Podcast appearances and mentions of michael what

About MichaelMichael Garski is the Director of Platform Engineering at Fender Musical Instruments, where he leads the teams responsible for service development & testing, devops, and data. He's been with Fender for over 5 years and prior to that  worked as a software engineer & architect on back-end systems at Viant, MySpace, Countrywide Home Loans & Fandango. He is passionate about application reliability and observability and their impact on customer satisfaction.Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgarski/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Your company might be stuck in the middle of a DevOps revolution without even realizing it. Lucky you! Does your company culture discourage risk? Are you willing to admit it? Does your team have clear responsibilities? Depends on who you ask. Are you struggling to get buy in on DevOps practices? Well, download the 2021 State of DevOps report brought to you annually by Puppet since 2011 to explore the trends and blockers keeping evolution firms stuck in the middle of their DevOps evolution. Because they fail to evolve or die like dinosaurs. The significance of organizational buy in, and oh it is significant indeed, and why team identities and interaction models matter. Not to mention weither the use of automation and the cloud translate to DevOps success. All that and more awaits you. Visit: www.puppet.com to download your copy of the report now!Corey: If your familiar with Cloud Custodian, you'll love Stacklet. Which is made by the same people who made Cloud Custodian, but put something useful on top of it so you don't have to be a need to be a YAML expert to work with it. They're hosting a webinar called “Governance as Code: The Guardrails for Cloud at Scale” because its a new paradigm that enables organizations to use code to manage and automate various aspects of governance. If you're interested in exploring this you should absolutely make it a point to sign up, because they're going to have people who know what they're talking about—just kidding they're going to have me talking about this. Its doing to be on Thursday, July 22nd at 1pm Eastern. To sign up visit snark.cloud/stackletwebinar and I'll talk to you on Thursday, July 22nd.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. We talk to a lot of people here on this show who are deep in the weeds of SaaS companies, or cloud vendors, or cloud vendors cosplaying as SaaS companies. Today, we're taking a bit of a different direction. My guest is Michael Garski, Director of Platform Engineering at Fender Musical Instruments. They make guitars among many other things. Michael, thank you for joining me.Michael: Oh, thanks for having me on, Corey.Corey: So, one of the things that I really appreciate about what you do as a company is I can, at least presumably, explain it to someone who is not super deep in technical weeds without 45 minutes of explainer first. The easy answer is, “Oh, Fender. You folks make guitars.” These days, no one just does one thing, I have to imagine. How do you describe what the company does?Michael: Oh, well, to quote Leo Fender, his view was that artists are angels and it's our job to give them wings. So, in addition to actually making and developing guitars and amplifiers, we've branched off into consumer-facing products to actually teach people how to play those instruments.Corey: You folks have been relatively outspoken about the various things you're doing at different AWS events. I mean, my approach to that tends to be that if AWS is great at making bricks that you can use to build amazing things with, “Well, great, can you draw a picture of the house that you can build with this?” “No, we're going to have a customer come out and talk about that stuff instead.” You folks have been focusing on a lot of serverless work, and you've been very public about the fact that you are almost entirely serverless-driven in terms of architecture if I'm not mistaken.Michael: That is true.Corey: Tell me about that. How did you get there and what brought it about?Michael: So, I work in the digital division in Fender. We started, let's see, we're coming up on five years I've been there. So, what we did was, initially, we started building services that could run within a container, or on an EC2 instance, but we started looking at Lambda functions. We had need to ingest a product catalog, so the IT team was able to drop us off a product catalog into an S3 bucket, and the easiest thing to do then was just trigger a Lambda function to then process that file. And it just kind of snowballed in from there.Corey: I think the common problem when people hear ‘serverless' is they think, “Oh, great. More discussions about Lambda functions.” And Lambda is almost getting something of a tarred reputation in some circles because when we can build amazing things with it ourselves, we love it, but when we ask AWS how to wind up integrating two services, or about a feature gap, their response is, “Oh, use a Lambda function for it,” It starts to feel like they're using it as spackle and the spackle has become load-bearing. Do you view serverless as being purely function-driven or is it broader than that?Michael: It's much broader than that. Serverless is a mindset where you're looking beyond just Lambda functions to using a lot of third-party services so that you can actually focus on your core business. Like, we use Zuora as a subscription provider for web-based subscriptions; we use Algolia for full-text search; we use a variety of other services so that we can just focus on the core business.Corey: One thing that's been on everyone's mind, somewhat recently, has been the idea of dramatic changes as far as user behavior goes. And in the more traditional environments where you see things like EC2 instances or on-premises data centers, back when the pandemic first hit and companies that were very focused on a model of business that aligned directly with people behaving in certain ways that they suddenly didn't, would the 80% drop-offs or more in their user traffic, but their infrastructure spend just kept hanging out exactly where it was, in a straight line. So, at some level, it feels like yes, the whole point of cloud is that it can be elastic, except no one builds it that way for a variety of reasons. When COVID hit, what changed for your business?Michael: Change for our business is we launched a program called Playthrough, okay we did this about a year ago; we started it, we gave away three months of Fender Play for free. It was a single-use code that a user would redeem and no credit card required, and over a period of five days, we saw our traffic increase by more than ten times. And we had very little changes we needed to make. Everything scaled up, we had no issue with—we used a lot of Lambda functions, DynamoDB, everything just scaled up fine. The only point that became a bottleneck was our Elasticsearch cluster. However, beefing up the nodes and adding a few more nodes that resolved that issue immediately.Corey: So, I'm going to go out on a limb and postulate that you folks increased pickup when the lockdowns hit, if for no other reason then, “Well, I'm trapped at home and I'm tired of staring at the guitar on the wall. I may as well learn to play it.” I would guess. I could be way off base on that.Michael: No, no, that's very true. Even since then, even after that program has expired—of course, not everyone then converts and sticks around—but many, many did, many more than we thought would did stick around, and our usage and our goals were exceeded for this last year, and we're in a healthy place, and looking at continuing to grow and expand in the future.Corey: So, one of the applications that I think gets a fair bit of attention—rightfully so—lately, is something called Fender Play, and as best I can tell, that is a app that works in web, it works on mobile, and it's a video-based instruction tool for guitar at least, but some other instruments as well. How did that come to be? Did that exist before COVID hit? Has that been something that's been in the works for a while? Or was it, “Well, we're going to do a two-week sprint and build this thing from scratch?”Michael: No, we launched that—this June we're coming up on the fourth anniversary since it's been launched, so we launched this in summer of 2017.Corey: One of the problems I've always found is that it's challenging to learn to do something that is as, I guess, physical and intricate, et cetera, as playing an instrument without having someone in the room looking at you and smacking you with a stick whenever you do things that are wrong. “Nope, that's a bad habit. If you keep doing that it's going to hurt you.” How do you approach that as a company from a non-interactive perspective of someone who's going to watch a video and do things and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't? Particularly in light of things like, well, the competition is YouTube, which, you know, I'm going to roll the dice and sometimes I'll see a great tutorial, sometimes I'll see one that I don't realize teaching me terrible things, and then it's going to recommend some baseless conspiracy theory because YouTube. How do you differentiate that? What makes Fender Play different?Michael: So currently, you're right; it's just a video-based instruction app. There's not any way to, like, provide direct feedback to students within the web and mobile applications. However, we do have an online community, and our Fender Play instructors do an office hours feature, is where they'll actually answer questions live and talk to students. We are investigating and doing some earlier research in some, possibly, being able to provide that type of feedback to users, but it's very challenging problem, just due to the nature of you're playing an instrument that has multiple strings, so you're trying to pick out the chord that they're playing in, and the timing. But it's something we definitely need to add.Corey: There's something to be said as well for the kind of care and attention that you folks wind up putting into your media where, “This is how you finger a chord,” and someone on the YouTube video will do it for two-tenths of a second, and they're filming it with a potato that isn't focused properly and pointing at the wrong part of the guitar. You folks have a high bar for quality on this. Is that done in-house? Do you wind up just going through a bunch of random folks that you just wind up offering a bunch of gift cards to, or free guitars to do this? How does the program work on the back end?Michael: So, we have an in-house curriculum team that puts together the lesson plans to really help people learn in small bite-sized lessons so that it's not too overwhelming at once. And that curriculum then is shot and filmed by an in-house video team that put that together; they upload the data into S3 for the final cut, then that gets transcoded via MediaConvert, and we serve it up via CloudFront.Corey: It's rare to wind up talking to a company that is something of a household name about something that they're doing, and hear the AWS services that they're using not trend toward a baseline mean if I can be so bold. Normally, you'll see some of the case studies, like, “Oh, this is an online bank. What services are they using?” “Oh, they're using EC2, and S3, and load balancing because did you miss the part where it's a bank?” They're not going to use these far-future services due to regulatory risk, among other things, in many cases.You're using Elemental MediaConvert, which is one of those relatively high-up-the-stack offerings that isn't broadly known. It's one of those services that is focused on specific use cases and specific industry verticals in a way that a baseline primitive service isn't. What does MediaConvert do?Michael: What it does is it takes the final edit of the video, and we have several different presets so that it will put it into an HLS format with different bitrates so that the user is getting the best quality video depending on their bandwidth.Corey: When I looked into it in the early days when it was first launching, I found that it looked an awful lot like Elastic Transcoder, which is a service that they've had for a while, only they changed up some of the capabilities. It's obviously far more capable as a service, but they also added something that felt like 15 different billing dimensions to it, “So, what is this going to cost me?” “Well, we're going to run it for a month and find out if we're still in business.” And it seemed like it was one of those very difficult to get started with and run experiments with service. Now, obviously, services evolve over time. When you started looking into it was that experience roughly akin to what you felt, or am I completely and unfairly slandering in the product?Michael: We actually started out using Elastic Transcoder and then moved over to MediaConvert, I believe it was last year. We found it to be a little bit easier to use, and the pricing overall in transcoding the videos for us is really a drop in the bucket as compared to actually hosting them and serving them up via CloudFront. And when we switched over to MediaConvert, we adjusted our settings to lower the maximum bitrate for a given video, we found that after a certain point, the quality to the user just doesn't really improve, and yet we're paying to serve the larger video.Corey: One statistic that I found was that in March of 2020—you know which I believe we're still in at this point; just, it's the Endless September model, applied to March—you wound up seeing over an order of magnitude in traffic increase within five days, and looking at that through a lens of traditional architecture, that means that nobody sleeps a whole heck of a lot. Given that you're in on the serverless story, and you have been since before that hit, what was that scaling experience like for you?Michael: Scaling experience was completely seamless. We use a lot of Lambda, DynamoDB, Kinesis, SNS, to glue things together, and no problems whatsoever. Just had to bump up our Elasticsearch cluster a bit, that was really the only thing because we saw some latency starting to rise on some of our APIs.Corey: Let me ask the uncomfortable question then because whenever I tried to scale things up quickly in a cloud environment, what was your experience with smacking into various AWS service limits as the traffic grew?Michael: Initially, we actually requested some service limits increase to make sure we weren't hitting the concurrent Lambda invocation limit, and same thing with Cognito, making sure that we weren't going to hit any limits as far as sign-ins and things like that. So, we were able to just put in requests, and they served us around pretty quick turnaround time on that, as well.Corey: It really does seem like there's a strong benefit on the serverless space, but I had to double-check before we started recording that you do, in fact, work at Fender because you are a staunch advocate for observability. And usually, when someone is that passionate about observability, you can guess that they work at an observability-slash-monitoring company. It's akin to the idea of someone selling mattresses telling you that mattresses are great and you should have four of them. You're on the customer side of that and still very passionate about it. Where'd that come from?Michael: Came from my time years ago, when I worked at MySpace—if anyone can still remember that—working on the search systems there. And as the company started winding down, to laying people off, and being one of the only people left working on those systems, being able to know and understand them, you just have to, so you have to continue to monitor and find ways to monitor, and that really ingrained how important instrumentation is and being able to really understand the health of your application as it's running so that you can see, yes, everything is good, and then when something doesn't look right so that you can know where to start looking, and you can be alerted of a problem.Corey: So, I tend to view the world in olden terms where monitoring was what we did, and we use something like Nagios, which was the second-worst option out there because everything else felt like it was tied for first. I also take a somewhat regressive view that observability is to monitoring as DevOps is to being a systems administrator. It's the same thing, but by using the more modern terminology, you can charge more for it. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you take a somewhat contrarian [laugh] view to that.Michael: Yes, yes, I do. It's about really understanding how your applications is running. It's not just looking at, oh, how many HTTP 500s am I serving up per hour, if I hit a threshold for the last hour? It's a lot more than that. It's really being able to really dig in and see what the issue is or what's working really well.And to that end, we rely on two services for this. We use Honeycomb and Epsagon. Honeycomb, kind of, acts as our top layer because it gives us the really good high-cardinality metrics where I can punch in a user ID and I can see all the API traffic that this user has performed. As well as, even just like when we launched the Playthrough when our traffic rose, that the reason we discovered that our latency was dropping was due to a service-level objective being triggered in Honeycomb on latency. And we were able to respond to that using that before customers really noticed anything at all.Corey: As an Epsagon customer myself, I'm always conflicted when I find myself going into their service and using it to figure out what the heck's going on with my giant pile of Lambda functions, and API gateways, and whatnot, wired together because the experience is uniformly excellent, but I'm also frustrated in that it needs a third-party to even begin to allude to what's going on. It feels, on some level, like the vendor that is providing this service to me should be reasonably effective at telling me what it's doing, and when it's breaking. I understand that how I wish the world is and how it actually is are two radically different things but does that ever strike you as well?Michael: Whether or not AWS should be providing that type of level, that seems… that seems like more of a service that you can have competition and other vendors that really specialize and get in the weeds on it. I don't think AWS needs to provide every service you could possibly use for your application. That's not something I'm too concerned about. I don't really even think it's their place, frankly.Corey: No, no, I understand. The problem I keep running into, on some level, whenever I try and diagnose it natively is, I look at CloudWatch and it's difficult to understand that is this—in my case because again, I'm still early days with a lot of these things—is it the API gateway that's having the problem? Is it the CloudFront distribution that is tied to that? Is it the Lambda function? Where's the handoff?Trying to understand where in a complicated application the failure is occurring is a challenge. And let's be clear, most of that is a problem of my own making because I didn't have the good sense to instrument this thing in a reliable repeatable way when I built it. It feels like everything is tied together with duct tape, and baling wire, and spit, and a bit of luck. As a counterpoint, the more companies I talk to, the more I realize that no, no, this is actually how most people feel [laugh] when they look at things that are working. It's, yeah, it's terrible. It's a trash fire, but it makes money so we're going to roll with it.And there's always, on some level, a sense of what we've built is very far from the platonic ideal of what we should have built. Does that resonate with you, or do you take a step back and look at what you've achieved with a perspective of, “This is awesome. More people should do it exactly like this.” And honestly, if it's that one, I'd love to take a look at what you've built.Michael: I think there's always room for us to improve on what we're doing because we're constantly learning and evolving to improve both, even at such a low level of like, “Okay, how do we lay out the files in our service repository to make the best organization to make sense?” All the way up to, “Okay, how are we going to do tracing? And what kind of information do we need to get from that so that we can find problems when they occur?” We're always looking to learn what others are doing, and talking to others in this space. No one will ever be a hundred percent right. There's always room for improvement everywhere.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I'm going to just guess that it's awful because it's always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn't require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren't what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Corey: One thing that you folks have done that I think was really interesting and didn't get as much play as I think it really deserved, was that, especially in the early days of the pandemic, you wound up seeing that massive increase due to giving out almost a million free three-month subscriptions to Playthrough. Additionally, you also worked closely with LAUSD, the Los Angeles Unified School District, to add Fender Play to their middle school music program's curriculum to help supplement their remote learning programs. First, was that all in the same timeframe? Or—and, two, what has it been like, I guess, working with a organization that is, I guess, on some level, not particularly cloud-first. I would imagine. When I lived in Los Angeles, I never got the sense that LAUSD was full-on serverless, full on-board with cloud, full on-board with remote learning. And then the pandemic of course exacerbates all of that.Michael: Yeah, so those were really two different projects. So, that the Playthrough project that started in March, and we started working with Los Angeles Unified School District last year during their summer school program; started out with 1500 students and we put it together very quickly. Essentially, we use the same three-month codes that we used for that Playthrough promotion so that we could set things up very quickly for students and gave out, through our nonprofit arm of Fender, the Fender Play Foundation, gave out 1500 instruments to these students to use during the summer school program. And that program became so successful, we continued on with them in the fall, and now in the current semester, and we will be again this summer. I believe there's 7000 students in the program now.And working with their IT team has actually been quite nice. And in dealing with partners, you wouldn't think much of, “Oh, it's a school district, what do they have?” But as far as just ease of working with them, we actually hooked into their SAML provider in Cognito so that LAUSD students could authenticate when they come in through the remote learning systems. And they were great to work with and very helpful and cooperative.Corey: One of the arguments that you'll see that comes up against serverless, from time to time, is that you are now indelibly linked to your provider, but you can't take what you've built with all of these services and just move it over to Azure or GCP on a moment's whim. Now, in practice, people who tend to build for that, just build everything on top of EC2 and very little else, and then run it entirely in AWS and never move it to any of those other places. But was there friction with making that, I guess, architectural commitment to a single vendor?Michael: Oh, you're bringing up the vendor lock-in Boogeyman.Corey: Oh, I absolutely am. Most people who bring that—when I bring it up as a straw man so you can attack it, most people who bring up the vendor lock-in Boogeyman, “Oh, you have to go multi-cloud,” are either trying to sell you something that is required if you want to go multi-cloud, or they're a cloud provider themselves who know that if you go all-in on one provider, it will certainly not be theirs.Michael: I think if you properly architect your applications with separations of concerns that you could move to, say—okay, say Lambda wasn't working out for us anymore, and we needed to take our applications and, where, we're going to put them into a container, but we're going to stay in AWS. Our applications are set up in such a way that Lambda is basically a deployment pattern. We could easily convert those individual function handlers into route handlers with a minimal effort because the business logic and then the underlying data storage are separated. So, it would be feasible for us if we wanted to, say, move to Azure and use Azure Functions and whatever comparable service they have to DynamoDB. I'm not too familiar with a lot of their offerings.But that would certainly be possible to do it with, obviously, some effort and really, at the end of the day, the resources you have working on the applications are end up going to costing you much more than any, sort of like, software licensing or specific savings you're going to get from a cloud vendor, so might as well go ahead and just use those service that they're providing. So that you can just focus on the business.Corey: My approach has almost universally been that looking at an awful lot of companies and their AWS bills, it is a challenge to find an environment where the resources in the environment cost more than the people who are operating them. In the context of business, AWS bills seemed giant and enormous, right up until you look at payroll and then it's, “Oh, okay.” That's counterintuitive for folks who are learning this, and I fall prey to it myself is, when I'm playing around as a hobbyist trying to build something I value, my time is free because I'm learning as this goes, and then in that context, especially when I was starting out as a student, it was, “Oh, great. So, this winds up costing me $7 a month. Oh, that's a lot of money. That's my ramen budget, so I'm instead going to wind up spending eight hours avoiding it charging me anything.” It's the exact opposite from the direction you want staff that you're paying to work on these things to go in. How do you approach the idea of increasing the cloud cost if it will save time for your team?Michael: It's a balance between, where do we need to build this ourselves? And then not only build it, you have to operate it and maintain it? Or what is the cost of getting this third-party service? And that's really what it comes down to in all of them. And do we actually want to spend time working on this piece of infrastructure that these other people are specializing in and do so well? I've got better things I can have people doing than that.Corey: Speaking of people, one thing that you talk about, as you self-describe, is that you wind up not writing a whole lot of code anymore, but you're something of a stickler for observability and enforcing consistency between services, so you'll periodically do things like submit a PR to tweak a log message to put your mind at ease, was one example that you gave. Given that you're a director, which is generally manager of managers style approaches, how do you avoid having those PRs come across to your team as either micromanagement or a condemnation of what they've built? Because I get it; when I see something that's easy and small to tweak, I want to go ahead and get it fixed immediately. I don't want to go back and forth and play those games; I just want it done. But I'm also always weighing that against, I don't want to have people think that I'm judging them somehow for something I'm very much not.Michael: That's a very good point. The larger technical decisions on how things are laid out, I generally just try to—I don't insert myself into. I let the team go ahead, and make those decisions, and leave that direction, and let them take the charge on that, and I take the approach of looking at it as more of a guiding, and mentoring and teaching to really hone and instill that discipline in really being able to understand what the applications are doing. And as our team is growing, I have less and less time to even do those things, but I can go through the systems and go, “Hey, how come we're not tracing this call to the reCAPTCHA servers? Let's add that in there.” And I'll just at this point now, I mainly just write Jira tickets to have someone else actually do the work.Corey: The more I do this, the more I realize that as complicated as the technology is, the people are in many ways, far more complicated. And let's be fair here, non-deterministic things that work super well on one person one month could work entirely differently a following month, or even with the same person, or between teams. It's a constant balancing act, on some level. And giving people a sense of psychological safety has always been the biggest challenge. The thing that surprised me about management, back when I was running ops teams was the more, I guess, responsibility you accrue as you rise from individual contributor into the management—or ‘rise' is sort of a wrong term; it's an orthogonal transition—is that you spend a lot more time on the people problems, and your ability to directly control or affect change diminishes because you have to do everything via influence. You get a lot more responsibility with a lot less direct power [laugh] over the outcome in some ways. Does that align with how you see it, or am I just—do I have very strange approaches on management? Which may be true, and why I got out of it as fast as I could.Michael: No, that is a good point because you are having to [unintelligible 00:27:05], like, influence, and guide, and more take a higher-level view, as opposed to really getting into the weeds of like, “Okay, what methods are we going to put on this interface? How are we going to, say, architect the internals of an application?” Those are details I just really don't have time for anymore. But larger things as to making sure that we're okay, it's like, “What's the performance of this?” And, “Overall, is something that can be adapted as the business needs change, and as we change? And as we learn, what can we do to modify it?” And more just things like guiding, and mentoring, and really taking a higher-level view of that.Corey: I'm going to selfishly ask about something that I struggle with myself. That goes a bit more into the technical area, but you talk about enforcing consistency across all of your different services. What does that mean? Similar coding style? Similar instrumentation?Because I look at the things I built and microservices that power my internal nonsense, and each one of those is very different than all the rest. So, whatever your version of consistency is, I know I'm not doing it. But how do you view it?Michael: So, there's really two types of consistency. The one I really refer to the most is in observability. So that, if you've got a thousand Lambda functions out there, and each one is logging things slightly differently, that's just a pain to deal with, and realistically, dealing with a thousand unicorns is a real pain. So, through that observability, at least in Lambda, we use an internally developed middleware to make sure that the logging is consistent, and it's easy enough to use. And then other consistency, like, just within projects of how we lay things out.That's something that's been consistently evolving. What's the folder structure in how we organize the code? And we've kind of been evolving that over the last three years. And within about the last six months, we've come up with a really good pattern and a template for the future. And it's not much different from what we started out with, but it's a little bit easier, really, to comprehend as a new engineer coming in. It makes more sense.Corey: I have to ask—and I understand if you don't want to give a particular endorsement in any direction—but do you go through Serverless Framework, SAM CLI, the CDK, using the console and then lying about it? What is the template that you wind up using for that uniformity? Because even internally, I use three or four of those different things and professional advice: don't do that.Michael: Let's see. So, in our development, QA, production environments, infrastructure is all managed with Terraform. Each engineer has their own personal AWS account so that they can work on things there—Corey: Oh, that makes billing granularity super easy.Michael: Oh, yes. You can tell who's got EC2 instances running up for too long. But for the most part, we'll use Serverless Framework in that regard to say—for the engineer can just deploy into your local environment. Although we are working on ways to reuse the Terraform infrastructure and deploy that. But we have our own build and deployment pipeline that we built using CircleCI, and all of our Lambda functions are in Go.And so having to compile, say, 20 binaries in a service, that gets kind of slow, one of our DevOps engineers actually came up with a way to use Lambda to build the Lambdas, so that we can build them all in a distributed parallel fashion during the build process.Corey: One thing that I do love about the whole serverless approach—and it is a neat part about Lambda—is no two people ever seem to do it quite the same way. You can tie things together in so many different and exciting ways, and it's fun. It's almost like a modern version of playing with Lego. And I know that if Jeff Barr is listening, he just perked up at that. But I love the concept that you can take so many different ways to achieve similar outcomes. And it almost gives a bigger sense of creativity in how you approach problems. Has that been your experience?Michael: Oh, definitely. It's not only the creativity; it's also the flexibility in how you solve it, and the ability to adapt and evolve as services evolve, or change, or there's new ones are added. And to the point of using AWS, kind of, saying, “Oh, using a Lambda function to do this.” Like, using Lambda functions for customizing behavior of Cognito with the Cognito triggers, is to me, I think, a perfect way to customize the service to do exactly what you need to do.Corey: I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. It's always appreciated. If people want to hear more about what you have to say and how you view these things or even, possibly, decide to work with you, okay can they find you?Michael: I'm somewhat active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best place to find me. Please go ahead and connect to me; tell me you heard me on the podcast here.And yes, we are hiring. We have, all within our technical organization, from client, to web, and mobile engineers, data engineers, DevOps, API, we're always hiring and if we don't have something right now that fits your experience, let me know that you're interested and I'll put you on the list so that when we do have an opening, we'll reach out right away.Corey: And we will, of course, include links to that in the [show notes 00:32:20]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I appreciate it.Michael: Thanks for having me on, Corey. It was nice talking to you.Corey: Michael Garski, Director of Platform Engineering at Fender Musical Instruments. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with a comment telling me that I'm almost certainly doing that chord incorrectly.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Michael Piercy is the owner of The LAB Sports in New Jersey. Michael transitioned to the fitness industry after an illustrious career in professional baseball where he played for three major league organizations. Today, Michael works with everyone from elite professionals, youth athletes, and active adults to help them unleash their inner athlete. Michael is recognized for his achievements in the fitness space, including being named Personal Trainer of the Year in 2017, and TRX senior master trainer. Michael is also an author and a speaker.   In this episode hosted by Dan McDonogh, Michael shares more about his transition from professional sports to the fitness industry, and what inspired his decision to work with youth athletes. He speaks about the challenges and most rewarding aspects of working with youths, and why it's important to manage expectations of everyone involved. Michael also shares more about his ideas of what it means to be a playmaker, and how to bring that out in the work we do. Tune in to find out more.   Key Takeaways: [0:38] Dan introduces his guest for this episode — Michael Piercy. [2:05] Michael made a transition from professional sports into the fitness industry. What was that transition like for Michael? [4:45] What was the gap that Michael saw that needed to be filled, especially with youth athletes, that he works on within his facility? [6:50] What does Michael find the most rewarding working with youth athletes? [8:56] What is the most challenging aspect of working with youth athletes? [10:54] Dan and Michael discuss the challenges of managing expectations, both of the athletes and their parents. [16:18] What does it mean to be a playmaker, and how can we all bring that into the work that we do? [20:07] Michael talks a bit about embracing your vision. [22:33] This podcast is being sponsored by VertiMax. [23:59] Michael explains what it means to let your work speak as it relates to being a playmaker. [26:32] Part of being a playmaker also has to do with knowing your strengths. [30:12] Michael shares a story about talking to his mom about stealing bases. [32:20] #4 of being a playmaker is to mind your words. [34:57] Our words matter a lot, especially when working with youth athletes. [38:03] The last thing Michael talks about in being a playmaker is that coaching is a calling. [45:08] Dan summarizes some of his biggest takeaways from this conversation with Michael. Mentioned in This Episode: VertiMax VertiMax on Facebook VertiMax on Instagram VertiMax on YouTube VertiMax on LinkedIn Dan McDonogh Dan McDonogh on LinkedIn Michael Piercy on LinkedIn and Instagram The LAB Sports   Tweetables: "The fitness industry was always something that was really central to my life." - Michael   "That's one of the most important things that we do here is try to work on the total athlete." - Michael   "What can we give them that can help them really make a difference, not only just as an athlete, but as a person." - Michael   "It's not about results, it's about the work that you put in." - Michael   "Building trust with the parents is ultimately going to lead to trust and growth and development in all areas of that child's life." - Dan

In episode 228, we talk with Edmond Memorial High School Esports Coach Kate Swearingen about the teams playing against others across the state. You can find their games on https://www.twitch.tv/memorialbulldog (Twitch). Transcript: og228 Michael: Greetings and salutations my fellow geeks and welcome to episode 228 of the Okie Geek Podcast brought to you by Okie Comics I'm Michael Cross. Students at Edmond Memorial high school are enjoying the ever-growing community of e-sports. Their coach is chemistry teacher, Kate Swearingen and she joins us now, Kate, welcome to the show. Kate: Hi, it's so great to be here. Michael: So just tell me first off e-sports at Edmond Memorial High. What's going on with that? Kate: Yeah, so we have a great program. We run three different games. We have Rocket League, League of Legends and Smash Brothers. A ton of kids are involved. So it ranges because we have a club and a class we have about 30 plus kids in the class, and then we have just extra kids in the club, but we're hoping to even grow more next year. But yeah, it's, it's really exciting stuff. Michael: What made you decide to start this thing? Kate: So I've always had a passion for making sure that kids have a space that they feel like they belong. And I used to work at a middle school where I started an animate club and I would DM, Dungeons and Dragons as well. For a group of kids there. And then when I moved to the high school, I knew I wanted to coach e-sports because I played a MOBA at that time called heroes of the storm, which isn't really around anymore. But then, well it's around, but it's just not the same as it used to be. But then a kid approached me cause I kind of let them know, you know, Hey, like I like this based on like this to a kid approached me. He's like, I really want to start a League of Legends team. And I knew about League of Legends because in the same genre that I played so I was like, yeah, this would be great. You know, like some of my stuff will transfer over. So it kind of took him the rest of the year to get the club going. And then last year we had our first team League of Legends team. And then this year we have it as an actual class. So we have even more e-sports now than we did last year. Cause each of each of the own games are their own e-sports so, Michael: , And there's a community like a whole competition going on. Correct. Kate: Right. , we participate in two different tournaments right now. We're a part of OBSL which is the whole global e-sports league. And there are several high schools in Oklahoma that participate in that one. And that's our state tournament. And our playoffs will be April 3rd, but we're, we're sort of finishing up the regular season. We have just a couple more games of that to go. And then we're a part of a nationwide tournament. That's called play BS. So we, we play in that as well. And those, those real games, we have pre-season games right now, but we're starting our real games for that. At the beginning of March. Michael: That's amazing. And so how are you guys doing so far? Kate: We're doing really, really well. We haven't started our real play yes games but for our ESL games right now, we're undefeated. So in all of our sports, Michael: That's amazing. , Who else is in this  league, The major players that you would know would be maybe union or broken arrow, Jenks Okay, C grant and then there are some smaller schools too. Like we played Stillwell, not,  Stillwater Stillwell, and then we were supposed to Salina today, but that got moved around. And so, yeah, there's, there's just a whole range of schools, depending on which e-sport, it is some S some of these sports are a little bit cheaper to get into than others. Kate: So they're a little bit more accessible. Michael: Right. Do you travel to these places too? Or... Support this podcast

On his edition of Lifeline: Listen back as Mary Hayes, Dublin City Council explains to Michael What the HomeSwapper online service is all about. Broadcast: 13/11/2020

What if you were starting over from scratch, or with nothing. What are some things you could do to get ahead. And what are some things everyone could do right now to get ahead? LISTENER QUESTIONS: What can a now single girl in her 50’s do to become financially fit (Jacqueline) How to explain tax to kids (Vincent, Parts-Unknown) How do I get my brother to shut up about his investing schemes (Hali, Tennessee ) My wife would rather not invest and live life now. How can we get on the same page (Michael) What should our top priorities be when getting our first home (Kailani, Baton Rouge, LA) TOPICS: ===== Teach pre-school kids good money habits - Money A to Z is here: https://tinyurl.com/MoneyAtoZ

Too many people look at their life through the rear view mirror - simply looking back at what has already happened. You can create the future you want by developing a clear vision, and a plan of action. Today's episode is filled with tools to help you do just that. 3 parts to this podcast episode: Announcing the 20th Anniversary Edition of 48 Days Good News Vision - interview with Michael Hyatt Points Covered with Michael: What is Vision? Isn't Vision just optimism? How does creating Vision compliment dreaming? Why do distractions often look like opportunities? How does Vision give you an edge? Get direct links to the resources mentioned in this podcast, including the bonus resources for the new 48 Days To the Work (and Life) You Love and Michael Hyatt's Vision Drive Leader resources, in the podcast show notes at https://www.48days.com/clear-vision

125: Earning Freedom with Michael Santos Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term I’m reading from chapter six of Earning Freedom: Conquering a 45-Year Prison Term, by Michael Santos. In this reading, we’re covering chapter Six: 1992-1995 Months 62-84: Chapter Six: 1992-1995 ******* The air brakes sigh as the bus stops in front of the administration building of FCI McKean. As I look through chain-link fences separated by razor wire, I remember my first close look at a prison, back in 1987, when the DEA escorted me through the gates of MCC Miami. McKean has that same non-threatening feel of an office park. Without the impenetrably high concrete walls and gun towers of Atlanta, McKean looks almost welcoming, at least from the outside. I suppose the years have institutionalized me. While hobbling off the bus I inhale the scent of evergreen trees. McKean is set in the midst of northwestern Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Forest. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been in such a natural setting, double, razor-wire topped fences notwithstanding. The cool mountain air makes me shiver, but I soak up the sight of trees, spring flowers, and distant rolling hills as I shuffle along in line with 22 other prisoners toward the processing area. It’s early afternoon by the time guards snap my photograph, fingerprint me, issue my bedroll and ID card. Rather than following the wide concrete walkways through manicured lawns toward my housing unit, I detour into the education department for a look and to introduce myself to the supervisor of education. I find Ms. Barto’s office and knock. “May I speak with you for a minute?” She looks at my blue canvas shoes, my elastic-waist khaki pants, my dingy white t-shirt with 2XL written in black felt-tip marker on the upper left chest, and the bed roll I carry under my arm. “Looks like you just pulled in.” “Yes. I just got here.” From Bruce’s description of her I knew to expect a sight different from Mr. Chandler. Ms. Barto is in her mid-30s, slender, with chestnut hair, gleaming white teeth, and blue eyes that sparkle. She has a welcoming smile that many prisoners, I’m sure, confuse with an invitation to flirt. “Haven’t you reported to your housing unit yet?” “Before going there, I wanted to introduce myself and ask if you might have a job for me. My name is Michael Santos. I’m just transferring from USP Atlanta. You may remember my mentor, Dr. Bruce McPherson, who visited you and a few inmates here about a month ago?” “Oh, you’re Dr. McPherson’s friend. He mentioned that you were going to try transferring here. I’m surprised you made it, and so quickly.” “I was lucky, I guess. I wanted to talk with you about an educational program I’m involved in, and I hope you’ll help me with some special requirements.” “You’re in correspondence school, right?” She remembers Bruce talking about me. “I’m nearly finished with a program at Hofstra University. To complete it I’ll need to make arrangements here so Hofstra’s library can send the books I need to read. Besides those arrangements, I’m hoping you might have a job available that will provide access to a word processor.” With Bruce having paved the way before I arrived, Ms. Barto extends all the support I need, and there are no delays settling in at McKean. She assigns me to a job of tutoring other prisoners on their self-paced studies to learn word processing skills. She authorizes my use of the computer for school and coordinates with the mailroom to accept packages from Hofstra’s library. With Bruce’s advance preparations and my clearly documented record of achievement, I have a seamless transition into Dream McKean. ******* Compared to the penitentiary, McKean is a dream. Although a handful of prisoners on the compound serve life sentences, the tension at McKean isn’t as pervasive or palpable as it was at USP Atlanta. Professional, intelligent leadership is the reason behind the tranquility. Warden Dennis Luther doesn’t cling to the simplistic notion that prisons should exist solely to isolate and punish. Instead of relying on policies that crush hope, and managing by threat of further punishment, Warden Luther uses a highly effective system of positive incentives. I no longer live in a cauldron ready to boil over. To leave my cell in Atlanta I had to wait for specific times and pass through eight separate checkpoints, metal detectors, and searches just to get to the weight pile. By contrast, the doors don’t lock at McKean and our liberty to walk freely encourages a responsible independence, thus lessening the tension all the way around. McKean has a token economy where prisoners can earn points individually and collectively. We redeem the points for privileges and rewards that ease our time. The progressive system vests the population with incentives to exercise self-control. By keeping rooms and housing units clean, prisoners earn the privilege of more access to television and the phones. Those who accumulate enough points earn the privilege of having a portable television and VCR in their rooms. By minimizing disciplinary infractions, prisoners can participate in family picnics, order food and goods from local businesses, and wear personal rather than institutional clothing. No one wants problems that can lead to the loss of privileges or lockdowns. The system works exceptionally well, eliminating problems like gangs and violence. The rigid bureaucracy of Atlanta stands in stark opposition to McKean. Ideas for my master’s thesis begin to form as I study Luther’s management style. Eagerly, I write a letter explaining my intentions to him. He’s not only supportive but invites me to his office and makes himself available as an interview subject. ******* “I’m here to see Warden Luther,” I explain to the guard who eyes me suspiciously when I present myself to the control area. The guard is stationed in a locked booth, an area that is off limits to prisoners. After he makes a call and confirms that I’m authorized to visit the warden in his office, the guard–still wary–buzzes the door open and I walk in. Tall indoor plants with heavy green leaves fill the atrium-like lobby. I look up and see several skylights. Brightly colored fish swim in a large aquarium adjacent to the receptionist’s desk. She tells me to walk up the stairs. “The warden’s office will be to the left.” When I walk into the office the warden’s secretary greets me from her desk. “Have a seat Mr. Santos. Warden Luther will see you momentarily.” She smiles at me and offers to pour me a cup of coffee, as if I’m a colleague calling on a business acquaintance. I thank her but decline the coffee while picking up a magazine on the wooden table beside the chair. The trade magazine serves the prison industry and those who work in prison management. In perusing the table of contents I quickly spot an article that Warden Luther coauthored with one of my mentors, Professor John DiIulio. The phone on the secretary’s desk rings and she tells me I can walk into the warden’s office. My legs shake a little as I walk on the plush carpet. Warden Dennis Luther sits in a high-backed leather chair, at a desk of cherry wood. Behind him a large window overlooks the center of McKean’s compound. An American flag and another flag bearing the Department of Justice insignia hang from poles in the corner. Bookshelves line the wall and I see photographs of him with other Bureau of Prisons officials, including Director Kathy Hawk. “Have a seat.” Warden Luther gestures to a couch adjacent to his desk. It’s the first couch I’ve sat on since my term began. “Tell me about your thesis and how I can help,” he encourages me. “I’m at a stage where I have to propose my thesis subject to the graduate committee. I’d like to write about the incentive system and the token economy you’ve initiated here. I could make a more persuasive case if I could learn about the influences that shaped your management philosophy.” “Okay. We can start right now. What are your questions?” “Wow. I wasn’t expecting to start today, but since you’re offering, I’d like to hear about your relationship with Professor John DiIulio.” My question surprises him, and I’m sure he wonders how I know about the Princeton professor. “John DiIulio? Why would you ask about him?” “Well, while I was waiting in your outer office, I flipped through the magazine on the table. I didn’t have time to read it, but I saw that you coauthored an article with Dr. DiIulio. For the past few years I’ve had an ongoing correspondence with him and I’ve read all of his books. From what I’ve learned through our correspondence and from his books, Governing Prisons and No Escape, I’m surprised that you two would collaborate as colleagues.” He chuckles. “The truth is, John and I share more in common than you might think.” ******* After an hour with the warden I return to my room and immediately write a letter to Dr. DiIulio. I explain that I’m proposing to center my thesis on Warden Luther’s management style, contrasting his token economy with the goals of isolation and punishment that Professor James Q. Wilson promotes, and even with the strict control model that DiIulio himself extols. Dr. DiIulio surprises me with his quick response to my letter. He writes that he’s glad I’ve settled in so well at FCI McKean and that I’ve had an opportunity to learn from his friend, Warden Luther. “What if I could arrange to bring a class of Princeton students on a field trip to McKean? That way they could tour the prison and perhaps spend some time listening to you and Warden Luther describe your perspectives on confinement.” It’s an incredible offer for me, and I accept with enthusiasm. ******* On a Saturday morning, in the fall of 1994, I wake at three o’clock as a guard shines his flashlight into my single-man cell for the census count. After climbing out from under the covers and flipping on the light, I sit at my desk to read through the notes I’ve taken from Dr. DiIulio’s books. In a few hours I’ll receive an honor that I know will have meaning for the rest of my life. Although not quite equivalent to lecturing at Princeton, I’m looking forward to speaking with a group of Ivy League students, contributing to their education and to their understanding of America’s prison system. Few prisoners will ever enjoy such an honor and I bask, momentarily, in my good fortune.  I feel as if I’m charting my own course, making progress. At nine o’clock I walk to Warden Luther’s office, ready, intent on making a favorable impression while giving Dr. DiIulio and his students a different perspective on the need for prison reform. Three of us, including Warden Luther, Associate Warden Craig Apker, and I sit in a conference room. “Care for coffee or hot chocolate?” Warden Luther points to the buffet table. I walk over and pour hot chocolate from a thermos. While admiring the array of pastries on the oak table I suddenly realize it’s the first time I’ve sipped from a ceramic mug since I’ve been incarcerated. I’m used to plastic and this heavy mug dings against my teeth. The whole experience makes me grin. “Did you sleep well?” the warden asks. He’s dressed casually, in brown corduroys and a tan sweater over a shirt with a button-down Oxford collar. He looks preppy, which I guess is appropriate for a meeting with the undergrads. “I’ve been awake since three,” I admit. “This is a big day for me and I wanted to study the notes I’ve taken on Dr. DiIulio’s books.” Through the conference room window the three of us watch the charter bus come to a stop in front of the administration building. I’ve seen photographs of Dr. DiIulio before and recognize him as he steps off the bus. I’ve read everything I could about him. I know that he earned his Ph.D. from Harvard, and also that he was one of the youngest professors at Princeton to receive tenure. I count fourteen students, all well dressed, and I contemplate the brilliant futures that await them. These are future leaders being groomed in one of the world’s finest universities. Some may be offspring of legislators and judges. I’m thinking of the influence they represent and I’m grateful for the privilege of speaking with them while I’m wearing the khaki uniform of a prisoner. After introductions, we sit in cushioned chairs around the highly polished wooden conference table. The students take notes as Warden Luther provides the group with details on the prison. It is a medium-security Federal Correctional Institution with a population that ranges between 1,400 and 1,800 men. He describes how he governs the prison from the perspective that prisoners are sent to prison as punishment for their crimes, rejecting the notion that he has a duty to punish them further by creating an oppressive atmosphere. “So do you think others might construe your prison as one that coddles prisoners?” one of the students asks. “What do you think, Michael? Are you being coddled?” Warden Luther deflects the student’s question to me and I’m happy to respond. “I served the first several years of my sentence in a high-security prison, an environment that really dehumanizes everyone. Although I was able to create a routine and focus on educating myself, most of the other prisoners abandoned hope. Those perceptions and attitudes stoked their hostility. That level of anger doesn’t exist here, and from that perspective, it’s better, at least for me. “Some people might believe this atmosphere coddles prisoners, but it has many advantages that should interest taxpayers.  I don’t sense a strong gang presence, I haven’t seen any bloodshed, and the prisoners work together to sustain the availability of privileges we can work toward. We’re still in prison, still living without family, without liberty. When I’m lying on a steel rack in a locked room at night, with an aching to see my mother again, or to hug my sisters, or when I’m suffering from the estrangement I feel from society, from women, I’m aware of my punishment. I’ve been living that way for more than 2,500 days already. To me it doesn’t feel like I’m being coddled.” “What kind of changes do you think Congress could make that would serve the interests of taxpayers?” Dr. DiIulio asks Warden Luther. “One change I’d recommend would be to close all minimum-security prison camps. The camps don’t serve a useful purpose. Fences don’t confine the camp prisoners, and the men aren’t a threat to society. Camp prisoners should serve their sanctions in home-confinement or under some other form of community-based sanction that would not require taxpayers to spend more than $10,000 a year to support each man we confine in a camp.” “How about you, Michael? What kind of changes would you like to see Congress make?” “Well, as a long-term prisoner, I’d like to see citizens and members of Congress rethink the concept of justice. Instead of measuring justice by the number of calendar years a person serves in prison, I’d like to see changes that would measure justice by the efforts an offender makes to redeem his crimes and reconcile with society. Reforms should encourage offenders to work toward earning freedom through merit and redemptive acts.” “How about violent offenders?” Another student interjects. “Should offenders who violently prey on society have opportunities to earn freedom?” “I’m a big believer in a person’s capacity to change, to lead a productive and contributing life. An enlightened society such as ours ought to allow its criminal justice system to evolve. I don’t know the mechanisms citizens or leaders ought to put in place, or what challenges an individual ought to overcome to earn freedom, but I think we can come up with a system that serves society better than locking a human being in a cage for decades. Perhaps some offenders won’t express remorse, or work to atone, or do enough to earn freedom. But many will. And such a system, I’m sure, would serve the interests of society better than one limiting itself to isolating and punishing.” ******* The hours we spend together in Warden Luther’s conference room raise my spirit. When we leave I’m the tour guide, responding to student questions as we walk through the housing units, recreation areas, and prison compound. After our tour we return for a second conference that lasts another few hours. I’m energized as I finally walk them out to their bus, and I don’t mind at all when the guard at the gate leading back into the prison orders me against the wall so he can pat me down. Indifferent to the degradation and assault on my human dignity, I smile back at the group of students who watch the search. “Who’re they?” the guard asks, curious about why I’m with the group. “They’re students from Princeton.” He’s giving me a thorough search, perhaps because the group is looking on. I’m a spectacle, on display, with the guard’s hands working their way along my arms as if he’s squeezing meat into a sausage casing. “So why they coming to see you? You go to Princeton?” “No. I correspond with their professor, who has a relationship with Warden Luther.  The students came on a field trip and I was invited to participate.” “Lucky you,” he says as he clears me to walk through the gate and into the prison yard. ******* My meeting with Dr. DiIulio and his students inspires my thesis. It becomes a project that succeeds in making me feel luckier still, opening new avenues few long-term prisoners enjoy. Warden Luther authorizes me to record a video for presentation at the 1994 Annual Conference of the American Society of Criminology, and in May of 1995, Hofstra awards my Master of Arts degree. With those credentials and letters of endorsement from my growing support network, Dr. George Cole convinces his colleagues to admit me into a program at the University of Connecticut that will lead to my Ph.D. Eight years into my sentence and I’m on my way toward becoming a scholar of distinction. Or so I think.

In this episode, Marlon interviews Michael to learn new insights. What does "building wealth from the inside out" mean to Michael? What tools has Michael used to prioritize his time and get an edge in life? He discusses the 4 quadrants of time and how to prioritize them.   © 2020 FINANCIALLY ALERT LLC & SUCCESS BY CHOICE INC. All Rights Reserved. Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is for general information purposes only. In no event will we be liable for any loss or damage derived from the information provided.

In today’s podcast, Rhonda and David are honored to interview Dr. Michael Greenwald, a courageous clinical psychologist who helped make the Atlanta Intensive a truly amazing event. Michael volunteered for the live demonstration to work on his lifelong problem with social anxiety, which seems to be a popular topic these days, and likely a personal problem for many podcast fans. My co-therapist was Thai-An Truong, a highly respected TEAM therapist and TEAM therapy trainer from Oklahoma City. Thai-An also joins today’s podcast via Zoom and dialogues with Michael for the first time since the intensive. The session with Michael was powerful and inspiring, with a good 50% of the audience in tears (of joy) at the end. Michael recorded the session on his cell phone, but the quality was not up to the quality of our podcast recordings, so he agreed to fly up to the “Murietta Studios” from his home in Los Angeles so we could at least describe what happened and share the magic with you. If we can find a way to do some sound enhancement on the cellphone recording of the session, we will likely publish it as a separate mid-week podcast for those who like to hear the incredible therapeutic process unfolding in real time. If you review Michael’s Daily Mood Log at the start of the session, you’ll see that he was feeling depressed, anxious, ashamed, worthless, lonely, self-conscious, discouraged and stuck, and all of these feelings were intense. In addition, he told us that he wasn’t feeling much joy, self-esteem, pleasure or satisfaction in his life. But the strongest feeling was anxiety. He said that coming up on stage to face his fears was an enormous challenge, and that this was the first time he’d ever done something like this. We will do T = Testing again at the end to see what changed, and by how much. We’ll also ask Michael to complete the Empathy and Helpfulness surveys, so we can find out how he experienced Thai-An and David during the session. You may be saddened by the upsetting event Michael recorded at the top of his Daily Mood Log, which was “sitting with my son and trying to make conversation with him.” He said their conversations were always pretty superficial, and that he would typically leave the room after short interactions with his son because he felt so anxious. Here’s an example of a typical exchange. Michael’s son, a graduate student in clinical psychology, was working on his applications to internship programs. Michael: What’s up? Son: I’m working on my applications to internship programs. Michael: That’s good. How’s it going? Are you getting them in on time? Son: Yah, it’s fine. Michael: Are you completing them? Do you want me to look at them? Son: All fine. If you review the negative thoughts on Michael’s Daily Mood Log, you’ll see that he felt like a failure as a father because he did not know how to get close to his son or how to tell him just how much he loved him. He was telling himself things like this: Something is wrong with me because I can’t talk to him. 100% I am failing him as a father. 100% He deserves so much better than me. 100% He must wish he had a different father. 95% And more. I was sad to see that Michael had been beating up on himself pretty badly for years, and I'm pretty sure that the therapists in the audience felt the same way, because it was so clear that he was a tremendously humble, giving and loving father who was totally devoted to his sons. I found myself thinking, "My gosh, I wish I'd been half the father that Michael is!" The E = Empathy phase of the session lasted about 30 minutes. Michael indicated that Thai-An and I had done a good job, and that he felt understood and accepted, so we went on to A = Assessment of Resistance in a step-by-step manner, using these tools: The “Invitation Step” to find out if he was ready to roll up his sleeves and get to work on his social anxiety The “Miracle Cure” question to find out what he hoped would happen in the session The “Magic Button,” to see if he’d want all of his negative thoughts and feelings to disappear suddenly, just by pushing it “Positive Reframing,” asking Michael these two questions about each negative thought or feeling: “What does this negative thought or feeling show about you and your core values that’s positive and awesome?” “What are some benefits, or advantages, of this negative thought or feeling?” At first, these questions didn’t make any sense to Michael, since he was so used to thinking about his negative thoughts and feelings in a negative light, thinking they were “bad” and were the result of some kind of personality defect or mental disorder, like “social anxiety disorder” described in the DSM5. This is also the hardest part of TEAM-CBT for therapists to learn, because it is so anti-intuitive. But as the list of positives grew, Michael began to “get it,” and we could actually see his mood lightening up before our very eyes. It was so cool, and this was the first hint the audience had that something remarkable was afoot. This, for sure, is one of the most powerful and innovative components of TEAM-CBT. The “Pivot Question” and “Magic Dial” Question. Michael decided it wouldn’t be such a great idea to press the Magic Button, since then all of the positives on the Positive Reframing list would go down the drain along with his negative thoughts and feelings. He decided, instead, to dial down his negative feelings to much lower levels that would allow him to feel better without losing any of the positives. You can see this on the “% Goal” column of his DML For example, he decided that it would be desirable to dial his depression down from 85% to 20%, since some sadness was appropriate, given his difficulties getting close to his son. In fact, if his depression disappeared completely, it would be like saying he didn’t really care. Michael decided to dial down the rest of his negative feelings as well in the range of 5% (for discouraged and stuck) to 15% (for anxiety), and 10% for the rest of his negative feelings. This ended the A = Assessment of Resistance phase of the session, and that took about 25 minutes. We then went on to M = Methods, focusing on his negative thoughts, one at a time, and attacking them with a variety of techniques like Identify the Distortions, Externalization of Voices, Acceptance / Self-Defense Paradigms, Examine the Evidence, and the Paradoxical Double Standard Technique. At the end, we went into the audience so Michael could ask participants if they were judging him, and what they thought about him as a father. This is called the Survey Technique, and it is usually pretty threatening to people with social anxiety, or any of us, really! But as you’ll hear in the podcast, the feedback he received was jaw-dropping. Thai-An joined us at the end and dialogued with Michael about the loneliness he’d struggled with, as well as how he could most effectively share his feelings of love and insecurity with his son. His “homework” after the session was to call his son and report back to all of us the next morning! The next morning, Michael reported that he’d had the most phenomenal dialogue ever with his son! He was practically floating on air, and reports that after the intensive, his life has changed dramatically in many ways, including: A terrific relationship with his son. Feelings of true joy, even ecstasy, that he’d never previously experienced or even thought possible. Way better connections with people in general, due to being open and vulnerable for the first time. Greatly improved clinical experiences as a result of using TEAM-CBT in his clinical work. In fact, he is thinking of starting a free weekly TEAM-CBT practice group in the Los Angeles area, and hopefully opening a Feeling Great treatment center somewhere down the line. Make sure you contact Michael if you are interested joining his weekly practice group. (drmichaeldg@gmail.com) You can see his amazing mood scores at the end of the session on his final DML. He also gave us perfect scores on the Empathy and Helpfulness scales, and described his experience as a “transformation.” After the session, he added that he’d seen that people really could improve quickly during other live demonstrations at my workshops, but felt skeptical that a TEAM session could trigger joy, even euphoria, as he’d never actually felt those kinds of feelings. But now, he realized this was actually possible! I would like to thank Michael, as well as my amazing co-therapist, Thai-An Truong. Thai-An is located in Oklahoma City and specializes in treating post-partum depression with TEAM-CBT. She also does one-on-one case consultation as well as awesome online TEAM training for mental health professionals, including free weekly webinars as well as her “TEAM-CBT bootcamp intensives.” If you would like to contact Thai-An, she can be reached at Thai-An Truong thaian@lastingchangetherapy.com. After the show was recorded, I received this amazing email from Michael. I think you'll enjoy it! Dr. Burns, Just some additional thoughts I'd like to mention about the changes I've noticed since the Atlanta therapy demo. The ones you put in the show notes are totally accurate. But the positive changes I've experienced since the demo go way beyond those. I'm not writing this to suggest you include these; I'm great with what you wrote. I only wanted to elaborate a bit on how things have been for me because it's such an incredible change for me. Please feel free to add to the notes, or not, at your discretion. And by the way, we are now two months post-demo and my mood scores remain essentially at zero with high positive feelings. My stress tolerance has increased a great deal. Prior to the demo, when I made a mistake or did something stupid, I would rip into myself with intensely harsh criticism and self-judgment (I think I shared with you about the time I dropped the bottle of Cologne as one example showing the different reactions to myself). Now, when the same sorts of things happen, those harsh voices are absent or merely a whisper, and easily dismissed. So there is no accompanying self-hatred like before. I'm far more outgoing with people in general. I feel closer than ever to my friends and family. I've been more present and available to my friends and family. I'm more open and far less defensive than I've ever been in my life. I feel more positive feelings than ever, and I laugh more than ever. I have more compassion for others as well as for myself. I'm more aware of my emotional world and have more access to my feelings. I'm able to connect more with others in general. The types of situations that would trigger feelings of irritability or anger, no longer do. I'm more able to be available for others, whether in my personal or professional life. I'm closer with my wife, and, honestly, with everyone in my family and social circle. I've been in several social gatherings since the demo, and my levels of anxiety have never been lower, and my level of engagement and participation has never been higher; I'm like a different person. I'm more optimistic and hopeful than before. So I know this is a bit of rambling, but I just wanted to mention these things. As I  had discussed with you during our visit, I've been struck by how far-reaching the benefits of the therapy demo have been for me. We focused on the one moment of one problem on the DML. We blew away those negative thoughts and feelings. That outcome, had it been limited to that specific target, would have been amazing and a total success for me. But as per your model, that was a 'fractal'. And the change in the brain circuits happened with that fractal and the new networks were created, and I feel that they continue to grow. For me, it's truly been the opposite of the drop of ink in the glass of water, discoloring everything, as a distorted thought or belief will do. The therapy demo was the drop of 'clarity' that shined the light on all my distorted thoughts and beliefs at one time. Maybe that's corny, but this is what it feels like to me. So feel free to use or not use any of this as you see fit. I only wanted to mention these things. There's more, but I think this gives the flavor. Thanks again. Love, Michael Thanks for listening today! By the way, if you are looking for CE credits or training in TEAM-CBT, my upcoming workshop on therapeutic resistance on February 9, 2020 will be a good one. You'll learn how to use the techniques described in today's podcast. See below for details and links! David    

In this episode of Follow The Leader I sit down with Micael Freund the founder and chairman of Shavei Israel, one of the most important Jewish organizations as it identifies and reaches out to "lost" and "hidden" Jews reconnecting them with the Jewish Nation and Israel. So how exactly did Michael end up creating Shavei Israel, amazingly it the issue found him when he was working in the Israel Prime Ministers office. When you tune into this episode you will also get to know the following about Michael.- How did Michael's late Grandmother have a lasting effect on him?- What motivated Michael to start Shavie? (10:20)- Biggest challenges Shavei Israel faces?- Best way to communicate your message?- What leadership characteristic defines Michael?- What mistake should leaders try and avoid?

Honestly this title says it all. Welcome back to ACEaota! We know this episode was supposed to be about Hawaii, but due to some technical difficulties we are proudly bringing our own personal stories to you! Who is Michael? WHAT is Michael? What's so spooky about a cupcake candle? And is the elf ok? Give this episode a listen to find out! If you enjoyed this and would like to hear us read and react to your personal stories, send them to us! Our email is aceaotapodcast@gmail.com! We will be creating a listener episode in the future, and we would love to read your stories on the podcast! While you are at it, follow us on our social media: Twitter & Instagram: @aceaota You can also follow us on our personal accounts: Twitter: @thetippietop & @SunnySarahLou Instagram: @tippietop429 & @Sunny_SarahLou Thank you for listening, and we will be back again next Monday! K THX BYE! - Sarah & Jess

We talk about private barrel selections being the new unicorns on this show all the time. But it begs the question, are we seeing so many private picks that the market is oversaturated? It seems like every week there is a new barrel in our city for sale, FOMO about some sweet sticker, or the secondary market has a crazy valuation on a normal single barrel selection. We examine all the components that go into getting single barrels such as the amount of influence from distributor reps, the amount of available barrels at the distilleries, and if you would buy from a big chain vs a small independent store. Will there ever be enough bourbon to go around and not over bloat the market? We’ll find out. Show Partners: At Barrell Craft Spirits, every release is intentionally unique, and can’t be duplicated. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Check out Bourbon on the Banks in Frankfort, KY on August 24th. Visit BourbonontheBanks.org. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about Portugal. What got you into to buying private barrel picks? What's the landscape of private picks in DC? With the increase in stores wanting private picks, are some stores going to get shut out of the program? Do you think distilleries should be taking care of the bigger accounts over the smaller stores that started doing picks earlier? Is there a bias towards certain states? Would you want to buy a private barrel pick from a big box liquor store? Does the local sales rep make a difference? What about restaurant picks? Do you think distilleries are running out of barrels for their private barrel programs? Is the market flooded with private selections? What could distilleries do to give one store an advantage over another? Let's discuss stickers. Do they influence your purchase? Should stores slow down barrel picks? Why are some people spending so much for private picks on the secondary market? 0:00 Yeah, all I think all of our products are, which ones the few that we've gotten are like my daily drinkers. Yes, I'm with you. I don't ever drink the rare stuff by myself. And nobody ever comes over. So. 0:26 Hey, everybody, welcome back. This is Episode 210 of the bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny. And we don't really have a whole lot of bourbon news to talk about. In fact, we have none but we have some sort of fun little tidbits information plus some things that we've been working on and what we've been doing. So let me tell you about them. So I had some information sent to me a few weeks ago by Chris Middleton over at whiskey Academy. And he said this after he listened to Episode 207 with Jimmy Russell and I sat down with them. Now, you know, it's not often when you can stump Jimmy Russell and this was one thing 1:00 We had kind of talked about that's really kind of a whiskey mystery. So let's kind of dive into it. We talked about the name Ezra on the podcast, and we did that for a bit and somehow we stumbled on the topic of Ezra Brooks. Now, from my knowledge, I remember this being a fictitious name and brand but we got on the topic and it kind of just spiraled out from there. However, here's some factual information on Ezra Brooks that came from Chris Middleton. So Ezra Brooks it is a whiskey brand that is a copycat brand of jack daniels Black Label Tennessee whiskey. It was created by Frank Silverman of the Frank Silverman and company in Chicago in 1957, or he sourced Kentucky bourbon under the Ezra Brooks distilling company is an NDP filed on July 30 1958, with Herbert Silverman as the chairman. Now this was all also under the Hoffman distilling company in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. There was no Ezra Brooks no distiller, owner investors, celebrity or a day 2:00 The thief from a whiskey cemetery. He's a trademark Phantom. SO Hockley built the Hoffman distillery on the Salt River in 1880 joined II Kaufman. After prohibition, it was rebuilt with the brothers Robert and Ezra, who were brought in to run it. And those were the sons of Thomas repeat, hence the connection to the wild turkey distillery. Jimmy Russell was probably referencing the name from here and all likelihood It was not where the hazard Brooks name came from. Frank Sillerman unashamedly copied everything from jack daniels, starting with the square bottle to a similar black and white label graphic, the filigree even an image of an old distillery illustration, which jack Dino's had on the back of the label, even the trademark name Ezra Brooks with similar syndication and personalization, so we're men also attempting to replicate jack daniels unique use of charcoal filtration. As an aside, Ezra Brooks was America's second charcoal rectified bourbon was 3:00 Since post prohibition, but the processes were very crude in simplistic it's more of a gesture circulating some charcoal and the whiskey barrel for 24 hours. George decal, the other charcoal was launched in 1964. Silverman also plagiarized jack daniels unlabeled claims and copied some of the Jackie Mills print advertising messages back then. JACK, Dino's went on allocation from 1956 to the early 1960s when the consumer demand exceeded the production under the maturation. So that's a good little whiskey tidbit for you. So make sure you try to write that one down. Now you know the kind of the real history behind Ezra Brooks. So I want to give a shout out to our friends over for castle festival for hosting us this past weekend. We had a great time hitting up the bourbon lodge that was sponsored by Justin's house at bourbon and the bird review to get some dusty pours as well as some air conditioning before heading back out into the crowd the jam with bands like Judah, the lion, the killers, and Nelly 4:00 Put on actually a real good show to bring back some those early 2000 memories for lots of us. You can catch our for castle updates on our Instagram and Facebook pages. Did you catch that thing we released on Tuesday this past week? Well, you can look forward to hearing those every week from now on. We're excited to be launching whiskey quickie to give you a fun update in the middle of the week. The normal podcasts will remain unchanged, and hope you look forward to hearing more of them. If you want to catch the video versions, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube page. And you can see that sweet intro that we've cooked up. We've got no shortage of whiskey to review and we can get through quite a bit with only 62nd reviews. But if there's something that you were dying to hear, send us an email team at bourbon pursuit calm. We talked about private barrel selections being the new unicorns on this show all the time. But that begs the question, are we seeing so many private pics that the market is just becoming over saturated? It seems like every week 5:00 There's a new barrel that's going up for sale in our city. There's fo mo about some sweet sticker attached to a bottle that we want to get our hands on, or the secondary market has some crazy valuation on just another regular single barrel selection. We examine all the components that go into getting single barrels, such as the amount of influence from distributor rep, the amount of available barrels that are even at these distilleries. And if you would even buy from a big chain versus a small independent store, will there be enough bourbon to go around and hopefully not overload the market? will find out. All right, well, let's get on with the show. Here's Joe from barrell bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 5:42 Hi, Joe from barrell bourbon here, every release is intentionally unique and can't be duplicated. Once it's gone. It's gone. Find out more at barrel bourbon com. 5:53 I'm Fred Minnick. And this is above the char as I walk into this beautiful store, surrounded by 6:00 port and scotch bottles. I went up to the owner in Lisbon, Portugal. And I asked him a question, sir. Where's your bourbon? He said, Well, there's no demand for bourbon here. Nobody wants it. I love bourbon, he says, but nobody really wants to buy bourbon and Portugal. A few days later, I walked into a lovely bar. There are plenty of ports and scotches and cognacs and the bar owner boasted is like yeah, we have the largest bourbon selection in all of Porto. I'm like, Wow, fantastic. What do you got? We've got bullet bourbon. He said, I was That's fantastic. And then he had four roses and he had a couple of vintage Bourbons and he was very excited to even have jack daniels and Jim Beam. I think he had a redemption here and and an orphan barrel there in for sure. It was the largest selection of bourbon that I had seen in Portugal, and he made some nice cocktails. But at the end of the day, that was not 7:00 Nearly the amount of bourbon that I'm used to seeing, and even a random chilis in Boise, Idaho. Now I guess I shouldn't expect to go to Portugal and see bourbon littered on all the shelves. Not at all. I don't expect that one bit. But I was rather shocked to see that bourbon had not penetrated such a country field with culinary love and wine and port. So perhaps I'm naive to think that bourbon should be served throughout Portugal. But let me tell you why. When I walk into a foreign country, I look for bourbon. It's because I think of the distillers in the 1950s and 1960s, who are trying desperately to get these countries to pull down their tariffs except bourbon overseas. See, in that time frame, bourbon was not a unique product in the United States. And so places like United Kingdom, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, they were all terrifying bourbon because there was nothing unique about it and the world. Also want 8:00 Give scotch and easy pass so it could help rebuild the United Kingdom. And so when I look at the shelves throughout the world, I think of the toil of the distillers in the 1950s and 1960s, and those in the 1980s, who were just kind of hanging on by a thread, just trying to bring bourbon back. And while I could easily say that, you know, bourbon and Portugal means less bourbon and Boise, Idaho, it's really not that simple. You see, the more bourbon grows, the more production we will have. And if we can get places like Portugal to carry, I don't know, three to five Bourbons, and every store or restaurant, that's a win for Kentucky. That's a win for bourbon. And at the end of the day, I think it's a win for you too, because that means they're going to work harder to make better bourbon. And that's this week's above the char Hey, 9:00 If you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram, that's at Fred Minnick again. That's at Fred Minnick. Until next week. Cheers 9:11 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit Kenny and Ryan here tonight talking about a particular subject that means a lot to all of the bourbon crazies, the bourbon nuts out there because this is one topic that Ryan and I I think, I mean Gosh, we're we're hundreds of episodes into this now and we start rolling back the the clock and the dials and we go back in time and I remember when Ryan was all like, Well, why would you chase unicorns when store pics are the are the real thing that you want? You know, this is this is a privately selected barrel. It only has a finite amount of bottles in it. And now it seems that the game is even getting ruined for store pics in that all right, Ryan. Yeah, now you got to start your own private label. Rare 9:58 because it's 10:00 I guess I was probably what two or three years ago I said that I was just burnt out by the whole camping and lotteries and all these, you know, limited releases and then the store pics was like my, you know, I was like man, those are the just like you said, but now it's gotten to the point where like you said every stores doing one every groups done one they got a sticker on they got this that that and then it's like, all right, what's you know what's rare about these anymore? But I mean, they are still rare because you are selecting your own barrel but uh, you know, same time I think they've kind of lost their luster a little bit, but I don't know, they're still unique. Yeah. And I think I think again, harder. Absolutely. And I think the good thing is at least with this certain topic, because there's there's a lot of ways that you can take this, you know, we've had, we've had you know, as I mentioned, Ryan talked about this a lot. We had Matt Ray, Walt Aiden, English the WWE wrestler talk about it. We had we had Brett from brick 11:00 banter on here we talked about sort of, you know, who can you trust when somebody's actually picking out a single barrel we've also had Jamie Ferris on the show before where he's had over 70 single barrels at one time in the store. So the single barrels they're not nothing new however, the craze is starting to really rise in popularity amongst you know, everywhere to the point where people are quickly selling out a single barrel pick that their total wine just got somewhere in Houston because somebody posted they're like, Oh, can I go get that let's go run and go get it real quick. So it craze the craze is starting to reach capacity. Yeah, and the crazy thing is not to keep going on a banter on our our banter. 11:46 The the the people that have been doing these are you know, for so long and that started doing these to bring interest in these single barrels are getting squeezed out. And that's kind of the the crazy thing about it. It's because there's such a demand. 12:00 The groups that you know, really bought into this and kind of made distilleries famous for it. 12:05 Because they're just a group, they're not really had the buying power of big liquor stores. So we can get into this a little more, but it's just, it's an interesting environment. It's still unique and very cool environment. But there's a lot more at play now. And so you kind of gotta weave in and out how you can end it. Alright, so we've talked enough. So let's introduce our guest, Michael. 12:27 So our guest is Michael Gallagher. Michael is a bourbon enthusiast and brought this topic to us as a way to kind of spark a conversation of what's the market going to be like now and what's it going to be like, even in the future? So Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. So before we start diving into the topic, you know, I we always have to get your bourbon story kind of where did you come from? How did you grow up in this? This this brown water wasteland or whatever it is nowadays? Well, when I was growing up by my parents and really drink it off, so I didn't really start getting 13:00 into it and probably until like, five years ago, and, and I didn't live it up here near DC for about eight years now. And being right across the line, the wild west of DC until I have a couple of liquor stores actually like the frequent because it's a lot easier to get stuff. And that actually helped me broaden my horizons as far as like the range of, you know, flavors and tastings that you can get from it. I mean, I'm not an expert in any means when it comes to figuring out like, whether these are way marzipan or what you know, we just play one on the podcast. 13:35 We ride on Fred's coattails on that 13:39 so yeah, I built a collection of myself it's just been a nice happy that I've enjoyed so what's your your collection up to this point? I probably got around 150 bottles which is probably like nothing compared to what you get but dang that's about there with me. The problem is I drink on like, like this slowly keep diminishing but Kenny Hello 14:00 He's a hoarder he's got that's not true because every time you come over I crack one open and then you just leave and so I'm I'm always stuck with all these bottles and only have like two pours poured out of them because you invite you don't invite me back. 14:14 There's a reason why that happens to for sure. I guess Michael kind of give us a little bit of an indication of like, What got you like looking into buying Perino private selected barrels that have been done either by stores or by groups or anything like that versus, you know, either regular offerings or trying to chase after unicorns. I think it was when I started collecting deeper it was more about availability I guess, because like you get to a certain point you can't, you're not going to find that many more new bottles. So it became more about the different flavors in like a four roses. You know, private select the different kinds of flavors you can get from you know, different recipes they have, which I usually found through the 15:00 Single barrel program that you know liquor stores and guys like you have done 15:07 and so what's what's sort of the landscape in DC as well because I know I know we've got friends that own stores around there and I know the way that as you'd mentioned the wild west of laws happened but what's the like the landscape of private pics because I'll tell you about the landscape of private pets here in Kentucky after you're done 15:29 as far it's just I think the the stores 15:33 if I'm understanding your question correctly did stores just happened to do as many pics as they can. I mean, I don't they don't usually get that many in they probably do like four or five years especially the my favorite store is that about which is good. Yeah, I mean, because the one thing that we you know, we kind of see around here is that there is 15:52 there's an abundance. Right? I mean, I think I think there is something to be said about having this. Everything in your backyard. A lot. 16:00 These stores have had these relationships with the distilleries for a very long time. So when they want to go and do a private pic, it's like yeah, sure. Come on in like we've been doing business forever. And then now it's starting to the point well, okay, well, bourbon, the craze is starting to go up. So now we've got stores in California and Oregon and Washington and Iowa, New York. And I everybody wants to do them now. And so there's, there's this. They're feeling this pressure. Yeah, there's tension and the pressure. And so and with that pressure, I mean, we're going to start seeing some people potentially get booted out and stuff like that. And I know Ryan, you've you've kind of seen it firsthand by you know, Guthrie, that's been on the show before. with Todd he's down in Bardstown. So, tell us a little bit about what that looks like. Yeah, so got there. A good friend of mine owns today's we talked about before, but he's been doing private pics for Gosh, I mean, it seems like it's 17:00 least seven to 10, maybe even 10 years, ever since they've been first having it. And so, yeah, he goes to plot for Russell's pics this year and four roses and they're like, Hey, 17:13 we don't have room for you this year. And, and it's based because he's a small store, you know, he doesn't do a ton of volume. And so they're basically catering to the bigger liquor stores that push the volume. And so it's kind of like squeezing the little guys out, they kind of, 17:31 you know, embrace them at first and so it's kind of like, all right, well, that doesn't seem 17:37 very fair. Very right. And we seen it with good friend of ours. Read with 17 out be I mean, they've been doing pics for ever and Campari just told them that they weren't gonna be able to do a Russell's pick. And they I mean, gosh, they've done. I mean, how many barrels that we picked that day with them six out of how many I mean, we probably 18 maybe you could just tell read and emulate it. 18:00 relationship with Jimmy and Eddie. And it was like, you're just going to shit on this relationship that's like been there forever just because they're a group and they're not a big liquor store. And so there's just been so many groups and so many liquor stores now interested in it that like, the way that these 18:19 bourbon companies are kind of determining who gets what is kind of alarming and shocking to me, and I'm not too happy about it, but I understand it is what it is. And it's like you said at pressure, squeeze markets, so they do what they gotta do, but I think I'll will All right. Well, remember that, you know, when about five, eight years, and all this stuff's out again and there, you know, calling us back up. Yeah, Michael, kinda want to get your take on that. Like, what do you kind of see is the, 18:51 the anti, I guess you could say happening, of being able to say, well, we're going to push out all these people that took it 19:00 The dance and we're going to take care of the Benny's and you know liquor barns in our backyard and going me wrong like they they get the cream of the crop for some reason I've seen liquor barn just regular like Buffalo Trace old Weller antique pictures that show up on Facebook. Holy God, I'm not I'm not kidding. They have you know, when we go we do our Buffalo Trace barrel pick they have four barrels when they do it. They have 12 1518 It's insane, right? So they treat customers a little bit differently to do you agree that these distilleries should be taking care of their bigger accounts rather than everybody that kind of has been keeping them in the dance for a while, but is as bad as it sounds. I mean, it's probably Money Talks, right? And it's almost like, to the point where to get certain bottles, like comfort like they've done in the past is these liquor stores have to push the cheaper stuff or the bottles they want to get off their hands in order to get the chance to get into the selections what it almost seems like in and so I guess another question that that we kind of 20:00 Bringing around that you know it does go by location to. I'm reading a few things that are coming here in the chat. Bill Nall says that location matters. He was in Detroit and there's a liquor store that had a barrel bourbon private pick. And it was, quote the only one in the state. However, here in Kentucky, you can go around to five or six stores and probably find one. Matt said the same exact thing he said in Iowa. There is only one for roses single barrel private selection pick for the entire state. He never saw it. He only saw there is only one Weller 107 barrel for the whole entire state of Wisconsin this year. So there is there is this sort of demographic, I guess, bias? I don't know. Maybe that's what it is like, what do you what do you all think? Do you think there is a demographic bias or is it because there's there's another underlying motive there? I guess it could be the idea of population density areas. I mean, I was not exactly a DC nuts. 21:00 DC is like this big city. But you know, DC, even DC like a liquor store that I usually go to only gets like four bottles, like a year, like four selections a year from different cup, and they're usually the big one like whistle pig for roses and stuff like that. But 21:14 I'm not around with. Yeah, I mean, I think where these distilleries are aiming, they're kind of probably starting to squeeze out the group's more so than stores. Because a group doesn't necessarily help them, 21:28 I guess, expand their brand or expand their reach. You know, we're us whiskey geeks were already in we're already buying their product. And so I think smaller stores and groups are going to get squeezed out first because like that, they just want to reach new customers and get into new markets and a group just not going to offer that especially one that's here in Kentucky. I mean, because we're going to, we're going to buy them if they're available and it's 21:57 kind of, you know, limits the reach if 22:00 just selling to so I can understand that. But at the same time we've are the ones that are, you know, like, I hate to hate hate to keep saying bring it to the dance, but we're the ones that brought you to the dance and so, so Hey, come on, give some love. No, Andy, just comment in the chat. He said, Well, groups don't sell cases of fireball. Exactly. 22:22 Exactly. And so 22:25 there's still a ton here in Kentucky. I mean, like you said, You got a liquor barn or total wine. I mean, they got the everyday Buffalo Trace and, like, even Barrow I mean, they're pleather but well when I said it, I mean they fly off the shelf like crazy. I mean, it's a it's just a different landscape than it was two three years ago. Do you think they have like deals with those like when I was in I was in Kentucky and I went to the old forester their new area where they have their you do I guess you do your single barrel select there and they had like the plaques on the wall for the people that have done pics, and like total wines has like 20 stars. 23:00 Any star was like 10 bottles I mean 10 barrels. So yeah, yeah I mean there's it's amazing right? I look at it from from a business perspective and yes it does make sense that you you help the people that sell cases upon cases upon cases of just old forester 86 or 100 or the new right or whatever it is right it's great to be able to take care of those people. 23:31 The flip side of it is is that when we start thinking about these big stores the the liquor Barnes the Benny's 23:40 you know, talk about some some massive change the total wines now when you go into one of these liquor stores, and you know, we have him around here, I'm sure that you've got a a Costco around you as well. Even though I don't know how big the Costco private barrel program is, even though they sell a shit ton of liquor but 24:00 What is what is your take? Like? would you would you feel comfortable buying a private barrel pic? Because it is that total line and you have no idea who did it? Or are you going to? Are you going to pass on it? Michael? What kind I want to get your ID on that. That Yeah, I've had that discussion in my own head a lot. As far as Do they really care about the taste? Or are they just doing the private select because it's a private select and I know it's going to sell more. I do like to tend to go to the to the groups but like you guys and that I trust like the you know, we kind of have the same flavor palette I guess you would say and I tend to stick to the smaller ones and stay away from the larger ones. Yeah, we do have costumes here in the DC whiskey read it is crazy about always posting like an update of what they have gotten each day. Yeah, I think the I guess the crazy thing about just Costco in general what's what's happened to the liquor sales because the words out that 25:00 It's, it's the cheapest, you're going to find any state that you're going to live that you're going to live and be they they get allocated items. So I'll never understand why they don't have a bunch of barrel selections or anything like that going on, because I know that they're running through a lot because that's the anomaly. That's the difference of a liquor barn and a total wine where they do have a lot of private selections, and they're trying to really put that as a differentiator. I was gonna say, I didn't even know Costco had or they don't have private selections, right? Is that what you're saying? You don't see I've never seen any or, I mean, so I will take that back. There was one that happened here, I think it was or maybe it was another location, but they just had like a knob Creek, you know, nothing, nothing crazy. But that's something that you typically don't see. And so I guess another way to kind of look at this, you know, Matt FE says in here it says, Why should you crap on the little stores, you know, you still get a single barrel into the store and it's still drives business. 26:00 But why why are you not going to help those smaller stores out? You all have a kind of take on that. 26:07 Well Could it be more about supply and demand kind of thing where they recognize that they got it they have to give these stores the largest stores their pics, but they're running out of not necessarily they're running out but they you know they probably allocate barrels of for their single barrel selection program and maybe they know that the big stores they have to take care of so that they the less store the smaller stores have less to go off of you know what I mean? Like you were saying earlier how you don't get that many barrels to choose from. Right What do you think that algorithm is? A figuring out what like, what do you have to sell to make sure that you get access to buy something that's way over my pay grade. 26:45 And my shareholder as bourbon pursuit. 26:49 podcast host but uh, yeah, I don't know. I mean, 26:54 it all makes sense when as a business fan, I mean, you 27:00 Do this too. I mean, you have those accounts that do everything for you. They're great customers, they pay on time. They, they, they're just easy to deal with. And I'm sure it's kind of like that with, you know, your bigger stores and with your district, you know, distributors and your bigger stores because it's, it's an easy relationship. It's an easy flow. And it's like, here's a reward for versus smaller store. Yeah, it might be, but they might pay slow, they might do that. I don't know. I'm just thinking outside the box here, but it you know, 27:30 it's like the 8020 rule. You know, 20% of your customers bring 80% of your revenue and so maybe they really focus on those 20% and kind of squeezing out that 80% that right now, just because they are in such a squeeze. Yeah, yeah, I definitely see that as being a motivation factor in you know, you owning your own business. You kind of have a different take on this then I think a lot of other people will to where were you do you follow the money trail? 28:00 Then you've probably have people like me who are like, well, I want to I want to have this personal connection with my, the small little local store. You know, I know them I know who's selecting the barrels, you know, when you go to a larger chain, you don't necessarily have that connection. Right? You're you're talking to hourly, hourly employees that are just sitting there stocking shelves, like, you know, it's very rare that you actually know who picked that barrel in the store behind it. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just the business landscape or in in general, it seems like more and more small entities are either being gobbled up by the bigger ones, and it's just become more in this business in more than any other it's, as we've seen with pursuit series. It's an economies of scale like none other and so, 28:53 you know, the local store, they might be, 28:57 you know, grave in heaven, but they might be you know, there 29:00 You're going to be picky, they're going to be a pain in the ass. And like, you know what we don't like these four barrels are really words, total wine, they're like, I just gives whatever, you know, it's like an easy transaction for them, then they're like, you know, it's like, we like dealing with you all, because you're not paying the ass and you're not like, bitching about us on the forums, and you're not doing this. So it's like, you know, so I can totally see it from it's all coming back. Megan says to me, because, like, but how long, you know, how motors are great, and I love having the relationship with God, they're picky, and like, they will nitpick the shit out of you. Whereas our big commercial clients, you know, they're like, as long as it looks good for the road, you know, and here's your money. And here's everything, you know, easy peasy. So let's, I that's the only way I can kind of relate to it in and you know, there's there's other thing that Matt kind of put in the chat and he says, Does it have to do it the representative that's in those states too. And, and we've seen this firsthand, at least on the podcast side as we've been doing our own private barrel selections is that the rep actually plays a huge role in this like they Yeah, they are 30:00 They are got a bottle for you. Exactly. And that's exactly what happens. Typically how this this works is that 30:08 depending on what region state of the of the nature of the US that you own, your allocated X amount of barrels, and you get to choose where these go and so it's it's a i don't know i mean i guess if you've been a boss and then you've come into the into the year and you're like, Okay, you've got 28% of raises that you can go you can figure out who gets 2% who gets 6% who gets whatever and so that is that is one thing is that a lot of these stores they they continually have to be really good to their reps to make sure that they're always going to be on deck to be able to get one of these private barrel pics because that is a that is a real thing. That is it's it's all business and shaking hands at the end of the day to guess what else would tie into the with the reps is also the restaurants increasingly increasing number 31:00 restaurants around DC have done private slicks that I've seen, like even Blanton's and Buffalo Trace and just for their just for mixing drinks to? Well, I think like I said earlier with the restaurants and bars, you're, you're putting your brand out there and exposing it to the public. And so like a high end restaurant like that, you know, diners are going to go for a high end experience, and they're going to spend money on something like that. And it just helps expose the brand versus, you know, small store small groups doesn't really do that for you. It seems like the distributor 31:37 because that is their role, which we don't really truly understand what the role is, but 31:43 it's a new it's a continually moving target. Yeah, so like, but it would make sense that the distributor would, you know, the distillers like, all right, these distributors get so many barrels and then the distributor decides who they go to 32:00 Based on like you said relationships or sales or ease of business whatever and that's I think that's how it is but maybe not I don't know and the way it should be probably 32:12 no I'm totally with you another angle to look at this is just the the boom of the bourbon market and what it is and you know we've talked about people getting pushed out just having the big guys come in and kind of small and the sort of stuff up and we've kind of heard it before firsthand that like oh like the there's not enough barrels to go around. I kind of want to get you know Michael your take on this. Do you think that's a cop out? 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And try a bottle of beer barrel bourbon and beer barrel rye use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 34:31 You really think that four roses, the you know the Russell's the everywhere, whatever the world's here are actually running out of barrels for this particular program. I highly doubt that they're running out of barrels. Maybe for the program. Maybe that is what they already said. Like they at the beginning of the year. They were like we're not going to go beyond this. And they didn't expect the increasing number of groups and like getting with these retailers to buy more and more 35:00 And maybe it will adjust over time over the next couple years, maybe they'll realize that this is a big business opportunity for them. So they will increasingly I know that will it you know, pause a couple was it a couple years ago or their private selection? So as I pick that back up yet, but you know, yeah last year the first I guess re entry to the they're going along with the the their own distillate now, so yeah, yeah, for sure. I think they did, like 97 of them last year, which is still small compared to a lot of people that Yeah, I don't think there's I think that these brands are just so using all their resources to, 35:45 I guess, fund all their everyday brands that they're pumping out into the public is that and to be honest, single barrels are a huge pain for them. They take a lot of resources. They're getting people, you know, they have a have a coordinator. They got to take a 36:00 lunch, they got to spend four or five hours with you, then they gotta dump that one barrel and make sure all the stickers are on that bottle and make sure they got to keep track of that barrel. And it's like, like, probably just like the hell of this. I mean, this is 36:14 it's actually bad business. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it was probably something that got into like, because nobody wanted anything. They're like, Oh, this would be great. We have all these extra girls, you know, come pick your own, like, and but now they're probably like shit, why do we ever come up with that? You know, we're shooting ourselves in the foot. But uh, yeah, that's probably one way to look at it. It's probably a huge labor burden to them to make it happen. And that's why they're probably not growing the amount of barrels that are allocated to more or less Selenium then because they're growing their everyday brands and they just don't want to put the resources towards it. Yeah, there is there is a lot of resources. I do mention that that really go into it. I mean, it kind of just reminds me of, so there's a there's a farm around us. That's 37:00 button 3045 an hour away whatever it is called huber's and it seems like people always want to go there and pick their own apples. And I'm kind of like Why don't you want to go pick your own apples that's it's a weird thing for me to think of as like I just go to go to our grocery store and find a really good honey crisp apple. And I think that that's probably like the flip side of what the everyday consumer sees versus what what we see because there's probably some like person that's really an apples and they want to go and choose their own apples and they it has a unique taste profile. But however the the better side of the businesses and well let's just dump them on a truck and push them out and and get them out in the grocery stores because it's just a better way to look at it. Well they only if they only put trailers of apples like two miles before you get to, you know, huber's they have like two they have trailers of apples and pumpkins that you can buy before you can for like $1 to dollars less. If they only did that with barrels, you know, like for you get to the distillery. These are 38:00 thousand dollars cheaper discount girls right here? 38:06 Oh man, that's that's actually hilarious the way you look at it like that. So we kind of talked about the market of how big guys are kind of getting in squeezing the little people out of it. We're looking at the business opportunity from the distillery side and trying to figure out you know, what is the algorithm of who gets to to get what however, I kind of want to kind of switch the angles here a little bit because one of the things that we've seen is that a lot of this has become pretty prolific. There's everybody that's trying to get into single barrels, whether it's stores out of West Coast ne se wherever it is, everybody wants to come and do this because they they want some sort of differentiation or differentiation offering for their stores be able to sell to their customers. 38:55 And so Michael, I kind of want to take it to you is like do you see this as 39:01 Where it is becoming a flooded market of private selections that are out there? 39:09 Do I think there are too many I mean, 39:12 how how much how different Can I guess the question would be how different can like whistle pig pics be if I have five stores in DC area and I go to each one each one has a whistle pig pig because that is a bigger one than yeah it does it does get a little tiring. So that's why I like to look towards the I like I'd like them to look towards the smaller ones like I love to go into Joseph Magnus and doing that pic because I mean even though it is MTP, it is nice to have a little something different than the you know, the bigger companies. And so I'll will refute that a little bit because I did and I did a whistle pig barrel pick. I had I had five barrels. We chose two of them. We chose two of them that had two different taste profiles. And I think that's just I think that's the difference between 40:00 Maybe and 40:02 and maybe I guess I when I when I think about this maybe that's what most people also don't recognize is that yet they they're not going to send out probably a bunch of barrels that they all taste the same like everything is these unique differences these these minute profile differences or anything like that. 40:20 So I've had the chance to be able to do it and whistle pig and I think there is some some variation against looking at it towards more of the collection aspect. As far as you know, if you're collecting different models, I wouldn't want 20 whistle pigs. It's a so I guess that's where I was coming from. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Because Yeah, you don't want to I mean, it's it's hard to spend 80 to $100 on every single one of those bottles, like you've got to you've got to make sure it goes back to the fundamentals of Do you trust who's picking it? Do you know who's picking it? What's the story behind it? But you know, Michael, I kind of want to put it to you in a different way. 40:57 You know, you had mentioned that, you know, you have all these 41:00 That that could be the same and maybe, maybe because they come from the same distillery but what could a distillery be doing differently to be able to give the stores one advantage over the other? When you say, Well, I'm going to go to a different store and I choose different things do you think you think it's on the stores to not try to choose the another barrel from a, the same distillery and there should just be multiple variations or is it is it something beyond that? I guess it can be I love the way that four roses as their, I guess, their single barrel. I forgot which different program it is, but the fact that they have recipes, it's nice to see. I guess it's a telling thing for the consumer like this is going to be a different recipe. But otherwise, you don't really know until you buy it and taste it. Because I mean, it's not like you're going to go to liquor store and they have a tasting tray for you to try. There's compared to the store down the street. If you have like, you know, two different with whistle pigs. So you 42:00 You kind of like to just go forward, I guess if you were going to go do it that way, but 42:06 I mean, I kind of like the way the four roses has their recipe stuff on there. Yeah, yeah. And then you have someone like makers, you know, where they allow you to blend your own unique profile, which I think is very, very awesome. But you have to get 250 bottles out of it 42:25 in spend eight hours with them to get to that point, but uh, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's on this is still I think it's on the store to pick the you know that that's what it's all about, you know, they gotta 42:41 let me they're not going and picking unique barrel like they're not saying like, well, let's pick three different ones and send it they're like nope, here's the allocate ones. Here they go. Have at it. You know, they're going to try to make this as less complicated as possible. But, you know, 42:56 but I'm worthy. I mean, the four roses and makers are the most unique experiences. 43:00 You know, we go to the Buffalo Trace and the knob Creek and it's, they're awesome. But you know that there's very subtle differences in each barrel that you're tasting. And so it's it is hard to kind of distinguish that, except that me and Kenny have superior palates to anyone now I'm kidding. totally kidding. But uh Yeah, and it's Yeah, it's tough because they're there is a ton of them. And I guess the only way you know people are talking about stickers. That's one way to differentiate themselves. But then, like, I wonder if these distilleries in the sticker game it's like, all right, well, it's all about the stickers now. And it's become less about our brand. And it's more about the sticker game and it's kind of taken away from our brand. So like, 43:44 in the stickers are cool, but they're starting to get a little excessive as well. But uh, I don't know. I'm just rambling. Sorry. That's okay. Yeah, there is one thing I wanted to kind of mention that you would, Michael would say it like Well, let's let's go put 44:00 I'll go buy a bottle from the competitor down the street and I'll sample at my store man that's that's the craziest form of guerilla marketing there probably could be just like take a dump on your competition there. Yeah. But you know Ryan does bring up a good point I think we should we should talk about stickers because stickers or why would you even buy a barrel nowadays or buy a bottle if it doesn't have a sticker on it? That's that's the mean it's like fundamental at this point. So kind of you know, Michael kind of talk about you know, your experiences with the stickers and if it actually has any sort of influence on your purchasing habit. I mean, I won't lie I can't be a sucker for bottles especially I've the the old Fitzgerald decanter bottle back there for which is you know, it's an okay, it's, it's okay, but there was $300 sleep bottle. Yeah, it's asleep. 44:52 I mean, I enjoyed going I wouldn't did the magnetic for you guys and I enjoyed naming it and coming up with the name and whoever did this. 45:00 Design stick I didn't know who exactly what did that that was really cool as far as the Pentagon on it with the Department of bourbon but so it it's got a cool factor to it. 45:11 But I mean do you think it's you think it's starting in the point where it's jumping the shark or do you think we still got a week this is this is going to go strong still on to 2020 I think it's gonna probably keep going strong. I think people like to have their their little spin on it. 45:26 Yeah, go ahead, run well, and I was gonna say it is play out. But Michael made a good point. It is fun to come up with names because that's what I do. And 45:35 most of ours I tried to name that. Not all of them, but it is fun for the group to have their own unique name and, and because otherwise, it's just, you know, they used to be laying like you got a little tag on the Russell's bottle where you got like a little gold medallion. You're like, well, that's stupid. Like that doesn't differentiate us so it is kind of cool. And I guess that I just don't like when they take up the entire bottle. 46:00 Like, and they look all like goofy and like bright and I don't know, like kind of take away from the bottle. That's when I don't like more work on the distilleries and have them make a special bottle for every single barrel pick. Yes, exactly. Now you're talking my love language. Oh, yeah, just yeah, keep keep doing these little custom things every single time. Yeah, no, I mean, I'll kind of talk about the sticker thing a little bit because, you know, I kind of I kind of look at what you all said and I think it's, I think it is fun. I think it's, it's a unique way to be able to give something a name and and ultimately, when I look at it, I like to name stuff after that that kind of like put some sort of sentiment into it. I don't I don't name something because it just sounds cool. You know whether it has a Shawshank Redemption sticker whether it has all a Holcomb mania sticker on it or anything like that, because that that doesn't necessarily mean anything. 47:00 It just probably just sounds cool. Like it has to have some sort of story. And that's, that's really what I love. Because when you when you're able to talk about it when able to drink about and drink it again, you can look at that sticker and you can kind of reminisce on that day. And you can tell the story to people you share it with, you know, like, this is why we came up with that name. This is what happened, you know, like, case of the Mondays, it was a Monday. And like, I was super hung over from a member guest and I was like, I'm really I'm in a case of the Mondays. You know, that I can tell people that, you know, it's like, yeah, I guess the sentiment and Yeah, I agree. And what do you think it's giving more sentiment to us? Or for people that have actually where they are picking it than it does for the consumers that are getting it? 47:43 Yeah, I can see their point. Yeah, I could definitely say that. Don't you want to know why I was named that or maybe? 47:50 Well, I guess I want to know like, if I'm buying something like I was unable to make the tasting room confessions, pick from New Roof, but 48:01 They came with a name and I was like, Well what Tell me about the name? Why did y'all come up with that? And you know, and I wanted to know because I wasn't there and so it was like I got to experience it through them because of the name. I don't know. Sounds kind of dorky. You like the lore of it. Yeah, school. Yeah. No, I mean, there definitely is two angles to it. I think there are you know, there's some that that definitely just speak to people because it's a cool sticker. Like it just to take another new riff for example, like people are putting all the plays on the riff name like you've got, like, I've got a bottle called Ken Griffey Jr. It's not like like Ken Griffey had anything to do with it. It's not like the group were sitting there talking about baseball stats, when it happened. They just thought of a funny name and, and put it on a sticker, like that's all it is like it doesn't actually have any sort of connotation to the day or memory or anything like that. 48:53 However, there's another slide of this when it comes to the marketing aspect when it goes on to the Facebook forum. 49:00 When people started learning about it i mean this is a real differentiator like do you all see that like if it wasn't for going smash on a four roses bottle? Like what would that even be a thing that people elevate it to be in this 300 $350 private pick and it's just another bottle for rose or the tipsy buffalo rather exactly 49:24 if somebody comes over and is trying like a Buffalo Trace especially like the one like your pic and they point out the fact that that stickers on there it's different than the other and then I go into telling them out oh as group I'm part of that actually went and picked it so I mean non bourbon you know enthusiasts actually 49:44 get a kick out of it kind of story so yeah, not an hour like sharing all the barrel pics sweet like when people come over that's the first thing I do is like our guys what barrel pics Do you want to drive because that's like, I don't know. I think that's cooler to share those then 50:00 Just like I'll try my Pappy 20 or whatever 50:04 I'll take the Pappy 20 50:07 that's what most people want they're like I don't give a shit about you 50:14 know as a you know, as an enthusiast it's fun for me to share with people nothing they like like it to that I could be wrong 50:23 absolutely and so I kind of want to close this out on a on a another note when we're talking about just you know private barrel pics and you know whether the markets saturated or not. 50:36 Is there a reason that anybody should slow down with with these when you're when you're thinking about a company's or anything like that because it seems like there is demand it's going to be happening. And I guess maybe not. I'll rephrase that maybe not slow down from a manufacturing perspective 50:56 should should store slow down in regards of what they should be. 51:00 What a offer because maybe they're trying to push other products just to sell just so they have these opportunities. And, and just to be able to sell a bottle. I don't know like 51:11 I think bourbon enthusiasts are just increasing the numbers daily, so I don't think we're at the peak right now. So I think there's still plenty of people to come into your liquor store and buy, you know, four bottles of fireball to go get drunk, and there's a guy that wants to come in and get as many privates like the guys he can that you earn. 51:33 Yeah, no, I'm with you. I mean, 51:37 I think they should keep doing because I mean, they are fun and they, they're, it's the only way to get a unique kind of experience and bottle then, you know, the limited release game has just gotten so out of control. Like where it's just, it's always camping, it's emails. It's this it's that and it's even the store pics are kind of going that way. And so that's what's nice about 52:00 What we're offering, you know, to our people, it's fun for us to do that and offer to our Patreon people, but being in a bourbon group to like having access to this, so I mean, I don't think they should slow down. I mean, the people are talking about new riff and you know, compared to like, bigger distilleries, and what I think this sounds boring, but that they should do a cost benefit analysis and maybe, you know, Russell's and all the big boys, it's really not beneficial to them to keep doing these. And whereas someone like new riff or a newer guy, they're gaining a lot of exposure around it. And it's really helped catapulting their brand and they should really embrace this. And it kind of reminds me of like, when I went to Napa, and like you go to like cake bread or Opus one, and it's like, oh, these are these great, distinguished brands and you go and it's like the lamest experience ever. But then you go to this like mom and pop winery, where you meet the proprietor and you like, and they're like, it's real intimate and, and I think that's just how it's going to be with 53:00 bourbon kinda as it keeps evolving is that you're gonna have these big boys then you're have all these little small guys and they're going to have to offer unique experiences through private pics or coming to the distillery hanging out with you know the the distiller and creating that connection 53:17 yeah i think that this should keep on rolling with them as much as possible because I love them all right. 53:24 I lied I have I have one more question because because I keep thinking about this and I It reminds me of like a post I saw earlier. And I see I see things in the secondary market that are then just single barrel pics that are being sold for the extraordinary amounts. I kind of want to get your all state Michael first like are people dumb? Like do they need like a reality? Do they need to reality check to say like, this is just another barrel pick like That's all it is. It's not going to change your life. yet. People are spending exhausted amounts, maybe because of the sticker or maybe 54:00 Because it came from a particular group, like I want to kind of get your take on one of the same people that are paying $900 for CYPV was that it's it is ridiculous. 54:11 Yeah, I don't I can't imagine ever buying products like going to a secondary market myself. I mean, I have a hard time buying other models in the secondary market. I just kind of take my chances in DC. Yeah, yeah. 54:24 Yeah, I'm with So Bill Nall says private pics play to the fo mo and fo mo is like, bourbon is fo mo it's like the perfect product for fo mo it's 54:35 you know, there's in single barrels or even more of that because it's like we only have this one barrel. There's never going to be another one like it and this whoever picked it and it's like it's the perfect product for that and people. They like Rarity and scarcity and like if it's the more rare and scarce it is, the more irrational they're going to be about it. You know, it's we are all done in this game. 55:00 We all got our like our bad habits This is like I shit for mine. Like there's no rational reasoning behind this hobby or it does that 55:11 mean we go Kenny you go on these pics you go at even like we do pursuit series I mean there's barrels of whiskey like, like, just like you don't believe I mean there's so much whiskey out there and you're like and it is just another barrel whiskey but there is that connection to is there's that Rarity about there's that specialness about it that people just go ape shit over and it's it's just like anything you know, it's like getting you like Porsches and you know you really want a Porsche or Mercedes and it's like, well why the Volkswagens made by the same people and it says same shit you know that it's a Porsche you know, it's got the branding and everything behind it. It's just, it's marketing at its finest. You know, it's, that's that's what we deal with. So that is the fun part about this because 56:00 It makes it unique, right? It makes it a it makes it a an experience that you're able to buy a bottle and have a connection to it have a story behind it, you know the person or you know the group that that, that purchase that or that anything like that. And so you do have this connection behind that particular bottle and I think that is fun. I just think that we need to kind of like dial the height meter back, maybe maybe 20 decibels in regards to this because people just need to understand and Ryan, you said it best. You know, we have the opportunity. Anybody that goes and visits, any distillery anyone and you look around you look at all the warehouses. Just understand, it's just another barrel of whiskey. It's another one. Yeah, there's there's always going to be another one down the road. So don't you worry about that, but not that one. But not that let's see, that's what you get. That's that's what that's the hook. That's what keeps you not your suit series. 56:59 You need all the 57:00 Rose yes absolutely but that's that's kind of what keeps you hooked in is like you like what if I miss out it is and the thing is Kenny we know that and I know that but it's still I still can't get past it and I don't care because it's the Chase is the fun that's you know it's just part of the fun hobby we were enthralled with no no, I'm totally with you. So let's go ahead we'll end it on that note because I think we we did enough insulting of pretty much the whole industry at this point. So this was this was a really good conversation So Michael, please 57:34 make fun of everybody including myself. Mike want to say thank you for coming on and giving you this. This this topic to talk about it was it was really good and I want you to kind of give a plug if people want to get in contact with your or anything like that. If they can find you any kind of social. How they can follow you there. I'm on Twitter. I don't you know, not that funny but MIKG 316 1989 58:00 There we go. It's all good. Yeah, follow him there. Follow us on all the social media channels, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at bourbon pursuit. And always make sure that you leave iTunes reviews too, because we love iTunes reviews and only share with a friend because that's what helps grow this show more. And All right, I'll kind of hand it off over to you, buddy. Yeah, reviews are great. But telling your friends even better, because you can share this wonderful experience and call them down to you know, 58:29 after they get involved with it. So now Michael, appreciate the time appreciate the show suggestion. That's what we'd love about the show is hearing from our fans and interacting with them. So if you have any things you want to talk about or hear about, let us know. And just we love hearing from you guys and we'll see you next time. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

An introduction to Michael Haynes and the Arsenal Mindset. Who is Michael? What does "Arsenal Mindset" mean? What is the purpose of this podcast? Listen to find out the answers to those questions + much more on this first introductory episode!

Martha has moved to Melbourne to be nearer to her Married At First Sight partner Michael, but has she picked the wrong part of town?Was the move from Bondi to Bundoora a weird one? Why isn't she living with Michael?What's going on, have they broken up? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ceci returns to talk more Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! Topics include Hermione’s trademark blue flame, the pools of the forest, “chivalry”, Miriam-Webster, Michael “What’s His Nose” Douglas, RIP? Hugh Hefner, Jerry McGuiure-ne, Doozles, Ceci’s Put Outer theory, Lord of The Rings, villainy, and more!   Thanks to our Sponsors! WIX: Get 10% Wix Premium with code "Potterless" at wix.com STITCH FIX: Get 25% off when you keep your entire box when you sign up at stitchfix.com/potterless   Thanks for listening! For more information on the show, visit PotterlessPodcast.com! You can find us at Facebook.com/Potterless, Twitter.com/PotterlessPod, and Instagram.com/PotterlessPodcast. If you’d like bonus content and/or EXCLUSIVE MERCH, head on over to patreon.com/potterless and for other merch, check out bit.ly/merchon. As always, Wizard On! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s just Rebecca and Michael this week.  It’s that time of year when company contracts are going out, which means that dancers across the country may not be getting their contracts renewed for the 2019-2020 season.  We put together a handful of bullet points to help dancers navigate this tough time and discuss what to do […] The post (126) Rebecca & Michael: What to do if you didn’t get your contract renewed appeared first on tendusunderapalmtree.com.

What are the lessons we learned in Season 2 of Heart to Heart with Michael? What gems did our Guests share with us? Host Michael Liben takes a look back at 2018, the Guests he interviewed, and what he learned from them. Tune in to hear sage advice and heartfelt messages from Guests from around the world as they share how they celebrate their departed loved ones.

Instagram stories and the dynamimcs of retweets Independence #37: Evolution of an App Follow-up: Marco's lookahead limiter iOS and memory swapping Wear leveling John's last Apple Photos book The iPhone XR The Stalman Podcast #36: "Just" Creators and Hands-On with the XR Gruber's review Example of OLED "smearing" The forthcoming iPad event #askatp Apple chip naming (via Cameron Deardorff) BMW M1 What's the last Apple product in each category that had no regressions? (via Michael) What do we use Shortcuts.app for? (via Fabian Diehm) A Shortcut to check contact photo sizes Post-show: Casey's Waffle Woes Casey's fallen friend: Waring WMK300 Casey's new waffle maker: Hamilton Beach Belgian Waffle Maker Marco's Cuisinart WAF-F20 Double Belgian Waffle Maker John's Breville Smart 4-Slice Waffle Maker John's offering to Casey: Breville BWM520XL No Mess Waffle Maker Sponsored by: Warby Parker: Glasses should not cost as much as an iPhone. Order your free Home Try-Ons today. Linode: Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. Get a $20 credit with code atp2018. AfterShokz: Headphones powered by bone-conduction technology. Get $50 off a Trekz Air bundle with code atpbundle.

If you've ever wanted to witness a miracle, or be a part of something special, then do we have the We're Having a Baby show for you! This week we filmed a live, off-the-cuff, outrageously funny YouTube Live, Ask Michael Anything event where we shared from the heart what's happening in our lives. And we decided to share it with you. So here it is, in all of it's impromptu, YouTube Live Glory, our We're Having a Baby Episode. We hope you enjoy, find inspiration, and incredible motivation, from this raucous, somewhat embarrassingly good time. We're Having a Baby Self-Improvement & Self-Help Topics Include: How Jessica broke the news to Michael What it means that Michael's persistent What Jessica said that completely embarrassed Michael Why it took so long to them. What happened along the way – and brought them here today. Why Jessica is superwoman What it means that “It is baby time” Why a volcanic fire delayed conception…quite literally! How Michael tried to plan beforehand. How Michael became “superman” as soon as he found out they were pregnant. What in the world is the “Michael gear”. How does Jessica plan to give birth? What are the fair godmothers – and what's the team Jessica is calling in? What is the manifestation work Jessica has been doing? Why are they sharing this news with the world? Why is Jessica sharing so early – and how does she hope it helps others? How they're sharing the journey publicly, and with their future child? What happened during Michael's automatic writing and heart-coherence work? What it means to share the journey with people? What is the law attraction work Michael and Jessica are doing? What is the positive energy that comes from sharing with the world? For More Info Visit: InspireNationShow.com Jessica Lee & Michael Sandler on Their New Pregnancy, What It Means & How it Came About! Law of Attraction | Fitness | Parenting | Motivation | Spiritual | Spirituality | Meditation | Inspirational | Motivational | Self-Improvement | Self-Help | Inspire For More Info Visit: www.InspireNationShow.com

If you've ever wanted a stronger, deeper, and more loving relationship, then do we have the show for you. Today we'll talk about dropping your shields, diving deep, healing your heart, and building the strongest, healthiest, most caring relationship you can. How Michael and Jessica met Why Jessica wasn't dating before she met Michael. Why she didn't want to date Michael What happened after they got married? Why things were so difficult? What they learned from their early years in their relationship? Why their relationship was so challenging? How they began shifting the relationship? What big changes did they make in the relationship? What did they learn (positives) from the difficulties? What it meant to become more heart opened? What it means to truly love and be in a relationship How do we break through to show our fears, move past our fears, and express ourselves? How do we feel truly safe in a relationship? What does it mean to really put yourself out there in a relationship? Why our partner may be our greatest button-pusher? What we can learn from Temple Grandin about soothing ourselves? How we can build a stronger relationship? What's the leap of faith we want to do for our partner if they're really upset? What we can do to find our partner if we're single? Where do we look to find our partner? What work do we want to do if we're single? Jessica Lee & Michael Sandler on How They Met, Overcame Massive Difficulties & Found Love on the Other Side! Inspirational | Motivational | Motivation | Spiritual | Spirituality | Meditation | Mindfulness | Self-Improvement | Self-Help | Inspire To find out more visit: www.InspireNationShow.com 

The groundbreaking FAYR co-parenting app is taking off due to the dedicated efforts of its founder Michael Daniels and its senior advisor Gwyneth Paltrow to improve the lives of co-parents and children. The challenges of co-parenting can be overwhelming and can lead to significant conflicts. Michael Daniels came up with the idea of creating an app for co-parents to help them effectively manage their time, their finances, and their co-parenting communication. FAYR is a groundbreaking app that simplifies everyday matters for divorced and separated parents.  As a separated father of two young children, Michael found himself overwhelmed by the legal, financial and emotional costs of divorce on his family. After 20 years in the homebuilding industry, Michael hung up his hard hat to create a tool that would not just improve his family’s life, but would also help the other 55 million divorced co-parents in the US. Despite his success on the Apple tv show "Planet of the Apps" and partnering with Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael's guiding light remains the same: working everyday to be his best self for his kids.  Your host, Christina Vinters, is a nationally designated Chartered Mediator on a mission to inspire and facilitate healthy family transitions. She is an “ex” Divorce Lawyer (Non-Practicing Member of the Bar), Author of Pathways to Amicable Divorce, and the  DIY Divorce Manual, and Peacemaking Business Consultant. Guest Links: Website: https://www.fayr.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/befayr/ Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/befayr Twitter:https://twitter.com/befayr Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/company/fayr/ Modern Separations Links: Website: https://www.modernseparations.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/modernseparations Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divorcewell Twitter: https://twitter.com/cvinters LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cvinters/   Christina: Hello and welcome! I'm super excited today to be talking to Michael Daniels. Michael is the founder and CEO of the new Fayr app (spelled F-a-y-r), and it's a groundbreaking app that streamlines key aspect of family management for divorced parents. That includes sharing a parenting temp calendar, tracking shared expenses, recording communication, and more, all in one location. Fayr debuted really in 2017 and drew interests from Apple TV, who invited him to audition for the reality series "Planet of the Apps". Michael was selected for the show and he had huge success, securing a partnership with his now head adviser Gwyneth Paltrow. Gwyneth is well-known as an academy-award winning actress of course, but she's also an active entrepreneur, with a highly successful lifestyle brand goop.com. She's a passionate voice for improving the experience of divorce for families and drew a lot of media criticism a few years ago for her announcement that she and her husband were consciously uncoupling. It's so exciting to see Michael and Gwyneth working ways to make life easier for co-parents, which is going to make a healthy and respectful divorce achievable for more and more families. Check out this interview with Michael to find out all the things that Fayr can do and how it can make your life better. Alright, let's hop in. Christina: Welcome Michael thank you so much for being here with me today! Michael:  Thank you for having me, Christina.  Christina: I'm really excited to talk to you because of the super positive project that you got involved with to help co-parents do a better job. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got inspired to create the Fayr app? Michael: Well, I would say my background can't be any further from this subject, I'm a home builder, I mean, I started building homes when I was a teenager, just an able-bodied worker. Later on, I went to work for the largest homebuilder in America and worked for them 6 years before going out on my own to become a custom home builder. And you know, like everybody else a lot of people go through divorces and it was just a very trying period for me. Family is important for me, I come from a military family and my father was an army officer for 30 years or so and you know traveling around a lot, family was always just important - we're always together. And I would say that that had a lot to do with feeling my interest in trying to do what I could for my kids and so, yeah, that being my background, I think it all really fed into my interest to communicate better, be as much a part of my children's lives and in a positive way. Christina: Well, the fact that you're outside of the standard legal divorce industry gives you a whole new perspective, I think what the industry needs. Michael: I think I relay to people really well, I find that the people I feel most comfortable and most effective in communicating with are just the regular people. I kinda leave it up to my team, they kinda do a better job than communicating with the professionals in this industry. Christina: And so how did you get inspired to create the app? What was the thinking behind that? Michael: What was the ah-ha moment? Christina: Yeah. Michael: Well you know, it's a culmination of a lot of things. You go through like these unexpected things can happen at any point. And so you get divorced, and then as the time goes on, the whole process was just tremendously arduous when you think about the two years it takes before from separation to finally getting through things, you fight over custody stuff, you know, whole bunch of money spent, and this is the measurable process and then when it's done and when you finally sign your parenting agreement, you think everything's gonna be okay but it's not. Emotions pop up, and next end, like you know, 6 more years went by and it's still not at rest. And so you never know when you're gonna be caught with this need to go back to court. And are you documented? Most people lose, not because they're bad parents, but because they're insufficiently documented. And I did, it's not fun to reconcile with laws all the time, and I would have to reconcile these laws every night and just miserable way to live thinking about this stuff constantly and so. Then you go to court and then the other person can very well say, "well you made that up". And there's really no way to prove anything, you know. You can't verify some of this stuff. So I thought to myself, "if there was something that could just galvanize, Google docs, Google calendar, your emails, Google spreadsheet, all of these things that I was happy to use constantly, text messages and everything, have it wrapped up and a one app - specifically like a go-to resource just for co-parents to either co-parent together or just document, just to avoid mitigate future problems. Assuming that was it, it was just a culmination of many years of these things and I just one day started looking into this. I mean, if nothing else, it's gonna help my life and probably help a lot of other people too. Christina: Okay. So I think this sounds like a good place for you to tell us a little bit about what the app does.That sounds pretty cool, the calendar and Google docs and so forth. All of that being rolled into one. What does the app do, and I'm wondering you mentioned that you can either use it together for co-parenting or it sounds like you can just also use it on your own? You don't need the cooperation of the other if you're just looking for documentation? Michael: Yeah absolutely. I mean it's basically an all-in-one digital ledger for child custody. So it's just the place you can go to let's say for example, things that parents run into. Let's face it, and I say this sometimes because I don't think people are very conscious of this, is that there's no other area in life that you can be in a simple lawsuit with another human being and you're forced to continue communicating with that person for years to come, you know. So it's a very stressful situation but the importance of communicating constructively with that person is paramount. And so how do you bridge this problem between the necessity for the benefit of the children (in my case 2 children) that you love the most in life, and then you have this horribly frustrating situation where you don't communicate well  because you were in a very bitter, emotionally, hard suit with this person. Because that what these things are - they're lawsuits. So anyway, I thought, what the app can do for you is let's take the calendar feature for example. It's color-coded so mom stays in one color, dad stays on another color, you put in your time-sharing agreement. And then if you need to switch a day, you can just let your day request just a fourth of the day to the other parent. The other parent instantly gets a notification saying "oh, Bill wants to forth his day to you". You can either accept or deny. If you accept it, it changes to your color, and it doesn't switch back to his color unless you release it again. But that way, if anything doesn't rise, your building this incontestable audit trail of information as life is happening. And that's just the calendar feature. But, it just streamlines things to where it's sending a new notification, it's letting you know when soccer is, you can set it up front where repeat this for the next six months every Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then every other year switch your Christmases, so everything's put in upfront and then it's just laid out for you. No more arguing, no more disputes over this particular issue. And I just wanted to simplify, take out all the arguing that goes on. And then the next feature, let's talk about expenses for example. I mean, people are very good about keeping a mental inventory of their own contributions for their children. But there's seldom real knowledge what the other person is doing. And no one's very good about keeping receipts, and no one's very good about all of the things that we have to juggle. And when your attorney tells you, "Hey, Friday I need all these stuff", it is terrible to have to start digging all that up and reconstruct that audit trail information. I had to call two different banks. my insurance company, doctor's offices, and dentist offices have reprint stuff and just have to dig it up and I'm sure there's still stuff missing. And if you dump it all at your attorney's office and your paralegal, just put it in a court-ready format, you know. That's costed you per hour. So it just all gets very expensive, I mean, I just spent nearly sixty thousand dollars in total on all these legal fees. And you think about what that could have done for what I have for my children. Anyways, the point is with this app, as things are happening I don't have to keep receipts anymore, buy something and I simply snap a picture of the receipt - it's there, it's recorded. Then I plug it all in,  and that's it. She can see it instantly, she can see everything that was purchased. Right now it's four categories and I'm about to expand that. So I called them involuntary expenses, it's either your medical, your dental, your personal or educational. And some of these things are tax-deductible. So the app also know which are tax-deductible, and at the end of the year, you can just say "give me my tax-deductible report", and it'll give you everything you've spent on your kids that you can deduct from your taxes as well. So just organizes everything, you don't have to save any more paper, and that's really beneficial. And again, at a glance now, both parents can see what's happened, and shortly you'll be able to settle up with each other within the app. You can just say, "okay I'm gonna settle up". You click the button and automatically transfers money to the other parent. You can pay child's support alimony, everything's gonna be able to be documented paid right thru the app.  Christina: Oh that will be handy. Michael: Yeah it will be great. And you can set it again. I want to make a co-parenting app that just lets you co-parent on autopilot. So yes you may do some work upfront, plugin all the stuff in. But once it's in, from then on out its just small little adjustments, here and there, as life is going on and you still make adjustments. But for the most part, you're just gonna get these "just go through life and things are gonna be nice and easy". So the next feature is my Geo pen points. The reason I have these is 'cause there are a lot of hidden cases where you're supposed to be somewhere but timely dropoffs or pickups, and there are court orders a lot of times, and to prove that you were there on time is an important thing. So with this feature, you can show up, you can simply say "I want to check in" and you log yourself and there it is - a time, date and stamp that you were on the planet in that spot at that time. So there's just no more he-said-she-said when you go to court. It's just you're good. You know you can prove that you were there. That prevents people from using children as chess pieces. And then the last feature that we currently have is our invisible text messaging. So every lawyer tells you, communicate email, 'cause emails are invisible in court, text messages are not. Well, with these, you have the best of both worlds. You have the ease of text messaging with the invisibility of email. It works just like the IOS messaging, super easy. And at any time you can just say "I wanna generate a report", and all of this stuff, every single day you had them the percentages, everything from whatever time, period you want to look at, just be instantly printed out in a PDF or Excel format. And there you go. Shortly though, right out just the two parents that can be on it, they are onboarded on in the system but shortly you'll be able to have third-party users for this login, to actually grow our user base tremendously. But you can have grandparents who are involved, step-parents, aunts, uncles, legal professionals, they'll have an interface too if they need to monitor just make a guardian light them for example. It's just gonna make everything much more simple, much more honest and fair - that's the name of the app, it's "Fair". It stands for Family, Advocacy, Your Responsibility, just to help make things easier that is in a very difficult situation. Christina: Sounds like it's streamlining a lot, saving a lot of time, and kind of peel back and take away some of the emotion out of the communication? I'm wondering if for example if we go back to the Calendar, and your request to switch a day, is that just very black and white like that or you switch it where you make the request, or do you have the ability for example to say, you know I have to work late next week. Michael: Every single one of these functions  - I know I'm just doing kind of a brief over if you're here, but if you select to switch, it actually requests you know, give a reason. You have to write a reason in so that it's notified "hey I'm working late" and you can put notes down there. So when this is printed off in the main report, it'll show that on Saturday, at 4:36 PM, you requested a fourth of the day, the notification was sent, it was accepted at this time, so the whole record is there for a judge or anybody to look at and they'll know exactly what happened, and the notes will be attached there too. "Oh I've forth of the day because I have to be here or this happens", so the communication is there, let's face it, six months from now I'm not gonna remember why I'm not gonna remember what happened. So, I've definitely thought all of that, I wanted to make this thing just as useful for people and just take out the anxiety that we go through later on. Christina: It sounds like some of these features might tend to actually encourage, better behaviors, so I'm wondering if, by using this app, maybe court applications are actually reduced or eliminated in some cases, what kind of feedback have you received? Michael: I mean I know from my own personal experience that it definitely mitigates problems that usually escalates to costly, you know court motions, and look you know, that's what we all want. I mean, our family courts... you correct me if I'm wrong I know you're more of a guru on this than I am but they're the most backed up courts in America, I mean that's why in some places it's up to three years, backlogs. So, hey if we can reduce problems and keep some money in some families pockets cause you know, it's they're sad statistics you know. I think most people know this what's sad is that you don't go in any sort of parenting tutorials. I don't know if they do this everywhere, but here in Florida, when you go and get divorce they make you take an online little... watch all these videos and take retention quizzes, and things like this that educate you in parenting, it's like "Man I wish I did this before when I became a parent." And then of course in this process just learning more about the effects of these two home situations on children nationally, it's pretty scary. I mean when you look at some of the statistics out there, and I'm not saying the answer is people should stay together cause I'm a firm believer that a lot of people if they're properly communicating it's a better situation for kids, for two people who don't like each other to not stay together. But the statistics actually show that if your kid is being raised in a broken home, they are twice as likely to drop out of high school, they're four times as likely to go to prison, twice as likely to actually attempt suicide. They're medicated for things like depression and anxiety and insecurities. They suffer from speech defects, asthma, and headaches at a higher rate. And I don't know what, I'm sure there's a lot of things that contribute to those statistics but, I think that kids growing up feeling that their parents are butting heads all the time, that can't help but believe that that causes some emotional duress on them. Christina: Oh absolutely, I think a lot of the studies have shown that it is the conflict that occurs in separation, not so much the separation itself, but that exposure to conflict between parents that's really traumatic for kids.  Michael: Totally. Christina: This app, I think has huge potential and you've already had a really exciting launch this summer, tell us a little bit about the Planets of the apps show that you're on. Some of our listeners might not be familiar with that. So what that was all about and what your experience is like there? Michael: That was pretty phenomenal the whole experience honestly, I was.. it was July 4th, 2016 and I was at my cousin's boat. And I'm kicking around this idea of building this app. So I priced it out and you know it was gonna be quite a bit of money, and I'm like "Man do i do that or I'm not... this a lot of things I can do with that kind of money " and he said "You know Mike, it's something that's.." he's like "I've been listening to you for 8 years complain about all the things you go through"  you know he's like.. "I think it's a good place to direct your energy and you gotta be passionate about something in life and you're really passionate about this" so I said, Okay I'm gonna go and pull the trigger. So 2 days later I put my deposit down, I started building it. And fortunately I did, cause if I had waited four days, I would've missed the window to be considered for Planet of the Apps. And it was very fortunate, and I didn't know they started with nearly 10,000 applicants and they narrowed us down to about, I guess about 80 of us that made it. And then of the 80, I mean less of a third of that made it to the final round, that I did. So it was really exciting cause I'm not an app builder, I mean I got out there and I was just overwhelmed by all these crazy smart people, I mean they cruise at that intellectual stratosphere that I can't look at from the ground binoculars, it's super smart people out there. And anyway, it's a good experience, so I go out on Planet of the apps, and we're filming this thing and I was lucky enough to have all four of the panelists there, you know Jessica Alba, Gwyneth Paltrow, Will i.am, and Gary Vaynerchuk, all four of them wanted to partner with me, and I think I was one of the only ones who have that. And super exciting, and again my app that time was just a concept, it was a Beta, it had to be in Beta but it was far from being in the app store. Far.  So I ended up choosing Gwyneth, and I chose Gwyneth because, one she's the only person who'd gone through a divorce, two you know this is a subject she's very passionate about, and you know the whole conscious of coupling that you've referred to as well. She gets it, and that's an important thing. I think I'd go through life and I think most people listening would probably agree that you just run into people especially when you're back out in the dating world, and you meet people who just don't get it. Unless you've been through it, it's something that kinda connects people. My dad was an army guy, so I kinda equate it to people who had gone to war, and you just talk to another guy and they just get it, you know. So anyway, I partnered with her, we met many times, we corresponded, we still correspond via email. And she's just been very very supportive, that I mean I'm about to launch Android and when android launches at the end of this month, I'll be re-engaging her efforts to get, start tweeting about it again. She's tweeted for me in the past and that's very helpful, I always get a good spike in downloads when she does that. And hey you know, it was a phenomenal experience, I gotta tell you I feel very lucky and I'm very happy that I have somebody like her who isn't just... she's not just bottom line focused like a lot of people are, who are just like "So how much money is this gonna make?" She's more concerned like when we met, it's like "is this gonna help people? Let's just focus on helping people and everything else will take care of itself." And I like that, I really really appreciate that.  Christina: Yeah for sure, I can see that in addition to her acting career she, of course, has the eCommerce lifestyle brand goop.com, which is also focused on having a great lifestyle, and you know the various different aspects of that, so having a positive co-parenting relationship I can see that would sort of fit in to that. Yeah, and she did have that very high profile divorce a few years ago, where the media was quite nasty towards her. I found it to be really discouraging that the intention and the desire to have an amicable divorce would be considered by the general media as being sort of a ridiculous goal to have or you know, just something the general public could aspire to.  So I love that she's putting up her energy behind this with you.  Michael: I think she's such a gracious person, I think Gwyneth is a really, you can just see it like when you're talking to her that she's really, you'll never know, you know I mean most of the media unfortunately for her, they portrayed her in any way that they want to, and they could do that with anyone, they could do that with you, me, anybody they wanted to. And I think it's unfortunate cause it's a "yeah you got your head in these clouds if you think people can do this amicably". But she's, you know, she's told me that she has a better relationship now with her ex-husband Chris, than ever before! She says "you know we have the best relationship we've ever had!" and that speaks volumes to her because that takes work. That takes a real concerted effort to just be able to say that, and to have done that cause she's doing better than I am, you know I mean like.. most people just don't do that well, with that. And I think most people like she said like most people get caught up in trying to be right... I'm right, I'm right. But it's like, it's not about being right, it's about being effective. Let's be effective for the benefit of our kids, let's not worry about being right. I listen to that, cause I'm.. just one of these guys who just want to be right. You know, I wanna win the argument. But you know, I got some maturing to do as well, you know. Christina: You've done some learning over the years. So in what circumstances do you see the app as being useful? Is this something you can see rolling out to most separating couples? Michael: Oh my goodness. I gotta tell you, I think married people should use this. I mean, let's face it, the number one reason above infidelity and religion - it's funny as it is, and if people would use this app, 'cause so many times, you know in today's world, and this isn't 40 years ago, but today's world, not our parents' generation, but you have 2 separate incomes, 2 separate bank accounts, and 1 person oftentimes paying the lion share of the expenses, and the other person's dropping it on a Harley Davidson or something like this just toys, and that becomes a point when things get tough. That becomes a real point of contention in a relationship. And so, I just think that anybody should. But obviously, that's a little lofty when you think that much married people are gonna jump on it. But, I gotta tell you, I see it ideally if two people can co-parent constructively together, it is a great platform for that. But if not, man do yourself a huge favor, use it because it is so much easier to just stay on top of things that document now than try to dig up those receipts later on. And you never do it, you never end up doing it, in fact, most attorneys tell me "I'm so frustrated with my clients because I tell them document... document and they just don't do it, and then inevitably they lose, and you know, that sucks".  Christina: Well there's so many things going on in life where you're separating trend to figure out where you're gonna live, maybe do you need to change your job, how are your children doing, and so the documentation just falls through the cracks. It's not high on the priority list, even though the lawyers might like it to pay. Michael: Yeah exactly. You've got life happening. And let's face it, it's not a fun thing to do. It is just the whole time you do it. You just dread it. It's not fun, I mean, and most people aren't organized with a lot of that stuff, so I just try to make it as easy as possible. And I think Fayr has a sincere effort at accomplishing that.  Christina: So having been divorced yourself and now being part of this industry trying to improve the experience for separating couples, do you have any advice? For couples who are in the process right now? Michael: Yeah I do, and it would be, you know it's tough because as you know, once you're years passed it you look back, and it's just like don't live with regrets. Really, really try to power through the nasty things that you kind of do, the unfair things that you do, because you're gonna regret the impact that it has on your kids later on because you wanna be the best you, you wanna be the best version of yourself for your kids. And the only way you're gonna be able to do that is just suck out the poison and they always say, you know, it's not the snake bite that kills you, it's chasing the snake that sends the venom to the heart that kills you. So just don't chase things. Just like what Gwyneth said, "don't worry about being right, just be effective and just be fair." I don't know, it feels like it's so easy to say, it feels like a cliche, it's like to put myself in that position back then, and I would say, "man, what the heck", he doesn't know what he's talking about. He isn't in my situation but, that's so I could tell parents it's just really trying to be fair with one another, 'cause it just hurts your kids when you're not. Christina: I think that's excellent advice. For people who are interested in trying out the app, what's the best way to contact you or to get a hold of the app? Michael : Yeah, so we're obviously on Facebook,  Fayr. On Twitter, it's Fayr Dad, and on Instagram we're @BeFayr. www.fayr.com. We have a lot of great information out there, you can google me as well, Michael Daniels Fayr, and you'll see up just a bunch of plan of the apps stuff, videos. We've been in the news all over the place even in England and Germany, actually. We got a lot of exciting things happening.  Fayr is doing great and we're gonna keep growing it as 55 million people across America who are living in a sort of two-home situation raising kids co-parenting, and I'm gonna keep marching forward and helping every one of them out that I can. Christina: And right now you said Fayr is available on the Apple App Store? Michael: Yes it is available in the App Store, that's Apple. And in another 2 weeks, it will be available for Android. Sorry Android has taken so long but we're constantly improving things and that's just more development time.  Christina: So for people who are not hearing this at the time of the original release, that will be around the end of November 2017. Okay Michael well thank you so much for your contribution to improving the lives of co-parents and kids out there. Michael: Christina thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it being here. Christina: And a pleasure talking to you.  

Michael: Hello everybody. This is Michael Gross of OptionSellers.com. I’m here with head trader James Cordier of OptionSellers.com with your February Option Seller Radio Show. James, welcome to the show this month. James: Thank you, Michael. As always, enjoy doing these and brining more and more information and educating investors out there to what we do. Michael: Excellent. We’re going to start off this month, to all of you listening, we’re going to answer some common questions we get through the blog or online. One of the most common questions people ask us is “I really like your stuff. Is there a way I can sign up for your course? Do you offer seminars I can attend? If I pay you, can you coach me how to do this?” … or various forms of that question. We get so many of those and we wanted to answer that question today and maybe shed some light on that for you as a listener. James, do you want to go ahead and maybe take a stab at answering that? James: You know, what’s interesting, Michael, we definitely enjoy getting feedback from everyone listening to this podcast each month. Please continue asking questions and any feedback is always accepted and we enjoy receiving that. Primarily, we don’t mind and enjoy educating the public. So often, investors are looking for alternative ways to take care of their nest egg or try and build the one that they’re trying to create. Basically, there’s a few investments out there. There’s being long in the stock market, there’s buying real estate, and as long as both of those are going up I think they’re very sound, great investments. But for people looking out 5, 10, and 15 years to expect everything to keep rallying indefinitely certainly is not the way. Educating yourself as to how to help manage your own portfolio, I think, is a great idea. We continue to give information and help teach people how to sell options and take in premium and, hopefully, make really good returns each year whether we’re in a bull or bear market. However, the majority of our clients and the most of the work that we enjoy doing is taking and investing with high-net-worth capitalized investors. That is our niche. That is what we do. The fact that we are a relatively small company and we don’t have thousands of clients, we’re able to be more nimble getting in and out of the market for some of these high-net-worth investors. As far as anyone wanting to follow along with what we do, educate themselves to selling options and taking in premium as we do, we’re going to continue educating people and allow them to do that on their own, if they wish. For the investors who are more apt to hire a manager to do it, certainly, that is our bread and butter and that’s what we’re doing here. Michael: It’s a good point, James. To shorten what James said a little bit and maybe sum it up a little bit is yeah, we do appreciate those offers and we do appreciate your questions, but we’re not in the education business here. We are money managers. That is the service we provide. We do provide a lot of educational material to anyone, the general public. We like to make it as high quality as we can. I think some of the things you’ll find on our website or that we send out to prospective investors is comparable to what you might pay thousands for in a course somewhere. That is something we provide for free. We enjoy that, we enjoy brining that message to the public and helping people understand this investment, because there really isn’t a lot of information out there on selling options in general but, especially, selling options in commodities. We’re simply out to help people understand that better and get more people involved in this because it can be a great investment if you understand how to do it. James, let’s move on a little into our main discussion here this month. We’re going to address what’s going on in the stock market because all investor’s eyes are on stocks now. They’ve been soaring. Some people are calling it still a post-Trump surge, but we’ve got some grayer clouds on the horizon. We’ve got North Korea and Iran shooting missiles off, we’ve got a lot of discord here in the United States. What’s your take on what’s going on right now in stocks? How do you feel about the market? James: Michael, I think that a lot of investors have just been waiting for the greatest country in the world to be run like a company and not like a politically correct viewpoint. Lowering corporate taxes, bringing money back to the United States, lowering personal income taxes, de-regulation, making it easier for companies to hire and re-invest, and it’s simply a near perfect platform right now for economic growth here in the United States. If you look at some of the European countries, they are starting to finally lift off. PMI numbers today out of Europe was some of the best in over a handful of years. We are certainly the boat that everyone follows. As the tide comes up, it comes up for everybody. People are extremely optimistic about the U.S. economy right now. Usually, the stock market is 6-12 months ahead and right now the stock market is telling us that the U.S. economy is about to start improving more than a 2% GDP… maybe a 3-4% GDP. So many people have been waiting for an economically friendly environment. Right now we have one and people are voting with their pocketbook. Michael: So, are you concerned at all about the lofty levels that we’re at? On Barron’s last week, Kopin Tan was talking about 76% of world stock markets are now over-bought. Does that concern you at all? James: You know, it’s interesting, Michael, overbought doesn’t mean over. I could see this exuberance probably lasting for a period of time. Right now, investors, I think, are so excited about getting into the market. Will profits match the soaring stock prices? That remains to be seen. There definitely needs to be some catch up. The market is either ahead of itself or very close to that; however, I think investors have been waiting for this for a long time. I could see 2017 probably being a decent return on the stock market, but there is no question that second or third quarter of this year a few people start taking profits and then all of the sudden there’s no one left to buy. For us to get a 5-10% correction on the stock market at some point this year is probably quite likely. Michael: Thus the need for sound diversification and that’s what we’re going to be talking about next here. James, we’re going to talk about one of your favorite markets next which is the gold market. You have a nice commentary this month on your bi-weekly videos where you’re talking about gold and a strategy investors can use right now in that market. Let’s talk a little bit about gold, what you like about it right now, and why you think that’s such a cash cow for investors. James: It really is. We have been following the gold market for a couple decades. It seems to be such a mystery as to what the value of gold should be. Sometimes it trades like a currency, sometimes it’s flocking to gold because of inflation or because of political concerns. It is absolutely, in our opinion, trading right now at fair value and yet there are so many questions about gold. “What will higher interest rates in the United States do? Will that push gold back down? I heard that there might be some inflation”, an investor might say. “That’s usually bullish for gold.” Talk about a goldilocks environment right now for gold. We have a stronger U.S. economy, which should provide some inflation, and yet we are definitely, in the United States, looking straight at at least 2, if not 3, interest rate hikes. That should keep the dollar firm. So we have people just absolutely wondering how high gold might go and you have an equal number of people saying, “With higher interest rates, gold is going to go down.” That uncertainty is the bread and butter of selling options. Gold right now, trading around $12.50 an ounce, there are people very interested in buying calls 50% above the market right now. Similar interest in people buying puts, believe it or not, 30-40% below the market. If you add up those two percentages, you’re talking about practically 100% strangle around the value of gold and, in my mind, trading gold now for some 25 years, that is about the best trade on the board. We think that’s going to probably carry on into 2018, as well. We’re just really happy about the enthusiasm that people have buying options on both sides and we’re going to take advantage of that. Michael: So, a lot of this political turmoil in the news right now is really helping that trade is what you’re saying, because that’s really bringing the public in. Gold is a great market to speculate in for the general public. When you get news of things that make people uneasy, when you see Iran shooting off missiles, when you get the daily news, people don’t agree with what Donald Trump’s doing sometimes, those are the type of things that can bring a lot of investor interest into a market like gold, and that’s why you get these wide strikes. That’s what James is explaining. If you’d like to learn more about the strategy of strangling the market, The Complete Guide to Option Selling gives a thorough explanation. That is the Third Edition. You can get that on our website- www.optionsellers.com/book. You’ll get it at a little bit of a discount there than if you get it at the bookstore or at amazon. James, let’s move on here to our next market this month, that’s the natural gas market. As most of you listeners know, we due follow seasonals very closely here. If you’re trading options in commodities, seasonals are a prime thing you want to look at first, especially in cyclical markets like natural gas. James, you want to take us through where we are with natural gas here in late February 2017 and what tends to happen there cyclically in that market over the next 30-60 days? James: Michael, natural gas is probably the most interesting of all the seasonals, I think, that we follow. Generally speaking, the investor public comes into natural gas to buy it for possible cold winter, they buy natural gas and natural gas calls in November and December. For those who are our clients or listen to some of the recommendations we made, generally speaking, you do the exact opposite. You fade what the public is doing. They’re buying calls, they’re buying natural gas going into winter season. We did that again this year. We saw about a 1 cent spike in natural gas prices. Natural gas generally tops out in December with cold temperatures going through the Northeast and the Midwest, only to come back down in February and March as the winter never seems to be quite as severe as they thought. Then, investors will think, “Well, if the market didn’t rally in this winter then it’s probably going to go down some more in the spring.” That’s just the opposite of what the seasonality is. Generally speaking, supplies of natural gas are their smallest as we come out of the winter heating season, then they start to build supplies and purchases need to be made and natural gas prices normally start heading up in March, April, and May. That is what we’re going to take advantage of the next week or two, is we will be selling put premium below the natural gas levels that we’re hitting right now. We’ve had an extremely mild February, probably March as well. We’re looking at very low prices right now for natural gas and we see the chance for 10, 15, 20% rally in prices starting in March and April. We’re going to be positioning in the coming weeks getting long this market. Seasonally it goes up in spring and we’re going to try and take advantage of just that. Michael: What’s the volatility like there now? Can you sell spreads there or is it primarily naked positions that you’re looking at? James: Well, natural gas used to trade at $10, $12, and $15 per million BTU’s. Now it’s trading around $2.50. It’s so interesting that this is probably the fuel of the future and right now it’s practically being given away. We would be selling naked natural gas puts primarily because the market is so low right now. If the volatility continues, and it has just recently, we’ll be looking at doing credit spreads on the put side, as well. So, basically taking a slightly conservative position and a slightly aggressive position because the market is so weak and so low right now. We’re looking at China’s involvement in natural gas imports for the first time since anyone can recall. At the same time, the U.S. is going to be exporting natural gas for the first time in decades. All of these items are going to be slightly bullish or very bullish for natural gas later this year. We think that’s probably the best seasonal to be getting involved with right now. Michael: Right now, in talking about natural gas, James, about 48% of all U.S. homes use natural gas for heating in the wintertime. Another 37% use electric, which usually comes from power pants fueled by natural gas. So, you do have your peak demand season in the wintertime and what James was just describing is, and we’re going to put a chart up here for you to look at, but gas storage levels tend to hit their lowest levels of the year in March and April. That’s the reason for this. When supplies are lowest, prices tend to get the strongest and they continue to get strong as they rebuild inventory. James, what you were talking about though, selling naked, some people that sell options, some in stock options, they shy away from that; but, in commodities we’re able to sell them so far out-of-the-money that you get a pretty big cushion there and you don’t really have to pick the bottom in the market. You simply sell and even if your timing isn’t right you can still get it. Do you see, if you’re looking at selling naked, what’s your cushion like? Do you still have a pretty good cushion there to give you some leeway if you’re a little early or a little late on the trade? James: Yeah, I think there’s a really good cushion and natural gas is probably one of the more historically volatile markets. When it was trading at $10 and $15, that volatility is still in the market, now it’s trading at $2.50-$2.75. For the spot contracts, we would be looking out September, October, possibly that far out. Those markets are well above $3.00 right now. Might be teetering on that in the week or so to come; however, some 20-25% below the market there’s excellent premium right now. That’s what we’d be looking at taking advantage of. If the market heads a little bit lower, probably selling premium 25-30% below the market. We think that’s an ideal way to get long the market. Natural gas, if you were to buy it at a certain level and fall slightly, that’s one thing. Selling puts some 25% below the market, I think, is an ideal way-- Actually, in my opinion, a conservative way to get into the market. Natural gas over the next several years is going to be in an up-turn based on Chinese demand, Chinese importation, and finally the U.S. getting to export natural gas for the first time in quite some time. Michael: That and even supply right now looking somewhat bullish in natural gas. Supplies this month are 9% below last year at this time… almost 9% below at 8.9%. So, you have a strong seasonal tendency, you have a bullish supply setup, and what you’re saying, James, is you’re able to go 25-30% underneath the market. For an option seller/a put seller to win here, he can take in a premium of what, $500.. $600.. $700? Is that the range you’re typically looking at? Correct? James: Yes. With the recent weakness in natural gas because of some very warm temperatures in the Northeast, yes a lot of options are trading right now between $600-$700 and that is certainly the sweet spot for where we like to write puts, especially in natural gas. Michael: So, what that investor would be saying is that as long as natural gas doesn’t fall another 25-30% at its most bullish time of year with a bullish supply setup, the option is going to expire and he’s going to keep that premium? James: Exactly. In addition, a lot of investors who are familiar with stock options selling and the high margin requirement, natural gas you’re looking at just 2-3 times the premium that you take in for margins. Your ROI looks really good, as well. Needless to say, we don’t know what natural gas is going to do the next 30 days, but we do know what the fundamentals are and the chance for natural gas to get a small or large rally this summer look quite strong to us. Michael: Sounds good, James. For you listeners, I know a lot of you listening have heard us for a while and you know what we’re talking about, you know the strategy, but we are making an attempt to over-simplify things a little bit for our new listeners out there that may be unfamiliar with how commodities options work. So, we want to make sure we hit all the bases for everyone listening. We’re going to take just a minute here and give you a little preview of the upcoming March newsletter. If you are on our mailing list, you can expect this next week first couple days of March. You should also be getting an e-version of that in your e-mail box. We have a pretty full issue coming up. We have a lesson coming up on how to use leverage in commodities. We have a lot of stock options sellers that have never sold commodities options. This is a lesson in the newsletter that’s really going to bring you up to speed on how the leverage works and how to use it to your advantage the correct way. We also have a strategy, it’s another little bit more advanced strategy this month- we’re talking about an options spread. It’s entitled The Crack Squeeze. It is in the energy markets. We’ll have to wait for the newsletter to read that and see one of the strategies we’re employing right now in those markets. Look for that in your mailbox or e-mailbox first week in March. James, talking about energies, let’s move over to the crude market. We have a really interesting situation setting up there between the seasonal and existing fundamentals that often times you don’t see, kind of conflicting things going on there right now. Do you want to talk about that a little bit for our listeners? James: Definitely. Crude oil is certainly one of the most liquid of all commodities as far as volume, open interest, and participation by investors all around. Not everyone is trading pork bellies and potatoes, but a lot of people know what the price of crude oil is. A lot of people bet with their pocketbooks what they think it’s going to do. Generally speaking, crude oil supplies are at their greatest in January and the market starts to rally as we approach driving season. As I think we all know, this year was different. OPEC together, along with non-OPEC nations, put together the first production cuts in over a dozen years and voila, we had a $15 rally. Crude oil is now sitting in the low 50’s to mid 50’s for the later months. I think right now is fully priced. Crude oil supplies in the United States are at all-time record highs. While the OPEC cut took a lot of people by surprise, and there are a lot of bullish factors right now from that, or at least a lot of analysts think so, it really is offering lots of opportunities now and coming up probably in April and May. Generally speaking, there’s a lot of interplay when you talk about energies. Generally speaking, what crude oil supplies and fundamentals might be might be different for heating oil or for gasoline or for natural gas. Probably the next 30-60 days we see crude oil prices very well supported by the idea that a lot of investors are pouring into that market because of OPEC production cuts. Some of the markets like heating oil generally are going to start heading lower after the winter season. So, often you’re going to see March, April, and May crude oil prices inching up while heating oil actually is falling. There is definitely an opportunity involved with that. For our clients, we manage that for them. For the novices, it can be a little bit much, but that’s another reason why you follow seasonality and why you keep well tuned into the market. We think that over the next 60-90 days we’re going to have really long lasting opportunities in energy. I would say in April and May is going to be the biggest one for the year, and that’s in the crude oil market. We’ll wait and see and talk about that when the time comes. Michael: As far as the energy seasonal goes, that is a major seasonal tendency. What James is explaining is being counter-balanced this year by fundamentals. As you mentioned, James, crude stocks at record highs… over 508 million barrels. That’s an all-time high for crude oil stocks, not for this time of year, but forever. That’s the highest it’s ever been. Also, interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today talking about bullish long positions in crude oil. 10 to 1 – is that what we were talking about earlier, James? James: Michael, every morning I have my favorite cup of Joe and I read the Wall Street Journal. This morning I read, and it has been well published recently, but today almost hit a crescendo, that fund traders in the world have amassed the largest long position ever in crude oil. It trumps their short position 10 to 1. That, in my opinion, is the most lop-sided position I’ve ever seen, especially in something as liquid as crude oil. While these speculators have time on their side right now, the months of March, April, and May are generally good demand for oil and smaller inter-production coming out of OPEC. That is definitely a wall that could come crumbling down. I would not want to be the last person to buy in that market and be holding on the last day because for crude oil to trade around $55 a barrel when in the United States, for example Texas, we can produce crude oil for around $15. You know that in many CEO offices right now and on napkins having a cocktail late at night in a bar there are business positions being put together where we’re going to produce oil at $15 and we’re going to sell it on the board of $55. There’s going to be an opportunity probably in April or May to take advantage of what the speculators have pushed up to probably over-valued heights right now. Michael: So, that big long position like that, sooner or later, that’s going to have to be unwound. We’ll see how that plays out. For the time being, you still have that strong seasonal in place that has to be respected, so you may have a little bit of balance there in the near term. That being the case, we have outlined a strategy in the upcoming newsletter called The Crack Squeeze. We’ll show you how you can take advantage of that. The premium available in that market right now, that’s a trade for now and the coming 30-60 days we have one of your favorite trades coming up, James, but we’ll save that for next month. For those of you that are interested in learning more about working directly with us through an account for high-net-worth investors, you can request our investor information discovery pack. You can get that at OptionSellers.com/Discovery. We do have a recommended $1 million account size. If you are interested in something like that, feel free to request our information package. It does come with a DVD. James, let’s move into our final portion of the podcast this month. This is our lesson for investors. We’re going to talk about diversification of asset class this month. In our videos, we talk about two important types of diversification. One is diversification of strategy, which some investors are not familiar with. Then, there’s diversification of asset class, which some investors are familiar with; however, our commodities often are overlooked when it comes to that diversification. We’re going to talk about this month some of the advantages, especially for stock options sellers, who are used to writing options in stocks, you understand how that strategy works, some of the big advantages you have by applying that strategy to commodities. James, maybe you want to cover this first. There’s plenty, there’s a couple right at the top though of most interest. What would you consider the top advantage of a commodities option writer over a stock option writer? James: Well, you know, stock option writers are a lot of our current clients. They eventually were introduced to short options through their stock account writing covered calls and such. A lot of investors started thinking, “Well, why don’t I sell options on stocks? That seems to be my best portfolio gains.” Generally speaking, selling options on stocks you’re selling approximately 5%, sometimes 10%, out-of-the-money, where in commodities when you educate the different ideas of applying short options to different asset classes, investors are absolutely amazed by the fact that you can sell premium 50%, 60%, 70% out-of-the-money. In some of the markets that we sell premiums it’s as high as 100% out-of-the-money with relatively low margin requirements to do so. A lot of investors that study for themselves what to do with their investment and what to do with their nest egg who discover short options, when they stumble across selling options on commodities certainly that is when our phone starts ringing. I think for the fact that we put ourselves out as the premier stock options sellers, rather commodity option sellers, it’s certainly an eye-opener to a lot of people who want to be diversified. Diversification is always the number one goal for a sound investment portfolio. The fact that the stock market right now is in a bull market, it’s at all time highs. At any moment, it can start a 5 year bear market and selling options on commodities allows you to be profitable in bull or bear markets. That’s what’s the real beauty of what we do. Michael: These don’t just come from us. A lot of these come from our readers/prospective clients that repeat this and these are the reasons we hear the most. That’s why we’re repeating them here. As James was saying, the biggest advantages here is, one, you can sell deep, deep out-of-the-money strikes. Two, you get a potentially high RI because the margins are so much lower than they are for stock options. I know the margins, most of the time, we pay are sometimes 100-150% of the premium. So, you sell an option for $700 and maybe you only put up $700 or $1,000 in margin to hold that. Is that what you’re seeing right now, James, in this condition? James: That’s exactly what we have right now. We have some of the lowest margins to hold short options on commodities that I’ve seen since I’ve been doing this. Not all of them are that way, but some of the most lucrative ones like the gold option strangle that we’re doing and the crude oil trade position that’s coming up. I’m looking at that already trying to get our ducks in a row for that. You’re looking at about 150% of the premium that you take in is what’s required for margin. That is really not tying up a lot of money to hopefully have very good results at the end of the year. Michael: We’re talking about selling deep out-of-the-money. That natural gas trade you described earlier, we’re talking about selling 25-30% out-of-the-money. That’s probably about the closest we’ll be to the money when selling options. Would you say that’s a fair assessment? James: Generally so. Any time someone is selling options on commodities on their own or with us, you’ll notice that the calls are always or most often can be further out-of-the-money for a simple reason. A market can only go to zero, it can’t go below that. When natural gas, which used to trade at $10, $15 per million BTU’s, is trading with a two-handle it can only go so low. The fact that we’re 25% below this market currently, I think, that’s way out-of-the-money. If the market inches a little bit lower, we’ll just continue to sell puts on that market. Often, we’re looking at puts some 40-50% below the money. The fact that natural gas is so cheap right now and the fundamentals look anywhere from friendly to bullish later this year, we think that’s selling them quite a bit out-of-the-money. We think that’s going to be a great position for later this year. Michael: Of course, one more thing I want to point out… you mentioned a diversification aspect. Commodities in general tend to be uncorrelated to stocks as a whole, but when you introduce the option selling aspect to it it’s a portfolio that’s completely uncorrelated to anything. It’s not going to correlate to equity, it’s not going to correlate to interest rates, the positions aren’t even going to correlate to each other because a market like silver’s going to have nothing to do with the price of corn and the price of corn will have nothing to do with the price of coffee. So, it’s a completely diversified portfolio that isn’t even going to correlate to the commodities indexes. That’s simply because you have the ability to sell options on either side of it. Those would be the three big benefits for you stock option sellers listening. You’re thinking about giving it a try, giving it a look. Those are the three biggest draws to this type of investment. Of course, they’re described in depth in our book or any of our materials on our website. James, I think we’ve had a pretty full session this month and I do thank you for your insights and your sharing of some of your thoughts on the markets this month. James: My pleasure. Talking about commodities and, not only that, but the approach of selling options on commodities is definitely an eye-opener to many investors and we look forward to doing more so in the future. Michael: Just an announcement here at the end of our podcast, for those of you considering applying for new accounts, we are closed for March. We are fully booked for March. If you are interested in one of our remaining April openings, please contact Rosemary. You can call her at the 800 number… 800-346-1949. You can also, if you’re an international caller, 813-472-5760. You can also e-mail her at office@optionsellers.com. That is to schedule a phone consultation. We do have a few of those left for March and they would be for April openings. Feel free to give her a call if you are interested in discussing one of those remaining openings in April. Everybody have a great month of option selling. We’ll be back here in March and we’ll talk to you then. Thank you.

As always, we receive feedback on previous episodes, but this time we also receive feedback on our feedback on feedback. We have a word of caution for Windows users burning Linux ISO files with ImgBurn, questions on Linux drivers and the differences between distros, suggestions on getting Ubuntu MATE installed and a Gone Linux story. There is much more feedback in the episode than we can list here, so you will just have to listen. We know you will anyway! Episode 318 Time Stamps 00:00 Going Linux #318 · Listener Feedback 00:15 Introduction 01:09 David: Feedback on feedback on feedback 02:30 Troy: A word of caution on ImgBurn 04:28 Benjamin: A familiar suggestion 05:08 Charles: Why are there no standard drivers for Linux, like on Windows? 16:32 Paul: Mint 18 or 17.3? 18:48 Mario: Congrats on 10 years! 20:56 Armin: Discovered Linux through BSD 22:29 Michael: What are the real differences between distros? 25:52 Amar: Congrats on 10 years 26:15 Michael: Does Mint MATE come with Orca by default? 27:41 David: MATE 16.04 does not recognize screen resolution in Virutal Box 28:56 Michael: Needs some help 30:35 Matt: Provides a review on video 31:22 Anders: Suggests Lubuntu 33:11 Carl: What kind of voodoo witchcraft is this? 36:12 Jacabo: About the last episode 38:15 Joshua: Gone Linux! 41:36 goinglinux.com, goinglinux@gmail.com, +1-904-468-7889, @goinglinux, feedback, listen, subscribe 42:34 End

As always, we receive feedback on previous episodes, but this time we also receive feedback on our feedback on feedback. We have a word of caution for Windows users burning Linux ISO files with ImgBurn, questions on Linux drivers and the differences between distros, suggestions on getting Ubuntu MATE installed and a Gone Linux story. There is much more feedback in the episode than we can list here, so you will just have to listen. We know you will anyway! Episode 318 Time Stamps 00:00 Going Linux #318 · Listener Feedback 00:15 Introduction 01:09 David: Feedback on feedback on feedback 02:30 Troy: A word of caution on ImgBurn 04:28 Benjamin: A familiar suggestion 05:08 Charles: Why are there no standard drivers for Linux, like on Windows? 16:32 Paul: Mint 18 or 17.3? 18:48 Mario: Congrats on 10 years! 20:56 Armin: Discovered Linux through BSD 22:29 Michael: What are the real differences between distros? 25:52 Amar: Congrats on 10 years 26:15 Michael: Does Mint MATE come with Orca by default? 27:41 David: MATE 16.04 does not recognize screen resolution in Virutal Box 28:56 Michael: Needs some help 30:35 Matt: Provides a review on video 31:22 Anders: Suggests Lubuntu 33:11 Carl: What kind of voodoo witchcraft is this? 36:12 Jacabo: About the last episode 38:15 Joshua: Gone Linux! 41:36 goinglinux.com, goinglinux@gmail.com, +1-904-468-7889, @goinglinux, feedback, listen, subscribe 42:34 End

Sunday at 2 PM EDT, Kathryn Christine and Meg will bring news and assistance from the Company of Heaven.  Lightworkers, come to listen and receive the balm and reassurance of Sananda, the Galactic news from Ashtar about security, life plans, assignments and your growing capacity; relevant information from Michael: "What is a thought?" how to recognize a thought that is not your own and transmute it.  Questions like "What is transmuting?" "How can I enjoy life while others are suffering/" and why you must not compare yourself and your unique role to other Lightworkers will be answered. Come join us for this exciting family gathering.  Take your place around the table and enjoy the abundance of Love and Light with your beloved Brothers and Sisters of Higher Dimensions.  All are welcome!  All are called to join in! Kathryn and Christine will also give updates and news about their own transmuting and Lightbearing work.  Y'all come! With Love, Kathryn Christine and Meg    

Going Linux 300 · Listener Feedback Aidan wants previews, Tony crashes, Will doubts Linux, Michael likes it light, Sean likes Puppy, Frank is unhappy and Angelo corrects some misinformation. Episode 300 Time Stamps 00:00 Going Linux 300 · Listener Feedback 01:06 Aidan: Window previews with Mutter 03:51 Tony: Flash crash 06:07 Will: Why now, go Linux? 13:17 Michael: What about Linux Lite 15:15 Sean: What no Puppy? 17:38 Frank: Unhappy with Mint and Ubuntu 25:34 Angelo: Misinformation about Assistive Technology 31:19 goinglinux.com, goinglinux@gmail.com, +1-904-468-7889, @goinglinux, feedback, listen, subscribe 32:31 End

Going Linux 300 · Listener Feedback Aidan wants previews, Tony crashes, Will doubts Linux, Michael likes it light, Sean likes Puppy, Frank is unhappy and Angelo corrects some misinformation. Episode 300 Time Stamps 00:00 Going Linux 300 · Listener Feedback 01:06 Aidan: Window previews with Mutter 03:51 Tony: Flash crash 06:07 Will: Why now, go Linux? 13:17 Michael: What about Linux Lite 15:15 Sean: What no Puppy? 17:38 Frank: Unhappy with Mint and Ubuntu 25:34 Angelo: Misinformation about Assistive Technology 31:19 goinglinux.com, goinglinux@gmail.com, +1-904-468-7889, @goinglinux, feedback, listen, subscribe 32:31 End

The Cast: Melanie, John, Ian, Cindy, Michael- What year did YOU graduate from High School.- D23 Conference with Michael who was there.- Harrison Ford, Moana, Bill Murray, Chef - the Food Truck movie, Randy Q-Newman, Michael cried, T-shirt canons.- John gets to pull out his Walken.- Parks going to be a mess for the next 5 years.- Annual Passes - what are they going to cut?- Queue's were terrible at D23.- Chris Evans was HOT.- Shanghai Disney will be mind blowing.- Stuff will be fixed for the next D23.- Churros were AMAZING!- Melanie has been Coast trotting - she's bi-coastal having visited Disney World, Universal and Disneyland.- Mel will never stay off site at Universal again! Club Level stays.- Fantasia Gardens - Mel's kids cant get enough.- Disneyland looks great for the 60th.  Paint the Night & Disneyland Forever amazing.- Aladdin being eliminated at Disneyland, Osborne Lights leaving Disney World.  - John thinks the show should move up the road to a different studio or that Universal should just start it's own lights show. INTERCOT Consulting (tm).- The history of Osborne Lights told by Ian.- John offers to move the Yaglenski Family Holiday Light Spectacular to Hilton Head if they contact him.- Mulch, Sweat and Shears done.- Take It or Leave It Tom Sawyers Island. Mel says take it. Michael takes it. Ian takes it, Cindy takes it, John takes it - Unanimous!- Websites selling Disney Dining reservations to guests.- #runICOT Marathon Weekend

You don't have to be a comic book fanatic to love superheroes. And even if you've never picked up a comic book in your life, you've almost certainly seen a comic book movie. A recent surge in comic book movies has brought us blockbusters such as The Avengers, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and many more. Given the success of this genre of movies, we are honored to interview the man who has been credited with bringing comic books to the big screen, and has been dubbed "The Godfather of comic book movies", Michael Uslan. Michael is the owner of the Batman series, producer of the Batman movies, and was the first instructor to teach an accredited course on comic book folklore at any university. Michael Uslan is a film producer with numerous award winning projects to his credit. He is Executive Producer of all of the Batman features from Batman to The Dark Knight Rises and won an Emmy Award for TV's "Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?" He has been a speaker at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the Smithsonian Institution. Michael recently teamed up with Stan Lee and the Smithsonian Institution to create a free online course titled the Rise of Superheroes. Take the course here! ____ "When I was in my twenty's, I bought the rights to Batman from DC Comics with my business partner, I quit my job, gave up all security, and rolled the dice. With Batman in my back pocket I went to Hollywood." - Michael Uslan Quotes from Michael: What we learn in this episode: How Michael turned a passion for comic books into a very lucrative career doing what he loved. What is the most disturbing comic book of all time? What is it like creating and producing the Batman movies? Why is the Smithsonian Institution teaming up with Michael Uslan and Stan Lee to create an online course on super hero's Resources: The Rise of Superheroes Course with Stan Lee and Michael Uslan - Free Trailer - The Rise of Superheroes The Boy Who Loved Batman: A Memoir -- This episode is brought to you by: Igloo: Go to igloosoftware.com/smartpeople to use Igloo for free with up to 10 of your favorite coworkers or customers! Lynda.com: Do something good for yourself in 2015 and sign up for a FREE 10-day trial to Lynda.com by visiting Lynda.com/smartpeople.

On today's ABC edition of Daytime Confidential Belinda, Tina and Luke discuss One Life to Live's "bitchy bangs," Luke and Tina's funniest Llanview moment of the week. Susan Haskell's possible return to her old stomping grounds and what might this mean for Michael Easton's John McBaine?Where in the hell is Edward Quartermaine? Why isn't he there for his great grandson Michael? What on General Hospital turned Tina off? The Haunted Star reopens yet again. What about a Lulu/Johnny/Maxie triangle?Ambyr Childrens leaves All My Children as Colby Chandler. Jake is being held hostage by militants. Where is Jamie and why doesn't the Martin family know that Jake is being held hostage?We also choose who our Performer of the Week from the three ABC soaps is.

Thank you Joe Tonnos ( https://www.theconsumervc.com/43-joe-tonnos-ketch-ventures-mistral-equity-partners-cricket-protein-tequila-and-investing-in-sustainability/ ) for the introduction to today's guest, Michael Nogen ( https://twitter.com/michael_nogen ) , one of the founding partners of Overton VC ( https://www.overtonvc.com/ ). Overton Venture Capital invests in early stage companies (Pre Series A) who demonstrate early success through revenue and market validation. Some of their portfolio includes Perch, Stantt and Joy Lux. Previously, he founded Theality, which became a national maternity apparel manufacturer and distributor carried by over 200 retailers and led global strategy at Gap and headed finance and strategy at 1800Flowers.com ( http://1800flowers.com/ ). A few books that inspired Michael: Good to Great ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0066620996?camp=1789&creativeASIN=0066620996&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Jim Collins The Culting of Brands ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591840961?camp=1789&creativeASIN=1591840961&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Douglas Atkin No Rules Rules ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1984877860?camp=1789&creativeASIN=1984877860&ie=UTF8&linkCode=xm2&tag=theconsumervc-20 ) by Reid Hastings Questions I ask Michael: * What was your initial attraction to entrepreneurship, and founding Theality? * You then went into consulting and then working in senior positions at Gap and 1800 Flowers. What were some of the learnings working at legacy brands? * How did Overton come together? * During the summit, one of the focuses was why have corporations at times struggle to innovate, which lead to acquiring challenging brands. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this since you worked for established corporate brands, but also was a successful founder. * Walk me through your due diligence process - * When you evaluate early stage businesses, what are some of the most important elements of either the founder or the business to get you interested? * Has it been hard establishing conviction amongst founders since you have to meet with them remotely during COVID? * What I find really interesting about your portfolio at Overton is you invest in both software / b2b2c businesses as well as consumer brands. Many software investors have felt consumer brands aren't venture backable. I was curious since you invest in a wide range of businesses and business models, how you think about porfolio construction and the return profile on each business? * What are current trends that you are focused on? * Has COVID changed your point of view on any specific trends? * What's one thing that you would change when it came to venture capital?