofs we do commercial roofs a lot. Residential roofs is just the one thing we don't really do. Just because we we don't have the staff to do it. So…   Michael: Yeah, okay, fantastic. And for people that want to reach out learn more about your take advantage of your services, what's the best way for them to do so?   Andy: The easiest way is my cell phone. It's literally for your clients they can for your listeners, they can call me it's 708 655 4186 that's literally my cell phone. They can text me call me I'm really easy to get a hold of while I still can. I'm able to get my phone away so write it down because I might have to switch here I might not be able to give my phone away and my wife gets mad with more calls.   Michael: I hope you're so busy that happens.   Andy: So ya know so far so far. Okay, wife's not getting mad, so…   Michael: Awesome. Andy, thank you so much, man. This was super great anyone watching the video could tell I'm super giddy talking about insurance stuff. It's so great to meet someone that's also as giddy so no, I really appreciate the time.   Andy: No, it's fun to actually have a host that actually knows that that area and yeah, it's fun. You You know you've been through it now yourself. So you kind of know the you know, you know, you know what we do and what a PA can help. So it's, good.   Michael: Big time, big time. Well, thanks again, man. I'm sure we'll be in touch.   Andy: Mike, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.   Michael: All right, everyone. That was our episode with Andy, A big thank you to him for coming on and sharing some great information, some great knowledge and wisdom with us. Definitely. If you are someone that is going through an insurance claim or will go through an insurance claim in your lifetime with the property you own, definitely consider hiring a public adjuster they are worth their weight in gold. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review. We'd love to hear from you all in the comments section and ideas on future episode topics. And we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing

Mr. Fernandez is President and Chief Executive Officer of 1031 Crowdfunding. Before founding the Company, he was Senior Vice President of Healthcare Real Estate Group in Irvine, California. Since January 2001, Mr. Fernandez has been responsible for researching and compiling accurately verifiable documentation across various industries, including assembling compelling content for marketing materials related to the purchase and acquisition of various real estate holdings. He has over 20 years of inside and outside sales experience. He is personally involved in raising over $800 million of equity from individual and institutional investors through private and public real estate offerings. He hired and trained a national internal wholesaler and external wholesaler sales force. In this episode, he shares how he interprets the current state of the economy and the real estate market; and how his company, 1031 Crowdfunding, creates opportunities to take advantage of during times of uncertainty. Episode Link: https://www.1031crowdfunding.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 I'm joined by Ed Fernandez, President and CEO of 1031 Crowdfunding and he's going to be talking to us today about the state of the economy, the market, and his company, 1031 Crowdfunding, and how we all can take advantage of crowdfunding 1031 exchanges. So let's get into it.   Ed what's going on, man, thanks so much for coming on and hanging out with me today. I appreciate it.   Ed: No problem. Michael, thank you so much for having me.   Michael: No, it's really, really my pleasure, I am super excited to chat with you, because you've got a really cool company doing some pretty cool things. So I know a little bit about it but for all of our listeners who aren't familiar with 1031 Crowdfunding give us a little bit of background, what is it that you all are doing?   Ed: Sure, so what we're doing is we're taking real estate, packaging it up and selling it to investors in little pieces. For those investors that are either tired of the tenants, the toilets in the trash, or they run out of this 45 day Id period that you have to actually do for the IRS and so if you're looking for institutional real estate, but you really don't want to go running around trying to find your own property in this limited period of time, you can come to 1031 Crowdfunding, where we have a slew of institutional property for those investors who are looking to be passive, and defer their taxes through a 1031 exchange.   Michael: Man, I love it, we are definitely going to come dig deeper into that because I was under the assumption that you couldn't turn 1031 into a passive investment. So we've got a lot to talk about. But before we get there, I would love if you could give us a little bit of insight into where you see us currently in today's housing market with all the stuff we got going on. We're recording this towards the latter half of September and 2022. What's going on man?   Ed: Well, as you know, yesterday, the Feds hiked rates again to another 75 basis points and so what's so what they're trying to do, obviously, and it's currently not working, by the way, they're trying to slow down in the housing market. But with money continuing to flood the economy, real estate prices are still exceeding and going up and people can afford real estate or housing, because interest rates are going up. So we're in a weird market today, I can say we can go back to 1991- 1992 and kind of look at that market, very similar type of events that are occurring today.   Michael: Okay, and for all of our listeners that weren't plugged in to the to the real estate market back then what was going on back then.   Ed: So back then it was the tech boom, right? Remember the tech bubble that blew up?   Michael: Yeah.   Ed: Prior to that event occurring, interest rates on loans were double digits 12-14% and people were still borrowing and buying houses and getting involved in real estate. But then the bubble burst in the tech industry and all that money flooded into real estate and that's where you had all this appreciation on the real estate side. So in today's market, even though we're not in double digit interest rates, interest rates are higher than what real estate is producing. So we're not as bad as we were. But we're actually pretty close to where, and who knows, we might get there. If the fence keep doing that. So those are the similarities where interest rates exceeded yields on real estate, and real estate just kept going up.   Michael: Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean, I remember hearing about those double digit interest rates, but I also have to think back and you could go park your money in a bank CD and make 6,7,8, 9%, which now is unheard of. So it's, again, we have these super high interest rates, but you can't make a yield, letting your money sit in the bank. It's getting eroded by the high inflation. So it's a really unique time   Ed: And I'm glad you brought that up. You know, what's very interesting is that Treasury bills now you could buy a federal backed treasury bill, fully liquid and get 4% where real estate is producing three and three and a half percent. So you're kind of seeing what's going on in this market.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. Where do you think we're headed? I want you to break out your crystal ball, change the batteries out put fresh ones in there. What's going on in the next two, three years?   Ed: You know, it's, it's, it's a weird market, you know, I'm not gonna get into the political frying pan of who's doing what?   Michael: Yeah…   Ed: Right. But if money continues to flood this economy, I don't know how you put on the brakes on inflation, if that continues to happen. So what has to happen and what I hope happens is that money tightens up so that the feds can kind of slow down and we can get real estate to a level where people can still buy a home, the millennials, those are the first time homebuyers and investors can still get a yield. I don't see that happening at least for another two years. That's where I think we're headed but we'll wait and see.   Michael: Okay and are you thinking that the interest rate hike is going to continue along that two year frame or are we kind of plateauing and we just have to wait a little bit longer for the effects to take hold?   Ed: Well, if Feds continue to raise interest rates, then now we're gonna go into a recession and how do we come out of that? So it's a fine line of how much to push and how much not to push. So we just got to wait and see, look, if I had a crystal ball, and I can tell you exactly what is going on, I would not be on this call. I'd be on my 200 foot yacht in Monaco watching F1. So I'm just letting you know.   Michael: Totally. Yeah, that's a great point to make. All right. Well, I am very curious to see how it all shakes out, I think, as are many others, but and let's transition here and talk about temporary 1031 Crowdfunding.   So someone has an asset to sell. They've, they've seen the skyrocketing appreciation and let's just walk through it like some numbers as an example. Because I find that makes the conversation a bit more concrete. someone's property is worth a million bucks. They got 400,000 and debt on it and they want to go 1031. The thing, so they sell it for 1,000,000 1031 rule says they got to buy something for at least a million, if not more. Where does sentry one crowdfunding come into play here? Does someone have to bring additional 400k that was in debt to the table to invest in have a proper 1031, how does that work?   Ed: No, no, absolutely not. So one of the one of the biggest things of a 1031 exchange is what we call closing risk, right and so you have 45 days to try to find something and then that's not, you know, there's holidays, weekends, that all counts, right? So you're out there, pounding the pavement, trying to find a replacement property within that 45 day period, which makes it very difficult. So in using your example, if an investor had a million dollar sale with $400,000 of debt, they can invest as long as they're an accredited investor and let me define that either an annual income of $200,000 a year for an individual 300,000 per couple or a million dollar net worth excluding the home you live in, you can come to our website and at any given time, we have anywhere between 30 to 50 different options to choose from and these investments are called Delaware statutory Trust, the term we use is DST been around since 2004, directly on the IRS website, and really what the DST is, is very similar to a living or family trust, where there's a trustee managing a trust for the beneficiaries, you as an investor, or a beneficial owner of a trust that's on title real property. So it could be a $50 million apartment building $100 million Amazon distribution center and for as little as $25,000, you can own a piece of this big property, right off all your expenses, like you're doing today, on your schedule II get paid cash flow on a monthly basis every 15th of the month, and when the property is sold, all the investors get 100% of the upside, and you're still in another 1031 exchange. So that's what we do. We're looking for those investors that are looking for passive investments, tired of the tenants and toilets in the trash or running out of time? Those are the ones that give us a call.   Michael: Yeah, no, that makes total sense and it sounds awesome. So if we go back to our example, of the million bucks in the in the 400k in debt, how does it work because like, my understanding is if I'm if I'm selling something for a million, I gotta go replace that with a million dollars of property. So if I go invest with you all, do I have to bring the extra 100,000, how does that work?   Ed: No, here's how it works. I'll give you an analogy. So let's say I'm a trustee. I'm going to go out and buy a $20 million apartment building. I'm going to create this broader. As the trustee, I'm going to the bank. They're approving me as the warm body, and they're underwriting the real estate, let's say they lend me $10 million. I'm the one that signs on the bad boy carve outs, and I'm the one that signs on the loan. So now the profit, I have 10 million of debt, I need another 10 million in cash. So I write a check for 10 million, and I close the property inside that trust. So to make the numbers easy, let's just call it 50%. LTV or loan to value and so let's say you sold your property for a million dollars, and you paid off the loan, and you got $500,000 in cash, and you got to buy something for a million dollars or greater. Well, when you invest in the DST, the DST already has a 50% loan on it and what happens is that it applies that debt to your position, along with the $500,000 of cash that you invest it. Now at closing, you own $1 million of this $20 million property, which allows you to satisfy your exchange.   Michael: No way. Everyone watching this video just watched my brain explode. That is why that is super cool. All right. All right, I dig it and can people invest using an entity? So like, if I have an LLC that I own this property in that I'm now selling? I need to keep that same entity, right as my purchasing as my up leg for the new property can folks use their entities to invest with you all?   Ed: Shoot, Michael, send me your resume I should be hiring you here quickly… Absolutely. So, so yeah. So you have to use the same tax ID number, right. So one of the one of the things we do in process in talking to investors is we ask them, are you owning this as an individual, an LLC, a trust and based on whatever tax ID number they're using on the sale of the property that tax ID number is the purchaser of this DST. So yes, you have to invest the way you sold.   Michael: I love it, I love it and are you I know you said you're passing on cash flows and 100% of the upside, which is insane. We're gonna talk about that in a minute but are you also passing along depreciation to the investors?   Ed: Absolutely. So whatever remaining basis they have from the sale will carry forward to this investment and based on the asset type, if it's an apartment building or residential 27 and a half years, or commercial 39 years, yes, depreciation will carry forward, in addition to that some of the opportunities have what's called a Cost Segregation analysis done on it, where you accelerated depreciation on the personal property in the first year, which is a huge help to shelter cash flow from tax.   Michael: Yeah, I love it, I love it. I've done several of those ad it's just been amazing to see what my taxes look like postclassic.   Ed: Yeah, It's good stuff…   Michael: And just getting back just for a minute on the accredited investor designation, because the question I'm realizing I've had for a while, and we always joke in the podcasts are super self-serving, I get to get educated here along with all of our listeners, we talked about the requirement having 200k as a single or 300k as a couple for the last two years. Is that adjusted gross income or is that net?   Ed: Adjusted.   Michael: Okay adjusted…   Ed: That's adjusted and here's the here's why that's required. It's because the investments in a DST are illiquid, right? So the regulatory environment wants to make sure that if you do have a financial emergency, that you have other funds to go after, and it doesn't have drastically affect your life, because you are in an investment that's illiquid. So that's why the requirements there.   Michael: Yeah, that makes sense and the alternative way to qualify as having a million dollar net worth or more, right…   Ed: Correct, or let's say you're in the financial services industry, and your securities license, and you don't have the net worth or the income, because of your professionalism and the designations that you hold that also actually qualifies as an accredited investor.   Michael: Okay, good to know. I was gonna say, yeah, because it could be kind of interesting. Speaking about cost segregation studies. If someone's got great income, but also has a great tax strategist, their AGI is probably going to be zero, if they know what they're doing and so that they could get discredited that way. But the net worth piece probably comes into play more often than the income piece, I'd imagine.   Ed: It does. Yeah, because we deal our client profile is anywhere between 55 to 90 years old and so they're always saying that they don't have the income, but they definitely have the net worth.   Michael: Yeah. Okay. Why is that? Why is your target demo in that age bracket?   Ed: It's because if you're younger, you know, I'm a control freak, right? I want to control everything. When you're younger, you want to control your destiny. Though most younger real estate investors go by their own deal, they manage their own deal, and they live or die with their performance. But when you get a little older, and you've already built up your net worth, you get tired of those tenants in those toilets in those trash, right and so you are looking for a passive way to continue to kick that can down the street, i.e. taxes and so normally the demographic is 55 years or older, they're kind of slowing down on their real estate investment portfolios.   Michael: Yeah and that makes total sense and so talk to us a little bit about what the exit looks like on some of your deals, because I was looking at your website, before we hopped on, I noticed you have some triple net stuff. So I'm just curious, you know, how are you exiting those assets?   Ed: Sure. So it's got to be accretive to the to the beneficial owner or the investors, I would say triple net lease stuff. Those are bonds. If you're looking for a Walgreens $1, General and Amazon, you shouldn't expect appreciation on those opportunities, you should just expect that coupon plus getting your money back, right? If you're looking for appreciation, which I would call more like a dividend stock. That would be a multi-tenant asset, apartment senior housing, student housing, self-storage, where you have the ability to mark rents to market which gives you that that appreciation. So the exit really is going to be based on the economics is or are the investors making money. If they're not making money, there's no reason to sell because it's still producing the cash flow, right. So as soon as the property starts appreciation to a point where the sponsor or the trustee feels okay, it's time to sell. That's the exit, you put it on the open market, you got a real estate broker, you get the offers coming in, and then you pick the best offer and you sell the property.   Michael: Love it and are you all targeting value add type of stuff, are you getting stabilized assets? What is the mix look like?   Ed: So the DST cannot use value add assets, meaning it can't move walls, and has to be stabilized assets? Unlike a tenant in common, right. 10 in common, you can do that, right, so the DST is all stabilized assets and when I say stabilized, it's either if it's multi-tenant, that's 90% plus occupancy and if it's single tenant, triple net investment grade tenant corporately guarantee and leases.   Michael: And is that regulated by the DSDM, is that a requirement of the entity structure that you're using?   Ed: That is the structure, yes, sir. That's the structure. Because if you if you disqualify the structure, You disqualify the exchange and now, people pay taxes, because it's not approved by the IRS.   Michael: Interesting. So the IRS is actually dictating what type of asset you can own in order to get this 1031 designation and benefits.   Ed: Yeah, if they're, you know, there's a specific structure and a specific way that needs to be structured. That's why a DST should have a legal tax opinion attached to it, from your securities lawyers to show that the structure is complying with this approved structure, that it should not be challenged if you invest and qualify for the deferral of tax via 1031.   Michael: Interesting, are there other vehicles out there that you could do something similar but have a value add component   Ed: Tenant in common. A tick, we call it a tick, the similarities are very similar to the point where you own a fraction of a piece of property. The differences are huge. Tenant and Commons. The investors make all the investment decisions. A tenant in common can have a capital call, a tenant in common can use non stabilized assets, a tenant in common can leverage the property and so back in 2000, and 4,5,6, and seven, the tenant in common was the most primary way of syndicating 1031 exchanges. But then and so, you know, everyone is going to agree as far as the investors are concerned when real estate goes up but in 2008, great recession, you have savvy investors, not so savvy investors. It's called hurting the cats. They disagreed on everything, right and so about six and a half billion dollars went into receivership by tips and so banks will not lend to a tenant in common structure. So your question and previously of how do I replace the debt would not happen in a tenant in common. That's why more tenant in common deals are all cash and the way they address Sit to investors is, hey, all cash, no foreclosure is owned, by the way, we're going to lever you up, pull the cash out and get it back to you tax free. Well, that's what happened in 2008 and everyone lost their money. So ticks in our business is a four letter word.   Michael: Very interesting. Okay, this is really good to know it. I'm curious and maybe some of our listeners are as well, because the investors are getting the cash flow, the investors are getting 100% of the upside, you're doing all the work, how does 1031 Crowdfunding make money, how do you all get paid?   Ed: So it's aggregating a portfolio. So yeah, we charge an acquisition fee, right anywhere between two to 4%, upfront and then we also get asset management fees, it's anywhere between half a percent to 1% off of the cash flow, but you really don't get rich doing that but the idea as a sponsor is, if you're managing $5 billion worth of assets, and you're charging a 1% asset management fee, you're making $50 million a year just unfortunately, watching paint dry.   Michael: It's not a bad business model.   Ed: It's not a bad business model. But you know, there's a lot of work to it. I'm thinking I'm kind of, you know, dumbing it down, but that's how sponsors make their money.   Michael: Okay, all right. This is great. If someone is considering investing with 1031 Crowdfunding or a different syndication, what are some things that they should be looking for? How do they go and educate themselves about the sponsor and about the deal?   Ed: You know, that's, that's a big deal right there and that's a great question because these deals have an upfront expense, we call it the load, right and even though the load doesn't affect an investor's capital accounts, so if you put a million dollars in, you're getting credit for the whole million in your cash flow is based on that whole million. The problem is, is that you overpay for that property. So let's give you that $20 million example that I used earlier, right? Let's say there's a 10% load on it. Even though I bought it for 20 million, I have to offer it to you for 22 million and even though your capital account is not affected, it's when you sell the real estate when that becomes material and so you need to make sure that the real estate can appreciate above its expenses, before entertaining a sale, right? So that at least you come out at par if you're going to invest in these things, and you're using a financial advisor to advise you to do this, the most important question you should ask is, Mr. Advisor, when does this investment overcome its upfront expenses and if that guy is any good, you should be able to tell you that, that's the most important thing when it comes to investing in these DSPs.   Michael: Yeah, that's super, a super great question to be armed with and so are most folks who are investing with you coming to you all via their advisors or via their team or they individuals. I mean, how do you find most of your clients?   Ed: So I'm, we do a lot of marketing, right. So we do a lot of SEO, a lot of SEM, I do things like this, my PR team is working. So we get anywhere between five to 700 new registrations a month on our website and we currently have about 60,000 registered investors today and so they just Google 1031 exchanges, and we pop up. So we're not, we don't use the financial services industry to distribute these products, even though we are in that service. But people normally just find us on their own or an attorney might say a CPA might say their friends might have used us. We have wonderful Google reviews. They just find us that's how they get to us.   Michael: Yeah. Okay, that makes a lot of sense and I'm wondering if you can shed light on like your worst deal ever, how it went wrong, and what happened?   Ed: That's a great so 2020 on the east coast of Florida, apartment building got hit twice by hurricanes within three weeks. Okay and you probably it's right, that time when Maria was coming and all that stuff. The property got flooded. 50% of the units became uninhabitable. Cash Flow stopped to investors, enough cash flow to pay debt service and then you had to get to the insurance companies and get the catastrophic damage insurance payment and the renter's interruption insurance payment and remember, I told you in a DST you can't do construction, right. So how do you fix the unit, right? So there's a term called a springing LLC. That's an every single DST ppm or private placement memorandum and what that what that means is that you dissolve the DST and now you're a member of an LLC, non-taxable event, your exchange is still good but now in an LLC, you can do construction, you can modify loans, you can do all these things to fix the property, right? So you go and you start fixing the property, you release the property, reinstate cash flow, right. But the issue is, you can't go your separate way anymore. You're in an LLC. So the entire LLC has to do an exchange or not. So they don't want to mess up there at 1031. So the LLC sells the property, does an exchange into another property and then two years later, the terms called Safe Harbor, you can convert it back into a DST and then everyone can go their separate ways when the property sells. That is the worst deal that has happened since I've been doing this.   Michael: And did the insurance proceeds cover all of your expenses enough in your business interruption to kind of make you guys hold in during the process?   Ed: Yeah, absolutely. So even though the timeline was delayed, the investors did very, very well. They just lost cashflow for about a year but then when the property was sold, they did well.   Michael: Yeah, I love it, I love and that's one of the things I really love about real estate investing as a whole is if you understand what you're doing the downside just isn't that scary…   Ed: Yeah, I agree. I mean, dirt is never gonna go to zero, right? It's just not gonna happen.   Michael: Right, right, man twice in three weeks. I mean, the only thing that I've heard of comfortable that I'm doing, I'm in the midst of a develop redevelopment project and I had two fires in the same building a week apart, during the course of construction.   Ed: Wow. Oh, that's not good. It's sucked.   Michael: It sucked, so… Oh, man. This has been super fun, man. If people want to find out more about you, continue the conversation invest with you, or what's the best way for them to do that and get a hold of you.   Ed: So you can go to 1031crowdfunding.com , like a crowd of people not a crown on your head, right or you can dial our number 844-533-1031 and you're absolutely you'll be able to find us.   Michael: Good stuff. Well, hey, thanks again for coming on and sharing and helping educate our folks. We'll definitely chat soon.   Ed: Michael, thank you so much. Looking forward to hearing back from you.   Michael: You got it, take care.   All right, everyone. That was our episode a big thank you to Ed for coming on super interesting stuff. I learned a ton. If you are in the middle of a 1031 or thinking about it definitely an interesting option to take advantage of. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

Daria Davydenko is a Securities Sales and Operations Specialist at Roofstock where she supports Roofstock's fractional ownership product, Roofstock One. Prior to that, Daria served as Vice President at Goldman Sachs. Her background in finance provides her with a unique view of financial markets and risk management. In this episode, Daria walks us through the history of public and private REITs, and who might be a good fit for investing in them. Additionally, she covers Roofstock's exciting new investment, Roofstock One, a fractional ownership option for accredited investors. Episode Link: https://www.roofstock.com/one --- Transcript Before we get into the episode, this podcast is intended for general informational purposes only and is not financial, investment, or tax advice. The information provided is not directed toward any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information products and services or to provide general investment education. Nothing in this podcast should be construed as, and may not be used in connection with, an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy or hold, an interest in any security or investment product.   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 Daria Davydenko, who is our sales and operations lead for Roofstock One and she's going to be talking to us about the history of public and private REITs really what they are, and who might be a good fit for investing in them. So let's get into it.   Daria, what's going on? Welcome back to the podcast. Great to have you back.   Daria: Hey, Michael, good to see you again. Thank you for having me.   Michael: Yeah, my pleasure, my pleasure. Great to see you again. So today, we're talking about a really cool offering Roofstock has Roofstock One. Can you give us a really quick insight into what that is and then I would love if you could help walk us through kind of the history of REITs in this product and how it came to be?   Daria: Yeah, sure. So Roofstock One is a relatively new offering that we have as part of all of the different products use that we have on roofstock.com. Roofstock One is structured as a private REIT. So one of the benefits of investing in Roofstock One is if you invest in real rental properties, you have the benefit of knowing exactly what your own. While it is a nice benefit, generally, it's not available to visit more passive real estate investments like REITs, public or private. However, we made Roofstock One different, even though it is structured as a private REIT. It is a fully transparent and customizable. So you know exactly what your own by buying a share of Roofstock One. So it is the first of its kind single family rental rate that's transparent and somewhat customizable to investors.   Michael: Awesome. All right. Well, we're definitely gonna dig more into that here in a little bit. But I would love if you could give us again, a kind of a background, like what is a REIT? How did we get here public versus private, bring us up to speed.   Daria: Yeah, so actually, what so REITs have a very interesting history, that I don't think a lot of people realize how the first I guess, you know, private equity firms have emerged, and then how can a REIT structure was created. So back in the 1980s, investors were mainly individuals and they were kind of using real estate to kind of harvest losses and shelter profits. So that was kind of the main reason why people were investing in real estate and also in the 80s, there was something that was called S and L. That they were created by the Federal Home Loan Bank act of 1932. They were like Savings and Loan Banks that basically had some caps on interest rates on deposits and loans, and but they were able to basically lend money to those individuals so they can buy real estate. Now, obviously, in the 80s, we all know that there was a recession and so because of the restrictions that were placed, placed on this SML banks, you know, because they had some caps on interest rates on deposits and loans, it greatly limited their ability to compete with other lenders as the economy slowed and inflation took hold and so for instance, as savers spelled money into the newly created money market funds that were yielding, like a much higher interest rates, like SNL just could not compete with those traditional banks due to their kind of lending restrictions and so when you add the recession of what happened is because the recession was sparked by the high interest rates that were set by the Fed in an effort to end the double digit inflation, which is kind of what we are kind of seeing right now, nowadays. So now we're left with little, you know, little more than, you know, kinda like a dwindling portfolio of low interest rate mortgage loans and so obviously, their revenue stream, you know, were severely tightened and so in the 1986, Reagan changed the law and then this indication was, you know, basically it was no longer working and there was no longer like the tax loss harvesting that was allowed in real estate, that can actually cause a real estate values to crater because a lot of people did not see any value of investing, I guess, are holding real estate anymore and so that actually caused SNL crisis and so I think a lot of people don't realize but during the SNL crisis, there were like 8000 banks that have failed. So, because of this, yeah, because of this kind of crisis that happened. I mean, this was like the largest crisis, you know, since the largest collapse of US financial institutions since the Great Depression.   And so like that, that kind of happened in the 1986 and so what happened, right, so once there's no kind of crisis happened, the government had to step in. So while they found that there was a lot of highly levered foreclosed personnel that owned a lot of real estate, and so government inadvertently owned those banks, and so they end up owning hundreds and 1000s of properties. What happened next is they have created something that's called the Resolution Trust Corporation, that basically became a property manager. So there sole purpose was to own and dispose of those distressed assets. So Resolution Trust Corporation or short, RTC was a temporary federal agency. So basically, from the 89, to the 95. You know, they largely were trying to kind of resolve this SNL crisis that happened in the 1980s, they, you know, they were basically like trying to do some property management, cleanup, what kind of what was left behind and another, I guess, purpose or creation, the RTC was to dispose of this assets. Now, the government wants to sell a lot of assets and so they need to have, you know, it's going to be highly inefficient for them to find like a single bar and buy, like, you know, who can just buy like a single property. So what they had to do is they had to figure out how to find a pooled vehicle that can just come in and buy this pooled kind of assets and so that's when the first private equity firms were created, who kind of came in, they were able to kind of pull financing, and then kind of buy like large amounts of this kind of real estate that was left behind after the SNL crisis. So that's where kind of their real estate or you know, kind of private equity investment was created. That's kind of the history of it. Now, the real estate investment trusts were a way for individual investors or intervene institution investors to get exposure to real estate without kind of having to go through, like active management of the underlying real estate. So Real Estate Investment Trust was a way to, for you to get exposure to, you know, real estate as a class. But you don't, you don't have to kind of forego, like, you know, the whole kind of financing closing, you know, property management aspect of it, while still enjoying the benefits of getting dividend distributions from the rental income, you know, the appreciation of the properties, etc. and then, in addition to that kind of REITs were created to encourage investors to get into the real estate market, and also get some kind of tax benefits from it. Now, I know I spoke a lot. So I just want to make sure I, you know, there's any questions that I can answer for you, Michael.   Michael: This is super interesting. I mean, one thing that terrifies me is this idea of government, governmental property management, that just would have been an absolute nightmare, because we all know how that probably worked out. But no, I think that makes a ton of sense and so the so these private equity firms were created to buy all of the hundreds of 1000s of distressed assets that the government ended up owning because of the collapse and the financial crisis. But so maybe, help me understand what a REIT is, like, is a REIT a share of the private equity company that then owns these properties, is that how that works?   Daria: Yeah, so REIT is basically like a pooled vehicle, you can imagine that, you know, let's say, like, just as a simple example, let's say you, Michael, you own kind of 10 different properties and you would like to allow other, you know, investors to kind of participate in ownership of those properties. You know, you can package them basically into a read. Of course, this is more complex than kind of what I'm describing, but in the simple terms, you can package it into the REIT and sell basically shares of the three to other investors who can get economic benefits of kind of owning 10 of those properties. REIT like many companies, they distribute earnings to investors in the form of dividends, unlike many companies have a REIT incomes are not taxed at the corporate level. So kind of that means that REITs are actually they avoid the double taxation of corporate tax and personal income tax. So instead REITs are sheltered from the corporate taxes so their investors are only taxed once and this is a major reason why investors value REITs over you know, other dividend paying kind of structures out there. Another benefit of REITs I guess, that they were created is that they're widely used because they're highly for favorable tax advantages are REITs are required to distribute 90% of their earnings to investors and so that kind of like allows them to avoid the double taxation that I mentioned previously and so this benefit kind of trickles down to all the underlying investors, you know, they're not being double taxed, and they can receive the maximum amount of capital from rate, I guess another advantage, I mean, we all know that investing in real estate, one of the biggest advantages of is the depreciation.   So depreciation can be passed through to individual investors, even in a REIT structure, basically, you because you get to offset your income is a depreciation kind of tax deduction. Let's say you might be earning tax dollars, that $10 per share, but you only will be paying like $7 as an example, paying taxes on the $7 of those earnings and in addition to that, if you're kind of holding your shares, for longer than a year, you will be paying the long term capital gains taxes, which is kind of much lower than your ordinary income tax. There was another kind, I guess, good, good question that you raised Michael, about what is the difference between private and public REITs, the main difference is private REITs are less liquid, you know, compared to public REITs, public REITs are the ones that are being traded on the public stock exchange and so you're basically kind of they're just like stocks, you can buy them and you can sell them and you will also be getting the dividends while private REITs they're not being traded on the public stock market and so hence, they're being sought after as like a less liquid option for you to own real estate. But at the same time, they're less volatile, obviously, because they're not subject to all of the changes that are happening in the public markets. So you just kind of there's just some kind of major differences, right? The liquidity but you know, because you're foregoing the liquidity, you're obviously getting less of like volatility in the stock price of your, you know, under the ownership of the shares of the REIT. So that's kind of the major kind of difference between public and private REITs.   Michael: Okay. Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Thanks for walking me through that. I guess the question that gets begged next is the Roofstock has been a marketplace for transacting on single family homes for years now. Why, like, why is this product coming about? Who is it designed to serve and who might not be a good fit for?   Daria: No, that's an excellent question. I think we what we have found as we've been speaking with investors who come to the roofstock.com website and who really enjoy owning kind of real estate and single family rental properties, in particular, one of the feedbacks we have been receiving from investors is that they are some of them you know, obviously, if you want to buy properties outright, you are getting, you know, there is like a large deposit, I guess, that you have to put to buy a property, there is a financing, there is like a very long process of kind of closing, the Roofstock does a very good job at making sure that we simplify this process for investors. So we tried to make it as simple and as friendly as possible. But still, there are multiple steps for you to close on a single property. But obviously, you will be kind of subject to that single asset race grade, if you are only owning a single property you will kind of whatever happens with this property, it will kind of great greatly affect your cash flow, now we have created Roofstock One because investors have been basically asking us, hey, I really can enjoy single family rental investing, but I'm still kind of trying to learn the space and understand how it works. I've never owned single family rentals before and so kind of I'd like to dip my toes into this asset class and so I think Roofstock One kind of offers this perfect opportunity for somebody to own this exposure to this asset class, single family rentals, while you know being completely passive, so meaning you don't need to go through the kind of the whole process of closing on the property, finding the financing, you know, finding the property manager, we do all of that for you.   You just kind of buy the share of stock one REIT you get exposure to this particular asset class and then kind of get, you know, potentially get quarterly dividends from the rental income and kind of just learn a little bit about single family rentals, how it works, how you know how you receive the dividends and gonna get accustomed to kind of owning single family rental asset class, where we have seen as there are, you know, some investors who really enjoy kind of being actively involved in the day to day of managing properties because you get this kind of owner exposure means that some people really like and so for those people, maybe Roofstock One might be a little bit too hands off and so they might kind of prefer to do like the direct ownership of the property. But there are also like a certain subset of individuals who just don't have the time to, like, investigate and spend time with property management companies and figure out like, you know, if they should increase the rent, or drop the rent, just kind of just to find tenants for the house, or should they kind of, I don't know, change the roof, or change the water heater in a property or wait for another month or two. So it kind of… Michael: All the operational stuff…   Daria: All the operational stuff, all of this kind of micro decisions that you kind of don't realize, but they do pile up and they do take a little bit of your time. So you know, some, some of those individuals are like, Look, I just want an exposure to this particular asset class, I want it to be passive, I really enjoy it, I think, you know, I believe in single family rental, kind of asset class in particular and so, you know, this is like, a perfect way for me to get a passive exposure, while still kind of feeling like I'm owning some, you know, underlying properties and we try to kind of make it as transparent as possible to investors, so they actually can see, you know, what properties are inside, you know, Roofstock, one reads, so they can understand, you know, what homes, kind of their tracking the economic performance of, and so they're still kind of getting the feeling of like, okay, with this share, I potentially can own 10 to 20 you know, how many properties they would like, still kind of feel like they're owning those properties. But you know, they don't have to spend as much time on the operation or day to day stuff. So yeah, that's kind of the major reason why we have created the Roofstock One is just to serve certain subset of our investors that we have seen come through roofstock.com website and, you know, obviously, there is absolutely still a lot of kind of benefit of owning the properties outright. But there's also like, you know, there's just a time kind of aspect that's involved in it as well.   Michael: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense and you said something about, for those people that are still learning want to dip their toes into the water, Roofstock One might be a good fit. But if I'm thinking about like a traditional REIT, I can go buy it on the stock market, I buy a share of it. I don't hear from anyone, I don't know what's going on in the day, like, I have zero insight into this. Is that different with Roofstock One like can someone truly expect to learn a little bit about what it's like to own single family rentals with roof stock one, or is it going to be just as hands off in passive and kind of, at a distance, like a traditional route would be?   Daria: I'd say it's somewhere in the middle. So I mean, it is just as hands off and passive. But I guess the major benefit is in public creeds, I guess it's a little bit more of like a pooled vehicle. So just by buying a share of like a public REIT, let's say, for example, that there are like 60, and 1000 properties that are public REIT owns. Now they can be in different like various markets, right. So there could be across many different states in the United States and so you kind of get exposure to all of those kind of little, you know, properties a little bit. So Roofstock One allows you to be a little bit more targeted, if you wish to do so, we have something that's kind of cool, called like a tracking stock, which is like a mini portfolio of subset of properties. So let's say if you're interested in a certain region in the US, just as an example, let's say Georgia, because you believe in this region, or maybe you have invested in this region before, you can get exposure only to the properties in Georgia instead of kind of getting the exposure to all of the properties inside the Roofstock One. But at the same time, if you don't have anything, you know, any convictions and you just kind of enjoy single family rental kind of asset class and you just want to have diversification, then you can also just kind of do that and you can just by exposure to all of the properties inside the restock one read. So we kind of just provide like an ultimate flexibility of investors coming in and kind of creating their own journey. Almost like a custom rate, create your own custom read…   Michael: The subway sandwich of REITs…   Daria: Exactly. Yeah, it's like a Subway sandwich. You're correct. Yeah, that just you know, you choose whatever you want, like and you can even choose your own sauce visit.   Michael: Except we use real fish and real meat in our subway sandwich. Don't know if this is the best analogy but people get the point.   Daria: Yeah, like yeah, we're you know, we're the like a guest who's probably accretes you're just kind of getting the you know, whatever the prepackage Subway sandwich that, you know, is not customizable, and you can't even choose your sauce. So that's kind of how I would think about it. I think the benefit of it is like, look, you can still kind of see what are the properties, underlying properties inside the, like those mini portfolios, for example, which is definitely something that you want to get with like a traditional public REITs, I feel like that they're kind of more giving you like, hey, this is our general structure, or a general investment objective, this is what we're doing this is like, let's say, 30% of our portfolios in Georgia, like x percentages in some other state, which is also great for those people who don't really have much conviction, and maybe they just want to get the general kind of diversified exposure. But you can also have to just be mindful of this kind of this still difference, there is still like this difference that exists between private and public REITs, where no public REITs are still subject to the same market volatility as any other stock would be, you know, I wouldn't say that there is like one, right or wrong way, just kind of, it's all about diversification, and what fits your investment goals and investment needs, and what makes sense for you, and for your investment portfolio and, you know, we're just kind of offering a way for real estate investors to create their custom REITs, if they want to get exposure to the whole asset class, if they wish to do so. They can also mix and match they can invest a little bit into public rates a little bit into private REITs and again, you know, there's it's always, diversification has always been a good way for you to kind of diversify your risk, so…   Michael: Yeah, okay, I do get well, Daria I have a question. That's maybe on every buddy's mind who's listening, you talked about the hurdles and barriers to entry of investing directly, and that's usually coming in the form of down payment heavyweight financing and there's steps involved, how much does investing in recycling cost? What's Is there a minimum investment is our maximum investment, like walk us through what that looks like?   Daria: Yeah, so we actually kind of tried to bring it down to minimum investment is $5,000. So anyone who so there is like a limitation that we you do have to be an accredited investor and accredited investor is something that's basically set up by CC, that's kind of their rules and regulations that in order for you to be invested in private REIT, you kind of have to be an accredited investor and I think it's kind of basically done for the benefit of the investors themselves. Since it is a limited liquidity you do want to make sure you have enough liquid cash that kind of set aside you know, that you have access to because you will if you're invested in into like any private vehicle private REIT or anything else, usually you know, you will not be able to like us you know this drill those money for like five years or so and so, I think that accredited investors just kind of really done to make sure that investors understand that this particular funds will not be able they will not be able to access it and they have enough liquidity on hands to you know, meet any some sort of like liquidity needs that they have during their like day to day life. Now accredited investor, someone who, who is an accredited investor, guess accredited investor is someone who has a net worth of a million dollars and that can include their real estate, investment portfolio or retirement, you know, retirement portfolios, or, you know, bank assets, kinda you name it, it can't include their private primary residence, but if they have secondary homes, and, you know, if they can only count equity basically on those properties, so if they have like a mortgage on the secondary home, they will have to figure out like how much of equity they have, and they can count it towards their networks. Another way to understand if you're an accredited investor is if you are making over $200,000 per year, and you've made over $200,000 per year, in the past two years, or you and your spouse or partner are making over $300,000 together this year and in the past two years. So those are kind of some of the limitations that beans set and they just kind of follow those limitations. But as long as you are kind of accredited investor, you can put you know $5,000 into like a Roofstock One REIT and there's $5,000 can be invested across all of our offerings. So we you know, we are not limiting you can only put $5,000 into like a separate a single kind of mini portfolio or a tracking stock. What we call, you can, you know, put $1,000 or $100 into tracking stock and the rest into like a giant, like a bigger font or you know, vice versa. So you can customize this $5,000 as much as you would like. So yeah, that's, that's kind of the limit. Yeah…   Michael: Great. Okay and I would imagine that other private REITs and for sure, public REITs that have been around for a while, have a track record the history of performance does Roofstock One have that yet or is it too new, like, how has it been performing to date?   Daria: Yeah, we do have a track record on Roofstock when you launched Roofstock One in November last year. So we are a little bit close to like a year of existence. So we have been distributing dividends and the dividend yields that we have distributed for the historical or like our past offerings, they are listed on our website. They can be accessed here, the investor reports and we also do have appreciation of the assets that has happened since we acquired them back in, let's say, November. So we just recently started to calculate something that's called nav, which is net asset value of our investments and that's in general, how private REITs figure out what is the value of their shares. So unlike public REITs, where the share price has been determined by the kind of just the normal forces of the markets, private REITs, because they're private, they, you know, they had to kind of figure out a way to value the assets, the underlying assets that they have and so the net asset value is kind of the common term where NAV is kind of a common term that they use to figure out what is the share price of their rate and that's what the Roofstock One does as well. So we are just like any other private three, we calculate NAV, we publish it, and then can investors are able to track estimated value of their shares. Now the reason I say it's estimated is because obviously, until we sell the assets, we wouldn't know the exact value of, of the underlying assets, we can only kind of do like an estimation of where we think it is right now. But it is, you know, a good proxy, I guess, for an investor to think, hey, this is like my estimated value. But you know, until you can actually sell the assets and just kind of the nature of real estate market in general, that it's very illiquid, and you wouldn't know the value of the asset until you actually like listed for sale and you started getting some buyers who are interested giving you offers etc. So very similar, you know, in REITs, because we own underlying assets. There, you know, we're kind of subject to the same market forces as any anyone else who owns real estate. But you know, net asset value is a good measure for someone to use to determine what is the estimated value of their shares.   Michael: Okay, okay super informative from the history to the product offering and why it makes sense. This is awesome. If people want to learn more about private REITs chat with you learn about Roofstock One, where's the best place for them to do that?   Daria: Yeah, we can be found on the roof stock.com website, or someone can just type in www.roofstock.com/O N E -one. That's our website. Now feel free to give us a call there is a button that you can click on and request a phone call and we have very friendly people to chat and they're always happy to talk about real estate, private REITs single family rentals investing. Now we love investors ask us questions and they love talking to them on various subjects. So yeah, you know, feel free to check out our websites style by ask questions and we are always happy to chat.   Michael: Amazing, well thanks again and definitely looking forward to seeing where Roofstock One goes from here. Talk soon.   Daria: Thank you Michael. Thank you for having me today.   Michael: You got it, take care.   Okay, everyone, that was our episode A big thank you to Daria for coming on really interesting stuff with the product offering as well as the history of REITs themselves. So go check out the website at roofstock.com/one. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, definitely love hearing from you. All ratings and reviews are super appreciated and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

As a lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee, Brian Boyd helps clients with real estate, construction, and business matters. It is with that knowledge that he and his wife, Dawn, have grown their portfolio to a six-figure income. Brian earned his BA from the University of Tennessee—Chattanooga, a JD from Samford University's Cumberland School of Law, and an LLM in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center. When not practicing law or working with Dawn on their real estate ventures, Brian can be found on the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu mats at his local gym. His newest book is Replace Your Income: A Lawyer's Guide to Finding, Funding, and Managing Real Estate Investments Today Brian talks about corporate structures, how they differ, and what you could be doing to protect your assets. Episode Links: www.briantboyd.com. www.boydwills.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 Brian Boyd, who is a legal tax professional as well as an author and active investor. He's gonna be talking to us today about what we need to do to protect our rear ends. So let's get into it.   Brian, what's going on, man, thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I appreciate you.   Brian: Hey, Michael, thanks for having me today. I'm glad to be here.   Michael: I am super excited to chat with you. Because you are a legal attorney and investor something we don't often see too much of.   Brian: Yeah, I am. I started out in Washington, DC as a tax attorney at a company called Ernst and Young. And over the years, I got into real estate and investing because I was representing a lot of contractors and developers and started looking at the way they were doing their businesses. And from there, I started tweaking their models trying to figure out well, how can I make this a little bit more tax efficient, create a little bit more loss with a lot more cash flow. And so that's when my wife and I in 2017, decided to get into real estate investing on our own. And now we're up to 25 doors, and we're cash flowing just fine. You know, in, in fact, maybe in the next year or two, she could step away from her full time job. And we'll just manage real estate.   Michael: Man, I love it. And so is your background in tax or on the legal side of things, or both.   Brian: So I have a JD and I have an LLM, which is a master's degree in, in law. But It specializes in tax. So yes, I do corporate formations. I do business transactions, helping people the real estate, anything and everything to do with businesses, individuals and their finances. In real estate investing. That's what I do. So there was a time I used to go to court, but I don't go to court anymore. My partner goes to court, and I just do business transactions and real estate investing.   Michael: Man, I love it. And before we get everyone's hopes up, you are located out in Tennessee. But is that the only state in which you practice in? Or can you help folks all over the place?   Brian: So I am licensed in Tennessee and Vermont of all places. My partner is licensed in Tennessee in Maryland. But if it has to do with federal law, I can work all over the country. However, if people are asking specifically about California law, I'm not your guy, call a local attorney speak to a local attorney. But from a structural standpoint, I can give you the basics and kind of point you in the right direction. But unless you're in one of those jurisdictions, and you want me to practice in those jurisdictions, those are the jurisdictions I'm limited to.   Michael: Okay. Well, let's talk about that for a minute. Because I think we were chatting before the show, we hit record, and there are a ton of Californians physically moving out to Tennessee. But my guess is they're probably a lot of Californians investing out in Tennessee. And so for those folks that maybe live outside Tennessee, but are investing in Tennessee, in terms of structuring their team around them, should they be thinking about having a local attorney local to them, as well as someone such as yourself or a an attorney located where the property is? How should you be thinking about that?   Brian: No, that's great question. I actually had an attorney contact me a few weeks ago and he is a he's in Chico, California. He called me and said, Hey, I properties in Tennessee. Can you help me on what? Yeah, I'll absolutely be happy to help you. And so what we did is we structured a Tennessee holding company with a wholly owned Tennessee subsidiary. And even though he's out there, he owns the LLC here. And as he invests around the country, like Texas, or Florida, or you know, any of the other states, you know, we'll set up other holding companies to represent those entities. But he can stay in California and own these companies, as long as they're structured properly, to pass through to him over in California.   Michael: Okay, awesome. Well, Brian, give us like, the quick and dirty if there is such a thing of what investors need to know, because I think a lot of our investors are starting to scale their portfolios that got a couple of deals under their belt, and they're really looking for some asset protection. What are some things they need to be aware of and where have you seen people go wrong?   Brian: So I have seen people go wrong with a few misnomers about what they believe series LLCs are and what land trusts are. So a series LLC, I know that everybody hears therefore multiple properties. and they are. But they also don't understand that when you have a series LLC, you have to have a separate bank account, a separate tax ID separate books, all of that creates an administrative burden on you to keep all these bank accounts separate all these books separate all these tax IDs separate. And typically I see those used more efficiently if you're a developer, that way you can develop a series, sell it, and not worry about it. Again, if you're holding your assets in series LLC, and you have series one through 10, for example, that's 10 tax IDs, that's 10 sets of books, that's 10 book keeper entries every month for those separate things.   Whereas if you just have an LLC, and you treat it properly, so your corporate veil cannot be pierced. And a corporate veil is the corporate formalities that you have to adhere to. So your corporate structure is honored by the courts. And typically, here are the things that people get popped for, they'll pay for their groceries out of their LLC, they'll pay their own mortgage out of their LLC, or they'll just treat their LLC like a checkbook. And that's not what it's for. It is a standalone entity, and it has to be treated and respected that way.   So if you don't do those things, you're fine. Your one LLC is going to handle it just fine. For example, my wife and I have, we have a parent company, and that parent company has two LLC is underneath it. And one LLC is for our portfolio over here. And the other LLC is for that portfolio over here. And it all flows up into the holding company, which is a perfectly fine way to structure your holdings. Yes, it is more filing fees every year, it's three filing fees. But if you're trying to get away from filing fees by creating a series, LLC, you're losing the war to win the battle on a filing fee. Because you're gonna pay all these other expenses for tax IDs and book entries and bank statements. And you're just creating a mess. I would not use series LLCs.   Now as it relates to land trust, we mentioned that earlier, I've heard a lot of people say, Well, I want to use a land trust. Why do you want to use a land trust? I understand that land trust, get it out of your name. And I'm well aware of that. But it doesn't really create any protections like an LLC would. A lot of people say, Well, I want the anonymity of an LLC, well, you can have the anonymity, you know, of an LLC without using Land Trust. Many states, Wyoming, Tennessee, Texas, you can file your LLC documents, and your name won't appear anywhere on there as long as you use a registered agent. So you can receive the benefits of the anonymity that comes along with the land trust by simply using the LLC. And you'll get more protections with the LLC.   So I would encourage your listeners to go talk to a lawyer about setting up an LLC to hold their assets, I tend to eschew Land Trust, they don't really provide the protection that people think they do. Unless you're using an irrevocable trust, which is a trust that gets it out of your estate. Not only does it get it out of your estate, it gets it out of your control, and you can't do anything with it, you have to go through a trustee and that trustee is supposed to use their best judgment on what to do for the trust. So think about that, as you move forward. And these these ideas that people read about online, I really like LLCs, my wife and I use them, I encourage my clients to use them. So that's just coming from my experience and what I do day to day in my practice.   Michael: Yeah, from a lot of the folks I've spoken to it sounds like the LLC has come like the Colt 45. For real estate investors. It's reliable, it's standard issue, it can do a lot of the things you need, you need it to do. It's nothing fancy, it just can get the job done.   Brian: No, absolutely. I agree with that statement completely. Okay, cool.   Michael: And, Brian, I think you're a good person to ask because I think we have similar styles of investing and asset protection, which I'm glad to hear. It sounds like you've broken down your portfolios into two separate LLCs What comfort what level of comfort do you have with the size of your portfolio in each LLC, before you want to further break it up or bring additional LLC online?   Brian: And you know, that's a good question. So the way we have treated our LLCs is we go by city, what's in each city. So for example, in Chattanooga, we have an LLC for Chattanooga, and Knoxville and Gatlinburg, we have an LLC for those properties. And in our short term rentals are Montana and the West Tennessee property. We have a separate LLC for that because they're out west So we've kind of broken it down over here, over here and over there. And then we have a parent LLC over top of it. So it's not really a matter of the number of doors or number of properties that have in an LLC. For me, it was geographic, and being able to keep everything separate. And especially for our bookkeeper to know that, hey, these are Chattanooga, they're in that LLC. When you run that k one, it needs to include all these properties. Same over here. So it wasn't a matter of my comfort level with the number of properties, it was just a matter of how can I segregate out all the separate assets that we have and make it user friendly? And also, we're not clumping all of our assets into one LLC. We're spreading them out. But we're doing it geographically.   Michael: Right. Okay. And as you and your wife do start to scale, I mean, is there a number of value that you that you'd see hitting in a particular LLC and saying, oh, that's maybe a little heavy, and that LLC, even if I'm investing in the same geographic area, let me bring online, another LLC, just so I don't have so much value sitting in a singular bucket? Or is not? Is that not really a concern of yours?   Brian: No, that's not really a concern. And here's why it's not a concern. It's because it doesn't really matter how much my entire portfolio is valued at, I'm always going to be deploying that equity somewhere else to get into another deal. And that equity may get deployed into another LLC. So it's not really a matter of oh, we're too heavy in this particular market. If I had 1000 doors in Chattanooga, I would still leave everything in that one LLC.   Michael: Okay, right on. Let's talk about insurance for a minute. Yeah, how much is enough?   Brian: I would tell people, you can't have enough. You can't. So we, we have homeowners insurance on every single property. And then our LLC is have business insurance as well. So we also have business insurance for the LLC. And each property is fully insured. And then we require renters to have homeowners insurance. And on top of that, we require renters to use a product called say Rhino, which is security deposit insurance. So they're not paying us a security deposit that we're holding an escrow for them, they're paying monthly, you know, let's say, you know, a month's rent is $1,000, we typically require two and a half months of rent for a security deposit, will Rhyno only requires them to pay like $8 per 1000. So they would much rather pay 20 to 24 bucks, as opposed to tune $2,500 in security deposit. And over the over the year, it comes out a lot cheaper for them. And we're safe and secure, knowing that as long as they're paying that Rhino insurance. If we have to make a claim, it's there, we've got it, they'll take care of it. So we're we're layering insurance, on insurance, on insurance with every everything we can do. So not only from a corporate standpoint of the company, and the asset, but also the tenants and the security deposit. So that's four layers of insurance.   Michael: Run that by me again, what rino does so so they are basically ensuring the security deposit, then you can make a claim for damage against that security deposit up to that limit.   Brian: Yes, yes, absolutely. That's exactly what they're doing.   Michael: And what about the tenant that goes haywire, decides I'm gonna stop paying rent? I'm not paying this right. No nonsense. So they stopped paying it. They've paid six months to date. How does that work?   Brian: Yeah, we make a claim. Like if, and so we're, we're on top of our rents and our tenants. And it's in our lease that you have to pay all this stuff. And they do. And if they don't we just make a claim immediately.   Michael: And how is your claim experience spin with those folks?   Brian: We haven't had to make a claim yet. But the person Yeah, the person I learned this from, he turned us on to it. And we're like, what, have you ever made a claim? He's like, Yeah, they paid us in four days. I'm like, done. You know,   Michael: Yeah, I'm sold. I gotta go check this company. What's it called?   Brian: Say Rhino. Okay. And, you know, we looked into it. I did my research on it. I think they just did another round of fundraising. And we were sold. We've talked to him, they're easy to work with. They won't reject any of your tenants regardless of credit. As long as you approve them, they're approved. So I take it look, yeah, no longer holding escrow and no longer dealing with security deposits. Let them deal with it. And our experience so far has been great. Let's knock on wood. I don't have to use it. But if I do They'll also pay attorneys fees. So, if you have to let somebody Yeah, go make a claim.   Michael: Man, this podcast just took a wild left turn, but I love it. I've totally here for it.   Brian: Yeah, it's, it's, it's great. And that all goes into ensuring our company, ensuring our tenants making sure everything's taken care of, but also protecting us, because we have put a lot of money a lot of time into these assets. And, you know, we want to protect those assets.   Michael: Yeah, no, it makes total sense. Speaking of Brian, let's talk about this topic for a minute, because you're another good person to ask because you have both short term and long term rentals. Do you see a difference in risk exposure between the two and grouping both asset classes in us in the same LLC?   Brian: No, I don't. The only risk that you run with short term rentals is the seasonal market. In that, you know, we were just talking about Gatlinburg, you know, and people don't realize that the high season is actually summer in Gatlinburg, and it's not winter, which is kind of weird. But yeah, people don't want to go to cabins in the winter. So you've got to be able to weather those low months. But no, I would keep both assets in the same LLC if it's in the same geographic area for me.   Now, that's not to say it's not right for you. And you know, we could also talk about what's best for you. But no, it doesn't matter to me. Because for us, as everything flows up into our tax structure, we've created this, this LLC step tax structure, that everything flows to the top as a pass through. So everything's flown to the top and the parent company pays all the mortgages on everything. So if you have long term rentals that are just, you know, clicking along and you have a week, month, say in Gatlinburg, like we both know that January, February is a week, month in Gatlinburg. You know, there's plenty of money just to go ahead and pay that note. So that's, that's how we do it. And that's what I encourage clients to do. Because you're, you're not really breaching the corporate veil of everything flows up in the parent company's paying for everything. And that's how we structured it. So we're still, you know, adhering to the corporate formalities, respecting those corporate formalities, and everything is paid from the parent company.   Michael: Okay, cool. And then from like a legal risk mitigation perspective, short term rental doesn't sound like it poses any additional risk as compared to a long term rental.   Brian: No, I wouldn't think so. Because the the management companies and I don't know, if you use the management company, but they have them sign all these documents, and they have their own attorneys, or all these waivers in there, and they have to put a security deposit down, you know, to rent the property and, you know, a cleaning deposit. And there's so many different deposits that we tend to get good renters at all the properties.   Michael: Okay. Okay, fantastic. And as someone is thinking about scaling their portfolio into multiple properties, maybe some different asset classes, from an entity structure, is there anything that they should be aware of, or they should be doing differently, if they've already, you know, started using LLC us in the past?   Brian: I would stay with LLCs. If you if you turn to like a C Corp, you get the double layer double layer of tax. If you turn to an S corp, I think you're gonna have to deal with more corporate formalities than you are with an LLC, an LLC is very flexible with what you can do with it. I wouldn't go with a partnership, a general partnership doesn't tend to have the protections nor does a limited liability partnership. You really want the corporate structure of the LLC to stay in place.   So there is no other entity out there that I would encourage people to use other than the LLC. You know, reasonable minds can differ on that. I wrote a chapter in the book on it. But at this point, I am not advising clients to use any other structure other than the LLC, it's very flexible, it's easy to buy and sell assets through and quite frankly, you know, it's it's easily respected in the state of Tennessee and in other states as well, I'm sure you know, LLCs are just common now, you know, as common now as s corpse were in the 60s 70s 80s and up to the 90s.   I would also encourage people to look at Wyoming, Wyoming is on the cutting edge of LLC formation. You know, they recently came out with a new type of LLC that has to do with crypto currencies and blockchain protections. It's it's crazy what they're doing out there. Tennessee follows shortly thereafter and we're all still trying get our heads around it because one, I'm not a crypto guy. I don't know a whole lot about it. But you're starting to deal with like blockchain technology for the way people can vote. It's, it's really fascinating. So I do like Wyoming, I have a Wyoming LLC for one of my assets. And, you know, it's a great state as well.   Michael: I dig it. You mentioned your book, let's talk about that for a minute. What's it called? Where can people find it? And what should they expect to find if they get a   copy?   Brian: Sure. It's, it's called replace your income, a lawyer's guide to finding funding and managing real estate investments. And they can find it on Amazon. Or they can go to www.BrianTBoyd.com. And they can order it through there. So the reason I wrote this book is because I'm having conversations very similar to what we're talking about now, about, how do I form things? What do I form? Why do I form it? Should I put all my assets in one LLC? And this book came about as a compendium of all those conversations I've had over the years with, with clients in real estate investing, how do they get started? How do they find properties? How do they get a loan? You know, what kind of loans are available? What platforms do I use? Do I do I use, Say Rhino? Or do I use Bildium? Or, you know, what's available? How can I do this using technology to leverage efficiency here? And so it's 13 chapters on all of that, including tax benefits, finance tips, how to structure an LLC, what you need to think about when you're putting together an operating agreement? You know, what's the difference between an operating agreement and bylaws? What's the difference between a charter and an articles of organization. I try to break it down. As if I'm talking to my 11 year old son, anybody can understand it. And that's what I want people to know about this book. It's, anybody can invest in real estate. You don't have to be a professional or have, you know, a six figure income, you can be a college student and start house hacking. You can easily you know, get a loan go buy a small two bedroom, one bath apartment somewhere, and get a roommate, move a roommate and then charge them rent and now your house hacking and now your real estate. And so it's possible for everybody.   Michael: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Brian, curveball question here. What's the best compliment you've ever received?   Brian: That I married up?   Michael: Is that Is that a compliment to your wife? Is that a sort of backhanded compliment to you?   Brian: It's probably a backhanded compliment to me, but I I, I could not do what I do without my wife, my wife is, you know, she's an inspiration. She basically runs the entire company. She only lets me talk to people if she can't figure it out. And she is the backbone behind this company. And the funny thing is, I had to drag her into real estate investing, I kept telling her about all the tax benefits of this honey, we can, we can make passive income. And, you know, let me tell you about appreciation and depreciation and how we can, you know, offset some of our income taxes. And she didn't believe me. Now, mind you, I have a master's degree and like, I went to school to do this. And I actually did this for a living for years. And somebody handed her Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and she read it and we're lying in bed when I was like, Hey, did you know that? If we did this, we could pay for a car?   I was like, yeah, she's like, did you know we could write our phone bill up? I'm like, Yeah, I did. She's like, did you know like, we could buy a computer and write it off in one year? I'm like, yes. I've been telling you this. And she doesn't believe it coming from me, the guy who has two graduate degrees and does it for a living, but she believes it from the guy that wrote the book, and I'm like, Okay, well, maybe I need to write a book and she'll she'll listen to, but she still doesn't listen to me. So it is what it is. But she she runs this company. And you know, I couldn't do without her. So when somebody says, I'm married up, I'm like, Yeah, I did. And I'm very lucky I did.   Michael: Amazing. So amazing. Well, Brian, that brings up maybe my last question for you. Before I let you out of here. I think there are a lot of folks probably listening to this that have a partner significant other that aren't interested or aren't involved with a real estate investing, but they would really like them to be or they need them to be. And so you went through this struggle with your wife, how how should people be thinking about bringing their other partner into the fold?   Brian: What I would tell them is you don't have to buy the book. You can look online and see the tax benefits of it. Is that You're going to create positive cash flow. And you're going to create tax deductions that's going to offset not only your cash flow, but your current income tax liability. So if you would like to pay less in income taxes every year, look at real estate investing. Look at it. You know, if you decide not to do and it's not for you, okay, don't do it. There are other things you can invest in. But our Congress has codified our public policy of investing in real estate in our tax code. It is there for you to take advantage of, look, when it comes tax time every year, I always kind of get a little tense, but then I'm like, Okay, well, let's go go buy another property. And then we can cost segregate that property, accelerate the depreciation, and create a larger tax deduction for ourselves, and it's not so painful come tax time.   I'm sure you know that as well that, hey, we can cashflow this property. And, you know, the government actually is encouraging us to go buy real estate, the government is encouraging you to succeed. And that's all I want for anybody is to succeed. You know, this book, I think it's 19.99. It's a lot cheaper than sitting down with me for an hour. And this is everything I've already talked about with people, and I do on a regular basis. So if your spouse is struggling to get on board with your idea of real estate investing, you know, maybe buy the book for them and show them that, hey, this is possible.   You're talking to a guy who worked two jobs to put himself through law school, and then two jobs while I was in graduate school on top of that, and I'm still paying off student loans. But you know what, I paid off a student loan last week. And I did it because we got a refund. That came back to me as a result of the deductions I have through real estate. And the first thing I did with that check was, hey, it's enough. I'm going to pay off that loan. And I did. So it's, it's a real example of how real estate can affect your bottom line.   Michael: I love it. That is awesome. And congrats on getting that loan paid off. That's really exciting.   Brian: Oh, thanks so much.   Michael: You got it. Brian, we're gonna get you out of here. If people want to continue the conversation, learn more about you. What's the best way for them to do so?   Brian: They can get in touch with me at the law firm. The website is www.BoydWills.com. And, you know, you can reach out to me on the Brian T Boyd, Facebook page and on Instagram.   Michael: Okay, amazing. We'll be sure to do that. Brian. Thanks again for sharing some amazing wisdom man. Appreciate you coming on. We'll talk soon.   Brian: Thanks, Michaels. Good to be here.   Michael: You could take care.   All right, everyone. That was our episode. A big thank you to Brian for coming on and sharing some wisdom about LLCs asset protection, tax benefits and some loopholes that we can take advantage of as real estate investors. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing

Neal Bawa is a technologist who is universally known in real estate circles as the Mad Scientist of Multifamily. Besides being one of the most in-demand speakers in commercial real estate, Neal is a data guru, a process freak, and an outsourcing expert. Neal treats his $947 million-dollar portfolio as an ongoing experiment in efficiency and optimization. The Mad Scientist lives by two mantras. His first mantra is that "We can only manage what we can measure". His second mantra is that "Data beats gut feel by a million miles". These mantras and a dozen other disruptive beliefs drive profit for his 700+ investors. In today's episode, Neal gives his take on what is happening in the multi-family market today, the dynamics of the current economy, and what he sees coming over the next year. Episode Links: https://multifamilyu.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/neal-bawa/  --- 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 joining me again is Neal Bawa, who is the founder of MultifamilyU and a big time multifamily syndicator and Neal is gonna be putting his finger on the pulse of the multifamily market and sharing with us some pretty hard hitting facts. So let's strap in, and let's get into it.   Neal, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me. I really appreciate you coming on.   Neal: It's great to be back, Michael. Great to be back.   Michael: Thank you, Neal. So last time, on our prior episode, we talked a lot about the single family space and what we saw going on with the market today. I'd love if we could focus our conversation on multifamily, since I know that you do quite a bit in that space as well.   Neal: That's right. I live and breathe multifamily. I started with single family like a lot of you know, the folks that are using your platform did, but multifamily is more scalable. So we currently have about a billion dollars of multifamily 31 projects about 4800 units that are either in construction or in lease up or you know, are stabilize, right. So, you know, a significant portion of them are already stabilized that we're holding, but we're also building a bunch of them, and working on the construction of some of them. So it's you know, what's happening today is so dramatic and so unusual. We you know, one could compare, maybe it's not as dramatic as the first three months of COVID. But otherwise, it's pretty crazy. It's pretty dramatic, dramatic. So it's, it's a great time to talk about multifamily.   Michael: Yeah. So a billion dollars and just turning back the clock a minute. I'm curious, how long did it take you to get to that point from when you started?   Neal: So I you know, ignoring a past company where I was a partner, this particular company has basically gotten to that billion dollars since February 2018. So, so about four and a half years, roughly.   Michael: Holy smoke, I was just interviewing a gentleman who's got a business he wants to scale to a billion dollars over a nine year period. So you mourn cut that in half, that's incredible growth. Neal: Well, keep in mind, I don't want to demean what we've done, because we're very proud of it. But with a when you're purchasing multifamily, the numbers get big, pretty, you know, quickly, right? So 100 unit multifamily today is $20 million. So you do get up there very fast. So I still consider myself to be a mid-level syndicator. There's dozens and dozens and dozens of companies that have bigger portfolios than I do and also, for reference, a billion dollar portfolio usually only equates to about 10 employees in a syndication business. Now, in my case, I have 30 employees, because I've 20 of them in the Philippines and that's helping me scale and so I have 20 full time employees in the Philippines in addition to those 10 people. But I think it's useful to have that frame of reference, I think that you're setting targets in multifamily, a billion is actually not a bad target the set.   Michael: Okay, I will definitely keep that in mind as I as I scale my portfolio. That's, that's really great to know. But Neal, let's transition and I would love to get your thoughts because you are a data scientist, you have so many great analytics to kind of backup your thoughts and opinions and viewpoints. Tell us what like what's going on in the multifamily space as we recording this today late, mid to late September.   Neal: Prices are falling and they will continue to fall. It's a bad time to buy any kind of multifamily in any market in the US and I rarely, I've never actually said that before, maybe with the exception of you know, first month COVID. It's currently right now, no one should be buying anything in the United States. But here's the good news. You don't have to wait very long. The market is now adjusting very rapidly. So I think that I think February March of next year would be a terrific time to buy you know whether it's the one to four units that get listed on Roofstock. By the way, I currently have a triplex listed on roof stock, check it out, it's on Brandon Avenue in Chicago. Whether it's those units or it's the you know, the larger unit we were also selling, you know, a 200 unit property at this point in time not on Roofstock but we're not buying anything. I mean, we've basically told our acquisition people to be pencils down stop looking, stop talking to brokers stop traveling to properties, because we are halfway through a correction. So and I'll explain why. Multifamily is a very different animal from single family. So let's say Michael is buying a single family property and it's next to another one that's identical to it. So there's two row houses and next to it. Well, if somebody last month paid a million dollars for the first one, Michael can get a loan that appraises for 1,000,000 value for his property, he can get that easily, regardless of what really happens in the market, he can get that, you know, and prices take so long to fall that even if the price actually falls, Michael can use a comp from half a mile away to still get that million dollars in value. So the banks on the single family side are really trusting you to do your, you know, to not to overpay, right. So if they're just looking at it, is there a comp that matches it and if it does, we'll just give this guy alone, right and if they feel like the times are hard, they might change their LTVs from 75 to 70 and but that's pretty much as far as the single family market goes. The multifamily market is radically different because a multi one multifamily property is a business. It's like you're buying a Tommy's carwash, or you're buying, you know you're buying a subway or a chain of subways, that's the best way to look at it. It's a business. So your underwriting really doesn't matter. It's the banks underwriting that matters, the bank that's giving you the funding and the moment that we start seeing interest rates go up in the market, the value of the property immediately decreases. Why? Because the bank's underwriting decreases the value of the property, because multifamily properties are based on just two things, something known as a cap rate, which is basically the market's estimate of what the property should be worth and then something else known as net operating income, which is basically rents minus expenses right? Now, the moment and you know, the moment your interest rates increase, and most multifamily today in the US is on floating rate debt. So what that means is, as interest rates go up, your mortgage is going up something a number called DSCR. I won't go into that into detail on that. But there's a number called DSCR, that basically starts to fall. So the higher your mortgage goes, the lower that number is. This means that, you know, let's say I'm a buyer and I'm selling two multi families and they're right next to each other, right. So they're same number of units, same occupancy, same design, so that their net operating income for both of these properties is exactly the same, like down to the last cent right. Now one, let's say one soft sell sold for $30 million. Okay, and I waited a month like 30 days, and the Fed raise interest rates by 100 bits right, but basically 1%. The second property now is worth less. It's worth less, even though there's another property that sold 30 days ago, that's identical with the same number of tenants with the same rents. It's now worth less so multifamily is on a sliding scale and that sliding scale is affected by interest rate hikes much sooner than single family.   Obviously, single family is also affected. We've seen there's 90 bond markets in the US where single family prices are coming down, but they're coming down really slowly, right. Like the I think the average decline in the last six weeks has been 2%, right and I mean, seasonal declines are bigger than 2%. So I don't even know what to make of that 2% yet, but on the multifamily side, depending upon the market, we've seen declines of six to 12% in multifamily prices already and in remember, the Fed only really started raising in May of this year that you know, we're doing this in the middle of September, right. So in five months, the Feds basically raised everything there was a tiny raise back in March, but it was it was so tiny that it really didn't make any difference. So in five months, the Fed has basically affected multifamily prices to the tune of six to 12%. Here's the bad news. That's not the end, because everybody including yours truly was thinking that when last week's inflation report came out, we would see a downward trend, and the Fed would give us some guidance that yeah, okay, well, instead of raising by 75 bits this week that there's a Fed meeting going on this week, we're gonna raise by 50 and then we'll see what happens in November, maybe we'll raise it by 25 and we were like, okay, if that happens, great. You know, where the Fed funds rate is at 2.25. They raised by 50 pips this week, then they raised about 25 pips in November at 3%. We're done with the Fed funds rate, and that means that multifamily doesn't have to drop any further. Well, it sucks but that didn't happen. Inflation didn't drop and so now the Fed this week is definitely going to raise interest rates by 75 bits, maybe they might even do it by 100 and that basically will spike up interest rates by 100 points immediately and then they'll have to do 75 points in November and maybe another 50 points or 25 points in December. So because of that bad news, we now know that we're midway through this drop in multifamily, right. So we think that there's another five or 6% drop coming by February or March. Is this bad? No. If you're not, you know, if you're not buying anything, just wait for five or six months and you get five or 6%. You know, you know benefits. What the heck is wrong about that because the market isn't bad. Rents haven't decreased, rents are continuing to increase nationwide for both single family and multifamily. So this isn't like 2008, where there's 5 million empty homes show me empty homes. I mean, there really aren't any, the market is an amazing occupancy levels. This is just one single factor, the cost of debt. So, if you can, in February, buy a property for 5%, cheaper, you will have had two advantages. Number one, the next six months, you're not paying for that high cost of debt, right? Number two, you would, you know, say 5%. So your property is cheaper, so your debts less right? Number three, you will be within six months of the Fed cutting interest rates. This is the part that most people don't understand. The Federal Reserve is not trying to kill us. They're just doing their job. and their job is to control inflation because if you don't control inflation, really bad shit happens really, really bad should happen. So it's much better to control inflation and obviously the industry that is most affected when you raise interest rates is real estate. No other industry in the US is affected as much as real estate by interest rate hikes. Here's the good news though. If you look at the last 61 years, the Fed raised interest rates nine times sharp up sharp down. So if you buy in Feb, by, I think July or August, the Fed should be dropping interest rates or at least talking about dropping interest rates.   Why is that important? Mortgage rates are guesses. So single family mortgage rates and multifamily mortgage rates in the US are just guesswork where the market tries to guess what the Fed will do next. So if the Fed starts talking about interest rate declines, the market starts to prices in., right and when the Fed says oh, well, we might hold, right the market reacts. So the interest rates basically adjust even before the Fed actually does anything. Perfect example of this: In December, the Fed started talking about interest rate hikes, but didn't actually raise anything. They didn't change anything until March. But in those four months, interest rates went up 100 basis points, they went up an entire 1% because the market was guessing what the Fed would do. So if you buy a multifamily in February and the Feds basically start to lower rates by June, July and August. Now you're in a better environment and as long as your rates are floating, they may float the other way, they may float down and give you a benefit. Where you start high and then you float downwards. That's why I think it makes sense to wait. I've seen a lot of my friends that have larger portfolios and me 2 billion 3 billion send emails to their investor saying we're pencils down. mean, what that means is we're not even underwriting a property we you know, we see 10 properties a day and normally we underwrite three or four of them. Pencils down means you just click the delete button 10 times and you're done with your job for the day.   Michael: Wow, I have so many questions. But I guess the first one is, why are mortgage rate guesses? Why doesn't, why don't banks look at actual data and what the actual borrowing rate is today and not worry about forecasting, but use hindsight. So it takes the guesswork out of it.   Neal: I'm not 100% sure on that. Just so you know, that's what the multifamily market does, right. So the multifamily market has two kinds of loans or I should say three kinds of loans. One of them is the guesswork kind where they try and guess what the Fed is going to do. The other one is one that's based on LIBOR or now called Sofer, these are basically and basically they're based on like treasury bonds and what those numbers are those loans. The moment the Fed hikes the they're going to hike this week, right so that they have a meeting on Wednesday, that we're probably going to hype it by 75 pips. Well, if I have that kind of loan, and I do at some of my properties, guess what, on Thursday, my debt is a lot more expensive. 75 basis points more expensive. So you can see that on the multifamily side. I have never, ever seen a single family loan do that. Every mortgage that I've seen 30 year 15 year five year ARM, they're all guesses forward looking guesses on the Feds rate. Why? I have no freaking clue.   Michael: Okay… We'll have to find someone out there that can give us a definitive answer as to why that is. But I'm also curious now, you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that in the single family space, the banks are kind of depending on us as borrowers to look at the value of the home and determine hey, this is worth or not, which seems very counterintuitive because the majority of multifamily investors that I know, tend to be able to underwrite really, really well, oftentimes better than the bank and so why is the bank's taking the power away from a multifamily investor and really giving it to a single family owner it seems a little bit backwards now.   Neal: Single Family is considered to be a REIT in the United States and single family lending is encouraged by politicians. The overall banking system believes that even if they go a little it over on the single family side, it's not such a bad thing, obviously 2008 was 2007 was different because it was not a real estate failure. It was a failure of lending standards, you know, they were basically giving gardeners million dollar loans, right. So that's not going to end well. So obviously, I don't see any evidence of that kind of stupidity existing today. So there are lending standards, they're pretty tight on those lending standards, they're not going above them, you have to be, you know, a good, good buyer. But beyond that, they as long as there's an appraised property that similar your property will appraise. I am not in favor of this other countries do not do this. Banks underwrite single family loans in other countries, the way that we underwrite multifamily loans. But because of Americans believe that single family is a very key part of their life. We've seen this appraisal based system for the last 30 or 40 years and every once in a while it blows up a bubble just like it did in 2007. So this is a conscious decision that the people that run this company had a country have made, and it has lots and lots of good sides, because it tends to overall increase the prices of single family appraisal, you know, somebody buys for more, the your property is more than next was more next one's more. So generally, it has a beneficial effect on the real estate market. But it also tends to create more bubbles than other countries.   Michael: Interesting. Okay, that's really good insights. So knowing that this isn't the ideal time to buy multifamily. What should people be doing? Is this the time to get educated, is the time to go get capitals is the time you know, what should folks be doing right now?   Neal: Um, I think that I'll give you some ideas, right? So I'll give you kind of a sense of, Well, what would Neal Bawa be doing and what would maybe somebody that's newer than Neal Bawa, you know, doesn't have a lot of multifamily should be doing. So let's just focus on that piece first, right, because what I do is really different from what you should be doing, depending upon where you are in the process. So let's say you're early in the multifamily process, you should be educating your investors, that an extraordinary opportunity is going to present itself most likely in q2 of next year. So that's, you know, April, May, June and that opportunity is there for the first time since the Great Depression, that in the 2008, depression, we have an unusual thing happening, and that will be multifamily prices, not single family, but multifamily prices will be low in q2 next year, compared to let's say, now, or compared to, especially compared to a year ago, they will be low. But the economy will not be anywhere like 2008, it'll still it'll be weak, it will be in a recession. But this is what is known as an artificial recession. So recessions are of two kinds, they come in two flavors. Number one, a recession that is artificially created by the Fed to cool down inflation, and we're about to go into one of those recessions, those tend to be shallow, and the they don't damage the economy in the long term, they create short term damage, and the economy tends to recover fairly quickly from those unemployment doesn't tend to go down too much. You know, so, so go up too much, I should say, you know, so. So we're about to go into one of those and those are the kinds of recessions where you want to buy multifamily. Why because multifamily prices still decrease as interest rates go up, regardless of the strength of the underlying economy. So the underlying economy right now is amazingly strong, right. So with all the hand grenades that the Fed has thrown at us for over five months, they've managed to move the unemployment rate from a historic 3.5% to a historic 3.7%. In five months, they basically haven't managed to dent the unemployment market at all and even that point, 2% increase has largely been because of being because of more people joining the workforce. So post COVID, a lot of people took a year and two years off, a lot of those people are now returning to the to the workforce because they're running out of that stimulus money and that's really what that point to otherwise, when you see like you might see, you know, news about layoffs in the United States, Google it actually look at the statistics. Anytime at any point in the economy, there's layoffs, right. But there haven't been more layoffs than they were six months ago or 12 months ago. It's just the regular layoffs that happened in a normal economy. So there's the economy is extraordinarily strong, and it's going to get dragged into recession simply because the Fed is going to keep throwing hand grenades until the economy goes into recession. But because the underlying economy will stay pretty strong during this shallow recession, you've got a onetime opportunity to buy cheap multifamily because multifamily is just as affected in terms of price. Whether the economy underlying is weak or strong right and you have a quick chance to come out of it and make a lot of money. You should be educating your investors telling them about this opportunity, because I haven't seen that opportunity at all since 2013.   Michael: Interesting.   Neal: That's what you should be doing, telling every investor about this and telling them, I am not buying anything now. Well, you probably know me, you know, don't have the investor money to buy anything now. But what's the harm in saying it's still true?   Michael: Right, right, right. Do you think though, Neal, that at that time, q2, next year, that folks, sellers, owners are going to see that, hey, there's this dip in prices, and therefore, I'm not going to sell because I don't want to sell at a loss I bought 234 or five years ago, I'm going to hold on to my property and no, there will be an inventory shortage, or do you do not foresee that happening?   Neal: There is already an inventory shortage in multifamily prices have still dropped. So the if you look at the inventory available to sell in the multifamily market, it's half of what we had a year ago. But multifamily is different from single family in single family is shortage of inventory tends to drive prices up. With multifamily a shortage of inventory cannot drive prices up because banks are underwriting and they don't give a flying F about what the inventory is. They just care about your debt cost and your debt cost is going up. So when so the key thing is that the single family and multifamily markets are fundamentally different. One of them is just a business and the business is based on its debt cost, and its net operating income and nothing else right. Whereas single family is based on demand. If there's nothing available on your street to sell whatever appears is going to sell for more. That's not how multifamily works. So even right now, supply is pretty low. But that doesn't mean that people are over able to over bid, because if they over bid, guess what happens, Michael, they can't get a loan for that amount and now they have to raise lots of extra equity, which reduces their returns and so a lot of them are like this is painful, we're just going to sit back for three to four months for the market to adjust. Buyers have sellers have to understand that either they just keep their property off the marketplace, which you know, you can do infinite infinitely, you can do it for some amount of time or they will adjust their pricing as they already have. Remember, we've already seen a six to 12% delta in just six months. That's how quickly multifamily reacts and I think that's why I'm in the multifamily business because I liked the logic of that. If your costs are increasing and your profits are decreasing, you should get a lower price, right.   Michael: It's pretty black and white.   Neal: Yeah, yes and that's how it works in multifamily. With single family, you can very often see costs increasing, but because everyone's holding off, nobody's basically selling their property. Everyone's like I've got lots of equity in the property. Now there's no property in the marketplace and even with costs increasing, you can often see increase in pricing. To me that has no logic and so I don't play in in that in that field.   Michael: Yeah, yeah, no, it makes total sense. Neal, let's talk about multifamily loan products and some of the different ones that are out there. You mentioned there's three different loan types. There's the fix for five 710 years, there's the LIBOR, floating rates, what's the third one?   Neal: So the second one is tied to so I'll go back, right. So the first one straightforward, fixed, usually it's five years and 10 year fixed. The second one is tied to a number called LIBOR or LIBOR or so far, these days, it's called Silver. That's kind of the new version of LIBOR. So it's a number and the loans will be, you know, LIBOR plus something LIBOR plus 2.25, right and what that means is the moment the Fed changes, interest rates, that's gonna change, right? So your, the interest rate, you're paying changes the very next day, right, the bank's gonna send you a letter saying, hey, Sofer has changed, therefore your interest rate is now x, right and boom, you're paying more, the third one is available, that is basically a rate that you it's a floating rate. right, but it's not tied to LIBOR. It's not tied to Sofer. It's speculative in some sort of ways. Now, it does tend to go up as interest rates go up, it's really tied to treasuries. Now, US Treasury bonds are a speculative product, right? So today, something happens in China or something happens in Russia, something happens in Ukraine, and all of a sudden, treasury bonds will shoot up or shoot down and so that particular rate is tied to the treasury bonds. So it's speculative and so, you know, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, often these floating off of these floating rates. Now, in the end, the rate is going to end up more or less where the Sofer one is, but it's not immediate. It's not like you don't get that happening the next day after the Fed raises interest rates and I'll tell you why because it's tied to treasuries and treasuries move upward. Are downwards because of 100 different factors. Only one of those are interest rates. So geopolitical situations can often make treasuries move downwards. For example, if the Chinese economy collapses tomorrow and there's blood on the street, treasuries will go downwards, even if the Fed continues to raise interest rates. That makes sense? So, to these sorts of things, these movements can happen so that rates that are tied to the US Treasury bonds tend to move up and down with Treasury bonds. So those are the three kinds.   Michael: Okay, and who is do you think well suited or conversely, not well suited for each type of loan?   Neal: So in terms of who is the lender?   Michael: No, if I'm a buyer, and I'm going to buy … Yeah…   Neal: I think, yeah, yeah. So there's also something known as a bridge rate, when it bridge loans, which no one is getting, I don't know, if a single person that's gotten a bridge loan in the last 30 days, because there are simply very high there are 7%, or even higher in the last, you know, 30 days. So the vast majority of people today that should be buying, let's say you have to buy for whatever reason, you're not stopping you want to buy the key advisors, everyone should today should get a floating rate loan, because if you believe like I do, that the feds job is to raise rates and then drop them and that's what they've done nine times in the last 61 years, then you have to believe at some point in the future 6-12 18, 24 months rates will be lower, because right now, they're pretty darn high, right? So if you believe that locking in your rates doesn't make sense. So the market today, all we have is really Fannie Freddie floating lanes, rate rates, which are similar to what your local bank would provide. So maybe you have a smaller project, you want to go with local bank, those are the same kinds of rates that Fannie Freddie provides, they're probably charging you a quarter point more, but you've got a relationship with them, their points are lower. So lots of people go with local banks. But I think that's the only game in the market for multifamily today and the other thing that's happening in the multifamily market, which is driving prices down as you get multifamily, you might in a really boom time environment, you could get loans that are 75%, loan to value, right and then when the market starts to tighten up, they go to 70. Well, a few weeks ago, most lenders went to 65. So they're giving you a lot less loan to value for the same property forcing you to raise more equity. When you raise more equity, your returns go down, your underwriting suffers. So once again, people are like this not working. I'm not going to make any money. My investors have something known as pref or preferential treatment. So the property underperforms, they're going to make their pref I'm gonna make nothing. So a lot of people are stepping back, pencils down.   Michael: Yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense. That makes total sense.   Neal: And, and none of this has anything to do with a crash, you know, the 2008 scenario. If you believe that that is going to occur in the next 12 months, you're not data driven because the 2008 scenario, if you look at every if you list the top 10 factors that caused it, because it wasn't any one thing, right? None of those factors, not one of those factors exist today, right? What we do have is we pulled demand forward in 2021. In 2021, we basically helicoptered $10 trillion, worldwide, not 10 trillion in the US, luckily, 4 trillion in the US, but 10 trillion worldwide, we helicopter money to people for the first time in modern history. We've done a little bit of it before in 2009. But remember, we were bailing out banks, we were bailing out General Motors, the money wasn't going directly into people's pockets, right. So here we helicopter $10 trillion worldwide, and there's an inflationary effect. It pulled demand forward, everyone, all of a sudden had money, everyone spent money and so we pulled demand forward from let's say, 2023, next year, to 2021 and when we did that, we ended up creating massive amounts of inflation, nothing to do with the economy itself, but it created massive inflation and now we have no choice but to deal with it. I can tell you this if on the one side you said you know will you take 7% single Family interest rates right over the Fed stopping you know their program now just let him stop it I would say don't do that. Hyperinflation is so insanely dangerous, and so insanely destructive, that I would, even though it would really hurt me. I would take 7% interest rates any day, I will take 8% but I wouldn't tell the thread to stop doing what they're doing. 9% inflation if it gets entrenched if everyone believes that two years from now we're going to be at 9% It's astonishingly destructive.   Michael: Wow, wow. Okay and Neal, I'm just curious in based on your research the nine times over the last six to 10 years, the Fed has raised rates and then pretty succinctly thereafter dropped them. How far do you think we're gonna get, how low do you think inch rates are gonna go? I want the Neal Bawa prediction the crystal ball, if you will…   Neal: The federal funds rate, right, the Fed funds rate is what the Fed raises, they don't raise or lower mortgage rates. It's currently at 2.25% and in two days, it's going to go to 3%. We believe currently that the peak is going to be either 3.5 or 3.75% for the Fed funds rate and we think that on the downward path, they'll cut it all the way down to 1.75%. So from their peak, they'll go down 2%. So from the peak, whatever that peak interest rate is, it should go down 2%, right. Now, sometimes they have to go past that 1.75 on the downward leg, because they've hurt the economy so much when they were raising rates that they have to compensate. But we think that the Meet the perfect equilibrium rate for the Fed is around 1.75. Now, in their, in their public, in the public, they talk about it being 2.25. That's where they would like equilibrium to be. But they never seem to ever achieve that. It's always lower than that in a normal market. So they just like to talk it up a little bit to set expectations. So we think that whatever that top interest rate is that you're going to see the highest interest rate, the mortgage rate. Once the Fed is done and brings it down, you should see mortgage rates 2%, lower. So it there's a possibility that sometime in the next 180 days, you'll see a 7% mortgage rate, right. So it might touch that number, but I don't think it goes further beyond that. Okay, but I could be completely wrong, because if the Fed doesn't kill inflation, then all bets are off.   Michael: Right, right. Yeah, this is all under the guise of inflation getting tampered back because of the moves and so just to kind of put that in perspective for people as the end users, 2% reduction of the Fed funds rate will typically constitute a 2% drop on what a borrower is going to pay. So if rates get up to 7%, and then Fed Funds pullback to two by 2%, we would expect mortgage rates to hover on that 5% in the consumer market.   Neal: Yes, exactly four and a half to five and a half going up and down a little bit, you'd remember it's speculative, but you'll have plenty of opportunities to you know, lock something in under 5%. So I think the key message is this, never be afraid of 5%. It's really beyond 5%, that the single family economy starts to you know, it starts to miss heartbeats. That's where it starts to be problematic until five, I've really not seen much of an impact in the marketplace, there'll be a little slow down in price increases and right now a slowdown is healthy, they've gone way too much way too fast and so retrenchment is a very healthy thing.   Michael: Yeah. Okay and just for frame of reference for folks, during COVID, the Fed funds rate was zero, right?   Neal: They dropped it. It was zero, correct. So there were we've gone from zero to 2.25, in five and a half months, right and they were threatening to do it for about four months before that, but they wanted the market to adjust before they actually raise the rate. So we've gone up to 2.25. It was zero for two consecutive years. So two years, in two months, the Fed funds rate was zero.   Michael: And has that ever happened in American history that you know if?   Neal: No, I think that pandemic is very unique. We saw the Fed funds rate fall to about 1% in 2009 2010. But they didn't take it down to zero. So the only time they've ever taken it to zero is this time, I expect all future crisis will go beyond zero now that the eurozone has gone negative and Japan's gone negative. There's no stigma attached to going negative. So I think the next crisis will go below zero.   Michael: Wow and that'll be an interesting time to have a loan tied to LIBOR or Sofer?   Neal: It'll be is it's fantastically interesting. I think what we are, Michael, we're living in the middle of the greatest financial experiment in history and it's, it's an experiment that has no precedent, it doesn't have anything that you can look back to, right. We're doing some truly crazy stuff and we're hoping that it will work out even though we have about three years three or 3000 years of monetary history that says it's never worked out for anyone in the past. So we're just hoping that we are different so right it's all about you know, as long as the musical chairs are going people are you know, people are walking and that's how it's going to be and I don't know when the real challenges happen. I think we're getting closer and closer. I feel like China is just about ready to combust at this point. We'll see what happens.   Michael: Okay, well, I will definitely stay tuned, Neal. This was amazing as always, for people that want to pick your brain more, continue the conversation learn more about you. Where's the best place nice for them to do that,   Neal: Um, you can connect with me simply by typing in my name. I'm the only Neal Bawa on the worldwide web. So just NEAL BAWA, hit enter, there's a couple 100 podcasts that I've appeared on. There's webinars, conference recordings, where I'm on stage. If you'd like to chat with me on LinkedIn, once again, I'm the only Neal Bawa on LinkedIn. So go ahead and connect with me there or go to my website, multifamilyu.com. So that's multifamily, followed by the letter u.com. There's about 30,000 people that attend the webinars that are on that site, we have a new one coming up, which is the impact of interest rates on the economy, and the upcoming recession. So real estate at this point is officially in a recession. The housing market is now in a recession, because it's declining. But I think the rest of the economy is going to follow it and so we have a webinar on that and I think that's going to be in three weeks.   Michael; Okay, fantastic. Well, Neal, thank you. Again, really a pleasure to chat with you and have you on and I'm sure we'll stay in touch.   Neal: Awesome. Thanks for having me on.   Michael: You got it, take care.   All right, everyone. That was our episode a big thank you to Neal for coming on love his data driven approach to his conclusions, which I think we probably all could use another dose of that. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

Garrett Sutton is a corporate attorney, asset protection expert and best selling author who has sold more than a million books to guide entrepreneurs and investors. For more than 30 years, Garrett Sutton has run his practice assisting entrepreneurs and real estate investors in protecting their assets and maximizing their financial goals through sound management and asset protection strategies. The companies he founded, Corporate Direct and Sutton Law Center, currently help more than 13,000 clients protect their assets and incorporate their businesses. Garrett also serves as a member of the elite group of “Rich Dad Advisors” for bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki. A number of the books Garrett Sutton has authored are part of the bestselling Rich Dad, Poor Dad wealth-building book series. There are three types of entities most commonly used to own real estate: Limited Liability Company, S Corporation and Limited Partnership. Tune in for todays episode where Garrett provides a quick summary of the best entities for real estate investment. Episode Link: https://corporatedirect.com/contact/ --- 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 Garrett Sutton, who is an attorney, investor and author with over 1 million copies of his book sold and today Garrett is gonna be talking to us about all the different entity structures we should be aware of as real estate investors, as well as wherever we might want to think about forming those entities because it plays a big role. So let's get into it.   Garrett, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I really appreciate you taking the time.   Garrett: Thanks, Michael. It's a pleasure to be with you today.   Michael: No, no, the pleasure is all mine ad I'm super excited to chat with you. I know a little bit about your background and what you do kind of on a day to day basis. But I would love if you could share with our listeners who you are, where you come from, and what is it that you're doing in real estate today?   Garrett: Well, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area like you and I moved to Reno in 1989 and Nevada is a great state for setting up LLCs and corporations along with Wyoming. So I practiced corporate law since 1978, and became associated with Robert Kiyosaki and have written a number of books in the rich dad advisor series and you know, have enjoyed talking to people around the country around the world about how to protect your assets. As you start investing in real estate, you need to think about how you're going to protect that real estate because we live in a very litigious society, people sue each other all the time and unfortunately, they don't teach this in school, you have to get this information on your own and so that's what we provide is the information you need and then we offer a service to help you protect your real estate and brokerage and other assets.   Michael: Love it and just right off the bat, I read one of your books for our Roofstock Academy book club, it was a great read, so I can definitely vouch for it. But what are the books that you've written and then what talk to us about your most recent book?   Garrett: Well, I've written a number of books in the rich dad advisor series, including start your own corporation, that's kind of a foundational one, and then run your own corporation, a lot of my clients and I set up a corporation now what do I do, and you have to run it properly. Then I also did loopholes of real estate, which is kind of the tax and legal strategies for investing in real estate and then the newest book is veil not failed and that deals with the corporate veil, you set up an LLC or a corporation to be protected and too many people do this themselves, Michael, they just set it up online, and they don't realize that there are additional steps you have to take to stay protected and so if you don't want your veil to be pierced where someone can sue the company, there are no assets there. They can go through the veil of the company and get it your personal assets, if you don't want that to happen and that's why you set up an LLC.   Michael: That's the point, yeah…   Garrett: It's that you don't want it to happen. You need to follow these corporate formalities and so that's what the book veil not fail is about kind of stories, horror stories of people who didn't follow the rules and then in the latter part of the book, it shows you how to follow the rules so you can stay protected.   Michael: Yeah, great. and where can people find out if they're interested in picking up a copy?   Garrett: Amazon has it the veil not fail. It was supposed to be out in April, but we have this thing called supply chain problems.   Michael: I've heard of that.   Garrett: Not enough paper out there. So it's not out until November but you can go ahead and preorder it.   Michael: Fantastic. Garrett, let's talk about I think a pretty hotly contested and debated topic in the real estate space and that's LLC versus no LLC, I think and it's tough because we're I'm California based. A lot of our listeners are California based and so to have an LLC in California, you're paying at minimum 800 bucks a year and with today's cash flow based on some real estate investments that can eat in to your investment pretty significantly and so I've heard folks say, you know, forget the LLC, go get umbrella policy, go get high liability limit insurance and call it a day. Don't worry about it. What are some risks pros cons associated with doing that, that you've seen folks run into?   Garrett: You know, there's a whole area of law called Bad Faith litigation, and that's when insurance companies collect the premiums and then find a way not to cover you. All right, the insurance companies have acted in bad faith over the years. errors in collecting the premiums and then having exclusions, that little tiny print that you never read and so, you know, the insurance companies, let's face it, they have an economic incentive to not cover every claim and so they're going to find reasons not to cover you and so I always recommend that people have insurance. That's the first line of defense but these LLCs are the second line of defense, in case the insurance company doesn't cover you, or what about a situation where your insurance is, say 2 million, but the judgment is 4 million, right? I mean, you're personally responsible for that extra 2 million. If the property is in an LLC, they can get what's inside the LLC. But if you've done it, right, if you if your veil is strong, they're not going to be able to reach your personal assets for that extra 2 million. So the idea that you're just going to rely on insurance is, in my opinion, quite naive.   Michael: Yeah. Okay, I love it. I'm of the same opinion. I always, I never like to play my hand, though but I love hearing that because I come from the insurance world. So I know how bad things can go and I also have seen how they're supposed to work. But I think you're totally right, there's totally an economic incentive to not pay claims and the insurance industry as a whole gets kind of wrapped in with the folks that are doing the latter, not the former. So I think it makes a ton of sense. But Garrett talked to me about I've heard this concept, and this idea that, okay, there's this, you can be over insured, there is such a point. Now, if I go get a $10 million umbrella, because I really want to be protected. Does that then put a target on my back for a claim or a plaintiff to say, well, hey, he's got a pretty a pretty massive insurance policy, you know, I was only going to sue him for a million, but let's go after the full 10.   Garrett: Well, I mean, there are a number of factors there. I mean, having enough insurance is not a bad thing. If the claim is a million, it doesn't give the attorney the right to try and collect 10 million, you know, I mean, the claim is a million. So you know, the fact that you have extra insurance isn't a bad thing. The attorneys, you know, what we like to do, what we tell our clients is you want to have enough insurance to cover any claim and so you want to have insurance on the property fire casualty, right? You want to have a personal umbrella policy of insurance covering your home and your autos because I think that's the biggest risk out there is a horrific car wreck, right. Do you need that umbrella policy, a commercial umbrella policy over your various rental properties, maybe I had a part such a policy for a while but here in Reno, it got pretty expensive and so I just have regular insurance on the properties. I have regular insurance for my home and autos and I have an umbrella policy for me personally and so you get in that horrific car wreck. There's enough insurance money for the attorneys to get at. They know how to get at insurance monies, they get a percentage of what they collect and then if everything else is held in LLCs you know you'll have a an LLC if you own a property in Oregon, you have an Oregon LLC on title, you own a property in Utah, you'll have a Utah LLC and tie on title and then those two LLCs are owned by one Wyoming LLC. That's how we like to structure things and the attorneys are going to have a tough time collecting from a Wyoming LLC and so they leave you alone on the LLC. Do you have enough insurance to pay the claim and they'll leave you alone on the LLC is that's how we recommend our clients structure things.   Michael: Okay, and why Wyoming LLC because I know you made a very deliberate point of saying where is formed, what's the point?   Garrett: There are three really good states out there and they compete against each other to be the best which is good for us. Instead of having one federal law that applies to every single state. After the American Revolution, each state wanted their own corporate law and so now we have each state with their own corporate law in Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada compete against each other to be the best. You know, the filing fees every year that come in are pretty good. It helps fund the government. So the reason I like Wyoming over Nevada and Delaware is all three protect the owner of the LLC the charging order is the exclusive remedy and all three, but in Nevada and Delaware the annual fee is $350 a year and in Nevada they list your name on the state website. In Wyoming the annual fee is $62 a year and your name does not show up on the State web site. So Wyoming offers lower cost, better privacy and equal protection. So a lot of our clients set up Wyoming LLCs.   Michael: Yeah, okay, well, I'm sold. So being a California guy, though, this is what I've heard and would love your insights. So I've been told that California they want their piece of the pie. So I've got to register any LLC that I own. In California, because I'm a resident here, I live here, even if it has not doing business, because the way California defines doing business is basically me living here. So if I do I own property in Oregon, I own it with an Oregon LLC, that LLC is owned by the Wyoming LLC, but then I gotta register both of those here in California?   Garrett: No, you raise a very good question. So in our example, we had an Oregon LLC and a Utah LLC and if those were owned by you, as a California resident, we'd have to pay 800, twice, once for Oregon, once for Utah, by having the Wyoming parent there, the Wyoming LLC, and we qualify that one to do business in the State of California. You don't have to pay the 800 for Utah, or Oregon. So that's a way to save the $800 for all the title holding LLCs yes, one of them has to pay right $800 to the state of California and you know, California has gotten a little bit looser, you don't have to pay the 800 the first year, that $800 is a credit on the first $50,000 in profits. So it's not like it's wasted. So, you know, I've had people move from California to Nevada, because of that $800 fee. It's just infuriates people. But there is if you love living in California, there's a way to work it so you have protection, and you don't have to pay $800 for every single LLC you own across the country.   Michael: Okay, fantastic and then in going back to that example, if I've got the I've got to register the Wyoming LLC here in California, do I lose out on any of the anonymity that Wyoming affords me because now it's registered here in California?   Garrett: Yeah, you'd have to list your name in California.   Michael: Okay, all right. Yeah, maybe I will think about moving, who knows? All right, Garrett, in your book, and I want to get really nice here for a minute, because I've got you. You talk about quitclaim deeds versus warranty deeds and I think a lot of our listeners out there have utilized this practice, or have heard about this practice because if you go get a conventional loan from a traditional bank, they won't lend to an LLC. So you go get the name the loan in your name, then transfer the property title to an LLC after the fact, right. In the book, you talk about quitclaim deeds versus a warranty deed, can you give us a little bit of insight into what the difference is and why someone should think about using one versus the other?   Garrett: Well, the warranty deed or the grant deed says, I warrant that I own this property and if I don't, if I transfer it to you, and I don't own it, for some reason, you can sue me. All right. So it's a more powerful deed. The grant deed, the quitclaim deed rather, says, I don't know what I own. But I'm transferring whatever I own to you and the title companies go, well, he quit claimed that property and so that severs the title insurance, right because he didn't know what he had and so we're not going to cover him on it on a quitclaim deed and so and too many people pronounce it quick claim.   Michael: I know, I know.   Garrett: You know, and it's the same deed with a couple of different words in it. But you really always want to use the grant deed or the warranty deed because in many cases, you sever the title insurance, when you use a quitclaim deed, okay, and that's….   Michael: Okay and that's even if you're going from yourself as an individual owner to an LLC that you own 100% of?   Garrett: Right, yeah, just ask for the grant deed. Also, if you're buying property from someone, you want to insist on a grant deed or a warranty deed, because if they don't deliver the title that they've promised they are going to deliver, you have the ability to sue them for failure to perform.   Michael: Okay, super good to know, super good to know, Garrett, as people who are just getting started on their investment journey, I mean, what's the appropriate time to set up an entity because I've heard people say, I'll do it later. I'm too small. It's too expensive. You know, what are your thoughts there?   Garrett: Right at the start, you know, it's just not that expensive. We do not charge a lot of money to set up LLCs for people. It's very affordable. It's a business expense, you get to write it off. But I'll give you an example Michael and I I've told this story 1000 times, but I was in San Francisco at an event and I gave a talk about asset protection and this lady comes up to me and she goes, Well, I'd like to transfer title. I just bought a duplex and I'd like to transfer title into the name of an LLC. I go, that's a great idea. I go in California, it's $800 per year per entity and she goes, oh, I can't afford that and so I'm giving a talk in San Francisco again and she comes up to me and says, I've been sued by a tenant, I'd like to set up that LLC now. Well, it's too late, right? You know, the tenant rented from you, in your individual name, UX, they have a claim against you as an individual, and they can reach all of your personal assets as a result and once you've been sued, or even threatened to be sued, it's too late to set up an LLC. I mean, you can't put a seatbelt on after the accident. Yeah, right. So you really want to set this up right at the start and I've heard CPAs say, oh, well, you know, just set it up when you can and that's bad advice. I mean, you know, the joke I tell is that CPA stands for can't protect assets. It's just, you need to set this stuff up right now.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. Okay. I think it makes a ton of sense and I love the seatbelt analogy. I think that really hits home for a lot of folks. So as someone that's getting more sophisticated with their investing strategy, what like tools or strategies should they be aware of as they're starting to scale up and they're investing?   Garrett: Well, I think having that Wyoming, LLC is the parent holding LLC is a good strategy. We talked about an Oregon LLC and a Utah LLC owned by one Wyoming LLC and that Wyoming LLC is passive. It's not going to hold real estate, it's not going to do business with anyone, because if someone sued the Wyoming LLC, they could get at Wyoming at the Oregon and the Utah LLC. That's what the Wyoming LLC owes. So that Wyoming LLC is passive, it doesn't do business with anyone because we don't ever want it to be sued. All right. So that's a key strategy in protection. Now, if your clients are holding brokerage accounts, right, bank accounts, gold and silver stock brokerage accounts, in their individual name, the same rules apply. If they get sued personally, and they have all these assets at a Charles Schwab account in their individual name, someone can very easily get those and so what we do is we set up an LLC for the paper assets for the bullion and if you get sued, and that horrific car wreck, they're in an LLC, it's much different, much more difficult for an attorney to get at those because the exclusive remedy in Nevada and Wyoming is what's called the charging order and that is a lien on distributions in the state of California if you own an LLC that owns a piece of real estate in California, the law in California is that the car wreck victim can go to court and the judge can say yes, you've been injured, you can set forth the sale of the duplex. All right, and that is not good asset protection. So we like Wyoming and Nevada where the court says, okay, you have a claim. But here's the remedy that we offer in our state, you are entitled to distributions that come through the LLC, you can't barge in and force the sale of the real estate, you have to wait for distributions to come and that's not a good use of the attorneys time. You know, monitoring if distributions are made there on a contingency fee, they get paid when they collect on the insurance monies. So their time is better spent going to the next case that has insurance. So that Wyoming LLC that offers the charging order remedy, not where they can barge in and force the sale of the real estate but where they have to wait and monitor distributions that go to you. It's a much better system for protection than choosing a weak state like California, Utah is a really weak state, New York is weak. So we have to understand which states are strong and weak and structure your plan accordingly.   Michael: Yeah, interesting and Garrett, talking through all this kind of makes me beg the question of in our Utah, Oregon, Wyoming, California LLC example where the Wyoming LLC owns the properties. There is a holding company rather, if the tenant in Oregon falls and Sue's sues the owner. I mean how far Is this go and where is the court date held, how does that all work?   Garrett: Well, if you, if the tenant has is renting from the Oregon LLC, that's or they're in contract with, so the claim would be tenant would sue the Oregon LLC, the lawsuit would take place in Oregon, right? That's where the property is. That's where the tenant fell. The action stays within the Oregon LLC, it doesn't give the tenant a right to go down to the Wyoming LLC, which is the parent, it doesn't give the tenant the right to go over to the Utah LLC. That's a separate business entity. So the key here is that if the tenant sues, you want to get notice of that lawsuit as soon as possible, right, you want to turn over this claim to your insurance company, so that they can assist in settling the case. Too many people, Michael have this idea that if they use a land trust, where no one will ever know who the owner is, and no one will ever serve you is just nonsense because you want to get notice of the lawsuit as soon as possible. In the Land Trust scenario, they say, well, geez, no one will ever find out who the owner is. Well, what happens is they go to court and they say, Look, we tried to sue the land trust, we couldn't find out who the owner was and the court says, okay, well published notice in the newspaper. So they published it little two point type in the newspaper that We're suing the Oregon LLC, or the Oregon Land Trust, rather and you don't get notice of that either. They go back to court and say we tried to serve them, we published notice in the newspaper, and no one ever showed up. The court says default judgment, meaning the tenant has won and then when they're trying to collect, you know, you find out that you've been sued, the insurance company can say, Well, look, you should have had notice of this lawsuit, we could have defended you, but we're not covering you now. You didn't give us the proper notice and so this whole idea of a land trust and privacy is just nonsense. You want to get notice of a lawsuit, so you can turn it over to your insurance company.   Michael: Yeah, that makes no sense. I guess it's kind of like the ostrich approach like if I stick my head in the ground, I don't see it. I don't hear about it. It's not a problem.   Garrett: Yeah, it is a problem.   Michael: Interesting, okay and Garrett talked to us about some of the different entity structures that are out there. Because there's the C Corp, the S Corp, the single member LLC, multi member LLC, like should we as real estate investors be thinking about utilizing some of these different corporate structures or is really the LLC that that kind of 45 of structures.   Garrett: Pretty much the LLC is the way to go, if you're going to hold real estate, you in some cases, the limited partnership can work. If you're syndicating real estate and you want to absolute control, the limited partnership can work, you're not going to hold title to real estate in a C Corp or an S Corp or any other kind of corporation, tax wise, it's just not the best way to go. So the LLC is pretty much I mean, 98% of our formations for real estate are LLCs. The other 2% would be LPS for syndication purposes, or, you know, for estate planning purposes where mom and dad with an LP, the general partners, which would be another LLC can own as little as 2% and have absolute control over the property. So mom and dad through their LLC have 2% ownership, the limited partnership has 98% ownership owned by the kids as limited partners, and the kids can't force mom and dad to sell the property. So there are cases where the limited partnership works but in the vast majority of cases, it's the LLC that is on title to the real estate.   Michael: Okay. Good to know, good to know. I had another question for it and it totally escaped my mind.   Garrett: Well, how about fail not fail the new book?   Michael: Yeah…   Garrett: You know, people have these promoters out there just say that most wrongheaded stuff about LLC. I mean, they say that you don't need an operating agreement- wrong. They say that you never have to issue stocks or timber membership interests certificates- wrong. So you you'd need to treat your LLC, like a corporation whereby you have to follow these formalities. You have to have the annual meeting, right and the idea that you never have to have a meeting is when you get into a court of law, you're in front of a judge or a jury. I want you to have a minute book with the minutes of every yearly meeting in it and these promoters say, well, you never have to have a meeting. I want you to walk into court and tell the jury, yeah, I ran this property for 12 years and never had a meeting. It just doesn't work.   Michael: It's not going to fly.   Garrett: It's not going to fly. So you know, the reality is, when you're in a courtroom, the reality is not when you're in office with a promoter telling you don't have to do anything to maintain your LLC. It's just not accurate. Yeah, so that's why I wrote the book, because there's so much misinformation out there about corporate formalities. So with a corporation, you need to follow the corporate formalities and with an LLC, you need to follow the corporate formalities because someone suing can pierce the corporate veil on a corporation, they can pierce the veil on an LLC. It's very, and the rules are not hard to follow. They're really easy. It's just if you don't follow them, they can go through the LLC and reach your personal assets.   Michael: Yeah no, that's such a great point and also, Garrett, I mean, to that point, if someone listening is thinking about reaching out to an attorney for help with forming for entities or restructuring entities, I mean, what are some questions they should be asking and things they should be looking for, with an attorney that they want to put on their team?   Garrett: Well, does the attorney invest in real estate? I mean, I think that's a good question to ask because, you know, I invest in real estate, I've been through the wars and so it just helps you appreciate what the client is going through to have done that yourself. You know, I think some attorneys specialize in personal injury. In contract cases. I mean, you want someone who really knows the ins and outs of LLCs, and appreciates that we have good states and weak states, and that you have to put the combination together to fully protect the client.   Michael: Yeah, that makes total sense and we're recording this, let's see September 2022, what is like the reasonable cost to form an LLC, and then what are any kind of maintenance fees associated with maintaining the LLC?   Garrett: Well, we charge a flat fee of $795, in that, and then the filing fees are on top of that. So Wyoming, for example, is $100. That 795 includes the registered agent for the first year. So you're not paying any extra for that. We also have a system whereby we keep all your documents and if you have lost your operating agreement, we give you a portal where you can go on and download your documents. So we kind of have this backup service for you and then so you pay the 795, the first year, and then the second year, it's already formed, so everything drops down, you only pay 125 to four, the registered agent. Now we give you a book that shows you how to do the minutes because you really should do the minutes every year and even though we give you the book with the forms in it, a lot of people don't do it. So we offer a service where for $150 a year, we'll make sure that your minutes are done and we want to keep you in good standing, we want you to have those annual meeting minutes in your file, just in case you don't want to be in a courtroom and say I never had a meeting.   Michael: Right, it's too late, then like you said, Garrett, this has been super informative and people want to reach out, continue the conversation, take advantage of your services, what's the best way for them to get in touch?   Garrett: Well, they can go to https://corporatedirect.com/schedule/ and set up a free 15 minute consultation with an incorporating specialist that you'll work with this person all the way through the process and they'll give you a quote for what our services entail and you know, just see if there's a fit, we're happy to talk to you and so we set up entities in all 50 states, maybe you're you set up your entity already, it's an LLC, you don't have an operating agreement, you haven't issued the membership certificates. Don't tell anyone but we can clean it up for you. We also offer a registered agent service in all 50 states. So if you've got one company here, one company there we can be your one company to serve as the registered agent in all 50 states. So we'd be happy to help your listeners Michael and you know, have them call corporate direct or go, go visit the website, corporatedirect.com and there's plenty of information and articles there and kind of tells you what we do.   Michael: Amazing. Well, Garrett, thank you so much for that. One final question before I let you out of here. We've said the term a couple times. But for anyone who maybe isn't familiar, can you bring them up to speed on what a Registered Agent is and what the importance is?   Garrett: Well, the Registered Agent is someone in the state where you set up the entity or where you're qualified to do business and the idea is that instead of having someone who's trying to sue you search all over the state of Texas for you, right? The Registered Agent is an address where someone suing, you can go and serve the registered agent with service of process. So it's just it's kind of an efficient way for the justice system to work. It's one place where you can serve an LLC or a corporation, and then they're responsible for forwarding that on to you and so you want to use a reputable registered agent service that knows the importance of a lawsuit, if we get a notice of a service, we're on the phone immediately to our client, because you've only got 30 days to get an attorney and answer that complaint. So you don't want a mom and pop that is going to go out of business or doesn't appreciate the consequences of being served with a lawsuit. So it's an important function and if you fail to pay the Registered Agent, they're going to refuse service a process and then they're, you know, the person suing us is going to go back to court and get, you know, authorization to publish notice in the newspaper, and again, you're not going to get noticed to this cert of the claim. So you want to have that registered agent on your team at all times.   Michael: Yeah, yeah, super great point and the Justice Department looking for efficiencies. That's not something I maybe I've ever heard before. So really exciting stuff.   Garrett: It's something that does exists, so…   Michael: Oh, Garrett, thank you. Again, this was super informative, and I definitely would love to have you back on once your book comes out in November.   Garrett: That sounds great. Thanks, Michael.   Michael: You got it, take care. We'll chat soon.   Garrett: All right.   Michael: All right, everyone, and that was our episode a big thank you to Garrett for coming on. Definitely take advantage of that. 15 minute free consult if you're interested. As always, if you liked the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review. We'd love to hear from you all and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

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…

Derek Dombeck, a Real Estate Expert hosts and runs the WiscoREIA based out of Wausau, WI. There he coaches and teaches other real estate investors his keys to success. He is currently hosting 3 national Mastermind groups called the R.E. Circle of Trust and puts on an Advanced training and Networking event each winter called The Generations of Wealth Voyage. In the last podcast episode, Derek talked about creative financing solutions for real estate investors. In today's episode he will be tackling the other side of the coin and will share some insights about private capital, lending and how that plays into real estate investing. Episode Link: https://gowvoyage.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 today with me, I have Derek Dombeck again on the podcast and for those of you who missed his first episode, I highly recommend you going back and giving that a listen. But Derek is the owner of best REIA funding a private lender, he's also an investor. So today, we're gonna be talking about private lending, and also what we need to know as investors and how to utilize it. So let's get into it.   Derek, what's going on, man? Good to see you. Thanks for coming back on the pod.   Derek: Yeah, absolutely. Glad to be back.   Michael: I'm super excited to have you on. So last time, we talked about creative financing solutions for real estate investors. Now we're going to be tackling kind of the other side of the coin and so talk to us about private capital and lending and how that plays into real estate investing.   Derek: Well, I like to talk to our clients that are coming to us for loans in more along the lines of what how would they want to structure if they were the lender? So it makes more sense to them why are we asking for what we're asking for? We design our company, primarily because we were borrowers ourselves, and we want to do it in a way that would be probed by our borrower, but still safe for our investors. So a couple examples, we don't collect monthly payments, we don't collect interest payments, we let it accrue. Very, very few lenders do that. The methodology is that when you're when you're the lender, and a payment is missed or late, that gives you an indication of something could be going wrong with the loan and that's true. But we don't want to have to collect payments every month on 175 outstanding loans, which is typically what we're carrying at any given point in time. It's another staff member that we would have to have basically just to do that do collections. So as a borrower when I was borrowing the money, that's what I would have wanted, right? As a lender, it's different. So a lot of times I'm trying to have these conversations with our borrowers, as I mentioned, in a way that shows them that we're their ally, we're not just somebody sitting across the big fancy desk with a, you know, a suit and tie on looking down their noses at them. We want them to really realize that we are their business partner, in one way, shape, or form. Most interactions with borrowers if they've never met me before, it just starts out with a brief overview of our loan program and I often tell them, well, if you were going to be the lender, if it was your money, what would you want to see happen, especially if they're, you know, if your listeners are out there trying to apply for loans. There's three things two to three things that I think are super important. First one is whether they're going to a bank, a hard money lender, or a private lender, or their great uncle, have all of your documentation ready to go. At the I mean, at the drop of the phone, right? Like we get off the phone, bam, you can submit it. What drives every lender crazy is when they send stuff in piecemeal. You know, and we always have to ask for it and then we have to remind them and follow up that makes you look so foolish in the eyes of a lender. Okay, another thing for us, we don't require appraisals, but most people do. So, and we don't require appraisals in our loans, because I don't trust appraisers. They have no skin in the game, we have way more experience. But we're in a niche lending market of lending on rehabs and some appraisers may never have picked up a hammer in their life. How do they know what the after repair value is going to be based off of a scope of work? You know, if I get a scope of work that's submitted on an application and they claim they're gonna put a brand new kitchen in for $2,000 I'm gonna call bull ** because I know what it cost to put in a low end, middle end or high end kitchen. But again, as a borrower trying to help your listeners in that regard. If you're going to an appraiser or you're coming to us and we don't require appraisals, but having your data somewhere you had to come up with your numbers, right? When you made your offer to buy the property, I want to see, an appraiser may not want to because some of them don't necessarily like to help. But I want to see, because, you know, some of them are just arrogant. Let's be honest at it.   Michael: It's the ego play, yeah…   Derek: It's an ego play. But for me, it's not for me, it's required. I want to see those comps, or CMA, or a BPO, from a real estate broker, something to show me how did you come up with your valuations? If it's going to be a rental property, where's your cash flow analysis, you wouldn't believe it how many times we get applications in and they want to rent borrow money from our short term to fix the property, get a tenant in there and then refinance. But yet they have not talked to any long term lenders, typically banks to even know what their refinance terms would be or if they'd be able to get refinanced. They haven't done a cash flow analysis. Again, have everything ready for your lender as much as possible, right? Gosh, what else as a borrower, you know, coming in with a backup plan, a plan B, is so crucial. Our job as the lender is to expect you to fail and every question we ask is, is asked, because we want to know, if something goes wrong? Can we either take the property back or lien against the, you know, the borrower to get our money back? I mean, that's what it's all about. We are asset based lenders, banks are gonna look at the asset and their income, every lender is a little different.   But the bottom line is, can we protect our investors' money? Can we protect our money and if that borrower walked out of closing, sign the papers and got hit by a bus and died? Can we recoup our money, right? Borrowers don't think that way. Borrowers think sun shines, and sunshine and unicorns, right. Nothing's ever gonna go wrong, the project is going to be on time on budget, we're gonna get under budget. You know, it's total bul****. But that's, that's our jobs to explain that to them in a way that's, you know, we're not trying to drive them from our business, we want to do business with everybody, that's got to legit good deal. But they've also got to be realistic and the number one, two spots that most borrowers come in sunshine and unicorns, their budget is too low on their renovations, and their comps are too high. So they want to use the top comps and we don't, why don't we because the markets shift. Now, if they came in on evaluation, I'm going to use Wisconsin numbers, you know, because that's what I'm used to, if they come in with an after repair value of $200,000 and I look at the comps that they submitted to me and there was one house that sold for 200,000. But the majority of them sold for 175. Which one do you think is the lender want to use?   Michael: Yeah, the 175.   Derek: Right, so we're going to lend based on 175. Now, that means they're going to have to put some of their own or more of their own money into the deal. If they sell for 200 bonus for them. That's great, I hope they can. But as the lender, we can't live on hopes and dreams, we got to live on reality and what happens most of the time is they're trying to come in with as little money out of their pocket as possible by using the highest comps, the lender takes on all the risk, which is why we use the middle of the road comps and I don't go to the very low end either. But we're using the middle and again, if they have to put in 10 20,000 extra dollars, and they're confident in their numbers, they shouldn't have a problem putting in 10 to 20,000 extra because according to them, it's going to sell for 200 they should get their money back and then some but when you start changing that or having that conversation with them. Boy, it's amazing when they have to use their own money, how they start to sing a little bit different tune.   Michael: Yeah. Interesting. So it's almost like you have to protect them from themselves.   Derek: Absolutely and we will tell them that I mean, there's plenty of times where we have just flat out told people you should walk away from this deal. Like we want to do business with you in the future. We want to give you a loan, but you are setting yourself up for failure on this deal and most lenders wouldn't typically do that most lenders will just say, we're only comfortable lending up to x, go ahead and do the deal and then when they fail, the lender will take the property back and the lender is in good position depending on loan to value. But we don't, I don't really like that model. I mean, it's certainly not our model and at the end of the day, if I take care of that investor, and I save them from themselves this time, hopefully when they come back around, they're more educated, and they bring us a really great loan, they've got a really great project. That's what it's supposed to be all about.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about that for a minute, Derek. So it sounds like the things that you asked for, from your borrowers. It's really an opportunity for them to showcase their experience level that they've taught, crossed, the T's dotted the eyes and really thought about it and in very proactive in that, what if someone's just getting started? I mean, how much hand holding should someone expect from their lender or can they expect from their lender to help them get to a point where they're feeling confident or do you tell people hey, you know, go kind of skin, your knees somewhere else, and then come back to us when you're a little bit more polished?   Derek: So the answer is, it depends. There's, most lenders out there do not want to deal with brand new people. I mean, it's just a reality of life. We are different in that regard, too because we may say to the applicant, alright, we want you to partner with somebody, and that person has to have, you know, we'd like to see at least three deals worth of experience. Now, I don't care if they get mentored for free, or if they split the deal 50-50. I don't care what that partnership looks like. But we would like to see somebody with experience that is backing this deal and if they can't do that, or they don't want to do that, then we typically would say sorry, but we can't lend on this deal right now and if they don't know anyone else, which happens, we have an extensive network throughout the state. So we can pretty much in any market, we can line them up with somebody that would be willing to, to mentor them and get some feedback from them. So but I don't think there's a whole lot of lenders that would do that much hand holding… Yeah, you know.   Michael: And that makes sense to walk us through because you're a private money lender. So you are kind of this middle person where you take investor money, and then lend it out to other investors that are that buying real estate. So when the Fed talks about interest rate hikes are this sort of thing? Like, how do you set your pricing and what should listeners be expecting if they're going to private lenders in terms of rates, right now, we're recording this almost near early September and August 2022. What are you seeing an image of you'll be expecting.   Derek: So it's very volatile, depending on where you are in the country, and how much competition there is, we certainly have national, hard money lenders that are that are, you know, advertising, much cheaper rates than we offer. But they sell off their loans. Almost many before the ink was even dry. They're white labeling almost everything, which means that there's a hedge fund or another note buyer, that is fronting the cash to close the loan and at the closing table, that loan gets transferred and you know, the person that you signed the paperwork with may still be the servicer of the loan. So you may not even realize it's been sold off. But most of the national lending companies, that's what they do. The challenge with that is, when the borrower gets to any kind of a challenge, we'll call it with their loan, maybe they need an extension, or something's just going terribly bad. Those lenders are not going to be willing to work with them because they don't own the loan anymore. It's gone. It's in some hedge fund on Wall Street, and it's just a number. It's just a loan number, they don't care. They just okay, you failed, get out, we'll take your property. As private lenders, we don't currently we don't sell off any of our loans.   We are 100% privately backed, so I don't have any institutional money at all. That has their thumb on us telling us what we can and can't do and our investors are all individual people there, some are mom and pop. Some are, you know, a little bit higher net worth individuals, but we can have conversations with them. So for example, let's just assume that the markets crashed and 20% of our portfolio defaulted and we had to go take these properties back well, if the market isn't really viable, viable option to sell them off and be made whole, we can go to our investors and we've done this with all of our investors. Prior to them even getting started with us, we have this conversation, but we can go to them say, okay, you know, we still myself, my business partner still run a full time real estate acquisition company, we have rentals, we have everything in place. So we're gonna have to take these, you know, whatever it is 20, 30, 40 properties, and we're going to lease them out and we're going to just collect rents until the market comes back and our investors are, that's not their first choice, but they're okay with it, because they know it's a Plan B, I mentioned that before, you know, the, the borrower's don't want to come in with a plan B or Plan C, we've got that in place with all of our investors upfront and, you know, we pay our investors 9% currently, maybe they would have to agree to go down to 7% or 8%, it would have to look at the cash flow numbers. But that's still better than the alternative of losing money.   Michael: At zero, yeah, zero or negative.   Derek: As far as rates are concerned with us, what we pay our investors dictates what we charge and at 9%, we've got a three to four point spread on interest rate. So we charge 12%, throughout the bulk of the state of Wisconsin, and we charge 13%, currently in Milwaukee and it's really just to be 100% honest with you and your listeners, Milwaukee, we could probably charge more, because our competition is charging 15%. So we don't really have any intentions of increasing our rates, we don't have a lot of junk fees, that's another thing your listeners really should consider looking at when we're looking at any lender, the interest rates might be much, much better, but their junk fees, I know of a lender within my state, who charged something like $3,500 to get paid off. In order for you to pay the loan off, you had to pay a payoff fee, which is asinine. We see a lot of lenders that are charging several $100 to do a construction draw, or a loan or an escrow draw for your construction proceeds, that's your money as the borrower and you now have to pay three, four or $500 to get your money out of escrow. It's crazy, you know…   Michael: I've seen that.   Derek: All these fees are they're nuts. We do charge an extension fee if they go past our six month term and it's equal equals to what if we weren't able to redeploy that money and another 12% in three origination points. So for an extension fee, for us, it's a point per month, up to three more months. Why because we want that money back to redeploy it. So we could charge three more points, right? So but it's not some 10 points in some crazy, crazy astronomical numbers, it's really just trying to get our same level return on our money, whether it's extended or redeployed to a new loan.   Michael: Okay and people listening might be getting excited about using private money, because it sounds like so much more flexible, and just investor friendly. Other people might be a little bit scared hearing this and so I'm wondering if you can talk to if those people are listening, can they get involved on the investor side of things where they're funding other people's deals, and just clipping that 9% coupon or whatever the return is?   Derek: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if whether it's with me or with somebody else, I'm more than happy to talk to anybody about it and if you invest with us, you do if you don't, I don't, that's fine. But I would say there's some very important things that everyone should know if you went and borrowed money from your family. Okay, so maybe they're talking about a private lender being an individual that they have relationship with, or they might be using somebody's retirement account. I've seen this happen so many times, it makes me cringe. There was a couple young couple, I mentored them years ago, now they're, they're super successful, but they were just getting into the business and they were, they bought a flip house and they said, We borrow the money from my uncle at 2% and we can pay it back when we sell the house. So that's fantastic. That you know, this was back before 2% was popular, right? Yeah and I said, okay, did you put a note and a mortgage in place to protect your uncle and they said, no, he didn't care. He just said, pay me back when you get it, you know, when you get the money? I said, okay, do you have the property insurance? You know, the listing them? In case the place burns to the ground? Nope. Did you get them title insurance? Nope. All these things like they did not protect their family at all. So picture them getting sued by a contractor or anybody. Here's a free and clear property without a recorded mortgage against it and not and they lose it. Let's say we lose a lawsuit property gets taken away from them. Now they still owe their uncle all this money, and he had nothing to protect himself or we go back to the they get hit by a bus walking out of the title company, right?   Property, the money's gone, the money went to whoever they bought the property from, how does that family member collect or get their money back, if they don't have a mortgage in place, they can't foreclose on the property... So I just caution, anybody that's, you know, on the borrower side, that's going to borrow money from friends or family, make sure you always get title insurance to protect your lender. You know, the property insurance, the lender should be listed as a lender, not as an additional insured, there's a big difference and, you know, go through a title company, go through a closing attorney, make sure everything's aboveboard note mortgage in place, or deed of trust, depending on your state because you're just, I mean, you're hurting your family if you don't do it the right way. So always, always, always protect your lender, no matter what and if you're going to take a loss on a property or a project, I don't care what it takes, you make sure your lender is made whole, because we've lent money to people that screwed up their deals, but they took care of us and next time around, we lent the money again but you got to take care of your lenders. On the other side of it, if you want to be a lender, there's a lot that you have to consider just the whole underwriting of the deal. Is it a good deal? Is it not a good deal and how are you going to make sure that you get paid back are you going to have third party that goes there and make sure that the property is being managed, right, or if it's rehab, or you're gonna have somebody that's checking on the project and releasing money on construction escrow drawers. If you do want to collect monthly payments, who's going to do that who's going to service the loan. So there's a lot of things that it don't get me wrong, it's a great business, but there's a lot of things that people don't necessarily think about and I've seen it happen enough times where, you know, somebody has 100 200 $300,000 sitting around, and they just do a handshake deal, and lend the money to somebody, again, not getting the proper documentation in place. We had one ***hole and I say that, because he really was an ***hole, he took money out of his disabled brothers, IRA, to fund a rehab project and he had three other lenders on that project and he never he told his lenders, he was going to record all their mortgages for them and he never recorded the mortgages and it turned into this in this really nasty lawsuit. But he lost his disabled brothers IRA in that transaction and he's just the snake, you know, and they're out there. But you got to protect yourself. You know, I still believe in taking somebody at their word and believing the handshake. But that doesn't mean you don't write down and memorialize what you just shook hands about.   Michael: Right and if someone wants to get involved in the lending side of things, but you know what, you just said, what you just shared kind of makes them a little bit gun shy, or they want to have someone else take care of the day to day operations. I mean, are there businesses that they can plug into it? So here, take my money, pay me a return, I don't want to hear about it or know about what you're doing with it.   Derek: I mean, there is there's a lot of crowdfunding companies that you know, that became very popular. It seems to have died off here lately. You know, I don't hear as much or see as much marketing about crowdfunding. I would say the best way to do it is either find somebody in your local market at a RIA meeting, or, you know, a meetup group or even online, Bigger Pockets or something like that. But you got to spend some time getting to know who you're doing business with and, you know, Google the hell out of them, do background checks, all that kind of stuff. I invite anybody to Google me I have nothing to hide. You know, I'm never I just, I never tried to screw anybody over you know, and I mean, yeah, and it shows. But at the end of the day, you've got to know, this is I don't think this will ever circle back around. But I was invited to be on somebody else's podcast and I won't say the name. But then that gentleman was having a four day online conference and he asked me to speak for 90 minutes on this conference and I said, yeah, absolutely, I'd love to do it. He was expecting, you know, four or 500 people and so I was gonna send it out to my email list and help advertise it for him and it wasn't out there for 30 minutes, and two of my closest friends, one being a really good attorney were emailing me saying, Have you lost your fricking marbles? Like this guy is the biggest con artist and scammer there is and he actually the attorney sent me case studies of actual cases that this guy lost, and how he's not in jail, I don't know and I was just, you know, took and took him at his word. He's got a reputable podcast, right? So I'll go and speak on his conference. Well, who will you associate with can reflect very horribly on you, especially on social media. So I didn't mark it to anybody at that point, I still, I still spoke because I said I would and I believe in you know, I gave my word and I and there was a lot of other speakers at that event that were good. But I would never do business with that man and so that's the same thing. If you're going to lend money, or you're going to borrow money. Do you want to borrow money from a lender that doesn't want to be flexible if you run into trouble? Yeah, for us, we've only had to foreclose on nine properties in the last 10 or 11 years of lending, which is, is very, very, very low as far as the default rate. That's not to say we haven't had other people that had problems because we have, we have borrowers that have problems every week. But we're there to help them work through it, versus the lender, that's lending money as a backdoor way of getting properties.   Michael: It's a much more adversarial relationship.   Derek: Right, so you got to vet your lender, no different than if you were vetting somebody that you're going to invest with, we have a very clear in writing no ***holes policy within our company. I swear to God! Michael: I love it.   Derek: If I have somebody that and this has happened, I've had people that had several million dollars that approached us and said, We want to invest in your company and after half an hour, 45 minutes of talking with them, we just knew they were going to be the biggest pain in our *** and we turned them down. Same thing with our borrowers. If our borrowers stopped communicating with us, and stop doing what we agreed for them to do, then the ***holes  policy kicks in and we will have to default we will have to foreclose or at least we're not going to give them a loan next time. But the life is a lot better when you wake up in the morning and enjoy doing what you're doing and dealing with people that are not fun to deal with takes away from that. Yeah, we just don't do it. You just avoid it entirely. So I'd love to work with any of your listeners, unless they're an  *hole. Don't call me.   Michael: Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Derek, on that note for people that do want to reach out that do want to work with you that have more questions about private lending, what's the best way for them to do so?   Derek: My, my personal email address is Derek spelled DEREK, @ bestreifunding.com (Derek@bestreifunding.com)  and I keep an eye on my own emails, my if I miss something, my assistant will grab it. But I'd love to chat with anybody that's got questions and again, it's this isn't a sales pitch. I mean, if somebody just says legit questions about lending, and they have no intentions of wanting to work with me as an investor, whatever, that's totally fine. I don't it's not about that for me and then the other thing I'm writing a book right now about lending in from start to finish. What happens when an application comes in all the way through closing and servicing after the fact and that's going to be coming out towards the tail end of the year, November December it'll be published. So I'd love to give your listeners that for free the electronic version for free.   Michael: Awesome.   Derek: So they just send me an email that same email address (Derek@bestreifunding.com) , and say, hey, I heard you on this podcast and put you on the list when the books published we'll get it out to you.   Michael: Fantastic. Thank you so much and I just have an ask for all of our listeners that do reach out to Derek if you wouldn't mind please referencing that you heard him on the Remote Real Estate Investor in the subject line. So he knows where you're coming to him from. That would be super helpful.   Derek: Absolutely.   Michael: Well, Derek, this was great, man. Thank you again for coming on the show. Really appreciate it and I'm sure we'll be chatting soon. Can't wait, can't wait to read the book.   Derek: Yeah, I can't wait to finish the book because it's great when you're writing a book, except some weeks are more stressful than others trying to hit deadlines and stuff. So I'm looking forward to it, but I'm really looking forward to it being done, too.   Michael: I can imagine I can imagine. Well, hey, man, we'll definitely be in touch soon.   Derek: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me.   Michael: You got it, take care.   All right, everyone. That was our episode, a big thank you to Derek for coming on again and sharing his time and knowledge with us. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to give us a rating or review wherever it is eat your podcasts, and we look forward to seeing in the next one. Happy investing…

Raising finance for new real estate projects is difficult. Property development firms face interest rates as high as 29% when working with banking institutions as single-source loan providers. They also face challenges with multiple loan sources as crowd financing can be difficult to administer. Blockchain simplifies access to alternative financing models by facilitating investor management for developers and ensuring investment transparency and continuous ROI tracking for investors. In today's episode Goeffrey Thompson, Chief Blockchain Officer of Roofstock, and Sanjay Raghavan, Head of Structured Securities and Co-head of Digital Securities Initiative, walk us through what blockchain technology is and how they are tokenizing properties in a revolutionary way to buy and sell property.     Episode Link: https://onchain.roofstock.com/ https://twitter.com/rsonchain --- 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 I'm joined by Geoffrey Thompson, who's the chief blockchain Officer here at Roofstock and Sanjay Raghavan, who's the head of web three initiatives here at Roofstock and we're gonna be talking today about what blockchain is, and how it applies to us as real estate investors. So let's get into it.   Goeff, and Sanjay, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I am super excited to chat with you both.   Sanjay: Likewise.   Goeff: Thank you for having us, thank you.   Michael: No, absolutely, absolutely. So I know a little bit, obviously, who you guys are because we work together. But for anyone who isn't familiar with you. Give us a quick and dirty description who you are, and what is it that you're doing at Roofstock? Goeff, I'll kick it over to you first.   Goeff: Sure. So I'm Goeffrey Thompson. I currently have the title of Chief blockchain Officer at Roofstock. Previously, I was General Counsel and I've been a lawyer for by training for a long time and now heading up the blockchain initiative at rootstock together with Sanjay.   Michael: Awesome, great.   Sanjay: I'm Sanjay, head of web three initiatives. Previously, I was leading securities initiatives at roof stock coming up on actually three years this week. So super exciting tomorrow, I think.   Michael: Right on, so really quick follow up questions for you both. Jeff. Were you just like a crypto guy in your everyday life? I mean, how does a real out as a lawyer turn into a blockchain official at a company at the C suite level? I mean, that's incredible.   Goeff: Yeah, I kind of backed into it. That wasn't a plan but I had been advising friends. Since 2017, during the ICO boom, the initial coin offering boom, and I started hearing people in my network, talk about it and say things like, oh, well, it's not a security because it's a coin. So you don't have to follow the securities laws, you know, and I thought, I don't get a lot of the technical stuff that talking about, but I know I can help them with the legal stuff. So then I just I was acting as legal advisor for a couple of years and, and then Gary, our CEO knew that and last year, maybe 12 months ago or a little bit more, our board came to our CEO and said, you guys, Roofstock, you need to get smart on blockchain. We're not saying you have to do it. But you know, we want you to have an idea of whether there's something there and so he asked me and Sanjay, because he knew I had some crypto background and there's a lot of legal and obviously, the financial structure is critical as well, so we kind of got into it together.   Michael: Awesome and Sanjay, at the risk of sounding like a total rookie, what the hell is web three man, I hear so much about it. Break it down for us.   Sanjay: All right. So I know it's so web low. So let's take a step back, right. So web one, which was kind of the first incarnation of the internet, right? There were sites that had static information, you could like type a URL, URL and go and, like, consume that information. But that's all you could do is just a read only type of a platform and then a few years later, the internet evolved to kind of web two, which widely is known as the read write version of the internet. So not only could you consume information, but you could go and, you know, provide information and content to the internet as well as a consumer and what happened with web two was it you know, that ability to read and write created all kinds of new interactions, and that allowed a lot of kind of the internet economy to bloom around it, where the Googles and the apples and eBays and other large companies were able to curate a lot of the content and manage a lot of the traffic. But you know, with social media and stuff, you are providing content as well, and you are consuming content, there was ecommerce, so a lot of these things came about, but the power resided with a very few large corporations that kind of controlled all of these transactions and the when, when web one started, the kind of original vision behind it was a more collaborative environment, where the consumers and the creators and consumers could actually work with each other and use a token economy and share you know, revenue and monetization. So that idea of you know, read, write and then adding on to it at the end. So it's a read write own type of economy that's decentralized. permissionless trustless has its own native payment rails, where the content creators and con Then consumers are all working together and you know, there's no power resting with large corporations, but it's, you know, giving power back to the people. So that's how that's how I would sort of succinctly describe, three and it's so it's a sort of a new way of thinking about things and it's super exciting.   Michael: Yeah it does sound super exciting and so give us all like a background again, treat me like a third grader, because that's probably my IQ level when it comes to the crypto and blockchain world. Give us all an idea of like, what is blockchain and what is cryptocurrency and then we'll get in maybe on how to be thinking about it. With regard to the real estate space and why it even belongs here you don't think this…   Goeff: Yep, sure, so the core concept for blockchain is that it's a network that can be validated the data that's recorded onto the network, which is the chain can be validated by an a limitless number of third parties who aren't organized or connected in any other way. So these are called validators I could have when you could have when they just computers that read the information that's coming in from the blockchain, they perform some mathematical calculations, and then they verify that the data that's been submitted is, is what it says it is and then at that point, it's formalized and recorded to the block and then, so these blocks are really just pieces of data, data that had been put together and then as you form one block after another, that becomes the chain. So it's really just a chain of data that's been validated by third parties that are completely decentralized. So why is that important because it means that there's no third party, a corporation or government, whoever it might be, that can intervene in the functioning of the blockchain, once it's up and running, and you have enough people who are validating and writing to the to the system, it goes infinitely, and it can't be shut down and so the first use case that really grabbed a lot of attention was payments, right? That's what Sanjay was alluding to, in the early you know, the current web two universe, you don't have an easy way to send value to another person without going through a bank or a financial services company, Blockchain, Bitcoin allows you to do that, it's just simply on the on the chain, if you have value in the in the form of Bitcoin, you can send it to any other address anywhere in the world, instantaneously and no one can stop you from doing that. So this really arose from kind of an idealistic perception, like, we have to be able to have to guarantee our own freedom, you know, the government can't intervene and prevent me from sending money to you and that's where, you know, it came from, like the sophisticated cryptographers mathematicians who had an idealistic view, and that's where Bitcoin came from and then since then, it's expanded to a lot more utility, where you can do much, many more things other than just send payments. You can, you know, NFT, you can have lending platforms, you can have social media companies that are effectively on a blockchain and can't be shut down or controlled by third party. So that's, you know, that's the overview of kind of where it came from and why it's important today. Sanjay, anything to add?   Sanjay: Yeah, no, taking a step from there right and that's exactly right, Geoffrey, the original idea was, you know, this all came about during the great financial crisis of 2008 2000, you know, 10 or so, where people thought that these, you know, financial intermediaries are, you know, in control of our lives and so Bitcoin kind of, you know, that was the reason why it came about as a peer to peer system where you can exchange value without involving these intermediaries. But then over the years, we've kind of seen that world expand rapidly and there's other cryptocurrencies now and one of the notable ones is Ethereum and on the Ethereum network, there's actually the ability to create what's known as a smart contract and a smart contract is essentially a piece of computer code that will execute based on a certain event occurring and why that is important is if you think about it from a disintermediation perspective, you know, in a transaction where two parties are involved, and party A needs to provide a good or service and party B needs to make a payment for that. You need a way to make sure that both parties are adhering to their portion of the agreement, or contract, right and so oftentimes, what happens in the financial services world is, in order to make sure that both parties are compliant with their aspects of the contract. You create an intermediary in the middle that takes that position of collecting information or payment from both parties and sending it across and a very common example of this in real estate. Michael, you as a, an owner of, you know, dozens of properties, you've gone through this process many, many times. But you there's an escrow agent involved exactly what I was thinking sure that, you know, right, the property title moves over to, you know, the buyer and the money goes to the seller, right. But imagine you had a piece of computer software that executed on a sale, and it made sure that the two parties were both appropriately receiving what they were expected to receive and there was no intermediary involved in this process. So this, this all executed, basically on the click of a button, right? Like that would be game changing in the real estate world and that's what we're trying to do now with through stock on chain.   Michael: Holy crap. For anybody who's not watching this video, I just didn't pick up my jaw up off the floor, because that was totally a game. So I have so many questions, I want to take just a step back and so Goeff, you were talking about this, these validations that can be done by any number of people. So I'm thinking about like a real world example. So if I go to the store, and I buy something with my credit card, I put down my credit card, they give me the goods and then in this case, would the validator be like the credit card company that says, look, this is the charge that like how do I think about that from like a traditional example.   Goeff: That's exactly right, the validator or usually there are multiple, but they'll they play the function of the credit card company. But instead of sending your data and the transaction data to the credit card company, where the credit, you know, the data goes to the credit card company, the credit card company says okay, this person has credit and the transaction is now going to be posted on their account, and then they send the okay back to the merchant. Instead, the merchant would send the data to a blockchain, the blockchain validators would pick up that transaction, they would validate that, you know, all of the details are the same. Usually, it's a small number of validators that have to agree on the transaction details to make sure that there aren't, you know, nothing's been missed and then once they've reached that consensus, whether that's five or 10, validators, or whatever it may be at that point, then it goes back to the merchant and as it says, The Merton now the blockchain has been updated to show that this transaction occurred, Goeff, or you or whoever was spending the money now no longer has that money. So I had that money in Bitcoin. I gave it to the merchant, the merchant side of the blockchain and said, hey, guys, can you verify that you're debiting Goeff's account and you're adding it to my account? Everyone said, okay, verified, validated, coming back. Now, I can't spend that money, I don't have it anymore and it's in your account. So that's, you know, a high level how that would work.   Michael: Okay   Sanjay: And a couple of more things there, right. Like, if you, you know, credit card transactions for small dollar values is one example. But if you look at larger dollar values, and there's ACH transactions that take three or four days to get validated through the banking system, a wire transaction, if you're trying to buy a house, and you need to make a wire payment, you're rushing to the nearest retail brand, scheduling an appointment to go into the wire, right?   Michael: It's such a pain.     Sanjay: It is all such a pain and like, imagine you had a way 24/7, right, like, you're looking at, you're browsing a site today, you find a property you really like, you want to buy that property, it's Sunday night at 10pm. You just click the button, and you know, your wallet says you have enough money and the smart contract validates that you have the money transfer property over to you, right, like imagine a world that's like that, where you don't have to worry about waiting three or four days for an ACH or running to your bank and getting an appointment waiting in line to get a wire done and it's all literally you're doing all this from your computer, click of a button 24/7 AMS and payments do anywhere in the world.   Goeff: And the cost is in most cases, negligible. You know, the wire fee is whatever 35 $50 It takes a day, you know, some amount of time to process ACH could be clawed back. The claw back concept that exists with ACH that doesn't happen in blockchain that doesn't exist. Like once it's final, it's validated, it's done and you could, you know, a simple payment transaction might cost from a few cents to a few bucks, but it's not going to be anywhere near the cost of a wire transfer.   Sanjay: And the transaction is immutably recorded on the blockchain, nobody can contest it, because you can go and open up that transaction on the blockchain and say, these two parties agreed to this transaction and it's hot, you know, it was hashed on the blockchain and there's this unique hash that represents this transaction, right. So there's no disputing later on. The parties agree that transaction gets done, it's instantaneously recorded and so that that makes this platform as a technology choice. You have innumerable number of possibilities because once you have those types of payment rails, you can build all kinds of applications around it.   Michael: This is insane, you guys. So like, we were talking about the validators and Goeff, you were saying, whatever, four or five or 10 validation points and people are doing it. So is it literally like people on their computer going, like watching their screen for these payments going back and forth or is this happening automatically?   Goeff: No, it can happen. It happens, it's automatic. Yeah, you set up a server that has the right hardware, there are different hardware and software requirements for different blockchains. But it runs silently in the background, or in some cases, it's, it's loud, because there are a lot of fans this morning.   Michael: I heard that, yeah…   Goeff: Yeah, but it's happening 24/7 In the background, and, and in most cases, it's just set or forget, set and forget, you don't have to be online all the time, doing anything manually.   Sanjay: And one other thing I wanted to point out was, you know, obviously, with banks, you can go there on weekends, after hours bank holidays and such, but even a MasterCard or Visa, if they're having a problem with their servers or something, you can have outages where you know, for a couple of hours, you're not able to do any credit card transactions, right? Whereas on the blockchain, that doesn't happen, right because there's blocks can be like, even if my computer was one of the validators, but for whatever reason, it's not working right now there are hundreds of other computers that are doing the same thing that are waiting to pick up the next block and compute it and solve the puzzle and so, you know, as Goeff was saying earlier, once the blockchain is up and running, and there's, you know, enough infrastructure in terms of validators that support that blockchain, you know, it's then it's permanently out there, and it's you can shut it down.   Michael: So that kind of brings to my next question and so you both are talking about this decentralization aspect and I think I've heard so much about the crypto world, it's like getting away from big banks and government and that sort of thing. But if this information is, I mean, it's public at this point, right? When I, Goeff, when I send you money or buy a service from you, it's now public information.   Sanjay: Just to just to clarify on that, right, the part of the information that's public is that this wallet address transacted with this other wallet address. But it's not necessarily public that, you know, Michael transacted with Goeff, right. So what's publicly stored is just the, you know, so, you know, when we talk about privacy, oftentimes, people use the words privacy and anonymity interchangeably, but they're two different things, right? You know, in one example, where there's just two wallets transacting with each other, you both still have full anonymity but the privacy concerning the fact that the transaction occurred between two wallets, that may be public information, but that's the kind of subtle.   Michael: Got it, yeah okay. Okay, that makes total sense, because, well, I was going with the question is, if I send Jeff money for a service, I mean, that could be a taxable event on the traditional world, like, if you were a credit card company, or you were a merchant, I send you that you have sales tax to pay. So I'm imagining government's point to the me sending you money and say, well, now we're going to tax it. But Sanjay, what you're saying is that the actual dollar amount, or what it was for, might not be available to them, all they could see was, someone sent money to someone else, end of story…   Sanjay: We use you the amount of money that went from a to b, but you don't like people don't automatically know who a and who B where the US are going as far as…   Michael: Or what it's for…   Sanjay: Right, in the US people are required, basically to report their own earnings and that's, you know, whether it's on the in the crypto side or non-crypto side, but, you know, you're required to report your earnings and in other countries and jurisdictions, they've passed laws where crypto transactions are not necessarily taxable. So, like, if you bought Bitcoin for, you know, $5,000 and sold it for $20,000, you may not have capital gains taxes in other jurisdictions in the US we do and that's, you know, self-reported, for the most part,   Michael: This is so nuts. Okay, so, taking one more step forward, we're talking about these coins. We talked about Bitcoin, and we mentioned Ethereum, as well, what gives these things of value? Is it just that we have generally I mean, the same thing can be said for the dollar, it's enough people have accepted or any currency have enough people have bought into this idea that this piece of paper that has an old president's face on it is worth what we've decided it's worth, same thing for Bitcoin and Ethereum.   Goeff: Exactly the same. All right, yeah. Nothing else. There's nothing else to we, you know, we all agree today that Bitcoin is worth 20,000. If it goes up, then you know, that's literally the market price. It's set by the people in the market who are transacting on a you know, every second and so it's a very clear pricing mechanism.   Sanjay: In a way you know, it's pure demand and supply that drive pricing for the these types of alternative currencies or crypto currencies, the dollar, for example, you know, we price $1 bill to be worth $1, right and so you will always be able to redeem $1 for $1. But, you know, inflation and other characteristics might make it less valuable to you, right like if a loaf of bread was 50 cents, and now it's $1, you know, you're paying more money to get it, but you know, you're not paying more bills necessarily, you know, like, the dollar bill is always $1 Bill, right? Whereas, one, one Bitcoin or one Ethereum, its value can go up over time, almost like the stock market, right? If you're looking at a share of Microsoft, it's $100 today, but because we all think Microsoft is very valuable, or Apple is very valuable, and the next iPhone is the most sexiest thing that's come out, and therefore, you know, we think we should, you know, put more value to the Apple stock, right? So the concept is similar with Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's simply people that are there are people who are, you know, buyers, and then there's their long on Bitcoin and then there are people who are short on Bitcoin and if there are more people long than short, then the price is going to go up. If there are more people short at a particular point in time price will come down. There's fewer demand.   Michael: Cool and so we mentioned, I think you both mentioned a couple of different use cases for the blockchain and for crypto. What, like, where do you see this going and for Roofstock, specifically, maybe you could talk about what we're doing as a company with regards to blockchain and where do you see it evolving from here?   Goeff: Sure, so, the, you know, the easiest use case for the blockchain technology is for something that is entirely on chain right payment is a perfect example, right? The you know, I give you send you something of value, call it Bitcoin, you accept that, and that's all on the blockchain and that's pretty easy. What we're doing is, we think taking the next step forward for blockchain and we're not the only ones. But we think that we do have something to add here, which is to bridge blockchain to real world assets and that's where things start to get a little bit tricky because let's say that you have a home, you call it a home on chain, a tokenized, home, whatever it is, and you have a token, a blockchain representation of a home, but it's a real world home and so you know, you say, oh, I go to my blockchain wallet, my crypto wallet, and I see I have this home token. That's great but let's say it's not the home that I live in and in fact, it's a home somewhere else in the country and I haven't been there for a while. How do I even know that there's still a home there, right and if I want to sell it to you, you know, you like the idea of using a smart contract to buy and sell this home? You like the idea of having a one click transaction of having certainty that you're going to get what you know, the home token in exchange for your money. That's all great. But how do you know that you're actually buying a real home and not just something that is called a home on a blockchain, whatever that even means, right.   And so that's where we've spent all of the last nine months and the better part of the last 12 months, diving into the nitty gritty legal details to understand and practical implications to understand how we can put this together in a system that works and the answer is, you have to have some type of validation from the real world as well, obviously, you know, the scenarios that I just mentioned, we can't allow that to happen where someone purchases a home token, and finds out that the home burned down three months ago. So you know, you just got nothing and so the way that I think what Roofstock can bring to this equation is the deep, detailed knowledge about how real estate transactions work, plus the blockchain, the blockchain, structuring the legal implementation and that's the value add that we have. I think there are a lot of others in the space and we encourage everyone to get out there and try, you know, try to build, but we do see others who don't have the real estate experience and even though they have a beautiful blockchain strategy, they don't know how to connect that and that you end up with something that's not useful. So what we're doing is designing a system that ensures that before any home is transacted, it's gone through all of the usual checks and balances that are necessary for real estate transaction and inspection has been done recently. We've done you know, made sure that taxes are paid, made sure that insurance is in place, make sure that the title is you know, unencumbered. We do all of that, because you have to do all of that no one's gonna buy it, if you doubt, but we do that behind the scenes, and so went by the time that you as the buyer come to see our site and you see the home, the home tokens that are listed there, you know that you have a data room that shows all of the documents that I just mentioned and more. So your diligence is already done for you. You don't need an inspection contingency, because you have an inspection report sitting right there, you know, you don't need on the on the on the flip side, you know, you don't need an escrow agent, because the smart contract simply it won't execute, it won't perform its function unless the buyer has the funds that it says it has. So you know, this smart contract at the time that you as the buyer purchase, you click, I want to buy this home, the smart contract checks, do you have money, the right amount of funds in your wallet? You know, they check the other side. Does the seller have a home, which is already been approved by Roofstock to be sold? Yes, yes, the transaction happens, and it's not and if one of those isn't true, then it fails and you know, we have to go back to the drawing board and fix whatever was wrong.   Sanjay: Right and then to add to that, right, the kind of the first version of smart contracts and NF T's and all these things that came about on web three, you know, a lot of those assets themselves had the value in it, right. So you might have heard about projects like board a, or crypto punks, these are well known NFT projects where people are spending Saturday 98 to buy, you know, a JPEG image of you know, this popcorn ape. But in those cases, that image itself has that value embedded in it and when people get that image when they buy that they've already exchanged value, right. But the example Goeff is giving us with a real life, real world asset, the NFT is a representation of that real world asset, but it's that real world asset that has the value in it and so when people are transacting these NF t's on the marketplace, Roofstock has to make sure that you know what they're buying and selling corresponds to that real world asset that has that value and we've gone through the inspection and other diligence process to make sure that is still true, right. So that's the sort of the next leap in the web three world where you go beyond just the you know, cryptocurrencies and crypto Native Assets getting traded and now you start looking at real world applications.   Michael: Goeff, I'm thinking about is like, so if I'm trying to understand this, I'm I buy this token, which the underlying asset kind of backing the token up, if you will, is the home, right? So I then own the home as well. How does that work for like, insurance purposes? If I gotta go get insurance on his home? Am I Michael, like going out to my traditional insurance people and saying, okay, well, I own this home, or like, who's on title of the home? How does that all work, is the token on the title?   Goeff: All the right questions. So the way that we're setting this up, each home is titled in its own LLC. So we have a limited liability company where the home is titled and so that really facilitates the transfer between different parties, because you don't have to record title, every time that home token is sold. The title obviously has to be recorded the traditional way at the county recorder's office, the first time that it's transferred into the LLC and then from that moment on, it doesn't need to be retitled because the only thing that's changing hands is the LLC, the ownership of the LLC, the membership interest, it's called like the share of the LLC. So that's, that's how we unlock that. So that when I sell you my home token, I'm selling you an LLC that owns the home and you as the owner of the LLC, you have full control of the LLC, and thereby full control of the underlying home. So you can do whatever you want with the home. If you want to rent it, you can rent it, if you want it to be a long term rental, a short term rental, you get to decide all of that you get to decide when you put a new roof on or if you want to repair the roof instead of replace it. You make all those decisions. As far as the insurance question that you asked, we do have an agreement with an existing insurance company that's tech forward, and they're interested in working on this project. So we've already set that up. The first time you buy a home from us, it will come with one year of property insurance, it's prepaid. If you want to change that you can you can change it if you want to cancel it and replace it with a different insurer. You can what we found is that a lot of intermediates in the space are not necessarily comfortable and dealing with this type of transaction. So we've spent a fair amount of time diligence seen a lot of, you know, providers in the market and we think the ones that we have are very good, but it's up to you as the owner, if you want to have a specific insurer, or a specific title company, you can do that. But otherwise, it's already in place and it's really as easy as just paying your annual premiums you can, you don't have to think about it, if you don't want to.   Michael: Okay, so the follow up what popped in my mind immediately, and then we're going to get you guys out of here, but we live in California. So Roofstock obviously doesn't have a very big footprint here, because there's not a lot of cash flow potential, or it's much more difficult to make the numbers work as compared to a lot of other parts of the country. So, Sanjay, if you buy a home for a million bucks, tokenize it and now you your property taxes in California are based on your purchase price. So if five years down the road, you sell it to me for 2 million bucks. Traditionally, my new property tax value is going based on that 2 million bucks. But are you saying that because this trent this sale isn't getting recorded, as it would traditionally that my property taxes are still gonna be based on your original sale price of a million bucks.   Sanjay: In many state that's, that would be true. But in California, unfortunately, prop 13 would pick that sale up. That's it's a state by state analysis and in most of the states, you know, the transaction would be fine. You individually report any capital gain on your taxes, of course. But in California, the transfer does get picked up.   Michael: Damn it. They always get you somehow but maybe in some states, it sounds like that might not get picked up, right. There's less of an issue…   Sanjay: That's right, in many cases…Yeah.   Michael: Interesting. Okay, man, I thought I had this huge unlock but clearly you guys have already thought of, of all this. So this is this is super exciting, guys. We definitely need to continue the conversation, got a lot more questions, a lot more information. I would love to disseminate to our listeners. But thank you both so much for joining me. If people want to learn more about web three and blockchain and crypto in general, is there are there good resources out there that we can point people to?   Sanjay: Yeah, I mean, definitely come to our website to learn about real estate tokenization. That's https://onchain.roofstock.com/ and also, you know, follow us on crypto Twitter. It's at @rsonchain and then individually, like Goeff and I do contribute in Twitter and LinkedIn and other areas as well. So, you know, look us up and follow us as well, on those platforms.   Goeff: And don't feel don't hesitate to reach out. Like you know, we're happy to talk we're here. We're you know, we're doing something new. We know a lot of people have a lot of questions, and we're happy to answer the questions and then he conversation. So ping us, we're happy to chat.   Michael: Amazing, amazing. Well, thank you both again, for coming on and super looking forward to doing this again soon.   Sanjay: Thank you. Thanks for having us.   Goeff: Likewise. Thanks.   Michael: Alright, anyway, that was our episode. A huge thank you to Goeff and Sanjay for coming on. We're gonna definitely be having them back on again soon. So if you have additional questions about things you just heard, or blockchain things in general, we'd love for you to see those in the comment section. Wherever it is, you get your podcasts, and we will try to get to them on the next episode with Goeff and Sanjay. As always, if you liked the episode, feel free to leave us just traditional rating or review. We love those as well and we look forward to see you in the next one. Happy investing…

Raising finance for new real estate projects is difficult. Property development firms face interest rates as high as 29% when working with banking institutions as single source loan providers. They also face challenges with multiple loan sources as crowd financing can be difficult to administer. Blockchain simplifies access to alternative financing models by facilitating investor management for developers and ensuring investment transparency and continuous ROI tracking for investors. In today's episode Goeffrey Thompson, Chief Blockchain Officer of Roofstock, and Sanjay Raghavan, Head of Structured Securities and Co-head of Digital Securities Initiative, walk us through what blockchain technology is and how they are tokenizing properties in a revolutionary way to buy and sell property.   Episode Links: https://onchain.roofstock.com/ https://twitter.com/rsonchain --- 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 I'm joined by Geoffrey Thompson, who's the chief blockchain Officer here at Roofstock and Sanjay Raghavan, who's the head of web three initiatives here at Roofstock and we're gonna be talking today about what blockchain is, and how it applies to us as real estate investors. So let's get into it.   Goeff, and Sanjay, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I am super excited to chat with you both.   Sanjay: Likewise.   Goeff: Thank you for having us, thank you.   Michael: No, absolutely, absolutely. So I know a little bit, obviously, who you guys are because we work together. But for anyone who isn't familiar with you. Give us a quick and dirty description who you are, and what is it that you're doing at Roofstock? Goeff, I'll kick it over to you first.   Goeff: Sure. So I'm Goeffrey Thompson. I currently have the title of Chief blockchain Officer at Roofstock. Previously, I was General Counsel and I've been a lawyer for by training for a long time and now heading up the blockchain initiative at rootstock together with Sanjay.   Michael: Awesome, great.   Sanjay: I'm Sanjay, head of web three initiatives. Previously, I was leading securities initiatives at roof stock coming up on actually three years this week. So super exciting tomorrow, I think.   Michael: Right on, so really quick follow up questions for you both. Jeff. Were you just like a crypto guy in your everyday life? I mean, how does a real out as a lawyer turn into a blockchain official at a company at the C suite level? I mean, that's incredible.   Goeff: Yeah, I kind of backed into it. That wasn't a plan but I had been advising friends. Since 2017, during the ICO boom, the initial coin offering boom, and I started hearing people in my network, talk about it and say things like, oh, well, it's not a security because it's a coin. So you don't have to follow the securities laws, you know, and I thought, I don't get a lot of the technical stuff that talking about, but I know I can help them with the legal stuff. So then I just I was acting as legal advisor for a couple of years and, and then Gary, our CEO knew that and last year, maybe 12 months ago or a little bit more, our board came to our CEO and said, you guys, Roofstock, you need to get smart on blockchain. We're not saying you have to do it. But you know, we want you to have an idea of whether there's something there and so he asked me and Sanjay, because he knew I had some crypto background and there's a lot of legal and obviously, the financial structure is critical as well, so we kind of got into it together.   Michael: Awesome and Sanjay, at the risk of sounding like a total rookie, what the hell is web three man, I hear so much about it. Break it down for us.   Sanjay: All right. So I know it's so web low. So let's take a step back, right. So web one, which was kind of the first incarnation of the internet, right? There were sites that had static information, you could like type a URL, URL and go and, like, consume that information. But that's all you could do is just a read only type of a platform and then a few years later, the internet evolved to kind of web two, which widely is known as the read write version of the internet. So not only could you consume information, but you could go and, you know, provide information and content to the internet as well as a consumer and what happened with web two was it you know, that ability to read and write created all kinds of new interactions, and that allowed a lot of kind of the internet economy to bloom around it, where the Googles and the apples and eBays and other large companies were able to curate a lot of the content and manage a lot of the traffic. But you know, with social media and stuff, you are providing content as well, and you are consuming content, there was ecommerce, so a lot of these things came about, but the power resided with a very few large corporations that kind of controlled all of these transactions and the when, when web one started, the kind of original vision behind it was a more collaborative environment, where the consumers and the creators and consumers could actually work with each other and use a token economy and share you know, revenue and monetization. So that idea of you know, read, write and then adding on to it at the end. So it's a read write own type of economy that's decentralized. permissionless trustless has its own native payment rails, where the content creators and con Then consumers are all working together and you know, there's no power resting with large corporations, but it's, you know, giving power back to the people. So that's how that's how I would sort of succinctly describe, three and it's so it's a sort of a new way of thinking about things and it's super exciting.   Michael: Yeah it does sound super exciting and so give us all like a background again, treat me like a third grader, because that's probably my IQ level when it comes to the crypto and blockchain world. Give us all an idea of like, what is blockchain and what is cryptocurrency and then we'll get in maybe on how to be thinking about it. With regard to the real estate space and why it even belongs here you don't think this…   Goeff: Yep, sure, so the core concept for blockchain is that it's a network that can be validated the data that's recorded onto the network, which is the chain can be validated by an a limitless number of third parties who aren't organized or connected in any other way. So these are called validators I could have when you could have when they just computers that read the information that's coming in from the blockchain, they perform some mathematical calculations, and then they verify that the data that's been submitted is, is what it says it is and then at that point, it's formalized and recorded to the block and then, so these blocks are really just pieces of data, data that had been put together and then as you form one block after another, that becomes the chain. So it's really just a chain of data that's been validated by third parties that are completely decentralized. So why is that important because it means that there's no third party, a corporation or government, whoever it might be, that can intervene in the functioning of the blockchain, once it's up and running, and you have enough people who are validating and writing to the to the system, it goes infinitely, and it can't be shut down and so the first use case that really grabbed a lot of attention was payments, right? That's what Sanjay was alluding to, in the early you know, the current web two universe, you don't have an easy way to send value to another person without going through a bank or a financial services company, Blockchain, Bitcoin allows you to do that, it's just simply on the on the chain, if you have value in the in the form of Bitcoin, you can send it to any other address anywhere in the world, instantaneously and no one can stop you from doing that. So this really arose from kind of an idealistic perception, like, we have to be able to have to guarantee our own freedom, you know, the government can't intervene and prevent me from sending money to you and that's where, you know, it came from, like the sophisticated cryptographers mathematicians who had an idealistic view, and that's where Bitcoin came from and then since then, it's expanded to a lot more utility, where you can do much, many more things other than just send payments. You can, you know, NFT, you can have lending platforms, you can have social media companies that are effectively on a blockchain and can't be shut down or controlled by third party. So that's, you know, that's the overview of kind of where it came from and why it's important today. Sanjay, anything to add?   Sanjay: Yeah, no, taking a step from there right and that's exactly right, Geoffrey, the original idea was, you know, this all came about during the great financial crisis of 2008 2000, you know, 10 or so, where people thought that these, you know, financial intermediaries are, you know, in control of our lives and so Bitcoin kind of, you know, that was the reason why it came about as a peer to peer system where you can exchange value without involving these intermediaries. But then over the years, we've kind of seen that world expand rapidly and there's other cryptocurrencies now and one of the notable ones is Ethereum and on the Ethereum network, there's actually the ability to create what's known as a smart contract and a smart contract is essentially a piece of computer code that will execute based on a certain event occurring and why that is important is if you think about it from a disintermediation perspective, you know, in a transaction where two parties are involved, and party A needs to provide a good or service and party B needs to make a payment for that. You need a way to make sure that both parties are adhering to their portion of the agreement, or contract, right and so oftentimes, what happens in the financial services world is, in order to make sure that both parties are compliant with their aspects of the contract. You create an intermediary in the middle that takes that position of collecting information or payment from both parties and sending it across and a very common example of this in real estate. Michael, you as a, an owner of, you know, dozens of properties, you've gone through this process many, many times. But you there's an escrow agent involved exactly what I was thinking sure that, you know, right, the property title moves over to, you know, the buyer and the money goes to the seller, right. But imagine you had a piece of computer software that executed on a sale, and it made sure that the two parties were both appropriately receiving what they were expected to receive and there was no intermediary involved in this process. So this, this all executed, basically on the click of a button, right? Like that would be game changing in the real estate world and that's what we're trying to do now with through stock on chain.   Michael: Holy crap. For anybody who's not watching this video, I just didn't pick up my jaw up off the floor, because that was totally a game. So I have so many questions, I want to take just a step back and so Goeff, you were talking about this, these validations that can be done by any number of people. So I'm thinking about like a real world example. So if I go to the store, and I buy something with my credit card, I put down my credit card, they give me the goods and then in this case, would the validator be like the credit card company that says, look, this is the charge that like how do I think about that from like a traditional example.   Goeff: That's exactly right, the validator or usually there are multiple, but they'll they play the function of the credit card company. But instead of sending your data and the transaction data to the credit card company, where the credit, you know, the data goes to the credit card company, the credit card company says okay, this person has credit and the transaction is now going to be posted on their account, and then they send the okay back to the merchant. Instead, the merchant would send the data to a blockchain, the blockchain validators would pick up that transaction, they would validate that, you know, all of the details are the same. Usually, it's a small number of validators that have to agree on the transaction details to make sure that there aren't, you know, nothing's been missed and then once they've reached that consensus, whether that's five or 10, validators, or whatever it may be at that point, then it goes back to the merchant and as it says, The Merton now the blockchain has been updated to show that this transaction occurred, Goeff, or you or whoever was spending the money now no longer has that money. So I had that money in Bitcoin. I gave it to the merchant, the merchant side of the blockchain and said, hey, guys, can you verify that you're debiting Goeff's account and you're adding it to my account? Everyone said, okay, verified, validated, coming back. Now, I can't spend that money, I don't have it anymore and it's in your account. So that's, you know, a high level how that would work.   Michael: Okay   Sanjay: And a couple of more things there, right. Like, if you, you know, credit card transactions for small dollar values is one example. But if you look at larger dollar values, and there's ACH transactions that take three or four days to get validated through the banking system, a wire transaction, if you're trying to buy a house, and you need to make a wire payment, you're rushing to the nearest retail brand, scheduling an appointment to go into the wire, right?   Michael: It's such a pain.     Sanjay: It is all such a pain and like, imagine you had a way 24/7, right, like, you're looking at, you're browsing a site today, you find a property you really like, you want to buy that property, it's Sunday night at 10pm. You just click the button, and you know, your wallet says you have enough money and the smart contract validates that you have the money transfer property over to you, right, like imagine a world that's like that, where you don't have to worry about waiting three or four days for an ACH or running to your bank and getting an appointment waiting in line to get a wire done and it's all literally you're doing all this from your computer, click of a button 24/7 AMS and payments do anywhere in the world.   Goeff: And the cost is in most cases, negligible. You know, the wire fee is whatever 35 $50 It takes a day, you know, some amount of time to process ACH could be clawed back. The claw back concept that exists with ACH that doesn't happen in blockchain that doesn't exist. Like once it's final, it's validated, it's done and you could, you know, a simple payment transaction might cost from a few cents to a few bucks, but it's not going to be anywhere near the cost of a wire transfer.   Sanjay: And the transaction is immutably recorded on the blockchain, nobody can contest it, because you can go and open up that transaction on the blockchain and say, these two parties agreed to this transaction and it's hot, you know, it was hashed on the blockchain and there's this unique hash that represents this transaction, right. So there's no disputing later on. The parties agree that transaction gets done, it's instantaneously recorded and so that that makes this platform as a technology choice. You have innumerable number of possibilities because once you have those types of payment rails, you can build all kinds of applications around it.   Michael: This is insane, you guys. So like, we were talking about the validators and Goeff, you were saying, whatever, four or five or 10 validation points and people are doing it. So is it literally like people on their computer going, like watching their screen for these payments going back and forth or is this happening automatically?   Goeff: No, it can happen. It happens, it's automatic. Yeah, you set up a server that has the right hardware, there are different hardware and software requirements for different blockchains. But it runs silently in the background, or in some cases, it's, it's loud, because there are a lot of fans this morning.   Michael: I heard that, yeah…   Goeff: Yeah, but it's happening 24/7 In the background, and, and in most cases, it's just set or forget, set and forget, you don't have to be online all the time, doing anything manually.   Sanjay: And one other thing I wanted to point out was, you know, obviously, with banks, you can go there on weekends, after hours bank holidays and such, but even a MasterCard or Visa, if they're having a problem with their servers or something, you can have outages where you know, for a couple of hours, you're not able to do any credit card transactions, right? Whereas on the blockchain, that doesn't happen, right because there's blocks can be like, even if my computer was one of the validators, but for whatever reason, it's not working right now there are hundreds of other computers that are doing the same thing that are waiting to pick up the next block and compute it and solve the puzzle and so, you know, as Goeff was saying earlier, once the blockchain is up and running, and there's, you know, enough infrastructure in terms of validators that support that blockchain, you know, it's then it's permanently out there, and it's you can shut it down.   Michael: So that kind of brings to my next question and so you both are talking about this decentralization aspect and I think I've heard so much about the crypto world, it's like getting away from big banks and government and that sort of thing. But if this information is, I mean, it's public at this point, right? When I, Goeff, when I send you money or buy a service from you, it's now public information.   Sanjay: Just to just to clarify on that, right, the part of the information that's public is that this wallet address transacted with this other wallet address. But it's not necessarily public that, you know, Michael transacted with Goeff, right. So what's publicly stored is just the, you know, so, you know, when we talk about privacy, oftentimes, people use the words privacy and anonymity interchangeably, but they're two different things, right? You know, in one example, where there's just two wallets transacting with each other, you both still have full anonymity but the privacy concerning the fact that the transaction occurred between two wallets, that may be public information, but that's the kind of subtle.   Michael: Got it, yeah okay. Okay, that makes total sense, because, well, I was going with the question is, if I send Jeff money for a service, I mean, that could be a taxable event on the traditional world, like, if you were a credit card company, or you were a merchant, I send you that you have sales tax to pay. So I'm imagining government's point to the me sending you money and say, well, now we're going to tax it. But Sanjay, what you're saying is that the actual dollar amount, or what it was for, might not be available to them, all they could see was, someone sent money to someone else, end of story…   Sanjay: We use you the amount of money that went from a to b, but you don't like people don't automatically know who a and who B where the US are going as far as…   Michael: Or what it's for…   Sanjay: Right, in the US people are required, basically to report their own earnings and that's, you know, whether it's on the in the crypto side or non-crypto side, but, you know, you're required to report your earnings and in other countries and jurisdictions, they've passed laws where crypto transactions are not necessarily taxable. So, like, if you bought Bitcoin for, you know, $5,000 and sold it for $20,000, you may not have capital gains taxes in other jurisdictions in the US we do and that's, you know, self-reported, for the most part,   Michael: This is so nuts. Okay, so, taking one more step forward, we're talking about these coins. We talked about Bitcoin, and we mentioned Ethereum, as well, what gives these things of value? Is it just that we have generally I mean, the same thing can be said for the dollar, it's enough people have accepted or any currency have enough people have bought into this idea that this piece of paper that has an old president's face on it is worth what we've decided it's worth, same thing for Bitcoin and Ethereum.   Goeff: Exactly the same. All right, yeah. Nothing else. There's nothing else to we, you know, we all agree today that Bitcoin is worth 20,000. If it goes up, then you know, that's literally the market price. It's set by the people in the market who are transacting on a you know, every second and so it's a very clear pricing mechanism.   Sanjay: In a way you know, it's pure demand and supply that drive pricing for the these types of alternative currencies or crypto currencies, the dollar, for example, you know, we price $1 bill to be worth $1, right and so you will always be able to redeem $1 for $1. But, you know, inflation and other characteristics might make it less valuable to you, right like if a loaf of bread was 50 cents, and now it's $1, you know, you're paying more money to get it, but you know, you're not paying more bills necessarily, you know, like, the dollar bill is always $1 Bill, right? Whereas, one, one Bitcoin or one Ethereum, its value can go up over time, almost like the stock market, right? If you're looking at a share of Microsoft, it's $100 today, but because we all think Microsoft is very valuable, or Apple is very valuable, and the next iPhone is the most sexiest thing that's come out, and therefore, you know, we think we should, you know, put more value to the Apple stock, right? So the concept is similar with Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's simply people that are there are people who are, you know, buyers, and then there's their long on Bitcoin and then there are people who are short on Bitcoin and if there are more people long than short, then the price is going to go up. If there are more people short at a particular point in time price will come down. There's fewer demand.   Michael: Cool and so we mentioned, I think you both mentioned a couple of different use cases for the blockchain and for crypto. What, like, where do you see this going and for Roofstock, specifically, maybe you could talk about what we're doing as a company with regards to blockchain and where do you see it evolving from here?   Goeff: Sure, so, the, you know, the easiest use case for the blockchain technology is for something that is entirely on chain right payment is a perfect example, right? The you know, I give you send you something of value, call it Bitcoin, you accept that, and that's all on the blockchain and that's pretty easy. What we're doing is, we think taking the next step forward for blockchain and we're not the only ones. But we think that we do have something to add here, which is to bridge blockchain to real world assets and that's where things start to get a little bit tricky because let's say that you have a home, you call it a home on chain, a tokenized, home, whatever it is, and you have a token, a blockchain representation of a home, but it's a real world home and so you know, you say, oh, I go to my blockchain wallet, my crypto wallet, and I see I have this home token. That's great but let's say it's not the home that I live in and in fact, it's a home somewhere else in the country and I haven't been there for a while. How do I even know that there's still a home there, right and if I want to sell it to you, you know, you like the idea of using a smart contract to buy and sell this home? You like the idea of having a one click transaction of having certainty that you're going to get what you know, the home token in exchange for your money. That's all great. But how do you know that you're actually buying a real home and not just something that is called a home on a blockchain, whatever that even means, right.   And so that's where we've spent all of the last nine months and the better part of the last 12 months, diving into the nitty gritty legal details to understand and practical implications to understand how we can put this together in a system that works and the answer is, you have to have some type of validation from the real world as well, obviously, you know, the scenarios that I just mentioned, we can't allow that to happen where someone purchases a home token, and finds out that the home burned down three months ago. So you know, you just got nothing and so the way that I think what Roofstock can bring to this equation is the deep, detailed knowledge about how real estate transactions work, plus the blockchain, the blockchain, structuring the legal implementation and that's the value add that we have. I think there are a lot of others in the space and we encourage everyone to get out there and try, you know, try to build, but we do see others who don't have the real estate experience and even though they have a beautiful blockchain strategy, they don't know how to connect that and that you end up with something that's not useful. So what we're doing is designing a system that ensures that before any home is transacted, it's gone through all of the usual checks and balances that are necessary for real estate transaction and inspection has been done recently. We've done you know, made sure that taxes are paid, made sure that insurance is in place, make sure that the title is you know, unencumbered. We do all of that, because you have to do all of that no one's gonna buy it, if you doubt, but we do that behind the scenes, and so went by the time that you as the buyer come to see our site and you see the home, the home tokens that are listed there, you know that you have a data room that shows all of the documents that I just mentioned and more. So your diligence is already done for you. You don't need an inspection contingency, because you have an inspection report sitting right there, you know, you don't need on the on the on the flip side, you know, you don't need an escrow agent, because the smart contract simply it won't execute, it won't perform its function unless the buyer has the funds that it says it has. So you know, this smart contract at the time that you as the buyer purchase, you click, I want to buy this home, the smart contract checks, do you have money, the right amount of funds in your wallet? You know, they check the other side. Does the seller have a home, which is already been approved by Roofstock to be sold? Yes, yes, the transaction happens, and it's not and if one of those isn't true, then it fails and you know, we have to go back to the drawing board and fix whatever was wrong.   Sanjay: Right and then to add to that, right, the kind of the first version of smart contracts and NF T's and all these things that came about on web three, you know, a lot of those assets themselves had the value in it, right. So you might have heard about projects like board a, or crypto punks, these are well known NFT projects where people are spending Saturday 98 to buy, you know, a JPEG image of you know, this popcorn ape. But in those cases, that image itself has that value embedded in it and when people get that image when they buy that they've already exchanged value, right. But the example Goeff is giving us with a real life, real world asset, the NFT is a representation of that real world asset, but it's that real world asset that has the value in it and so when people are transacting these NF t's on the marketplace, Roofstock has to make sure that you know what they're buying and selling corresponds to that real world asset that has that value and we've gone through the inspection and other diligence process to make sure that is still true, right. So that's the sort of the next leap in the web three world where you go beyond just the you know, cryptocurrencies and crypto Native Assets getting traded and now you start looking at real world applications.   Michael: Goeff, I'm thinking about is like, so if I'm trying to understand this, I'm I buy this token, which the underlying asset kind of backing the token up, if you will, is the home, right? So I then own the home as well. How does that work for like, insurance purposes? If I gotta go get insurance on his home? Am I Michael, like going out to my traditional insurance people and saying, okay, well, I own this home, or like, who's on title of the home? How does that all work, is the token on the title?   Goeff: All the right questions. So the way that we're setting this up, each home is titled in its own LLC. So we have a limited liability company where the home is titled and so that really facilitates the transfer between different parties, because you don't have to record title, every time that home token is sold. The title obviously has to be recorded the traditional way at the county recorder's office, the first time that it's transferred into the LLC and then from that moment on, it doesn't need to be retitled because the only thing that's changing hands is the LLC, the ownership of the LLC, the membership interest, it's called like the share of the LLC. So that's, that's how we unlock that. So that when I sell you my home token, I'm selling you an LLC that owns the home and you as the owner of the LLC, you have full control of the LLC, and thereby full control of the underlying home. So you can do whatever you want with the home. If you want to rent it, you can rent it, if you want it to be a long term rental, a short term rental, you get to decide all of that you get to decide when you put a new roof on or if you want to repair the roof instead of replace it. You make all those decisions. As far as the insurance question that you asked, we do have an agreement with an existing insurance company that's tech forward, and they're interested in working on this project. So we've already set that up. The first time you buy a home from us, it will come with one year of property insurance, it's prepaid. If you want to change that you can you can change it if you want to cancel it and replace it with a different insurer. You can what we found is that a lot of intermediates in the space are not necessarily comfortable and dealing with this type of transaction. So we've spent a fair amount of time diligence seen a lot of, you know, providers in the market and we think the ones that we have are very good, but it's up to you as the owner, if you want to have a specific insurer, or a specific title company, you can do that. But otherwise, it's already in place and it's really as easy as just paying your annual premiums you can, you don't have to think about it, if you don't want to.   Michael: Okay, so the follow up what popped in my mind immediately, and then we're going to get you guys out of here, but we live in California. So Roofstock obviously doesn't have a very big footprint here, because there's not a lot of cash flow potential, or it's much more difficult to make the numbers work as compared to a lot of other parts of the country. So, Sanjay, if you buy a home for a million bucks, tokenize it and now you your property taxes in California are based on your purchase price. So if five years down the road, you sell it to me for 2 million bucks. Traditionally, my new property tax value is going based on that 2 million bucks. But are you saying that because this trent this sale isn't getting recorded, as it would traditionally that my property taxes are still gonna be based on your original sale price of a million bucks.   Sanjay: In many state that's, that would be true. But in California, unfortunately, prop 13 would pick that sale up. That's it's a state by state analysis and in most of the states, you know, the transaction would be fine. You individually report any capital gain on your taxes, of course. But in California, the transfer does get picked up.   Michael: Damn it. They always get you somehow but maybe in some states, it sounds like that might not get picked up, right. There's less of an issue…   Sanjay: That's right, in many cases…Yeah.   Michael: Interesting. Okay, man, I thought I had this huge unlock but clearly you guys have already thought of, of all this. So this is this is super exciting, guys. We definitely need to continue the conversation, got a lot more questions, a lot more information. I would love to disseminate to our listeners. But thank you both so much for joining me. If people want to learn more about web three and blockchain and crypto in general, is there are there good resources out there that we can point people to?   Sanjay: Yeah, I mean, definitely come to our website to learn about real estate tokenization. That's https://onchain.roofstock.com/ and also, you know, follow us on crypto Twitter. It's at @rsonchain and then individually, like Goeff and I do contribute in Twitter and LinkedIn and other areas as well. So, you know, look us up and follow us as well, on those platforms.   Goeff: And don't feel don't hesitate to reach out. Like you know, we're happy to talk we're here. We're you know, we're doing something new. We know a lot of people have a lot of questions, and we're happy to answer the questions and then he conversation. So ping us, we're happy to chat.   Michael: Amazing, amazing. Well, thank you both again, for coming on and super looking forward to doing this again soon.   Sanjay: Thank you. Thanks for having us.   Goeff: Likewise. Thanks.   Michael: Alright, anyway, that was our episode. A huge thank you to Goeff and Sanjay for coming on. We're gonna definitely be having them back on again soon. So if you have additional questions about things you just heard, or blockchain things in general, we'd love for you to see those in the comment section. Wherever it is, you get your podcasts, and we will try to get to them on the next episode with Goeff and Sanjay. As always, if you liked the episode, feel free to leave us just traditional rating or review. We love those as well and we look forward to see you in the next one. Happy investing…

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